Ekberg's mother told agents that her son purchased the ricin on the Internet.
Video of Perp walk at link.
Posted on 01/13/2005 6:13:01 PM PST by dumpdaschle
OCALA, Fla. — A man was arrested after authorities allegedly found the deadly toxin ricin stashed in a cardboard box at his home along with a small cache of weapons, officials said Thursday.
Steven Michael Ekberg, 22, faces up to 10 years if convicted of possession of a biological agent. FBI agents said they didn't believe Ekberg, arrested Wednesday, had any connection with terrorist groups.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Ekberg's mother told agents that her son purchased the ricin on the Internet.
Video of Perp walk at link.
Oh yeah, that's right Sarin. Are they similar?
Nope, Ricin was NOT used by Aum Shinryko on the Tokyo subways; it was Sarin.
That they only managed to kill 12 people with actual nerve gas is an indication of the fevered overhype of Chemical weapons as "Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Only 5% of the casualties in World War I were from chemicals. Only 1% of Iranian casualties in the Iran-Iraq War were from chemicals. And this is with thousands of tons of chemicals used.
It's sort of ridiculous to lump chems in with nukes. No comparison.
Doesn't take much at all of this stuff to be lethal and there is no cure or antidote. Death is painful and extended, taking up to three days. Symptoms are severe abdominal pain, bleeding internally, etc.
Sarin is a chemical weapon and Ricin is a bio weapon.
But aren't chemical weapons much easier to make and distribute than nukes? And although they are not as deadly, don't many of the exposed have life long problems related to the exposure?
Wrong. They're both chemical weapons. Ricin doesn't "infect" you. It's simply a poison, making it a chemical weapon.
sat = say
I thought Bio Weapons were those that cause disease or infections, that sort of thing. Isn't ricin classified as a chemical weapon?
Chemical weapons are easier to make and distribute than nukes.
Thing is they're less efficient in killing people than high explosives.
Any time and money a terrorist wastes fiddling with chemical weapons, when they could have used that time and money on high explosives, is time and money wasted.
Heck, the members of Aum Shinryko probably would have killed more people if they'd just gotten on the Tokyo subway cars with Machetes and started hacking away, instead of setting up Sarin releases.
The thing about chemical weapons is that for whatever complex reason people are more creeped out from dying from chemicals than they are of dying from being blown apart or burned to death. Same thing is true of radiation.
Do you think he was planning on poisoning someone? If he had been able to use the poison, is it traceable? I mean, would an autopsy reveal the poison?
I think it qualifies as a biological agent. It's a protein from castor beans, so while it's not biological in the sense that anthrax or weaponised small-pox are (as it doesn't cause infection and so forth), it still is a biological agent.
And thus the possible reason they used it. I think he wanted to send a message more than cause mass carnage. The leader of that group was kind of exposure hungry wasn't he. I mean, I remember seeing a picture of him after he was caught and he was smiling at the camera I think.
Problem with someone like this nut case is that this process would probably take some time - Maybe weeks. In the meantime he could be delivering doses to others before the threat was known. Given the time delay from the point of poisoning until actual sickness would also make it difficult to tie the perp to the scene.
Wald = would (Da*n spell checker!)
Maybe he was going to invite some Puerto Rican friends over for Ricin Beans.
Exactly right. I have long said that you could scrape the radium from a few hundred wristwatches, dump it on Wall Street, phone the media and say that there's been a 'radioactive release', and the government would have to admit, 'Well yes, there was some radioactive material leaked', and all hell breaks loose. You'd have to shut down the street and have it decontaminated- not because there's any real danger-- but because the public hears ' radioactive contamination'.
You could probably eat the stuff with a spoon-- but the media would gleefully blow it into a huge, big deal and people would panic like cattle.
If he's bored and wanting to search the net for something to make, why not make paper mache or a batch of brownies? Why ricin?
Not to split hairs, but that just makes it organic, not a biologic agent. A biological agent is alive, as in a virus or bacterium. It spreads not merely from the original vector, but then from host to host to host. It's a disease.
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