Abstract The analytical superasymmetric fission model is used to estimate the half lives for spontaneous emission of heavy clusters from atomic nuclei. One gets a unified description of the new radioactivities, alpha decay and fission processes. Life-times shorter than 10 30 s are found for the emission of more than 140 different clusters with 2–24 proton numbers and 3–31 neutron numbers. Even the “stable” nuclides with Z>40 are metastable with respect to several new decay modes. Solid state nuclear track detectors allow a good discrimination against other disintegration processes.