A thing I learned today: the Los Alamos National Laboratory maintains a phone line, mentioned in this PDF info sheet, for surgeons and morticians who find plutonium-powered pacemakers in people's bodies and realize, shit, this probably shouldn't go in the regular trash
- He/Him
I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.
Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.
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in reply to @pervocracy's post:
I had no idea nuclear pacemakers even existed! That sounds... scary!
They aren't used in new pacemakers anymore, because lithium batteries have gotten better and the battery-changing procedure has gotten easier (the battery pack is implanted just under the skin so changing it doesn't require access to the heart, only a superficial incision that can be done with local anesthesia).
But back in the day when batteries weren't so good, it was the best option. Plutonium-238 has a half-life of 87.7 years so that battery is never going to need to be replaced.
Okay actually that makes a lot of sense, thanks!
I hope at least one person enjoyed being a NUCLEAR cyborg! That's like being PINNACLE cyborg!
I like the part where they say "please do not autoclave [the plutonium pacemaker]"
I mean, you just dug it out of someone's chest, I'm sure it's pretty gross at that point and you'd hate to send it to the nuclear waste facility dirty