Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 3:57 pm Post subject: Novel 18: How do you stop an exploding man, Part II
Ted is captured by a military-looking group that hoses him down with liquid concrete. Ted escapes by exploding the concrete and goes in search of the 2 needle weapon. He discoveres where it is made and what its purpose is.
Once again, I totally called the tracking implant. So is it a localized implant, or is the isotope in their whole body? In other words, can you remove it so you can't be tracked?
If the isotope is part of a larger molecule that is something used by the body's cells, it could be in someone's body for a while (wild guess, a few weeks). It might not be evenly distributed if it's something some cells use more than others.
I have links to information about half-lives of radioactive isotopes. I found out that the isotope does not have to be radioactive if it is used for tracking.
To track people marked with the isotopes, I'm fairly sure they would have to be collecting tissue samples from the general population to see when and where their subjects pop up. Since I think Chandra Suresh had to have access to many tissue samples to generate his list, maybe someone organized a program to collect thousands or millions of tissue samples and gives out information to university professors and secret organizations.
For radioactive isotopes, the half-life in a person depends on what compound the isotope is a part of and how fast the body can get rid of it. Most information I found is for medical imaging, for which you want a half-life of just a few hours. I speculate that you would need a tissue sample to determine whether someone has the isotope in them, (EDIT) or get close to them with some imaging equipment (END EDIT), unless you're going to give such a high dose that they're dying or contaminating their surroundings.
For stable isotopes, scientists can compare concentrations of various isotopes to get a sort of a profile from a tissue sample, and that profile can be matched to a geographic region and other information (like diet). They have given stable isotopes to monarch butterflies to track migration and analyzed dead butterflies at their winter range to find out what proportion came from the place where they gave isotopes to the butterflies. I think half-life matters less with this, because it's used for things like diet - the subject keeps taking the material in - or things that are incorporated into teeth and bones.
From http://www.ansto.gov.au/ari/brochures_misc/Isotopes.pdf
Pages 10 and 13 have a list of commonly used radioisotopes and their half-lives. I don't know if the biological half-life is taken into account. Page 14 has a list of other isotopes used for other scientific measurements.
It doesn't have to be radioactive. But if it's not, HRG has to have a way to collect physical samples from people to find out where they went later. If it is, I think you would still need physical samples or a scanner. Also, if it is radioactive, the radioactivity would wear off, although HRG is unethical enough not to be concerned about the subjects' health, so he might give a larger dose or use something that lasts longer.
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