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To me, such an act would be madness

There was serious concern that some insurgency group would blow up the complex.The Russians took this possibility seriously. They sent a large contingent of troops to secure the area

When astronauts return to the moon or travel to Mars, how will they shield themselves against high levels of cosmic radiation? A recent experiment aboard the International Space Station suggests a surprising solution: a radiation-eating fungus, which could be used as a self-replicating shield against gamma radiation in space.

The fungus is called Cladosporium sphaerospermum, an extremophile species that thrives in high-radiation areas like the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. For C. sphaerospermum, radiation isn’t a threat — it’s food. That’s because the fungus is able to convert gamma radiation into chemical energy through a process called radiosynthesis. (Think of it like photosynthesis, but swap out sunlight for radiation.) ...

To test the “radio-resistance” of C. sphaerospermum in space, petri dishes containing a .06-inch layer of the fungus were exposed to cosmic radiation aboard the ISS. Dishes containing no fungus were exposed, too. The results showed that the fungus cut radiation levels by about 2 percent.

Extrapolating these results, the researchers estimated that a roughly 8-inch layer of C. sphaerospermum “could largely negate the annual dose-equivalent of the radiation environment on the surface of Mars.” That would be a significant benefit to astronauts. After all, an astronaut who is one year into a Mars mission would have been exposed to roughly 66 times more radiation than the average person on Earth.