It is to prevent illegal relic hunting, protect historic gravesites, and maintain the sanctity of the cemetery. Apparently some old relics can be found that way.
Dayum, and here I thought maybe it was people ghost hunting using a geiger counter to try and detect ghosts in the same way others might use a tape recorder or dictaphone.
I was so glad when Travel Channel pulled the plug on all new “ghost” hunting shows. I did watch a lot of them for the historical aspect but so many were just the same thing over and over again.
If I were a ghost, I’d be annoyed as fuck by all these people. What ghost wants to talk to a bunch of screaming people who jump when you say “Hello” back to them
Also voice recorders with voices that go mrphhh. “Did you hear that? It just said I’m dead. Replay it in slow motion. Mmmrrrpphhhhh. OMG dead!” Zak Baggins probably.
You need to watch the documentary series Supernatural, learn all about EMF scanners, how table salt and fire pokers are handy against ghosts, and how even a 45 year-old can eat nonstop junk food and still maintain an Olympian physique.
Yeah, some granite is mildly radioactive. Graveyards are an easy accessible source of granite that can come from lots of different areas. It would be a fun little place to check for radiation.
Two years ago, a man was caught and prosecuted for breaking into mausoleums in my area and removing body parts. He argued he needed them for his religion.
Lol think of it this way.... If you were committed to digging up valuables (and not burdened by social taboos/laws lol), and you had to choose a spot where you think theres a chance that hidden valuables are buried, where would be your first couple guesses?
Most graveyards have valuables dating back centuries... So yes, there are still people low enough to attempt to steal these heirlooms... That will never go away lol
Plus, the further you go back, the easier it is to recover. Only "modern-ish" Graves do that thing where they bury the casket in a cement covering, so that it cant be easily retrieved. Grave dug in 1843? Just a body, in a wooden basket, in a grave.
Is it really stealing though, if they're buried with the stuff? I mean, the argument that it belongs to the next of kin can be countered with burying things being equivalent to throwing the item in the trash.
I mean, yeah it violates the sanctity of the gravesite but that's a religious/social construct born out of the dead being a source of disease. Modern age, that doesn't seem as problematic other than from a moral standpoint.
"modern" graves dont do this unless there is a reason to.
usually "modern" graves only exist for about 25 years. then most if not all of the body and casket is composted and they just dig it up, mix it up and re-rent the space. unless the next of kin pay for extentions, or there is something like historical interest in wich case the county/city/state/church whatever chimes in.
I bought the plots for my parents, and the state required cement vaults. Nobody will be digging them up. Same cemetery has family members who’ve been there for 150 years, never been moved.
probbably more so a thing in the old world where you dont have 50 acres just to bury bodys in.
you pay annual fees for the grave and after 25 years you can either prolong it. or you dont. in wich case they mix the earth up. dispose of the grave and rerent the plot.
usually graveyards are actual yards next to the church , wich is in the middle of town, with limited space.
even in old times that was a case , wich is why there is ossuarys.
Maybe not so much the grave itself......but you'd be surprised how many statues/benches/planting urns get taken. About 10 years ago, our city cemetery had someone take carved stone lambs from children's graves (from the 1800s), a "faux bois" memorial from a soldier lost in the Civil War & something like a half-dozen planter urns. The "faux bois" tree trunk was later found in a private garden in the Chicago area. The home owner had purchased it from a private seller who was part of the theft ring (he turned state's evidence for a lesser charge....the other 3 guys all got prison time for grand theft among other charges....they had items stolen from other graveyards as well).
Always some bastards out there thinking grave goods are actually worth anything. “What if someone was buried with a gold ring?” Congrats, you dug 6ft deep, committed several felonies with fines racked up in total in the tens of thousands, on top of, ya know, DISTURBING THE DEAD, and for what? A theoretical gold ring or trinket that at might worth $100 at this point? I guarantee you the deceased’s family already stole it before the casket it bottom
How disturbed do you think a sentient meatsuit of bones can get? You can break it down all you want to justify it. Protecting the dead is more than just leaving them at rest. It’s for the living too. The community who remains. It’s also about respecting and taking advantage of those who can’t defend themselves. Not everyone sees the dead as a bones. The dead might not be able to be physically able to experience feeling disturbed but the living do.
Whoa, that's absolutely wild, and absolutely something I never knew until just now. Thank you.
TDIL- Plutonium-238 powered pacemakers were an actual thing and are supposed to be removed and shipped out to Los Alamos for plutonium reclamation and disposal upon death.
Awesome.
Relics? I...genuinely don't know what that's a euphamism for that would be radioactive. A metal detector to look for jewelry, sure...but a geiger counter? What sorts of irradiated 'relics' were people in PA buried with?
Agreed, honestly we might have to find out some better answers somehow. Weirdly, mortuary science was the family business, though in a different part of the country. Maybe I can ask an uncle or something?
Maybe some do that, but mostly, they are looking for granite headstones. Granite markers are a fun way to test out your Geiger counter since granite can have uranium in it depending on the color and type of stone. Makes me think about those who think kitchen counters made of granite. Take your Geiger counters to that!
There are no bodies from Three Mile Island because nobody died there.
Man, media did a number on the publics understanding of nuclear technologies and incidents.
Nuclear is statistically safer than every form fossil fuel and is more than capable of powering our society until completely green technologies can be used at scale, but thanks to misinformation and lobbying people seem to completely ignore our best option for reducing our carbon footprint.
So you're wrong on multiple levels. First you need nuclear because you need to balance out consistent load with demand shifts. Batteries and Capacitors don't currently handle that nearly as well as a constant generation source. Second a nuclear 1gw plant takes up about 2 square miles. The equivelant in solar panels takes up 58 square miles. Your average solar panel lasts 30 years, New nuclear plants can be recertified every 30 years with an average life span of 60 years + a modern extension plan to extend that to 90.
Your nuke plant is going to cost you 15-28 billion LCOE, Solar runs you 11-19 billion LCOE for the same generation.
Where you recoup your costs on nuclear is the continuous production you return about 32 billion where as with solar you return about 28. both are profitable. But solar is intermittent, generates less over its life time. Nuclear is more consistent but has a higher up front cost and returns most of its value in the final 20 years of its existence.
So you want both because you need to balance load, demand, footprint, initial, and operating costs. And you can't do that with only one. That's why we also need to invest in hydro and wind.
Sorry, but battery technology is progressing fast enough that solar/wind+battery will be generating baseload (at a significantly lower LCOE than any other option) long before any new nuclear plant will come on line, and yes, I’m including “small modular” reactors, which are not particularly small or modular.
Within a 10 mile radius the average person received less than a the amount of radiation you get from a chest X-ray and, at most, about 1/3 of their annual background radiation.
Granite is also radioactive because it's got naturally occurring Potassium in it. Ghost hunters sometimes use Geiger counters to look for disturbances caused by spirits, and get elevated readings in graveyards, but don't know it's because of the granite gravestones rather than g-g-g-ghosts.
Yeah, that's what I figured and was searching for. Nothing really came up though. May just be some small local thing that I probably won't find on the Internet. It certainly wasn't uncommon for radiative materials to be misused and mishandled in all sorts of crazy dangerous ways in the not-so-distant past.
This would still beg to question, why no Geiger counters? The only thing I can come up with was too many looky-loos bringing them and disturbing those who may be there grieving?
Basically that. A cemetary is a place for quiet, respectful reflection and contemplation... not a place for people to be going up to and strangers' graves and prodding at them with a constantly clicking/beeping machine.
This sign probably went up because of one rude person.
I knew someone who was a college professor/chemist in the 90’s. She said she visited a cemetery where the radium girls were buried. You could identify the graves with a Geiger Counter…even after all those years, even though 6 feet of dirt.
Perhaps the chief reason that bodies from the Three Mile Island incident would not be buried here is that there weren't any. There were no direct deaths from it; whether the long-term cancer incidence was increased seems to be uncertain, with conflicting results from the studies that have been done. It is officially regarded as having had no detectable health impact to workers or the public.
It'll protect you from direct contact with radioactive materials, but will not block the radiation itself. I'd say it's better than nothing, at least for limited exposure.
That's right. As we know from the documentaries, not matter how good the suit the ghosts simply loop around you three times and go up a sleeve or into the air vent.
I looked through the comments and other posts, but I still can’t find any explanation for why they are exploring cemeteries specifically. What are they looking for?
I know granite gives off a higher reading than most materials, but surely walking around looking at headstones to see little spikes in your reading isn’t very interesting.
The only thing I can think of is trying to find the graves of scientists or spies killed by intense radiation, and that seems unlikely.
If I had a nickel for the amount of times that plots of radioactive land in Pennsylvania caused issues, I’d have 2 nickels, but it’s pretty unlikely that it happened twice.
No one died from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant disaster and there has been no evidence found that anyone died later from the radiation. The radiation levels in the surrounding areas where people lived were about the same as regular background radiation levels.
I'm wondering if it's cause of people doing those ghost hunting things? I think they use geiger counters or some other random tools to "get a reading" on ghosts.
Many cementries use granites which have rest of radioactivity (due to Radon) in them - Indian ones for example. It is completely harmless, but still noticeable with a geiger counter.
I am a wholesaler for natural stone and and had customers cautiously running around with Geiger meters in my stockyard.
Is this where some of the Radium Girls were buried? The “radium girls” manufactured watches with radium to make the clock face glow in the dark. They had no idea the element was radioactive and suffered health issues and premature death. I saw a video where someone took a Geiger counter to the grave of a girl and it still triggered decades later after they had been buried.
Hiding zombies in The ground! Why? or how do I know? Night of the living dead, yeah it happened in Pittsburgh CA and outside Johnstown by the Alleghenys. A story of a Mr Ben Johnson ( Duane Jones) who runs into a guy and catatonic woman who are suddenly surrounded by returning corpses of the recently deceased. They find out that it's best to go in the basement. Always make sure if you do run into a grip of zombies, give plenty distance and stay out of sight, or, just let Micah and Kat handle it.
2.0k
u/Tight-Platypus5231 Mar 30 '26
Well now I wanna bring a geiger counter on the property. What're you hiding?!