The main event in our D&D game last week was a mysterious plague that was causing a town to become paranoid. It was actually caused by a valuable mineral. I got the idea from on 1)
this really good lecture series on the Black Death and 2)
the episode of Star Trek where a medieval-ish civilization gets its hands on a radioactive substance.
Katie, who plays in the game, pointed out that that episode is based on the
Goiânia accident, in which cesium was pried loose from a medical device found in an abandoned private hospital.
On September 18, Alves sold the items to a nearby scrapyard. That night, Devair Alves Ferreira (the owner of the scrapyard) noticed the blue glow from the punctured capsule. Thinking the capsule's contents were valuable or even supernatural, he immediately brought it into his house. Over the next three days, he invited friends and family to view the strange glowing substance.
Every link in this chain of events is stunning. This one in particular:
Four months before the theft, on May 4, 1987, Saura Taniguti, then director of Ipasgo, the institute of insurance for civil servants, used police force to prevent one of the owners of IGR, Carlos Figueiredo Bezerril, from removing the objects that were left behind.
The objects included the device containing the cesium.