Exploring Radioactive McCormick and Mi Vida Uranium Mines 

This is why RU-vid exists! What amazing unique content. I'm a collector and nuclear tourist myself, so it's great to at least passively connect.

Nice job! I’m an old uranium Miner and worked many of these mines. The Ml vida mine was originally found and developed by Charley Steen, and the government paid him $10,000,000 for finding this huge deposit as a bonus in the 1950s.The company I worked for bought this mine in the early 1980s (Wisconsin Public Service ) through MRC (Mineral Recovery Corporation) .just before the collapse of Uranium Mining in this Country. It still has full face drifts of .40 hundreds ore. I also lived in Uravan Co. and worked for Union Carbide as a Mining Engineer from 1975 to1980. Keep up the good work!

I am Environmental Science Graduate looking to study Environmental Radioactivity, Radioactivity Safety & Dosimetry for my masters. I have seen lots of people make videos on topics similar to yours but NO ONE has such a beautiful layout and explanation for topics and just a general way of presenting imagery and information in a unique, entertaining and interesting way like you. Please take my subscription! More to come in the future!

Thank you for comparing your readings to chest and dental x-rays. It really puts things in perspective. Also your presenting the half life of the radon decay isotopes is very helpful in understanding. I don’t know how often that area has earthquakes, but if it was even once a year I would not go in that first mine!

Wow! Incredable how all of that uranium bearing ore was concentrated by geological processes which occurred at mindbogglingly long timescales.

So amazing to think that the uranium from those mines might be standing watch in Minuteman missiles or powering an electrical plant. Such a desolate, yet beautiful area with a hidden energy source.

thanks for getting in there and sharing this remote place in Utah.

As a Radiological Control Tech, it would be so cool to go exploring places like this and use what I've learned at work "for fun"! Just a few tips, bag your instruments like you mentioned, wear some coveralls to keep contamination off your skin and clothing, and in areas like this, a respirator would be a good idea. Those simple things would really go a long way in giving you the confidence to explore places like this in greater depth. Someday I wish to check some of these places out myself so I can teach my kids about all of this stuff, but until then, thanks for taking us along with you!

Sketchy locations, but fascinating. And the landscape is magnificent. What had me on edge was the reminder that you're not the only one going alone to places that are in states of imminent collapse - and that some of the people who do that neglect to tell anyone where they are going.

Just stumbled onto your channel. I absolutely love your niche in exploration.

That drone shot driving along the cliff was amazing. Really appreciate your videos. Learned a bunch.

Before I found your channel I had no idea so many every day objects are spewing radiation at us and we don't even realize it. Makes radiation seem slightly less scary to know that we're being constantly exposed any time we go out anyway. As a native Utahn, I had no idea such mines were around Moab! Pretty cool!

Thank you for this man!!! Always enjoy your videos and your footage is no less than INCREDIBLE! Very, very cool! Wish I were there exploring myself, as it is both interesting, and beautiful. Thanks again my friend! 👍🙂

Great video. Thanks for sharing. Always great to see some nice landscapes and geology 👍

Love hearing that radiacode just going REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE lol 😂 mine dose that every so often when i go exploring my area. Also you should bring a black light with you and see if there are any fluorescent U minerals. It’s really neet to do

Another genuinely interesting and gripping episode. So glad I found your channel. Sometimes the algorithm is spot on!

gotta be one of the most interesting youtube channels out there. These videos have me genuinely intrigued every time I watch them. Love the content man!

Went on a cave tour in Alabama this week. My Geiger counter was up over 100cpm towards the end and must have picked up the radon daughters because the CPM stayed high, especially near my clothes for a few hours after. So fun to learn from this channel.

Awesome showing of this mine, that banding looked quite old! The style of it is very cool, thought it was from the 50s and it was! What a time for mining... Dangerous as hell.

Awesome new video, Thanks Drew!

I found this channel from nowhere, but love the things you show..... keep up the good work

The transition scene footage/music just after 14 min was beautiful. Awesome video.

Oh! I love to know more about the geology of the places you visit and the geologic processes of how the uranium and other elements came to or near the surface. Thanks!

I have a cheap GQ Geiger counter because I like being able to learn more about the environment around me. A counter isn't something most people will use much, but it's a tool that when you need it, you NEED it. The most radioactive thing I've found is a granite boulder that looks like it's traveled for a long time given how smooth it is. It reads around 45CPM, while background radiation where I'm at is usually between 16-23CPM. Definitely not very hot and I'm pretty sure my counter can't detect any alpha particles. I live somewhat close to the highest point in Ohio, so where I'm at isn't exactly a radioactive hotspot compared to the West in the Rockies. I think that rock was brought here be glaciers and I don't think there's a whole lot of radioactive minerals between here and north into Canada. Oh, and intersting video as always.

thanks for the tour, Drew!

I know I'm gonna love every video, so you have earned instant likes whilst the ad's are playing 🥳 Strolling around here in the comment section, just feeding the algorithm, and your ego. Best channel find of 2022! Much love from 🇸🇪

Any chance you could do a video explaining the different types of particle, which ones are the most and least dangerous, allow radiation levels etc. A beginners guide to help understand your videos even. Great job, really interesting to watch. Keep it up

Great explore Drew. I wonder how the miners dealt with being contaminated with radioactivity. These mines look very sketchy to me, like the rock is just waiting to pancake off, nothing like the hard rock mines I worked in. Thank you for your efforts, take care.

I love your stuff man. I have made a collage project about nuclear energy with things you teched to us. Keep it up!❤️

I’ve been to both of these mines and I definitely recommend a rebreather or some sort of HEPA filter mask and sealed eye coverings for the mi vida mine. There is a ton of airflow, sure, but also a ton of radon gas as mentioned. I went into the Dirty Devil and Temple mountain mines a few months back without proper breathing equipment and my lungs were burning only a few seconds in. Be safe explorers, always use proper discretion and equipment while exploring

Awesome video. Your content inspires me to explore some radiactive places myself. But I have to wait until next year for that.

all of our uranium mines were open-cut. The radon gas wasn't a problem. I had a piece of green uranium ore in a sample bag put away for years. Decades in fact. The cotton bag had rotted away. Your gieger counter would have identified the ore in that mine. A gold mine near where i live had Pitch Blende with the gold ore. The Curries used Pitch Blende to extract their radium from.

you should use your gamma filter for your RadEye if you enter that mine again so you know how much dose you are really getting in there, and of course use your mask :) great videos, keep up the good work!

I was born in the desert. This video reminds me how much I miss it sometimes.

Gave thumbs up before the add finished!! 👍 More antiquing too please! 😁

You really deserve alot more subscribers i hope you get them soon. Great filming and neat angles. Thank you !!

Love your Channel Drew :)

Great video! Looks like you had some fun! We’re hoping to head out that way soon to see the sites. Hoping the next video is on uravan. That area from uravan to Lisbon valley, from carpenters ridge to the north there is one of my favorites to explore!

Terrific combination of exploration video and the background information that makes watching those videos a richer experience. Not much of these ores here in New England, at least that were ever explored or mined.

just started with radioactive item and rock collecting. found your videos while doing research and have to say you're pretty interesting. Now i need to get a better Geiger counter than this GMC-300E

Man that place looks like rattlesnake heaven, be careful out there, great video as always!

It is pretty amazing to see where the nuclear programs begin, with a bunch of really spicy rocks.

Thanks Drew for your wonderful content and artistic presentation. I just now finishing watching all your videos, oldest to newest (over a few weeks). This video seemed special, in that it seemed like one of the most radioactive situations you've put yourself in for a video. While you've certainly had very high CPS on your meter many times in your videos, those other times (if I recall) were always due to small sources held close to your meter (fiestaware, smoke detectors, etc). In those cases, moving the meter back from the object would quickly drop the radiation seen by the meter. But in this situation, even as you approached the mine entrance (not holding your meter close to anything) you had high readings. All that radiation was coming, not from small nearby sources held near your meter, but simply from "the environment"... the ground, the walls of the mine, the daughter products in the air... it all adds up to sort of a "shower" of radiation raining upon you from all directions at once. For me, this was one of the spookiest places that you've visited. Thanks again Drew.

Please protect your skin better! You may not be frightened of a random dose here and there of what you can't see, but what you do see is already doing damage. I think I'd rather see you masked in a white layer of protection than burnt this way. Excellent video as always, and I'm only 2 minutes in. Perfect picture, colors and crispness, a joy.

I love your content. I spent about 10 years as an underground miner.

Thx for the interesting video tour. How about always keeping a UV light on you for highlighting the radioactive minerals? Also, I'd be thinking about a radon filtering face mask, if they exist, as we'd all breathe easier for you when soaking up CPM like that. Nice camera work, too!

I bought my Radiacode after your first video where you mentioned it and I love it. The spectroscopy was a little bit off from the factory, so i had to do some calibration (did a lot of searching and eventually came across a PDF in German that I had to run through Google translate that explained how to do it), but other than that, it's been great. The calibration is super simple if you have a check source (I used my Cs-137 source). And you were right. Flipping the screen back and forth is fun.

Radon stand is a breeze . You’ll be fine with that. At SONGS the HP’s had us sit at the check point in front of a fan. We would check every 5-10 minutes to see if the gas was gone.

Hey, I like your t-shirt! Keep up the great videos!

I was an x-ray tech, so it refreshing to see someone not afraid of a little radiation!

M father and Marlowe Smith staked the Rio Algum Lisbon Valley mine in the early 50's. At six years old I would camp with my dad at small mines. Dynamite shovels and a five yard dump truck got the ore to the refinery...I loved the desert and retired from water well, blast hole and temperature gradient holes for the Geysers. Also private wells and irrigation wells for the vinyards...I'm retired but the company is still active after 100 years..LOL

Nice video bro. You’re gonna be glowing in the dark before you know it.

Nice Video. Love your content! But it would be super useful to always have a microsievert reading! Especially in like the Videos of your smoke detectors etc. The 101 is nice but it‘s only beta and gamma. Alpha would also be very nice.

the second mine was so hot!? You went in there without anything on with such a dusty environment talking to the camera and everything. You are a special kinda guy to put yourself in those situations :P

Not good not terrible, but we measured 3k microsieverts in Byk mines from gas masks!! Camera started to show white dots as radon concentration increases (probably will post a video), but for my friends it's so catchy to have a walk in huge multi-floor mines) but on 21:30 moment where you get 32k CPM readings is mad thing! Good luck, be safe!

I love your channel and your explorations, because I’m visually impaired, and cannot see very well. These are places I’ll never have a chance to go into. And you I am learning about radiation. Still don’t really understand all that much, but it seems like the second cave you were in was extremely dangerous from what it sounds like. Please be safe.

The US will have to start doing its own Uranium mining again, IF it gets cut off from its current sources, so we'll need people like DREW here to monitor the environmental situation on this.

the equipment left inside the mine is mind blowing. dwarfs that rusty stuff at the entrance.

Another "hot" video.. very interesting. Looking forward to the next one.

Drew...Could you do a video about the tools, techniques, and the people that did the digging back in the old days? That aspect intrigues me.

You're right in my back yard, give me a shout there's a bunch I could show you great video keep it up

Your intro music is the same as Blancolirio channels! Great vids. That is all.

Definitely didn’t realize that was sandstone, not surprised it’s collapsing. Still cool though.

Cool video! Love the drone shots. Could you please switch to μSv from time to time? CPM means nothing to me lol.

Very nice video ! Did you happen to see the difference in readings between the radeye and radiacode in the mine itself ?love the vids ,very beautiful 😍

I'll go in there with you when you're ready. Let's do this!

Radon therapy spas exist all over Europe, old uranium mines turned into radon spas, including Colorado and Montana. There is tons of research showing the rejuvenation benefits of radon, a monoatomic energy based therapy. You're welcome to follow my channel on these esoteric subjects, and alchemy, under my name capitalized.

It would be interesting to bring a cloud chamber to that mine and see what kind of tracks the mine air would generate.

how the heck miners used to work in that environment, i can imagine 45k at the entrance alone for hours and hours and maybe years working on those mine could do to them! crazy. Amazing video like always, curious to know where the name of the mine comes from "Mi vida" is "my life" in Spanish or also could be used as "my love" meaning "you are my life"

"It only works so well, until it fails." quote of the day.

Great drone footage!.. although I share the same concern as several other viewers. If that counter is putting out a steady tone, it can't be good for human tissue. True, the overall dosage is low, but things add up over time.

You should start a go fund me now for any future cancer treatments you’re going to need. 😳 Edit: Please don’t stop making these videos, they are great content and very informative 👍

He had a beard like Dan Hurd before he went into this mine!

i guess you could say you got that uranium fever

I say a helmet would really protect your head if you were to trip over something. As you said- a helmet is no match for a truck-sized rock falling from above.

When I was in 8th grade, I thought one could smell radon in their basement because it would decay to polonium which would smell like sulfur. So, I assumed any bad smell in the basement was a sign of radon.

I measured 40k CPM right at the hole in MI Vida with just beta & gamma. I then walked around inside for about an hour and the level stayed around 9k. I never understood why my counter kept reading so high after I left the mine until now lol. Also there is one or two more open mines about a mile south of McCormick along the ridge, very easy to spot on Google earth and there's pics of the entrance on Mindat. If you have time to go back that way it would be super cool to see. It'll probably be next summer before I get a chance to go...

You should hook up with @AbandonedandForgottenPlaces. I think they are in the same region, and would probably love to explore some of these mines and have the tools and know how to get into those sketchy areas 10:00 that's known as "slabbing" for obvious reasons. it's coming apart in big man killer slabs. and yes, that's the "back" of the mine, and the sides are the ribs The yellow tubing isn't really for radon, although it works for that too. it's fresh air supply to the working areas. they blow air down though the mine though those so you always have fresh air at the deepest parts pushing any bad or stale air out, as well as blasting gases. those bags are in every mine in the country right now

Thanks Drew, I enjoy your videos. I was wondering about lava and it’s radioactivity. What are your thoughts? Thanks.

Wow, lots and lots of critter chirping, after having one or two tours through or around these kind of readings or mines ...do you need potassium iodide, just wondering. If I should come across anything as your found here would I need a few doses?

Sounds like you have learned to show a bit more respect for the progeny of Radon compared to before. However it's still smart to set a good example and wear a p100 respirator. They are not expensive and readily available. The lining of your lungs gets more of a dose than your clothes because lungs are actively pulling air volume in and out. The short lived half-lives are said to deposit their energy with a bit more impact on tissue than long lived ones. Something to be aware of.

24:08 Literally!

I want to do this one day I'm 23 I can make my own decisions I'm a collected or uranium vasaline glass custard all that and radium pocket watches from the 1920s and I love them I want a raw piece of uranium that would be fantastic and the whole experience would be phenomenal a dream

and ? is your counter still active? great finish with that air borne cam

your video very educated

Another RU-vidr (Robert Murray Smith) did an interesting experiment using americium and a solar cell to generate electricity. With your knowledge I wondered what else could be used?

I'm curious, have you ever been the scattering of mines in Utah, going north from Bullfrong/Ticaboo, route 276 up through Mt Ellsworth, Fred's Ridge, Mt Holms, Mt Hillers, etc. I ask cause many years ago I worked at Bullfrog in my early 20's and would often take days off exploring those dirt roads we all see off the highway. One day with friends we saw some caves, which ended up being mines. I want to say it was prior to Mt Ellsworth, and not far off the road to the west. Drove right up to the mine openings, nothing was marked, and the mine openings were easily big enough for my jeep. So being the reckless 20 something I was as the time, I drove in. I remember getting a ways in before I saw "danger radiation" sign. Got back to lakeside and some greybeard(lol now me) said "oh yea they used to mine tons of uranium out of the hill around here, you shouldn't go anywhere near that stuff". Oh also.... arent you mad that old man emu doesn't make an upper control arm? :p

It seems odd there would be signs and fences around that structure, and yet nothing around the screaming hot radioactive mine entrance...

What do you keep in your sling bag? I’m just curious, to see how it differs from what I keep in mine

I really wonder that such places are so easily accessible and no gate, signs whatsoever to see anywhere at the entrance ....

Your channel name is a bit more appropriate that usual for this video.

Love this content. R.I.P. headphones users. 🤣

If that tiny detector is beings hit to the point of whistling , think about how much is tearing through your body and ripping up cell structures ?

Love the fallout theme music

On the east coast in the Appalachian area households deal with about 12 uc/L on a 30 day average. I can only imagine the headache of building a home in that region. How many Radon fans it would take to get below 2uc/L........lol

Wow so you're saying that a uranium mine is radioactive. Gee I would've never guessed lol

Interesting to see the minecarts still outside of Mi Vida, do things like that normally get left behind when a mine closes? It's not carted off for recycling or something? Just left to rust?

To just leave a mine train like that behind there must have been some big profits made.

Do you think you will ever go in that mine and film it? And if so, would you be wearing any propective gear? Does the gasmask in your emergency gear video protects you from radon gas?

Just an idea for you but could you explain how the miners were able to work around rates that high everyday.