An Iridium-80 radioactive sword?

[selunatic2397]

I was reading the novel Riptide, by the authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Long story...its about the oak island money pit, which has the obligatory hoard of pirate loot...and a cursed sword.

The sword of saint michael...so deadly that even to look at it meant death...yes lots of star sapphires studded the gold hilt and sheath...the blade though...

Pitted, flattened,deformed..hot to the touch...scaly and oxidized to a purplish black with inclusions of white...kept in a lead casket and found in a roman temple ruin...

Supposedly it radiated the entire treasure...killed of the pirates by killing their bone marrow...then with no immune system they fell victim to "opportunistic diseases".

A high tech gieger counter sternly stated 240.8 rads/hour...through tens of feet of rock and earth when the casket was cracked open for a peek...33.144 rads/hour when then closed...but raised to 3217.89 rads/hour when the sword was drawn...

Even if this thing would make one hell of a treasure for my gamers...is it even possible?

The book hint that the sword came to earth in a meteorite, but was a treasur eof the spanish crown after some foolish sailor took it from the romen ruins...all on his ship were found dead.

Since the author had even the lead casket be warm to the touch, they seem to have hit on radiothermal decay generators and ran with the idea...

But could it work or is it hogwash? If the latter I'll just use some other lure for my pirate treasure.

 

[Carlobrand]

I was reading the novel Riptide, by the authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Long story...its about the oak island money pit, which has the obligatory hoard of pirate loot...and a cursed sword.

The sword of saint michael...so deadly that even to look at it meant death...yes lots of star sapphires studded the gold hilt and sheath...the blade though...

Pitted, flattened,deformed..hot to the touch...scaly and oxidized to a purplish black with inclusions of white...kept in a lead casket and found in a roman temple ruin...

Supposedly it radiated the entire treasure...killed of the pirates by killing their bone marrow...then with no immune system they fell victim to "opportunistic diseases".

A high tech gieger counter sternly stated 240.8 rads/hour...through tens of feet of rock and earth when the casket was cracked open for a peek...33.144 rads/hour when then closed...but raised to 3217.89 rads/hour when the sword was drawn...

Even if this thing would make one hell of a treasure for my gamers...is it even possible?

The book hint that the sword came to earth in a meteorite, but was a treasur eof the spanish crown after some foolish sailor took it from the romen ruins...all on his ship were found dead.

Since the author had even the lead casket be warm to the touch, they seem to have hit on radiothermal decay generators and ran with the idea...

But could it work or is it hogwash? If the latter I'll just use some other lure for my pirate treasure.

Iridium specifically? Radioactive or not, I don't see how someone from that era could work it into a sword. Also no such thing as Iridium 80. Iridium 188, maybe?

First issue: whatever metal it is, it needs to be workable with the tools available to that era, and it needs to produce something a smith would consider a usable sword. If the melting point is too high, or the metal too brittle or too soft, the smith will reject it. If it's blended with iron, then there's less of it and less radiation.

Second issue: half life. The "hotter" something is, the faster it "cools". It might have killed Romans in its day, but now the only danger is cancer ten or twenty years down the line. Conversely, the hotter the author tries to make it in the current time period, the more lethal it would have been a couple thousand years back. If it's actively dangerous today, it would have killed a Roman smith well before he could have completed his work - and it would have been considered cursed and disposed of long before they attached a hilt or decorations. Your relic would look more like a half-completed sword blade, lacking handle grips or any other decorations.

 

[robject]

Some materials with half-lives into the thousands of years and up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radioactive_isotopes_by_half-life#109_seconds

(Of course, another question for materials with a geologic-time-insignificant half-life is "how was it created?")


How about tellurium mixed with iron? Of course it probably would only kill people slowly, via cancer over years of close exposure. Hardly seems fierce.

"Watch out! I'm the Vorpal Death Blade! OooooooOOOOOooooo! I'll probably cause thyroid cancer within twelve years!!"

 

[Enoki]

Well, if it's putting off 500+ rad you have a problem in any case whatever it is made of. That's pretty much a certainty that within a week or two you will have surely gotten a lethal dose of radiation and are going to die in short order.

 

[robject]

Well, if it's putting off 500+ rad you have a problem in any case whatever it is made of. That's pretty much a certainty that within a week or two you will have surely gotten a lethal dose of radiation and are going to die in short order.

Sounds challenging... "Yes your highness, we're working on that special sword, but our smiths keep dying..."

 

[Carlobrand]

Well, if it's putting off 500+ rad you have a problem in any case whatever it is made of. That's pretty much a certainty that within a week or two you will have surely gotten a lethal dose of radiation and are going to die in short order.

Well, someone had a problem at some point. Assuming as stated that the someone was a Roman era swordsmith - and I don't recall Roman era swords being all that noteworthy, the thing sounds more Byzantine - then you've had at least 1500 years for that number to go down.

 

[Enoki]

Well, someone had a problem at some point. Assuming as stated that the someone was a Roman era swordsmith - and I don't recall Roman era swords being all that noteworthy, the thing sounds more Byzantine - then you've had at least 1500 years for that number to go down.

50 rad over several days (assuming like 16 to 24 hour exposure) is close to a 50 - 50 lethal dose of radiation. 500 rad is definitely going to do you in in a matter of days. Rad and Rem are pretty much equivalent.
It doesn't take that much exposure continuously to kill you.

So, if the sword is radioactive and giving off 50 + rad /rem you are going to die in pretty much short order being near it. Now, roughly 6" of lead, 2 feet of water, oil, or the like, will reduce exposure by about 90%. So...

 

[rancke]

50 rad over several days (assuming like 16 to 24 hour exposure) is close to a 50 - 50 lethal dose of radiation. 500 rad is definitely going to do you in in a matter of days. Rad and Rem are pretty much equivalent.
It doesn't take that much exposure continuously to kill you.

So, if the sword is radioactive and giving off 50 + rad /rem you are going to die in pretty much short order being near it. Now, roughly 6" of lead, 2 feet of water, oil, or the like, will reduce exposure by about 90%. So...

We still have the original smith dying long before he can finish it.

How long does it take to make a sword using a hitherto unknown alloy? Add the experimentation period before the smith came up with a usable alloy and you have the minimum time someone can wield it before dying.

I suppose the decoration could have been added after the original smith died. And a succession of smiths forging the sword in the first place. But you have to ask yourself, how many smiths have to die before the project is abandoned before it is finished?

It sounds more than a little farfetched to me.


Hans
Hans

 

[Lycanorukke]

A high tech gieger counter sternly stated 240.8 rads/hour...through tens of feet of rock and earth when the casket was cracked open for a peek...33.144 rads/hour when then closed...but raised to 3217.89 rads/hour when the sword was drawn...

For the 'counter' to be pinging 2.4 Grays through a few meters of rock and earth it would have to be gamma or neutron radiation. (Alpha or Beta would be easy stopped). But even then the source would have to be a extremely powerful - ie: A Live criticality reaction, not just something decaying. A nuclear reactor has a half a meter of steel for the pressure vessel and a few meters of concrete, so I dont think a lead box would make it 'safe to handle'. Not to mention with that much radiation, the decay heat would melt the box pretty fast if it wasn't cooled.

Assuming 1 Gray = 1 Sievert (for X and Gamma rays) your looking at about 50% mortality within a month for an hours exposure.

0.3 Grays for the 'closed box' means it would take 6-7 hours to get the 50% fatality.

As for waving the sword around (32 Grays), you would be dead in under three days in extemely unpleasant ways. Louis Slotin got zapped by about 11 Grays in the 1946 criticality accident,a third less that the sword thing.

The interesting side note is that with the sword spitting out that much radiation, it would be glowing blue with Cherenkov radiation if someone had a look at it.

 

[selunatic2397]

I managed to corner one of the local radiation health monitors for the hanford area...helps to live where I do sometimes!...

He pretty much confirmed what y'all have said...The author had a little bit of info and faked the rest for the rule of cool...

He suggested to use a "handwavium metal" sword if I was set on it but had not a clue how the local low tech swordsmiths forged it without one heck of a lot of dead swordsmiths.

Oh Well...I'll just have to use something else for my cursed treasure.

Thanks for all the science help guys!