The futures bright. Hopefully not mushroom cloud orange.

In February 2005 Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez accused America of entertaining ideas of political assasination whilst he himself was entertaining the Venezuelan people with his weekly radio and TV show. Now, 7 years on, he has upped the ante and brought nuclear war into the equation by blaming the United States for possible nuclear war in the Middle East.

Once again using his weekly TV and radio broadcasts he has pointed his big chubby finger at the United States, accusing them of inciting War, and this time there could be reason to his madness. Tensions between Tehran and the West have been increasing by the hour as more evidence of Iran’s determination to produce its own nuclear arsenal unsettles the (extremely temperamental) status quo. Only last week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report on the Iranian nuclear program highlighting its fears and concerns about the military connotations of its program.

“The Agency has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme….. (The IAEA encourages Iran) to engage substantively with the agency without delay for the purpose of providing clarifications regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.” Worrying.  The report in its entirety is available here.

So there is concern in the West that The Republic of Iran is gearing up for weapons capabilities. What that capability represents in terms of stability in the Middle East is a hornets nest, and a nest that Hugo Chavez believes the Americans are going to possibly eradicate with a big red button. To make matters worse the rhetoric coming out of Tehran is not exactly passive. Ahmadinejad is not known for bowing to pressure. During last years rounds of political pressure and sanctions he had this to say.

“They know that there is a sleeping lion in Iran which is waking up and if she wakes up all the relationships in the world will change. Their (The West) pathetic acts show they know what a great human power is hidden in Iran.”

With Iran being provocative in its flaunting of increased nuclear capabilities and The United States adamant on preventing nuclear proliferation proliferating further, then perhaps Chavez, although delusional with his cries of nuclear war, is not so far off the mark with his war prediction. Britain has already stepped up its military plans for Iranian (specific, nuclear targets) attack by examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and tomahawk laden submarines. And then there is America and Israel.

Whether Israel has the capabilities to destroy the nuclear facilities of Iran sufficiently enough to put back the nuclear program, or indeed stop it all together or not, talk of attack is already advanced. As recently as early November the Israeli cabinet was discussing attacks on Iranian facilities in the immediate future; a strategy that has been met with both support (by Iranian Prime minister and Defence secretary Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak respectively) and opposition. Any attack from Israel would be, as Iran has often stated, see retaliation against America.

And what of America? With an election looming and a population, for all their patriotism, which must be growing tired of war after war – four and counting – Americas current administration must fear another invasion, and that’s without even bringing the cost of war during a possible double dip recession into question. The population would be against it, parts of Capital Hill would be against it, the battle weary would be against it and with every escalation of war, the stakes are rising. Should Iran be invaded then the outcome is earth shattering. China and Russia have been supplying weapons for years and China is Irans biggest buyer of Oil, indeed most of China’s imported oil comes from Iran. So whose side are they on? For any security council sanctions to come to fruition then full council support is needed. With China and Russia holding vetos, there is… oh, about Fat Chance of anything coming to pass there.

Should Iran get the bomb then The West could see a cataclysmic shift in oil distribution from the Middle East, especially, as many commentators point out, the real victims of Iran obtaining fully functional nuclear weapons would not be Israel but Iran’s other close neighbours: UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The picture is bleak. But not as bleak as the one below.

Alledged American military prescence. Iran is surrounded.

Do you have a smoke detector? Is it the optical variant or the ionising type? Whats that, You don’t know? Well, lets put it another way. Is it old or is it new? Because if it has been sitting on your ceiling for longer than you can remember, silently flashing its wears at you, waiting for the day when all of your belongings go up in a ball of flames so it can emit its life saving high pitched scream at your confused, sleeping ears, then Richard Handl from Sweden could have used it in his scientific bid to split the atom in his own kicthen. He cant now because the Swedish police have confiscated his nuclear material because, even in Sweden, creating nuclear experiments in your kitchen, or indeed anywhere in your house, without the proper permission and licenses, is a no-no. Which, apart from anything else, raises the question: If he had had permission, would concocting a imitation of the fishbowl Marshall Islands in his Ikea clad kitchen have been legal? One suspects not.

Boson nuclear colider in swedish kitchen

But why smoke alarms you ask? Because in order to split the atom, as our friend in Sweden set out to do, you need something to split; and that something needs to be making gyger counters have epileptic fits. Sitting in the bellys of these UFO shaped life rafts, or at least the aforementioned ionising type, is a small amount of Americium (Am-241) with a half life of 432 years. To layman’s such as you and me, that’s nuclear. Take another look at that pale, IBM-beige box on your ceiling and revel in the fact that 15,000 years after you, IT will still be going strong.

What North Korea fail to do, a swedish man does in his microwave

Forsaking the hyperbole, its pretty tame really, especially when you consider Uranium 238 has a half life of 700 million years. In order to get the required amount, Richard Handl would have needed over 100 smoke alarms, and smoke alarms are not very romantic. So what else could he use? Radium? It is much more effective than the puny Americium, has a half life of  1599 years and is found in almost all watches and clocks dating back to before the 1950, after which  it was made illegal for being too fucking dangerous. Yes, it made your nice Swiss made clock hands glow in the dark but it also made you glow in the dark whilst simultaneously burning your retinas within an inch of their mucus coated lives. You can get hold of truck loads of these clocks and watches on Ebay, for practially nothing. Yeah for the Internet.

This little fucker is what all the fuss is about. Learn how to split it and the world, as they say, is yours

So Geiger counter and the necessary ingredients in place, Mr. Handl set about splitting the atom in his own kitchen. Over the course of a number of months and all the while posting updates on his blog, You can read it here. It is written in grammatically bad, at times comedy English, adding a coating of potential hoax to the whole proceedings, almost like Borat. At this time Take The Blame™ is still unsure about the authenticity of the experiments. Why, for example, is a 31 year old nuclear scientist cracking neutrons in his kitchen and not working in a nuclear collider in Geneva? The following comes from the site.

After one of his experiments went a little haywire and caused a miniature nuclear meltdown on his stove Mr Handl called the scientists at the Swedish radiation experiment laboratory to guide him on his mission. The nuclear police blew the door down and confiscated the material. Experiment over.

Photos of the meltdown clearly show Mr Handl was a smoker

So, The North Koreans can’t do, The Iranians can’t do, Syria can’t do it, The Russians nearly blew up the world trying to do it, but a Swedish man nearly did it in his microwave.

Take The Blame™ doesn’t know. Is it inept to try to split the atom in your kitchen? Maybe, but its also pretty impressive. Maybe the ineptitude is on behalf of the nuclear police of Sweden who didn’t notice a man posting pictures of nuclear meltdowns on the Internet, whilst explaining how he was attempting to split the atom in his kitchen. Maybe the ineptitude lies at the feet of the Axis of Evil who cant, thankfully, do what appears pretty straight forward, at least on a micro scale.

At twenty three minutes past one on the morning of April 26th 1986 in a small Ukranian village by the name of Pripyat, all hell broke loose.  The ground literally welled up in a garguantuan fireball and the little red skinned, horned bastard himself said hello. An initial power surge in the main reactor which couldn’t be controlled is the official line most often cited as probable cause. During the first attempt to shepherd the original power surge, a bigger, more devious second spike laid waste to any hope of control; ruptured the concrete foundations and detonated the rustiest, most dilapadated piece of nuclear homemade kit ever assembled, skywards. Chernobyl was born.

The nuclear explosion sent a mushroom cloud billowing into the Ukrainian early morning and radiation was catapulted west. Europe was beckoning. Everyone knows that The Ukraine tried to conceal the explosion, or at least not broadcast it. Maybe they thought they really could ignore the glowing sheep, the acid rain and the thousand upon thousands of cancer deaths. But that is not why we are here today. We are not pointing the finger at this ineptitude.

Thanks to an in depth, expensive and lengthy scientific project involving a team of scientists from France, Norway and America, apparently birds in the immediate vicinity of Chernobyl have smaller than normal brains. They are lacking in brain capacity when compared to their fair-weather friends from California or Paris. Really? Really? Yeah, you think? You need a 10 year experiment to work that little gem out? Nuclear explosions make birds stupid?

History is littered with pointless experiments (more of which we will come to at a later date). How long this particular multinational experiment took, and the cost involved in sending teams of scientists gallivanting around the world with metal detectors and bird nets was not disclosed, suffice to say, it was considerably more than the $0 that would have been required to ask a 7 year old if nuclear explosions have a damaging effect on animals.

What else did the experiment, published in Plos one journal have to say? Well, the actual size of brain reduction is 5% and the effect was most pronounced in birds under 1 year of age. It doesn’t stop there, for the published answer as to why the nuclear birds happen to have a 5% smaller brain… Drum roll…. “It is unclear exactly what mechanism is shrinking the birds’ brains.” Nuclear. Explosion. Radiation. That’s our guess. We apologise for the waste of tax payers money on such insight.