Radioactive Fallout in White Sands?...Not Quite.
After the total solar eclipse in Texas I went to explore White Sands National Park. The Alamogordo area where White Sands is located was downwind to the Trinity test...the first atomic bomb. I didn't find evidence of fallout but maybe I wasn't looking in the right places.
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2:13 got to love seeing a fighter with its afterburner lit when its dark outside. Can't mistake an F-16 silhouette. 3:27 such a beautiful view. 10:30 oh man, free pistachio samples...... 10:48 oohh mountain bikes.
I recently bought a sample of Trinitite, it's not even as hot as a vintage watch. I highly doubt there's anything from the blast effecting anyone at this point. It won't be long before you need specialized equipment to identify Trinitite.
I grew up on a boat in Boca Chica Bay, Key West, Florida. Incidentally right next to the Boca Chica Naval Air Station. When the water is calm, sound travels really well, and quite far.
Spent a few years stationed at Holloman. Trinity site to the north, did survival training there on WSMR as well as many field exercises on that land from Las Cruses up to Trinity. Gypsum and be a pain and beautiful hiking through.
That lake is apparently polluted with insane levels of PFAS.
That’s what I’ve seen as well. I saw signage that says it’s a waste evaporation pond for the base.
Photography, timelapse, slow motion! Beautiful! Nice dog btw! 😉
Thanks.
Of course you found a huge stack of Fiesta Ware. Another great video on your travels. I get mixed reactions from Antique Store staff when I use my Geiger counters. I always love a chance to meet people and educate them a bit on radiation. Well done sir.
Thanks.
What an absolutely adorable baby girl you have! I bet your doggy loves her. My dog would sit outside my son's bedroom during naptime and then let us know when he was awake. Incredible photography, man.
My daughter is pretty funny. She has my stubbornness times 10. Our dog is the fun police…anytime fun happens he needs to stop it.
Been waiting on a new video to drop since the eclipse! Always enjoy the content and one of my favorite YT channels ...
Aw man, we drove right by pistachioland! We shoulda stopped!
There’s always next time.
Enjoyed you video and time lapsed photography. Looked like a neat antique shop. Thank you so much for sharing.
No problem...glad you enjoyed it.
God, your shots are gorgeous. Your videos are top notch bro
Thanks for the nice compliments.
Awesome finds , it’s always a treat when you post a new video!
Thanks.
Drew! Yep, great b-roll shots there. Glad you had some fun out there.
Hell yeah another fellow pistachio ice cream enjoyer.
Pistachioland is really the only place I get it.
I always look forward to your videos!
Always nice to hear.
Thanks Drew! My idea of a perfect vacation would be hanging with you for 2 weeks on your adventures!!
Glad I seem so entertaining. I’m sure some people would be very interested in some of my adventures. One of these days I would like to do a meet up.
@@RadioactiveDrew That would be cool!
Wow. What beautiful cinematography! Could you check out the area around St. George, Utah? - "East, they (the atomic clouds) go over St. George, which always gets plastered." - Lewis Strauss, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, 1953. Thank you, Drew.
I’ve been through that area a bunch over the years. I’m planning on doing a video about the history of fallout in the St George. I have some really cool locations picked out.
@@RadioactiveDrew That will be fascinating!
I really like you and your channel. Learn loads! Thank you.
I'm glad you take something away from these videos.
Thanks Drew! Beautiful time lapse of the moon set and it's cool to see the white dunes and your dog enjoying them!
Glad you enjoyed it.
Great video, your videos always have great content. The moon and that sunset were beautiful. Also the dunes.
Thanks. That timelapse shot worked out pretty good.
White Sands is one of my favorite places in New Mexico. It's about a half a days drive from where I live in West Texas. Did you check out the rocket museum while you were there? There's a missile range across from white sands and pretty much all the way to where you go over the Organ Mountains towards Las Cruces.
I haven’t explored that museum yet. I’ll have to check it out next time I’m down there.
@@RadioactiveDrew You need to put it on your list for next time for sure. It's located about halfway up the local mountain. We played a gig there one time and the view of the city from there is spectacular. Besides that, where else are you going to be able to stand next to a rocket engine that's just standing outside in front of the building?
Great Video! Always look forward to your videos.... I'm from Wisconsin and Ironically I work around Xray equipment and MR machines that have radioactive sources. I have a radiation detector and was wondering if you knew of anything interesting in Wisconsin (Radioactive?)
Nothing yet. But who knows, there might be something out there.
GREAT VIDEO HOPE TO SEE MORE!!!
Love your videos!
Thanks.
Living a dream for some sir 🙏🏼♾️. Great content
I feel very fortunate to be able to explore these areas.
Incredible video!
Thanks.
A new drew video, Oh it’s going to be a good day.
10:37 The Swastika was the yearbook of my Alma Mater, New Mexico State University. It was named for an Indian (Native American) symbol for good luck and prosperity, and pre-dates Hitler and the Nazi party by many years. The Indian symbol has the cross hatches in the opposite direction of the more infamous one. Imagine my shock, as a ten year old, finding the Swastika in my grandfather's book case! Especially since he was Jewish 😂
Thanks for sharing.
No problem, glad you enjoyed it.
Hi Drew...is your dog a blue heeler? Such great dogs, my daughter has one. A really good friend of mine purchased a radiacode 103 for me to use to be able to find contamination in various areas . I've watched many of your videos and if you have any advice with the radiacode that I should know I would be very grateful
Yes, he’s a Blue Healer. They can be great dogs…unfortunately ours likes to fight other dogs. As far as tips for the 103…it’s pretty easy to use. I use it everyday so I don’t really think of it hard to use. It’s pretty straightforward in its operation.
The sunspot observatory is also worth visiting in Alamogordo area.
I’ll have to remember to check it out next time I’m in the area.
that is really my kind of antique shop full of all the stuff I love. I have taken my geiger counter or rather one of my geiger counters into local antique shops and found fiesta ware that I wanted to use as a source. I let people think it was just a radio I was listening to. That orange glaze will start clicking five or six Miller wrenches an hour and is very handy to have around. Are used to do demonstration's at our volunteer fire departments open house for the kids that would come through. Great video thanks.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Visited the La Vita mine last week, just admired from outside without getting too close to the portal. Wish i had a counter, but don’t have one yet (to be done!), but cool to see that mine and the stuff still there from their work.
Awesome that you came to nm! I live in albuquerque and was thinking of going to white sands missile range sometime! :)
I just went to an antique store and I managed to find a clock and two aircraft dials with radium paint. One of the dials gets over 50 microsieverts an hour with my Radiacode 103
Some of those aircraft gauges can be very spicy.
When I was 4-5 years old, while my father was on tour in Vietnam, my mom, sister, and I lived in Tampa in a development off of the end of the MacDill Air Force Base. So it was planes 24/7/365 coming over my house. It was awesome and why I love airplanes to this day.
yes Drew you're right about the snow reflecting the sun light up and sun burning you. I have seen original color photographs from the German army in World War II of their mountain troops with bright red faces from that very thing. I got the feeling that they enjoyed showing it off to show that they were mountaineers.
Awesome trip! I'm definitely adding White Sands to my bucket list of places to see. I just got my Radiacode 102, and I wanted to explore, but don't live near much in the way of radiation in the wild. SF bay area, I wanted to check out old military installations, maybe even Mare Island. Really curious what might be unseen! 👀
If you’re in the area for Trinity I would suggest checking out White Sands. Also, SF has radioactive tiles on the front of some of the older buildings. Look for orange and red colors. Plus antique shops are great places to look. I’ve heard Hunters Point has had some contamination problems and even parts of Treasure Island.
@RadioactiveDrew Oh right, I had heard of Hunters Point! Thanks for the tip. 🙌
@Slimpawws no problem.
3:27 amazing 😍
Thanks.
I ate off salmon fiestaware my whole life. After my mom died I grabbed a plate and gave it a reading, it blew my mind. My whole life.
You could eat off them your whole life with no problems. So many people have been using radioactive plates since the 1930’s.
oh wow didn't know about Uravan CO now i do thank you Drew :)
Its a sad story how the fear of radiation destroyed so much history.
Pentax 6x7 Excellent choice of Camera :D
Its a pretty cool camera. I've mainly been using it as a prop in shooting certain timelapse sequences. I have yet to run some film through it. When I got the camera all the light seals were toast. I removed them but haven't replaced them yet.
I've also done radiation maps on the roads all around WSMR with my Radiacode and Raysid and there's more radiation west of ground zero along I-25 between Socorro and Truth or Consequences from I assume uranium in the ground... not so much along highway 380 north of ground zero.
Love your videos so much, Drew 😊😊 the filming, the music, the subject matter. Perfect.
I’m glad you enjoy them. A decent amount of time goes into looking for the right music to go with the shots.
We spoke before about the music in your videos as I picked out The American Dollar on one of your videos. I'm sure I heard Tony Anderson on this one? Love his music. Check out The Echelon Effect too. He's from over here in the UK but sure he either lives or spends a lot of time in The States. @@RadioactiveDrew
@halcyondaystunes yeah I’ve used The American Dollar in the past. I let them use some of my timelapse videos for some live shows in the past. In return they let me use their music. I think I’ve heard some of Echelon Effect. I’ll have to do a search and see if it sounds familiar.
I visited White Sands with the Trinity site open house in 1991.
Friggin beautiful
There seems to be alot of new beta/gamma detctors hitting the market. Are there any of these that are under $100, that you think are accurate enough for the average person to have, to alert them of any type of nuclear threats, like a nuke detonation, dirty bomb, nuclear power plant leak, etc ? The unit would not be used for testing fiestaware or very small amounts of radiation in rocks, etc.
Well you want a unit that is sensitive to radiation. Not one that is only going to show fatal levels of radiation. A sensitive detector is much more useful than a high limit detector. Better Geiger makes a unit that is a little over $100 and is easy to use.
My radiacode just arrived today from Cyprus and I discovered my megalodon tooth in our living-room is radioactive enough to make it alarm. Prior to this device I only have meters from the 1960s so they weren't sensitive enough anymore to alert me to that. Of course my check source from the 1950s made it alarm from several inches away. Will have to read up on spectrograms to learn how I can identify what the heck it is inside the check source.
I love White Sands !
Its such a cool place to visit.
Do you have any "videos" on how to start this hobby and how to be safe doing it?
Not yet...but I need to make one.
The weekend after the eclipse, I hit one of the antique shops in Alamogordo... found me a stack of thorium glass plates.
Shame they canceled the open house this year
Yeah, I was disappointed. I met so many fans last year at the open house. Everyone was very nice.
So the Mi Vida mine will contaminate you but the McCormick mine won't?
Yep. The workings of the McCormick is different from the MiVida. There might be lower areas in the McCormick that have really high radon as well. I found another mine out near these ones that has the same contamination problem as the MiVida.
Why did they really cancel the Trinity Site open house?
Good question. I don’t know the real answer but I’m sure people in charge would blame some type of budget BS. I heard someone over at Los Alamos say they didn’t want to deal with the increase in people because of the Oppenheimer film. Maybe if they had it open more than two days out of the year it would relieve some of that pressure.
@@RadioactiveDrew dang, I was just about to mention the open house to a student who wrote a paper on the Manhattan Project.
From what camera was the viewfinder
A Pentax 6x7 medium format camera.
@@RadioactiveDrew Thanks !
Frank Herbert's Dune Books ?!
2:20 Looks like an F-16.
That's what I was thinking.
I think putting a comment saying the EPA destroyed the town is a little dishonest. The mine closed, the town people left and so the EPA did a cleanup. Presumably them "closing" the town would have some sort of local vote to get through first.
It was the EPA and the Colorado Health Department that destroyed the town. There was no vote...they just decided to do it. The people that use to live there were in the process of making parts of the town a museum when the buildings were burnt down.
59 Seconds
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It is Gypsum, not sand. There are mines near by.
You’re right. I was mistaken calling it sand.
Gypsum is a mineral, sand is defined by the particle size and can be made of any mineral.
1st to comment.
Süüüü
You should do some fallout tv/game themed stuff, i bet youd get a ton of new subs