In Goldfinger (1964), the villains plot was to set off a dirty A-bomb in Fort Knox, irradiating the US gold supply. The claim was made that the gold would be radioactive for 58 years, which would be… 2022. Well, here we are.

As an aside, I can’t say as I think too highly of the math here. Cobalt and iodine were mentioned as part of the bomb being “particularly dirty;” bombs “salted” with those substances were proposed back in the day because they would indeed make bombs dirty. The fallout would be *nasty.* But the half-life of cobalt 60 is 5.3 years; that of iodine 131 is 8 days. This means that 58 years gives cobalt 10.94 half lives and iodine 2,650 half lives. This means that cobalt would have decayed down to 1/(2^10.94) = 0.00051 of it’s original radioactiveness; iodine would be essentially nonexistent. It’s the less radioactive, longer-lived components of the bomb – the uranium, the metal bits of the casing, etc. – that should be more worrisome long-term.

I often wonder sometimes if Hollywood types even care about simple accuracy.