[hilbert42]

The news was a bit of a beat-up and the chances of just accidentally stumbling on it out there were pretty remote to essentially nil. But what's authority to do? If some kid had found it and took it to school there'd be hell to play.

Based of its stated radiation signature it was always going to be easy to find. Right, it was a simple but nuisance task and took about as long as expected.

[d-z-m]

> hell to play.

not sure if this was a typo, but the phrase I'm familiar with is "hell to pay".

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/there...

[hilbert42]

Yeah, another damn typo I've missed, it's embarrassing. I understand the correct phrase.

Last week, I wrote 'we all cropped it' instead of 'we all copped it' which makes no sense—yet I reread that text three times, twice before posting and once thereafter and yet I still missed it.

I wish HN would allow typographical corrections past the usual edit deadline. Bad typos distract so they reduce the impact of what one is trying to say.

Thanks for pointing it out.

[HPsquared]

It was probably a mistake to report it to the public while it was still missing. That probably attracted a bunch of amateurs who could have ended up finding it. Far safer to look for it quietly first.

[laci37]

I guess that was because they were afraid of it getting stuck in a tire. If I found a strange metal cylinder in my tires, I would probably pick it up a try to find out what it is.

[HPsquared]

Did they close the road and/or put a checkpoint in place? That'd eliminate that risk.

[prollings]

The road you're talking about was 1400km long

[bell-cot]

1400km / (70km/h) = 20 hours of driving. This was no "a thousand volunteers on foot spent days searching for even a scrap of evidence" effort.

[rmccue]

Pretty sure it's also the only road connecting a lot of these places; this is far remote WA.

[zoklet-enjoyer]

I was considering going on a vacation/scavenger hunt when I saw the first article about it