So, who had "radioactive drop bears" on their 2023 bingo card?

[flybynight]

This is how nearly every 1950-60's giant monster movie starts

[NT2C]

This is how nearly every 1950-60's giant monster movie starts

But it's Australia, Land of Everything Kill You, would they even notice?

[EBuff75]

They found it!  Apparently it fell out of the equipment and off the truck shortly after leaving the mine and appears to have been undisturbed since it fell out.  https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/01/australia/australia-radioactive-capsule-found-intl-hnk/index.html

[Raptor]

Yes they did. They found it with a vehicle traveling @ 70 KPH.

Now the cynic in me wants to know if any more of these items in their possession are missing. Did they simply drop off another one so that they can claim to find it?
Yes. I know. I am not a trusting soul.  

Officials said the capsule the size of a pea was found south of the mining town of Newman on the Great Northern Highway. It was detected by a search vehicle travelling at 70 kilometers (43 miles) per hour when specialist equipment picked up radiation emitting from the capsule.

Portable search equipment was then used to locate it 2 meters (6.5 feet) from the side of the road.
"This is an extraordinary result ... they have quite literally found the needle in the haystack," said Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson.

Now in the US Rio Tinto would be sent a bill (or bills) for the emergency services time and material. This is how they looked for it on one stretch of roadway.

[tirls]

So... no radioactive emu? Damn.

[EBuff75]

So... no radioactive emu? Damn.

We lost round one of the Emu War.  Don't provoke them! 

[Anianna]

I would think that being radioactive made that needle a little easier to find.  From a couple meters away on a truck going 70kph - I feel like they may have understated the level of radioactivity this thing emits in the initial announcement. 

Yes they did. They found it with a vehicle traveling @ 70 KPH.

Now the cynic in me wants to know if any more of these items in their possession are missing. Did they simply drop off another one so that they can claim to find it?
Yes. I know. I am not a trusting soul. 

They could have just not mentioned that it was missing at all.  If there's enough oversight that they couldn't keep it quiet in the first place, maybe there's enough to ensure they have all of their radioactive bits accounted for at this point.  I can hope, anyway.

[tirls]

So... no radioactive emu? Damn.

We lost round one of the Emu War.  Don't provoke them! 

Mankind had its chance. I'm rooting for the Emus. 

[NT2C]

So... no radioactive emu? Damn.

We lost round one of the Emu War.  Don't provoke them! 

Mankind had its chance. I'm rooting for the Emus.

Collaborating with the enemy?  Our Aussie friends feed traitors to the drop bears, or so I'm told.  You could find yourself getting eaten!

[EBuff75]

So... no radioactive emu? Damn.

We lost round one of the Emu War.  Don't provoke them! 

Mankind had its chance. I'm rooting for the Emus.

Collaborating with the enemy?  Our Aussie friends feed traitors to the drop bears, or so I'm told.  You could find yourself getting eaten!

I, for one, welcome our new emu overlords!

[MacWa77ace]

Yes they did. They found it with a vehicle traveling @ 70 KPH.

Now the cynic in me wants to know if any more of these items in their possession are missing. Did they simply drop off another one so that they can claim to find it?
Yes. I know. I am not a trusting soul. 

Officials said the capsule the size of a pea was found south of the mining town of Newman on the Great Northern Highway. It was detected by a search vehicle travelling at 70 kilometers (43 miles) per hour when specialist equipment picked up radiation emitting from the capsule.

Portable search equipment was then used to locate it 2 meters (6.5 feet) from the side of the road.
"This is an extraordinary result ... they have quite literally found the needle in the haystack," said Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson.

This is a Bureaucrat patting themselves on the back and is literally the way I said they should search and would find it in an earlier post. OOORRR, its an emergency services minister that knows zilch about radiation.

If you want to compare it to finding a needle in a haystack then prolog that with we used a 2 ton electromagnet, held it over the haystack and turned it on. The needle immediately snapped out of the hay onto the magnet.  easy peezy!

The only way that wouldn't work is if they were in a uranium rich environment where the background radiation was equal to the output of the radioactive pellet.

[majorhavoc]

Rio Tinto apologises for losing radioactive capsule in Australia

QUOTE: The capsule may have gone missing up to two weeks ago.

Oh, godammit they don't even know when they lost it.  Seems like there's a decent chance it might not even be along the route they think they lost it on. 

I feel like the conversation went something like, "Well, it was at this facility and then Charlie here is pretty sure he popped it on a truck to go to this other facility, and now we just don't know where it is." 

Yes, I wrote that in an Australian accent.  Read it appropriately. 

I wonder if they all checked the bottoms of their boots yet.

Somewhere in there they also said that they checked the equipment it was in with a Geiger counter before the truck left and made sure it was in there.

Inter-dimensional wormhole - it's the only explanation. 

In any case It's been found.  Definitely more to this story, though.

[flybynight]

https://youtu.be/0lpOtpgPa7k