In reply to Psy-Q.

Oh, thank the xenomorphs - it's not just me! Seriously, anyone who's watched a behind-the-scenes docu of any of the Alien film should know his name is pronounced "GHEE-gerr," but they all get it wrong!

In reply to Kevin.

I told a That Guy once not to recommend the juvieniles, because I wanted the recommendee to read something that would make them become readers of SF in general and it's been decades since the juveniles would do that.  While in the presence of the recommendee.

(Similarly the people who say that Harry Potter makes kids want to read have not seen first hand what those kids do after.  They want to read more Harry Potter and nothing else.)

Person at ratchet restricted materials duty at a port, using that electric-driven neutron emission tool every day to whack containers and see what responds in kind as heavy nuclei... eventually gets a ken to it rather than rotate out, or an edgelord oncologist, figures they'll be a numbers station from the afterlife.

Or, you know, Starlord desecrated their grave, witches or witch discipline unlocked meteor materia, or the early local Gundam team battles industry is there and releasing Minovsky Particles every time they use high manoeuvring power (and/or in miniature, in a coffin.)

In reply to Cordwainer Fish.

Yep, that's it -- thanks! (I swear that I have read more than one book. And that I'm not That Guy who recommends Heinlein juveniles to someone asking what to give to their SF-curious kids.)

In reply to Kevin.

"The Long Watch", also Heinlein.

In reply to Kevin.

... looks like I'm conflating Heinlein's "The Green Hills of Earth" and something else; I could swear that I read the lead-lined funeral procession as the ending to a story of similar vintage.

I'm seeing the ending of a Golden Age sci-fi short story here -- Mechanicsman Third Class McIrishname keeps the atomic pile on the passenger starliner from going critical just long enough for the passengers and remaining crew to be safely transferred to the Phobos Shuttle. Then he's brought home in a lead coffin for an honored burial in the churchyard of the backwoods town where he was born. Captains and Astrogators from ships across the system come to bow their heads (from a distance) to this lowborn hero as a remotely-operated tractor carries him home. Everyone knows why the cemetery is hot; a Geiger counter would be rude.

In reply to Jeff.

I cringe a little because Giger is not pronounced Geiger, it's pronounced Giger (ghee-gr). Source: Grew up in Giger's hometown, we have lots of Gigers.

And if you're from a Romontsch-speaking part of the canton it even turns into jee-jr (rough approximation, the soft gj doesn't exist in English).

In reply to Space Hobo.

Technically: yes. In practice: no sane person would ever want to decrease their chance of accidentally getting bit by a radioactive spider.

For that reason alone, all metal detectors produced since the late 60s are Geiger counters under the hood. (Stuff like "Unk finds newlywed's ring in sand" are industry plants.)

Could not find a reason that sign was put there, but I did run across this site: https://billiongraves.com "the world's largest resource for searchable GPS cemetery data". If I'd made that it would be called NextGrave and have lots of posts by dead people complaining about the cemetery going downhill, all the raccoons, and does anyone else hear that tapping from three coffins over? Anyone?

In reply to tfb.

This sounds awfully like an SCP.

In reply to tfb.

Always trust "THE MGT"... fnord

In reply to jwz.

No, Jamie, repeat after me: I reveal my Inmost Self unto my God.

That sign is unfortunate.  The nature of the accident, the accident itself and its location have never been declassified.  The site of the accident is visible on satellite imagery, but without quite specialised information it is not easily identifiable as what it is, or rather just what it is the remains of.  The bodies of most of the operators were recovered or, to be precise, sufficient body parts to account for them: individuals were not identifiable.  The decision to bury the materia at Fannettsburg was expedient but probably unfortunate.  There is adequate shielding, but rumours have circulated on message boards about just who, or what, might be buried there.  The sign, erected by the elders without official permission, serves only to encourage those who search.  We have this in hand: tomorrow the sign will never have existed.

THE MGT

You need a HR Giger Counter then.

https://mightyohm.com/blog/2012/09/h-r-giger-counter/

In reply to Space Hobo.

That sounds exactly like something that a member of the Alpha-Omega Doomsday Bomb Cult would say.

The killjoy answer seems to be that they didn't know that geiger counters and metal detectors are two different things.