Goiânia accident in popular culture
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The Goiânia accident was an incident of radioactive contamination in central Brazil that killed several people and injured many others in 1987.
The accident was described in several documentaries. It also became topic of several movies, songs and science fiction novels.
- The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Thine Own Self” was loosely based on this incident.
- The novel Blindfold Game. by Dana Stabenow mentions this incident.
- An episode of the animated series The New Adventures of Captain Planet was written with a plot that parallelled this incident, with a group of children finding a radiation source in scrap medical equipment and subsequently contaminating themselves and their neighbourhood, although (unlike reality) the heroes are able to intervene before any deaths occur.
- The novel Witch Baby by Francesca Lia Block mentions the incident; several characters proceed to make a movie based on it after reading an article.
- The accident is briefly mentioned in the Brazilian short film Isle of Flowers (Ilha das Flores) by José Furtado.
- The House episode "Daddy's Boy" is similar to this incident.
- The Italian singer-composer Angelo Branduardi wrote the song Miracolo a Goiania, in his 1988 album Pane e Rose, in which he imagines the excited dialogue between the people involved in the accident.
- The Latin-American singer-composer Rubén Blades wrote the song El Cilindro, in his 1992 album Amor y Control, also about the accident.
- In 1990 Roberto Pires directed the film Césio 137 – O Pesadelo de Goiânia dramatising this incident (IMDb record).
- In the Simpsons episode titled "Lady Bouvier's Lover", Milhouse calls Bart and asks, "Hey Bart, you want to go play with that X-ray machine in the abandoned hospital?". Bart replies, "Sure!"
- The crossover band Punch (from Goiânia, Brazil), now broken up, recorded a music album called Cesium 137.
