Nuke Buster (ca. 1990)
In 1971, approximately 300 hippies packed into a caravan of painted school buses and left Haight Ashbury heading east. They ended up in Summertown, Tennessee where they formed "The Farm," perhaps the most famous of the Hippie Communes. At one time, as many as 1,500 people lived there. Today the number is closer to 200.
One source of income for the Farm is the production of small portable radiation detectors which are marketed under the company name SE International (Solar Electronics). The best known of these instruments is the "Radiation Alert," a small, hand-held GM detector.
My favorite is the "Nuke Buster," a portable GM detector that plugs into the cigarette lighter socket of a car. The central red light comes on at 0.04 mR/hr (roughly 4 times background) and the main alarm goes off at 1 mR/hr.
Case: ca. 4" x 4 1/2" x 3 1/2"
Donated by S.E. International courtesy of Steve Skinner.
From the ORAU Then & Now Blog: Hippies, a commune and nuke busters
The Nuke Buster is one of the incredible items in ORAU’s online Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity. It plugs into a car dashboard to electronically monitor radiation levels. How do hippies, communes and Nuke Busters intersect with ORAU? This blog explains.