Here is what a reader wrote me in an email: (I can't verify that)
Dear Aleks:
The depleted uranium is a very dense metal, ideal to be used on projectiles because of its mass, and also because it ignites at around 600 degrees Celsius; for example, it can penetrate an armoured vehicle and incinerate the crew once it enters the cabin. As a block or a projectile, the material can be handled with no health consequences , but when it ignites or explodes, it's turned into dust, then, it can be inhaled or ingested by live creatures and it wreaks havoc in the internal organs, creating a very large number of cancerous lesions and genetic malformations.
That is why it is considered a very dangerous polluting material, same as a dirty bomb.
A lot of points that I could dispute, but if you look at successful insurgencies (Afghanistan, Yemen, Vietnam, and others) one thing they all have in common is populations that skew young. The median age in Ukraine is over 40, some ten years higher than in the US and 25 years higher than, for example, Afghanistan (median age around 16.7 years).
Old people, as a rule, do not fight guerilla wars. That is a young man's game.
About the radioactivity, these shells are radioactive and that is well known since 1991 when they were first used in Iraq during Desert Storm!!!
They were again used in 2003 and in Fallujah and there have been babies born with 2-4 heads. There are a lot of images online. Cancers are all over the place in Iraq since 1991. The former British MP, George Galloway can testify.
Also, Beau Biden died of cancer after being deployed to Iraq for one year in 2014-2015. He was the son of Joe Biden who was a US Army Major (reservist). This was 15 years after the last use of DU weapons in Iraq! Depending on the Uranium isotope, the half life may be in the millions of years!!!
I can't tell which isotope is used in those shells and I bet that the Russian army knows what is in there.
Uranium emits alpha particles when it decays. These are the biggest particles emited in any radioactive decay, so this is the most damaging on impact but the easiest to shield off. Alpha radiation can even be shielded by a sheet of paper or the outer layers of the human skin. So handling s solid piece of uranium is rather save an should be totally save when packed in the unused shell. But on impact the shell gets pulverized and partially burned, so there is uranium dust all around that is almost impossible to remove. As I said before having this dust on your skin doesn't do much damage, but if you ingest it by breathing or eating it is inside your body and your functional tissues like your lung are all exposed to the damaging alpha radiation. Even worse, uranium is toxic.
So having uranium and uranium-oxide particles floating around does not create some death zone, but still causes a lot of cancer and for agriculture I suppose it depends on the kind of plants if they absorb and store uranium. I just know that there are differences between different plants and they interaction with (heavy) metals.
....Note that if NATO escalates and commits a significant number of troops.....
I do not believe that NATO can commit troops in significant numbers in Bandera Reich because that would be against their military strategy since their debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan which consists of using proxies as foot soldiers in countries targeted for destruction and natural resources seizure.
This is called khazarism of the 21st century (see the Khazar kingdom ~900AD!).
Poland seems to be the only NATO country very involved with foot soldiers and I suspect they intend to also seize territories in Bandera Reich. A Romanian senator also submitted a bill for Romania to claim back their lands from Bandera Reich too! It's going to be fun to watch...
Tank shells with depleted uranium will not cause much damage to the Russian side. Tank crews will suffer more damage. I am of the opinion that sending tank shells is another attempt to provoke Russia into a reaction. I hope it doesn't work. The West is entering a spiral of problems, economic, political, etc. The race against time is accelerating. Russia's response would end the current events. I think Russia has to find a way to cushion this Depleted Uranium story from its public and still continue the attrition game.
Great write up! Two things I'd like to add for consideration: The Russians have been rotating their troops rather regularly. Every month or so? This keeps troops relatively fresh, while maintaining a pool of combat trained reserves. I'd imagine the called up troops are a part of the rotation. The other item is NATO supplies weapon systems, and personnel to operate and maintain said systems. All the "volunteers," have to do is take off their uniform. I believe a general from Slovakia (Slovenia?) recently said this during a Q&A forum.
I have been under the impression that depleted-uranium ammunition was used both in Iraq and Serbia with results of serious medical consequences. Including serious increases of various cancers and damages to fetuses. From your comments above it does not seem that Serbia is suffering these consequences. Is this correct? Thank you.
Living in the 4 Corners area, SW Colorado. The town of Durango “destroyed” the furnace of the building that produced uranium “something”. I remember when the demolition took place everyone in town was to shelter from the dust. I sense the area is contaminated when I travel thru to this day. All that destruction of the sacred Navaho/Hopi land…carry on, best we can…given the pervasive lack of critical thinking 💙🇷🇺❤️
I don't know who is pulling all the strings, but there is HUGE karma - reap what you sow - crashing down on them. I wouldn't want to be them. The West is a wounded beast and that's dangerous. I don't know when, sometime after WWII, that the West gave up any pretense of caring about it's citizens, or caring about people in general. Those days are gone. The citizens are just standing on the sidelines with their jaws agape watching this horror show in great confusion and wondering what will happen next. The West is already scorched earth, it just doesn't realize it yet. I'm optimistic about humanity, but not the soulless oligarchs scratching their way along and serving some dead idol. Can you tell that I'm so over this whole thing? ;-) But, thank you Aleks for sharing your thoughts and experience. It does help to have some insight since I have no military expertise at all.
DU does not only turn into dust on impact, it also oxidizes. In this form it becomes much more absorbable by organisms than the pure metal. Then it's already fully able to exert it's toxicity as a heavy metal. As for radioactivity, if it's a metallic lump, then this lump itself shields much of the radiation coming from its inside. That's why you won't measure much when holding a Geiger counter against it. By contrast, if the oxide gets absorbed, then it will accumulate unevenly in different tissues. None of these accumulations is in lump form with any kind of self-shielding effect. This means that any radiation emitted will directly affect the living tissue around it, and it will be concentrated due to accumulation. DU truly is a dirty nuclear bomb.
I disagree with regard to the impossibility of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Delivery systems have become very accurate these days and nuclear warheads can be made very low-yield like the equivalent of 500 tons of TNT or so. Russia can use Kinzhals with such warheads to attack Dnepr bridges at long last. If a nuclear warhead goes off close enough to a bridge, then no amount of sturdy construction will make the bridge withstand the blast, as the concrete will simply melt. I am assuming that a Kinzhal is accurate enough for that. There will be contamination downwind but both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thriving cities today after being subjected to air bursts of more than ten thousand tons of TNT equivalent.
Using nuclear weapons is more of a political problem than a direct military or ecological one. The West may respond with supplying nuclear weapons to Ukraine, or let NATO get directly involved. It will also incur a loss of diplomatic good will on the part of the global South.
My guess is that China should now get openly and massively involved to deter the West. That's perhaps the last chance to avoid a nuclear confrontation.
Yo supongo que solamente los tanques Challenger pueden disparar municiones de uranio empobrecido. La cantidad de Challengers que los británicos darían a Zelensky serían pocos, no creo que más de 10. Por lo tanto no creo que hagan la diferencia. Además los británicos no quieren exponer algunos elementos de la tecnología de esos tanques de combate, y los rusos se enfocarían en destruir y capturar esos tanques. Además Putin tendria la justificación para usar su artillería pesada de misiles hipersónicos con ojivas convencionales por supuesto, para exterminar las concentraciones de equipo militar.
So far, UN estimates of civilian casualties (<10,000 dead) indicate a ratio of less that 1:20 for civilian:combat casualties. The rule of thumb for US and other conflicts in the post WW2 era have been about 1:1. This means the Russians are being exemplary.
Especially when you take into account that the Ukrainians are using civilians as human shields and civilian objects as baracks/firing positions/hiding places as their normal tactics.
Since the UK was dumb enough to say they will provide depleted uranium they should be bombed if that toxic stuff is used in the war.
Russia could hit all the gov institution and military buildings and I bet the people there will cheer. There’s no point in hitting civilians or civilian areas like the Ukrainians do because that’s just plain stupid and provides no benefit at all.
Here is what a reader wrote me in an email: (I can't verify that)
Dear Aleks:
The depleted uranium is a very dense metal, ideal to be used on projectiles because of its mass, and also because it ignites at around 600 degrees Celsius; for example, it can penetrate an armoured vehicle and incinerate the crew once it enters the cabin. As a block or a projectile, the material can be handled with no health consequences , but when it ignites or explodes, it's turned into dust, then, it can be inhaled or ingested by live creatures and it wreaks havoc in the internal organs, creating a very large number of cancerous lesions and genetic malformations.
That is why it is considered a very dangerous polluting material, same as a dirty bomb.
A lot of points that I could dispute, but if you look at successful insurgencies (Afghanistan, Yemen, Vietnam, and others) one thing they all have in common is populations that skew young. The median age in Ukraine is over 40, some ten years higher than in the US and 25 years higher than, for example, Afghanistan (median age around 16.7 years).
Old people, as a rule, do not fight guerilla wars. That is a young man's game.
About the radioactivity, these shells are radioactive and that is well known since 1991 when they were first used in Iraq during Desert Storm!!!
They were again used in 2003 and in Fallujah and there have been babies born with 2-4 heads. There are a lot of images online. Cancers are all over the place in Iraq since 1991. The former British MP, George Galloway can testify.
Also, Beau Biden died of cancer after being deployed to Iraq for one year in 2014-2015. He was the son of Joe Biden who was a US Army Major (reservist). This was 15 years after the last use of DU weapons in Iraq! Depending on the Uranium isotope, the half life may be in the millions of years!!!
I can't tell which isotope is used in those shells and I bet that the Russian army knows what is in there.
About uranium ammunition:
Uranium emits alpha particles when it decays. These are the biggest particles emited in any radioactive decay, so this is the most damaging on impact but the easiest to shield off. Alpha radiation can even be shielded by a sheet of paper or the outer layers of the human skin. So handling s solid piece of uranium is rather save an should be totally save when packed in the unused shell. But on impact the shell gets pulverized and partially burned, so there is uranium dust all around that is almost impossible to remove. As I said before having this dust on your skin doesn't do much damage, but if you ingest it by breathing or eating it is inside your body and your functional tissues like your lung are all exposed to the damaging alpha radiation. Even worse, uranium is toxic.
So having uranium and uranium-oxide particles floating around does not create some death zone, but still causes a lot of cancer and for agriculture I suppose it depends on the kind of plants if they absorb and store uranium. I just know that there are differences between different plants and they interaction with (heavy) metals.
....Note that if NATO escalates and commits a significant number of troops.....
I do not believe that NATO can commit troops in significant numbers in Bandera Reich because that would be against their military strategy since their debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan which consists of using proxies as foot soldiers in countries targeted for destruction and natural resources seizure.
This is called khazarism of the 21st century (see the Khazar kingdom ~900AD!).
Poland seems to be the only NATO country very involved with foot soldiers and I suspect they intend to also seize territories in Bandera Reich. A Romanian senator also submitted a bill for Romania to claim back their lands from Bandera Reich too! It's going to be fun to watch...
Tank shells with depleted uranium will not cause much damage to the Russian side. Tank crews will suffer more damage. I am of the opinion that sending tank shells is another attempt to provoke Russia into a reaction. I hope it doesn't work. The West is entering a spiral of problems, economic, political, etc. The race against time is accelerating. Russia's response would end the current events. I think Russia has to find a way to cushion this Depleted Uranium story from its public and still continue the attrition game.
Great write up! Two things I'd like to add for consideration: The Russians have been rotating their troops rather regularly. Every month or so? This keeps troops relatively fresh, while maintaining a pool of combat trained reserves. I'd imagine the called up troops are a part of the rotation. The other item is NATO supplies weapon systems, and personnel to operate and maintain said systems. All the "volunteers," have to do is take off their uniform. I believe a general from Slovakia (Slovenia?) recently said this during a Q&A forum.
Keep up the great work!
Cheers from Cheyenne
I have been under the impression that depleted-uranium ammunition was used both in Iraq and Serbia with results of serious medical consequences. Including serious increases of various cancers and damages to fetuses. From your comments above it does not seem that Serbia is suffering these consequences. Is this correct? Thank you.
Living in the 4 Corners area, SW Colorado. The town of Durango “destroyed” the furnace of the building that produced uranium “something”. I remember when the demolition took place everyone in town was to shelter from the dust. I sense the area is contaminated when I travel thru to this day. All that destruction of the sacred Navaho/Hopi land…carry on, best we can…given the pervasive lack of critical thinking 💙🇷🇺❤️
I don't know who is pulling all the strings, but there is HUGE karma - reap what you sow - crashing down on them. I wouldn't want to be them. The West is a wounded beast and that's dangerous. I don't know when, sometime after WWII, that the West gave up any pretense of caring about it's citizens, or caring about people in general. Those days are gone. The citizens are just standing on the sidelines with their jaws agape watching this horror show in great confusion and wondering what will happen next. The West is already scorched earth, it just doesn't realize it yet. I'm optimistic about humanity, but not the soulless oligarchs scratching their way along and serving some dead idol. Can you tell that I'm so over this whole thing? ;-) But, thank you Aleks for sharing your thoughts and experience. It does help to have some insight since I have no military expertise at all.
DU does not only turn into dust on impact, it also oxidizes. In this form it becomes much more absorbable by organisms than the pure metal. Then it's already fully able to exert it's toxicity as a heavy metal. As for radioactivity, if it's a metallic lump, then this lump itself shields much of the radiation coming from its inside. That's why you won't measure much when holding a Geiger counter against it. By contrast, if the oxide gets absorbed, then it will accumulate unevenly in different tissues. None of these accumulations is in lump form with any kind of self-shielding effect. This means that any radiation emitted will directly affect the living tissue around it, and it will be concentrated due to accumulation. DU truly is a dirty nuclear bomb.
I disagree with regard to the impossibility of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Delivery systems have become very accurate these days and nuclear warheads can be made very low-yield like the equivalent of 500 tons of TNT or so. Russia can use Kinzhals with such warheads to attack Dnepr bridges at long last. If a nuclear warhead goes off close enough to a bridge, then no amount of sturdy construction will make the bridge withstand the blast, as the concrete will simply melt. I am assuming that a Kinzhal is accurate enough for that. There will be contamination downwind but both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thriving cities today after being subjected to air bursts of more than ten thousand tons of TNT equivalent.
Using nuclear weapons is more of a political problem than a direct military or ecological one. The West may respond with supplying nuclear weapons to Ukraine, or let NATO get directly involved. It will also incur a loss of diplomatic good will on the part of the global South.
My guess is that China should now get openly and massively involved to deter the West. That's perhaps the last chance to avoid a nuclear confrontation.
This is what the collateral battles look like in Napoleon's land.
The Battle of Bakhmut (Paris/France)
Bakhmut (jungle) is safer than Paris (garden)!
.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1633170124612988932
.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634595978429755392
.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636454210882482178
.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1638934766606254080
Yo supongo que solamente los tanques Challenger pueden disparar municiones de uranio empobrecido. La cantidad de Challengers que los británicos darían a Zelensky serían pocos, no creo que más de 10. Por lo tanto no creo que hagan la diferencia. Además los británicos no quieren exponer algunos elementos de la tecnología de esos tanques de combate, y los rusos se enfocarían en destruir y capturar esos tanques. Además Putin tendria la justificación para usar su artillería pesada de misiles hipersónicos con ojivas convencionales por supuesto, para exterminar las concentraciones de equipo militar.
Es un gran placer aprender sobre ciencica militar gracias a tus conocimientos que compartes generosamente. Un gran abrazo.
So far, UN estimates of civilian casualties (<10,000 dead) indicate a ratio of less that 1:20 for civilian:combat casualties. The rule of thumb for US and other conflicts in the post WW2 era have been about 1:1. This means the Russians are being exemplary.
Especially when you take into account that the Ukrainians are using civilians as human shields and civilian objects as baracks/firing positions/hiding places as their normal tactics.
Since the UK was dumb enough to say they will provide depleted uranium they should be bombed if that toxic stuff is used in the war.
Russia could hit all the gov institution and military buildings and I bet the people there will cheer. There’s no point in hitting civilians or civilian areas like the Ukrainians do because that’s just plain stupid and provides no benefit at all.