Let's Explore A Dangerous Radioactive Uranium Mine

本站收录: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]So, hey, you want to go out in the wasteland and explore a radioactive uranium mine with me? Now, that's not exactly the first thing you should ask your new Tinder date, but for some of us, well, that's just the sort of thing that gets us fired up, right? Um, today we are going to be discussing a safety practice that often gets ignored by both um both the explorer types and preppers alike. All right? And that is radiation safety. Um, I guess I guess most people don't think about it too much because unless there is the uh unless there's the aftermath of of a nuclear war with Fallout to deal with, then it probably doesn't seem like a priority, right? I mean, I guess so, but that's uh that's not really an accurate assessment. All right? Because there are actually radiation hazards all over the place that people don't even really know about these days. Now, our little excursion here today is going to demonstrate that fact as we head out to an open and accessible uranium mine that anybody could easily explore if they wanted to.

[00:01:06]And guess what? This isn't the only one.

[00:01:07]All right? They're all over the place, believe it or not. And you won't find them marked on maps or or even with warning signs a lot of the time, okay?

[00:01:15]They just look like cool caves to go explore for hikers or maybe even a place to camp for the night. And that could be a deadly mistake. You know, people tend to think that the uranium that fuels both the atomic energy industry and the world's nuclear weapons stockpiles is rare or something, okay? But it really isn't. Getting your hands on some is as simple as driving an hour or so out of town. All right? Just uh just remember to wash your hands after. And welcome to the wasteland.

[00:01:57]Hey everyone, this is Chris and you're watching Wasteland by Wednesday. Now, the focus of this channel is discussing the collapse of global civilization and figuring out how we can get ourselves ready for that. Now, today's video has two different purposes. All right. The first is that we're going to talk about uh some of the basics of radiation detection and safety when out in whatever wasteland surrounds you. And the second is that we're going to be uh showcasing the new uh the new Radia code zero uh detector that was sent to me some time ago. Now, this uh this isn't the full review video for the Radia Code Zero. Uh, but that's coming soon and it'll be linked up here somewhere above uh once it's ready. All right. And I'll probably link it at the end of this video as well again when it's ready. Uh, for today, our main focus is to talk about radiation safety in general when you're out and about. All right. And we will just be using the radio code zero to do that. Now, first off, I want to talk uh just a little bit about radiation in general. All right. And it's it's a crazy complex subject with a ton of confusing and often contradictory terms. All right, I'm not going to try and lecture about it in full here because this isn't your freshman physics class and nobody wants to hear all that.

[00:03:15]Um there are plenty of excellent educational videos available on the uh subject here on YouTube and most of them are made by people that are much smarter than I am. All right. Um, remember I'm the guy who's gonna go out and dick around in an irradiated cave today. All right, how's that for smart?

[00:03:34]Now, um, I I do want you to get an idea of some general facts about radiation. Um, specifically the dangerous kind that can actually affect you. Okay? And by that I mean ionizing radiation. Um because technically otherwise everything from you know the signals put out by your TV remote to the phone calls that you press up against the side of your head those are all forms of radiation. All right but they're not the damaging radiation types from uh radioactive isotopes and nuclear detonations or fallout and all of that. And given the focus of this channel those are the uh those are the only types that are are of concern to us right now. Okay. So, ionizing radiation, what is it? Um, well, it is uh it is high energy electromagnetic waves or particles that carry enough energy to detach electrons from atoms or molecules, thus creating ions. Um, and that's the least sciency way that I can say it. Okay? It it breaks apart molecular bonds and can alter atoms within your cells, which can damage DNA and cause health effects. All right.

[00:04:47]Examples of radiation include X-rays, gamma rays, alpha particles, and beta particles. Um, and that right there is enough information for you to go and Google those things to learn more about them. For now, just know that this type of radiation, these are the ones that can hurt or even kill you and we can move on. Uh, but there is still a little science left. All right? Because we have to be able to measure our ionizing radiation, right? To understand how diff how dangerous a a source or an area is, we have to determine both how much radiation is present and how much of a threat it represents to us. Now there are more there are more measurement terms out there than there are radioactive elements in the universe. All right? And each one of them serves a specific purpose. And again we don't need to concern ourselves with all of them here. All right? We are going to focus on two and that's counts per second and severts. Uh also counts per minute and uh severts are divided up into millisevers and micro severs. We'll get into all that. Now counts per second or CPS measures the raw detection rate of radiation events by an individual sensor. Um it means how many ionizing events hit the detector over the span of 1 second. Now this is an important measurement because it is useful to quickly calculate the general strength of radiation and to kind of pinpoint the source or direction of the radiation itself. Um now high counts don't always mean high danger. All right. A lot depends on the the force or the energy behind it. Such as uh such as the difference between low energy alpha radiation which can be stopped by your skin barrier and high energy gamma radiation which will pass right through you and touch all of your inside stuff.

[00:06:37]Okay. Um, again, too much science, I know, but for my uh for my preppers out there, think of radiation uh in the same terms as you think of like ammunition.

[00:06:49]All right? Even though a 9mm slug may be much bigger and heavier than a 5.56 mm slug, what really matters is the amount of powder behind them. All right? Which is why a 9 mil can be stopped by simple Kevlar. And a 5.56 will go both through the front and the back of that and it's also going to touch all your inside stuff, right? And that's because of the velocity behind it. Okay. So now we talk about severs. A seavert is the unit used to measure the biological effect of ionizing radiation on human tissue. All right. And this is the really important one because it accounts for the absorbed dose that you take the the type of radiation and the the the sensitivity of specific organs representing the risk of damage from the radiation that is present. All right. Um basically this is the measurement that determines the radiation's effect on you. Okay. Now because one sever one full sever is a massively large dose uh measurements are usually given in millisevers or the even smaller micro severts and it's given as milliseverts per hour and micro severts per hour. Um and it's micro severts that we will be using today out at the uranium mine. Um at least let's hope that's all we're using, right? Uh keep in mind that severs give their measurement of they give their measurement as as an absorb dose. Okay, which is why it's giving an given as a per hour thing. So a reading of 50 microceverts per hour means that you will absorb 50 microceverts of radiation if you stay at that location for an hour. This is the dose rate it's called.

[00:08:36]Um, here is a uh here's a useful chart that shows what the doses look like for uh for different things and and what's considered safe and what's not. All right. You can also go to the EPA website where they have an accumulated dose calculator to see, you know, get an idea of what kind of radiation you're getting from your from your daily life.

[00:08:58]All right. Um, I'll link this in the description below. Um, also there's a few handy charts you can use. One of which is this card that uh that actually came with my other Geiger counter. All right, this shows counts per minute rather than counts per second and it also shows a general equivalent microceverts per hour reference as well.

[00:09:19]Once you do a little research on this stuff, you'll have a decent understanding of radiation levels that you will get as as readings from your detectors. All right. My regular viewers may also have some idea of how significant say, you know, 940 counts per second is because that's the radiation blast that I recently got on a different mission out by Area 51. Some of you seen that in my Tempute video.

[00:09:46]Um, real quick, I do want to mention one very important distinction that sets the radio code zero apart from other commercial detectors and geer counters.

[00:09:56]All right. Uh this is um this matters for preppers. All right. Uh the radio code zero is not just an extremely sensitive device when it comes to being able to measure even small amounts of radiation. It's also capable of reading massive amounts, okay? And continuing to function in such high radiation environments when other detectors will simply max out and stop providing any useful data. Now, I will get into this more in the full review, but to keep it short, the the radio code zero is made to stay functional and detect levels up to 9,000 millisevers. All right? And when you consider that even uh even 1,000 milliseverts of exposure for a short time can cause extreme radiation sickness. Well, you can imagine what 9,000 millisevers means. Now most commercial geiger counters will max out and become saturated at between 10 and 50 millisevers. All right? But there is a world of difference in exposure from 10 millisevers to a,000 millisevers. And you need to know what the real reading for an area is. Okay? If your detector overloads at a low rate, I mean, yeah, you know that there's a problem. you know that there's a serious threat, but you don't get a complete picture of the threat situation. All right? That's why you need accurate readings all the way up and past what's considered fatal.

[00:11:26]Anyway, now that we know a little something about radiation, let's go out and find some. Yeah. All right. This is where the uh two-w wheelel drive Ford stays behind. And we will be hiking our way up along the side of that ridge up there.

[00:11:44]Um, we'll go down this part of the trail a little ways. Then it turns and it's kind of hard to see, but there is a series of switchbacks right along there. It's pretty steep little climb. And then it's going to go along the side of the ridge all the way down to where our mine is at somewhere right about up there.

[00:12:10]And so that's the plan. Lovely scenery, lovely terrain. Let's go ahead and break out our radiation detector, the radio code zero, and get to it. All right, guys. This is the radio code zero here.

[00:12:24]Comes in this nice padded travel case.

[00:12:26]This thing's actually pretty good quality. I like it. I've uh gone ahead and put the silicone case on. It let it sit here for uh I just turned it on.

[00:12:34]We're going to let it sit for a few minutes to get itself adjusted to the background radiation of the area. and uh and then we'll be heading out. In the meantime, I'm going to take off with the drone and give us a little bit of an aerial view of where we're going. Okay, we are airborne. I'm telling you, I can't stress enough just how useful drones can be for recon, for sight inspections, or even just for scouting trails like this. They are an incredibly handy tool that no prepper should really be without. If you don't have air support already, please go get some. We can see our trail here below as it heads up into the middle of the ridge. I'll go ahead and follow it up to give you an idea of where we're going to be hiking.

[00:13:17]This area is known as the Goldb Mining District and it is part of the Goldb National Monument and Wilderness Area just along the border of Arizona and Nevada.

[00:13:28]Our trail snakes its way up in a relatively gentle ascent through a series of switchbacks before finally reaching the ridge trail above.

[00:13:41]And that is where it turns and begins moving along the face of the ridge. This area is actually littered with uranium mines, but the one that we're interested in today is a small one called the Lucky Bart Prospect.

[00:13:55]The reason we're going here to this one is actually because it's one of the safest of the uranium hot spots in this area and not very deep into the ground.

[00:14:08]As we cruise along here, we can start to see the cuts in the face of the ridge that indicate past mining operations.

[00:14:18]Swinging out a bit, you can easily make out the two parts of this very small prospect. The first was not very deep at all, but the second is the cave we are interested in.

[00:14:31]Let's get a closer look. There's no mistaking it now. That is most definitely a mine entrance.

[00:14:37]So, think of some crazy postcolapse future now. Some group of refugees or travelers might even think that this spot uh makes a good rest stop or even a place to set up a camp in a shaded cool cavern. And indeed, it does feel cool inside that mine. But while it feels cool, it's actually quite hot and definitely not a place where you would want to spend a lot of time.

[00:15:00]Defensively, it could be attractive for a survivor group to think of putting a lookout up here. A single scoped rifle could command this entire valley. But no matter how well they watch outside, they can still be sealing their fate if they're unaware of the dangers inside the cave. As collapse preppers, we have to make sure that we have covered every base and learned about every threat and every danger out there. We won't have any Google to ask questions of, no YouTube how-to videos to teach us the things we need to know. We are going to have to do all that learning now, today, in the times before collapse. And that's why I'm here to talk about how we do that and to add my own little bits of knowledge to the pool.

[00:15:46]Okay, let's get back down to the ground and do some hiking up to this hot ass cave. All right, so looks like we're locked in. Uh, looks like our background radiation is around.19 microceverts.

[00:16:01]Uh, so that's pretty much within normal range. And we will, uh, we're going to set this to run with the with the app and we're going to keep a track of, uh, of everywhere we go. on that track. I'll be posting to the Radverse website and their map as well. So, we'll be able to see the radiation increases uh the entire way up this trail. All right. So, let's go ahead and do that.

[00:16:30]In addition to the Radia Code Zero and the case and everything else, they did send me the probe stick, which is kind of nice. And so, I'll be using that out here as we go.

[00:17:21]just a little ways down and we are already at 28 microceverts our reading. So starting to go up a little bit.

[00:17:40]This is a small well-known little campsite out here where some hikers have stayed before.

[00:17:48]And it's a good little landmark along this trail.

[00:17:52]Something to keep note of.

[00:18:24]I don't know how well you can see that, but we're at 34.

[00:18:28]micro severe just to keep an idea in your head about the radioactive reading we're going to see today. Take another look at that old card from my other geer counter. Don't worry about the CPM or the Miller ranking columns. Just look at the center column which shows levels in micro severs. We can see that up to 0.33 microceverts is considered normal background radiation while up to 0.65 65 is considered a medium level that isn't concerning. Greater than 0.65, however, is where we enter the highle territory that is still safe for moderate exposure, but elevated enough to be concerning. This runs all the way up to a full 6.5 microcevers. A reading greater than 6.5 and up to 13 micro sever is very high. And if that reading represents a sustained source, you should leave the area immediately as it is not safe for continuous long-term exposure. And finally, if you read above 13 microceverts, you should pull out immediately from what is an extremely high radiation environment. Again, to mention my recent Area 51 video where I was exposed to a blast of 67 microceverts from some anti- drone countermeasures device. Now, perhaps you have an idea of just how much radiation that actually is. That is the equivalent of spending about 1 hour on the ground at Chernobyl. So all right, so we got our first alarms at 71 microceverts about halfway up the hill.

[00:20:18]Go ahead and shut that off.

[00:20:24]But yeah, we're climbing up.

[00:20:28]All right, let's keep going.

[00:20:34]All right, we are reading out 83 8284 microceverts.

[00:20:44]Still only about halfway up the ridge.

[00:20:51]It's climbing now. And you can hear it clicking away.

[00:20:55]0.08.

[00:21:04]And look at that view.

[00:21:11]unspoiled except for that crappy Ford truck down there.

[00:21:21]Oh, and there's the next alarm. We are at 0.94 2.0.

[00:21:31]All right.

[00:21:33]2.4 2.7.

[00:21:37]We're climbing now.

[00:21:45]Ah, I missed the 420.

[00:21:48]5.0.

[00:21:52]Climbing fast now.

[00:21:55]8.4 8.5.

[00:21:58]That particular curve in the trail back there was hot enough that I wanted to hurry through it. Still not serious, but the rate did register over nine microceverts, so I put a little bit of hustle on.

[00:22:09]Coming down now to around 1.08 microceverts. If I had to guess, I would say, like I said, they either spilled some ore down there or there's another uranium deposit close to the surface that they didn't know about cuz there's something there.

[00:22:31]Let's move on.

[00:22:33]All right, we're at the top of our final switchback here. About to go along the edge of the ridge.

[00:22:39]But look at that view out there. Huh?

[00:22:44]You know what?

[00:22:46]Today's a Thursday and I am so glad I'm not at work. I mean, come on. Who could beat this?

[00:22:55]Out here in the middle of nowhere, the only human being for miles and miles and miles, hunting for a radioactive uranium mine somewhere along this ridge.

[00:23:07]And if that don't beat all.

[00:23:10]All right, let's keep going. Oh, we'll check our reading up here. It's been about a steady 1.05 around there.

[00:23:18]Millisvers.

[00:23:20]So, that's about right. Definitely elevated, but let's continue.

[00:23:32]You can hear that sucker clicking away in the background.

[00:23:42]All right, we got our 1 79 1.8 2.0 know reading and we're actually coming up to an area where they did have a uh where they did have a little prospect.

[00:23:59]Pretty cool looking rocks.

[00:24:04]So yeah, 2.1 2.2 right around there. Shut the alarm off.

[00:24:13]Continue moving.

[00:24:17]We're getting up into that into that area of higher radiation. Now, now up at this mine, the uh the uranium ore bearing mineral for this was called carnetite.

[00:24:38]And carnotite is a yellowish rock mineral of some sort, but that's what's uh that's what the uranium is actually found in up here. So, when we get up there, we'll be looking for veins of this yellow mineral to run our detector across and see what kind of what kind of readings we get.

[00:25:03]Yep.

[00:26:07]Looks like we are generally fluctuating between 1.5 and 2.25 as we cruise along the face of this ridge line here.

[00:26:25]Reminds you quite a bit of uh playing the Fallout games. Cruising along. Got your radio or radiation detector going.

[00:26:35]Little small for a pit boy, but whatever. 1.54 as we come up on one of our first uh major prospect areas.

[00:26:49]And this one was where they were digging in looking for another vein. Or maybe they found a small one and dug it out.

[00:26:57]Who knows?

[00:26:59]But at any rate, we will come in here and get a reading.

[00:27:06]Closer in.

[00:27:12]We're up to 1.66 66 milliseceverts.

[00:27:18]At this point, let's come back here and check out some of these rock veins.

[00:27:34]1.68 right here.

[00:27:40]1.7 coming through.

[00:27:48]Nice shady spot.

[00:27:51]Got some for mica veins, that's for sure. All right, we're going to move on over to the main event, which is right down here.

[00:28:25]All right, we have arrived out here.

[00:28:35]We're around 1.8 millisevers per hour.

[00:28:41]We'll go ahead and check out the entrance.

[00:28:53]All right.

[00:28:56]Just inside the entrance here and we've climbed past 2.0.

[00:29:05]Now, I do want to talk a little bit about this while we let this thing adjust and go through its period. We're climbing past 2.7.

[00:29:15]Now when it comes to uranium uh uranium decays uranium 238 is the naturally occurring ore for uranium and it decays into alpha particles which are highly radioactive but they can't penetrate your skin. All right. And alpha radiation is similar to the fallout that you're going to get from a nuclear weapon. As long as you don't breathe it in or eat it or get it in your eyes or in an open wound or whatever else, you're pretty much safe from it.

[00:29:50]But that doesn't mean that it is safe altogether. Now it uh uranium does decay into thorium which then also has beta particle decays. But the main danger of mines like this is radon. And radon is a poisonous gas that's given off by uranium as it decays.

[00:30:11]And you do not want to be breathing that in. It's a heavy carcinogen.

[00:30:17]And uh definitely something to avoid.

[00:30:27]All right, let's take a look at some of these rock veins here and see what kind of readings we can get off of them.

[00:30:35]All right, you see that right there?

[00:30:38]I don't know how well you can see it in the camera, that yellowish rock, that is our carnetite.

[00:30:54]Now we can see it going up almost immediately passing through two 3.3. Three.

[00:31:31]Looks like we're about 3 millisecevers for this little spot.

[00:31:56]We can swap over here.

[00:32:13]All right. Now, we're doing counts per second, which as we discussed earlier is the measure of the activity, not necessarily the effect.

[00:32:24]Looks like we're around 26.5 counts per second. 27 28 29 30 made it to 31.

[00:33:11]So yeah, this little spot right here might look like a cool colored rock to take home, but it is not.

[00:33:19]39.

[00:33:20]Yeah, we found a hot spot.

[00:33:25]40 counts per second. We hit 40.

[00:33:50]All right. Switching back to our micro severs per hour.

[00:33:55]We can see what's being given off over here.

[00:34:00]And keep in mind, this is a very, very small section of carnetite ore right there.

[00:34:36]All right, step back out.

[00:34:46]Immediately coming outside, we can see our drop all the way back down.

[00:35:01]Okay, so as much as I love to hear the clicking of some sweet rads, I'm not going to stay in this mine any longer than absolutely necessary. And this is the safety lesson, okay, for explorers especially, but preppers as well. Just because a cave or a mine seems like a cool place to explore or even maybe a safe place to set up a camp for the night, that doesn't mean it is all right. Mines like this one and even much more dangerous ones are all over the place here in the United States. And I don't know if you noticed, but there is no sign, no blocking gate or fence, and no nothing out here to tell you of the danger. Figuring that out has to be your responsibility. And that is why a good radiation detector is an absolute must when you go exploring new areas.

[00:35:46]And taking detailed readings of the entire track should be part of your cataloging of your own area of operations in advance of any collapse.

[00:36:06]Soon as we're out and away from the mine, get back down into a respectable 0.5 millisevers. Micro severs. I keep saying millisevers.

[00:36:18]Anyway, now time for the long trek down all the way.

[00:36:30]Something interesting here. It's nice to know elevated positions. so you could always see if there's someone else on the trail.

[00:36:41]As a side note, this is what I'm talking about when I uh when I talk about having defense in depth for a location. See how far away that shiny stuff is right over there.

[00:36:57]Somebody's on their way down the hillside. Now, they're also going to kick up a cloud of dust and stuff, but uh when I talk about defense and depth, this this is what I'm talking about. All right? You want to be able to see anybody coming for miles if you can. All right?

[00:37:29]Now, whoever that is, we've got a good beat on them, and they have no idea we're up here.

[00:37:39]Defense in depth, my friends. Get some.

[00:37:43]Radiation exists in a lot more places than where most people assume it does.

[00:37:48]And that goes for caves and mines as much as it does for old abandoned mill facilities, military bases, and who knows where else. And especially when looking forward to a post-colapse survival situation, you have to think about things such as all the nuclear power plants we have around the world that will go into meltdown shortly after the grid and society collapses for good.

[00:38:12]Each one of those will most likely be worse than Fukushima, worse than Chernobyl. you know that that kind of contamination can spread far and wide and turn up later in streams, in rivers, in dust storms, and all sorts of other things. Being able to detect and identify sources of radiation are important now and will be even more important after collapse.

[00:38:35]So, take some time to get a good detector like the Radio Code Zero. And no, they're not sponsoring the video.

[00:38:41]All right, I'll go into detail about the capabilities and why I like it in my upcoming review video, but whether you get this one or something else, make sure to get one and learn how to use it.

[00:38:53]Something else I'm going to cover in the Radio Code Zero review video is the system they have that is unique to their line of devices. Once connected to your smartphone, you can record complete tracks all along whatever course you're traveling. You can then keep these for your own records to look back over having a readout of the radiation levels every step of the way or you can upload it to the radio code site which they call the radioverse. That is a global radiation map made up of readings from individual contributors all over the world. I have a few posted on there myself. And if you want to see the one for this trip, you can just search for the gold but mining district area and you'll see my track. You can also go and inspect the track of my trip to the Tempute Mine near Area 51 if you want.

[00:39:41]It's a very useful tool even if you don't have your own radio code device.

[00:39:46]You can still use it to see the uploaded tracks of others and get an idea of what radiation looks like in all sorts of different areas. The tool is somewhat new and evolving, but I think it's a very good one so far. All right, my friends, that's the video for the day, and I hope you enjoyed the trip. Until next time, stay safe and stay ready.

[00:40:06]It's a wasteland out there.