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Thanks for putting an end to the "truckloads required" propaganda from the government mouthpieces.

Can't really blame them. They are trying to stem a panic. As a cop, I can appreciate that, but, a totally STUPID statement is not the way to do it.

Semper Fi

I just tried doing the calcs myself for ricin, which has a lethal dose of approximately 60 migrograms for a 160# adult male (about 10 times more toxic than nicotine). I am no toxicologist (and my chemistry is way rusty) so bear with me...

Let's assume a lethal dose of that toxin diluted into approximately 1 liter of water to be consumed by each victim. A smaller water volume would require more poison, so it would seem that this is a good worst case.

Let's also assume a small local storage and distribution reservoir of approximately 50,000 acre feet (Oroville is 2 million).

Assume a specific gravity of 1 for ricin.

(50,000 acre ft/reservior)(44,100 cft/acre ft)(6.8 gal/cft)(4 liters/gal)[(60x10e-6 gm ricin/dose)/(1000gm/dose)]= 3,500 liters ricin/reservior (to two sigfigs)

That seems to be a lot of ricin, about 4 tons. It would take ten times as much nicotine.

Once it was delivered it would then have to be dispersed evenly throughout the reservoir and would be subject to various degradative forces. As I said, I am n expert. Do you find an error in this?