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Another piece of news to make you feel better:

WASHINGTON, DC: The Washington Post is today reporting that a well-executed "dirty bomb" attack on a U.S. city could expose hundreds of people to potentially lethal amounts of radiation, researchers said yesterday in a Pentagon-funded study that sharply raises estimates of the human toll from such an attack.

The study also predicts massive financial losses -- perhaps greater than those caused by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- if a large dirty bomb were set off in the heart of New York or Washington. A dirty bomb uses conventional explosives or other means to spread radiation.

"The threat of a radiological attack on the United States is real, and terrorists have a broad palette of [radiological] isotopes to choose from," says the study by the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University. "It could cause tens to hundreds of fatalities under the right circumstances, and is essentially certain to cause great panic and enormous economic losses."

And then there is this:

Terror threat level still "high" at eight US airports
Sat Jan 10, 6:49 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States is keeping eight airports and other unspecified facilities on high alert for terrorist attack, after lowering the general threat level to "elevated" from "high".

Announcing the lowering of the threat level Friday, after 19 days of intense nationwide security precautions, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said that the United States would however "maintain particular vigilance around some critical resources and locales," The Washington Post reported Saturday.

Without giving details he said most of the increased security would involve "the private sector" and this included airlines.

Sources told the paper those facilities included eight airports, including those in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

The move signals a major departure in US strategy on internal security, in which officials "communicate quietly with local officials who need to ramp up security in specific areas" rather than issue costly blanket alerts encompassing the entire country, the Post noted.

The change reflects narrower, more "sophisticated" risk assessments concerning specific facilities, locations and types of infrastructure, homeland security sources said.