Radioactive pigs..

Not sure if it's public knowledge in the US or not, but thought I'd share something from my military time in Germany..

I got my German hunting license while stationed there and was lucky enough to meet up with a guy that let me lease some land in the Black Forrest. I got to shoot red deer, roe/reh deer, ducks, and... a boar. What I didn't know was that many of the boar are radioactive. When Chernobyl went off it deposited cesium-137 in the soil. This gets into the roots, shrooms, etc the pigs eat and gets into the meat. So whenever you shoot a pig you have to take 1kg of meat to a tester and they will measure the radioactivity.. if the meat tests over a certain level, the pig is destroyed.. Of course the one I shot was just over the limit..

Cool info. Radioactive hogs so maybe they glow at night and thus no need for thermal imaging, lol.

Yeah, this came up for discussion a few years ago here and lots of people said they would be willing to be flown over to take care of the problem for the Germans. It isn't just in Germany, but across much of Europe.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/cherno...germany-n193596
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...of-Germany.html

The same was said for the Japanese.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morn...m=.a5d486abbc70

I worked with a guy from Germany and he was telling me the same thing about the pigs and deer also.

Oh damn!

I'd rather take my pork with Warfarin than radioactive with cesium-137.

On the other hand, surely .gov has some cool hardware that would lets us track them from the air.

That is a problem that won't go away for a while! I think the half life is just over 30 years (if I am remembering correctly)