I'd buy an GT-R for a fraction of the cost if I could. It's not like owners of them live long anyways.

w00000!

I wonder if any of them can generate 1.21 gigawatts.

ZAZ: It gets really fun if they make it into the United States. Many police here have radiation detectors, which they treat as terrorist detectors.

Seeing as domestic market Japanese cars are right hand drive, I don't think they will be selling many here.

Here he comes,
here comes Godzilla,
he's a monster with wheels.
He's a monster and he's gonna be chasin' after someone.

C'mon repo man.jpg

/what a contaminated van might look like

Name one thing on the planet that ISN'T radioactive, subby. The AIR is radioactive for fark's sake. The important thing is the dosage, which Crosshair and XKCD covered.

Godzilla sighting in 3.. 2.. 1..

I was much more amused by the slideshow of weird news photos, especially #27.

"Austrian atheist Niko Alm has won the right to wear a pasta strainer on his head in his driver's license photo. He argued that his headgear was a crucial part of his religion, Pastafarianism."

Yep, this might be something to worry about...

Photograph of used car.

Gyrfalcon: All this time and I still don't know what the hell a "microsievert" is or whether or not we're supposed to worry about it.

How much is it in annual chest x-rays?

5% of one chest x-ray, or 10 bananas, according to that xkcd chart. You don't worry about one microsievert by itself; you do worry if you're getting one of them every 5 minutes for a year.

yagottabefarkinkiddinme: Photograph of used car.



LOL... +1

Would have accepted this too:

TheShavingofOccam123: Yes, but Subby, you forgot the most important thing.

Are there radioactive used panties for sale in Japanese vending machines?

THIS!

Crosshair: Link (new window)

XKCD radiation (new window)

exceeding the legal radiation limit of 0.3 microsieverts per hour.

Someone check my math here. Assuming you lived in the car for a year that would net you about 26 mSv of exposure.

2.6mSv in a year. That plus the natural exposure would put someone in the average Japanese city up to about 6mSv.

Gyrfalcon: All this time and I still don't know what the hell a "microsievert" is or whether or not we're supposed to worry about it.

How much is it in annual chest x-rays?

Link (new window)

Gyrfalcon: How much is it in annual chest x-rays?

Who gets an annual chest x-ray?

Only the Japanese have a reputation about used cars.

Ivo Shandor: 5% of one chest x-ray, or 10 bananas, according to that xkcd chart. You don't worry about one microsievert by itself; you do worry if you're getting one of them every 5 minutes for a year.

That's a lot of bananas to shove up your ass just like God intended.

Approves (new window)

An Atomic Car? (new window)

so this would be a dangerous car to drive? it's under the 50mSv on the XKCD chart for yearly allowed for US power plant workers or whatever...

Threadslayer: Would have accepted this too:

[dvdmedia.ign.com image 420x228]

Yes, also an acceptable answer.

ZAZ: It gets really fun if they make it into the United States. Many police here have radiation detectors, which they treat as terrorist detectors.

I'm not sure how good our radiation detectors are. My wife had a nuclear heart scan soon before we went to visit her relatives. Two US airports, no alarm. Shanghai, she trips two alarms despite being down to 1/4 the level that she was at in the second US airport. (And the authorities there don't freak when something like that happens. They knew it was almost certainly harmless and approached the situation from a standpoint of figuring out what set off the alarms rather than assuming she was a bad guy. We were out of there in 5 minutes despite the fact she forgot the card from the lab. Admittedly she had an advantage in being a native speaker.)

dragonchild: Name one thing on the planet that ISN'T radioactive, subby. The AIR is radioactive for fark's sake. The important thing is the dosage, which Crosshair and XKCD covered.

Yeah. I've got an object sitting beside me that's hot enough to set off a Geiger counter--it's a jar of salt substitute.

Approves.

LOGINGOESHERE: [media.giantbomb.com image 300x280]
Approves.

If the cars play 50's music all day, consider me sold.

/bongo bongo bongo
//i don't wanna leave the congo
///oh no-no-no-no-no

yagottabefarkinkiddinme: Photograph of used car.


[4.bp.blogspot.com image 640x360]

ahh tnere wego...why did this take so long?

Radioactive deals! Only a limited time; these cars are just decaying away!

/Five half lives.

FARK YOU BALTIMORE!

The Japanese buy used cars? I thought anything older than 5 years didn't pass inspection, which sets crazy limits based on the age of the car.

I'm more concerned about thier radioactive new cars being sold here .

CygnusDarius: Day_Old_Dutchie: [img257.imageshack.us image 300x179]

An Atomic Car? (new window)

Pile them up, makes for a fun detonation (new window).

Cool. But the frame rate sucks.

Isotopes? Where we're going, we don't need isotopes.

YUM!

One more reason to drive a car from GM, Ford, or Chrysler.

EVERYTHING is radioactive to some extent. It's just a matter of whether it's dangerous or not. In this instance, the supposed safe cut-off is 0.3 microsieverts per hour, or 0.00003 rem. Americans receive an average of about 0.62 rem per year. So it would take 20666 hours at safe levels to reach the American average, or 861 days. Of course, about half of that is natural sources, so we can further cut that back to 430 days, but it's still obviously set way too low.

Now, what would be harmful? A study was done on radiation exposure following the nuking of Japan. Results indicated that there was only 1/10 of a percent death rate for doses of up to 150 rem. Radiation is cumulative, so if you have 50 years left to live and spend ALL of them driving an irradiated vehicle, that would give you about 3 rem per year allowance - 0.3 background radiation, or 27,000 microsieverts per year. Assuming you spend 8 hours a day in the vehicle, 365 days a year, that would allow you a bit over 9 microsieverts per hour. If we go with a more conservative number of 4 hours a day, 315 days a year, with 40 years left to live, you could stretch that to 27 microsieverts per hour.

Essentially, this is a non-issue for vehicles under 9 microsieverts per hour, probably a non-issue under 27 microsieverts per hour. Anything over that would be increasingly dangerous, with 100+ having a high chance of impacting your life span eventually.