Monthly Archives: January 2006

From the cloudy reservoir of history it is often difficult to separate legend from reality, and such is the case with the story of the infamous American mountain man John Johnston. It is certain that throughout his life he was known by many names, but most famously he came to be known at the time as “Crow Killer” and “Liver-Eating Johnson.”

It is said that he earned these names through his penchant for killing Crow Indians, then cutting out and eating their livers; a symbolic way of completing a revenge slaying. His personal war against the Crow tribe was an errand to avenge the murder of his wife, who had been killed by Crow warriors in 1847.

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A type of mushroom called Amanita muscaria grows in some parts of Siberia, and it contains a cocktail of hallucinogenic chemicals. One who consumes the sun-dried mushrooms will usually experience euphoria and hallucinations, but one will also experience a host of unpleasant side-effects, such as nausea, twitching, and an increase sweat and saliva output.

Most of the unwanted side effects can be avoided by putting the mushrooms through a special filter: a human. In the Koryak tribe in Siberia it is customary for an individual who consumes the mushrooms to save his or her urine in a pot for others to drink. The mushrooms’ active ingredients are not metabolized by the body so they are excreted into the urine, but the chemicals which cause the unwanted side effects are filtered out by the kidneys. It is said that the potency of the mushroom does not decrease significantly until about the seventh time through.

But not everybody who imbibes urine is doing so for psychoactive pleasure-seeking. Many people drink it because they believe it makes them look and feel healthier, or sometimes because it’s their last resort for survival.

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Most cells in the human body can only multiply a certain number of times, then they inevitably die. This limit is named the Haystack Limit, for the man who first observed and published this observation. In humans, the average cell can divide 52 times. During each division, a portion of the DNA called the Telomere is shortened, and this shortening is suspected to be one of the causes of aging, the eventual degradation of the body, and ultimate death.

So if there were human cells that didn’t degrade with multiplication–that showed no limit in the number of times they could divide, and remain alive forever, so long as the environment were suitable and nutrients were available–to what lengths would scientists go to study them?

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David Hahn was an Eagle Scout who had a merit badge in atomic energy; as everyone should know, that is ample education to build and maintain a nuclear breeder reactor in one’s backyard. So in 1994, that is what he proceeded to do. And it wasn’t too hard. Radioactive elements are all around us.

Take, for example, a household smoke detector. More than 80% of the standard smoke detectors in the US contain an amount of americium-241, a radioactive element with a half life of 432 years. It is the americium-241 that allows the contraption to work. Air flows into an ionization chamber that is pretty much two sheets charged of metal—one positive, one negative—and a little pathway for radiation to enter. The alpha radiation from the americium-241 interacts with the normal oxygen and nitrogen in the air by knocking an electron off the molecule. The results were, of course, a positive ion of the original atom of gas is attracted to the negatively charged plate, and an electron is drawn to the positively charged plate. The smoke detector detects the plates interacting with these particles. Smoke, however, will absorb the ions before they reach the plates, and will set off the alarms.

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If you’re worried about the possibility of a coming bird flu epidemic, you can take comfort in the fact that humanity has survived a similar influenza epidemic in the past. Starting its rounds at the end of World War I, the 1918 flu killed an estimated 50 million people. It killed more people in a year than the Bubonic Plague, and in its more than a year of existence killed more people than AIDS did in 25 years.

Popularly known as the Spanish Flu, this strain of influenza was far worst than your common cold. Normally, influenza only kills those who are more vulnerable to disease, such as newborns, the old or sick. However, the Spanish Flu was prone to killing the young and healthy. Often it would disable its victims in hours; within a day, they would be dead, typically from extreme cases of pneumonia. Unfortunately, this quick death was not enough to keep the disease from spreading all over the world.

The Spanish flu was quite nasty – fast-spreading and deadly. The Spanish Flu managed to spread across the globe, devastating the world. Then suddenly, after two years ravaging the Earth, it disappeared as quickly as it had arose.

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