With great power comes great responsibility. We all know that to be true thanks to a young man from Queens who happened to be bitten by a radioactive spider and went on to save the world from a careless and egomanical oligarch, a technologist gone rogue, and a guy who is sometimes made of sand.
We all admire the bravery and pluck of Peter Parker. So when I heard that there was a shipment of possibly radioactive shrimp at Walmart, I felt the call to serve.
I must eat the radioactive shrimp.
According to a press release from the Food and Drug Administration, a shipment of frozen shrimp from BMS Foods, an Indonesian supplier, tested positive at customs for Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope. The frozen shrimp was set to be sold under the Great Value brand at Walmart.
“At this time, no product that has tested positive or alerted for Cesium-137 (Cs-137) has entered the US commerce,” the FDA wrote, although they recommend a recall for three Great Value products.
How did the shrimp become radioactive? Are all shrimp tested for radioactivity? Is foul play suspected, or is this some natural occurrence? These are questions I do not have answers to.
The only question I definitively know the answer to is: Do I want to eat the shrimp?
Yes, yes, I do. I need to try it. I cannot resist knowing there’s radioactive shrimp out there and that I could potentially harness its shrimpy powers. Would I get claws? A powerful tail to maneuver through water? Would I just go great with cocktail sauce?
[Note: Business Insider does not endorse eating anything radioactive, and you should not do this, no matter how tempting it sounds. Ingesting Cesium-137 allows the radioactive material to accumulate in soft tissues, increasing cancer risk, according to the FDA.]
Since apparently the contaminated shipment was stopped before it hit shelves, it sounds like I’ll never get a chance to find out. But thanks to the power of ChatGPT, I made a picture of myself as a radioactive shrimp:
ChatGPT / Hell