I'm sure it would be quite rare to fight in a clean-room where such a tactic would be necessary, but not to worry... even in conditions free from dirt and dust, you can still get several hits in by converting your ordinary EDC PocketSand™ into earth-shot.
I hope it's not "worse than useless" (which would mean "misleading"), as my goal was simply to find more identifiers for discussion or research beyond those provided: norway, thorium, 1959...
In 1959, Norway achieved a notable milestone by starting up its first nuclear reactor, the JEEP I (Joint Establishment Experimental Pile), located at Kjeller. This reactor was primarily used for research purposes, including early experiments with alternative nuclear fuels such as thorium. While JEEP I itself was not a thorium reactor per se, it laid the groundwork for subsequent Norwegian research into thorium as a nuclear fuel. This early phase demonstrated Norway's scientific interest in thorium, leveraging its domestic thorium resources and contributing to later thorium reactor experiments.
As a thought experiment, imagine a newborn growing up in this hypothetical culture a metaphors.
It may be that nobody alive remembers who Darmok is, but they learn it "because that's what we say to mean
<X>
"... sorta like each word is just a huge number of syllables.
So i think in principal such a language could perpetuate one generation to the next (with some interesting consequnces or exceptions regarding names), but the more interesting thing is how new words and phrases would come into being... which AFAIK would be impossible.
So maybe it's more interesting to consider it a disease or failure mode of language or thought itself.
As I recall picard was eventually able to pickup the metaphor concept, and it would surely be easy to clue-in the translator to translate mega-syllable-with-vocal-pauses words, but the other guy did not pickup any of picard's words.
In my head-canon that makes them a stagnant or dying race, absent a medical solution.