Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 13:25:53 +1200
From: JohnWW <johnww@XTRA.CO.NZ>
Subject: Re: the cash-landrum incident
That occurred in southeast Texas on 29 December 1980. A
slow-moving very
bright UFO, surrounded by a fleet of military-type black
helicopters,
passed over a car carrying Betty Cash and her grand-daughter
Vicki
Lendrum, resulting in the latter suffering radiation burns and
symptoms
of severe radiation sickness.
<SNIP>
I studied the case in detail from the APRO files including
medical
data.
Radiation sickness would have been fatal to all three if that
was
actually
involved, so it had to be something else.
In a message dated 3/26/2005
4:06:34 AM
Pacific Standard Time, nicap@insightbb.com writes:
Dick Hall:
Peter Rank, the radiologist and chief of medicine at his
hospital in
Wisconsin analyzed the data. He knew far more about the
medical effects
of
ionizing radiation than Brad or any of us. Brad hints at some
other
explanation, but he may be include a UFO connection. I'm not
sure if
means
it couldn't have happened as they said or what.
Brad forgot to mention the obvious fact that Betty was the
only one
fully
exposed to the radiation because she got out in front of the
car.
Brad Sparks:
You don't actually quote what Peter Rank says, in detail. I
have Schuessler's book on Cash-Landrum right here which is quite
devastating. I think I know quite enough about radiation
biology
having studied it at NASA Ames Research Center under NASA's
leading
radiation biologist. Radiologists don't necessarily know
about
fatal whole-body doses of ionizing radiation since they do not
apply
such fatal does to their patients, so there is no reason to
study fatal
doses in detail. IONIZING RADIATION is the ONLY kind of
radiation
that causes "RADIATION SICKNESS." Infrared, microwave and
UV
radiation (as well as visible light radiation) do NOT and cannot
cause
radiation sickness. If the Cash-Landrum trio had had
radiation
sickness they would have been dead within days or weeks because
the
onset of symptoms was so rapid (within 1/2 hour) and so severe
that as
symptoms of supposed ionizing radiation syndrome it indicates
100%
fatal dose, so therefore it could not have been ionizing
radiation
syndrome they suffered, but some kind of "radio-mimetic" effect,
which
many chemicals are known to induce (e.g., nitrogen mustards in
chemical
warfare are radio-mimetic).
Here is what Peter Rank actually says (Schuessler p. 111):
"Whether this radiation
damage was
indeed due to IONIZING radiation
is at this point
UNCLEAR.
Other possibilities include INFRARED,
ULTRAVIOLET, and MICROWAVE
radiation. I know of no way that we
will be able to establish
anything
further as to the type of radiation or
dose. The conclusion
I can
make so far is that radiation damage
occurred, TYPE UNKNOWN,
probably
LIMITED IN SEVERITY,
without evidence of
SYSTEMIC
involvement."
Rank did not consider radio-mimetic chemicals, but he recognizes
that
the Cash-Landrum symptoms DO NOT FIT RADIATION SICKNESS because
of the
obvious lack of "SYSTEMIC involvement" (which would have been
100%
fatal if SYSTEMIC or whole-body in nature), so it has to be in
his
opinion SOME OTHER KIND of radiation and he speculates on "other
possibilities" such as IR, MW and UV, none of which can cause
radiation
sickness. It was clearly "LIMITED IN SEVERITY" because
they
should have died from it if it had been ionizing radiation
sickness.
I also studied the radiation shielding factors involved, unlike
anyone
else apparently. For ionizing radiation to travel 140 feet
in air
from the landed UFO to the car and heavily dose Cash-Landrum it
would
have to be extremely penetrating radiation that would go right
through
car window glass as if it was not even there, car window glass
would
provide essentially ZERO SHIELDING (so the Landrums inside the
car
would have gotten the same FATAL DOSE of ionizing radiation as
Betty
Cash who went outside the car IF it had been IONIZING radiation,
the
only radiation that causes radiation sickness). Alpha and
beta
particles could not travel through 140 feet of air. X-rays
would
peter out after 140 feet (unless an x-ray laser weapon was
deliberately
trained on them). Only gamma rays, neutrons and cosmic
rays could
travel that distance without tremendous attenuation. But
ionizing
radiation SCATTERS, it does not travel a straight line, but a
crooked
jagged path that GOES AROUND CORNERS. You cannot hide from
ionizing radiation by going behind a car, the engine block and
metal
body provide MINIMAL or almost NO SHIELDING, as the IONIZING
radiation
zigzags around the corner as if the car engine or other
obstruction was
not there.
The DOE-DOD Effects of Nuclear Weapons (latest rev., 3rd ed.
1977) has
an excellent drawing of this around-the-corner effect of
ionizing
radiation which is called "skyshine" on page 339 in Fig. 8.45,
and
states (pp. 338, 348):
"The fact that gamma rays
can
reach a target from directions other than
that of the burst point [or
source
of radiation] has an important bearing
on the problem of
shielding.
A person taking shelter behind a single
wall, an embankment, or a
hill
will be shielded, to some extent, from
the direct gamma rays, but
will
STILL BE EXPOSED to the scattered
radiation (or skyshine), as
shown
by the broken lines in Fig. 8.45a.
Adequate protection from
gamma
rays can be secured ONLY if the
shelter is one which
SURROUNDS the
individual, so that he can be
SHIELDED FROM ALL
DIRECTIONS (Fig.
8.45b)....
"... because of the
scattering
experienced by gamma rays, an adequate
shield must provide
protection
from ALL DIRECTIONS. Somewhat the
same situation applies to
neutrons
[as] ... neutrons undergo extensive
scattering in the air [and]
..
their directions of motion are almost
randomly distributed."
Hence the ionizing radiation shielding factors would not have
provided
the Landrums inside the car any significant shielding or
protection. They would have gotten about the same fatal
dose as
Betty Cash outside the car. So it could not have been
ionizing
radiation.
However, radio-mimetic chemicals could have been distributed
whereby
persons inside a car might get significant shielding from the
chemical
exposure (depending on the type of distribution or
medium).
One last point, as I learned from NASA's chief radiation
biologist, it
is just not true that it is not possible to determine the
radiation
dose after the event. In the 70's a technique of radiation
dosimetry was developed using chromosomal aberrations as a
dosimeter. Ionizing radiation causes damage to the DNA
molecules
resulting in a certain percentage of breaks in the chromosome
structure
that are not repaired and are proportional to the whole-body
ionizing
radiation exposure. These remain for the rest of the
person's
life and can be measured at any time. Even tissue samples,
if
well-preserved, after death can be analyzed for a chromosomal
aberration count and a lifetime radiation dosimetric
measurement.
This has obvious application to the Cash-Landrum case (last I
heard two
of three are still alive) and the Villas-Boas case (which does
seem to
be ionizing radiation). In addition, rock and soil samples
from
the Cash-Landrum site can be analyzed at any time even decades
after
the event for evidence of neutron and gamma irradiation, it
doesn't
depend on finding and measuring short-life radionuclides that
are
already long gone.