Ashcroft's Warning: Dirty Bomb

[DrCarl]

Am I the only one who heard Sean Hannity, at about 5:40PM EST, stop while on the air and say: "So that's what Ashcroft's warning is. It's a dirty bomb."

[LandofLincoln]

So do I, I'm afraid, and I live in NYC. Worse, so do my kids.

We need to kill these people. If this thing goes off, we need to end the war with all of our enemies in a day.

I COULD NOT AGREE MORE. I WOULD HOPE THAT G.W. COMES ON THE BOOB AND INFORMS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT THE PLANES HAVE LEFT AND RETURNED, ALL PILOTS ARE SAFE, AND THE MISSION IS ACCOMPLISHED. THE ENEMY DOES NOT EXIST ANYMORE.

[FUSSBALL]

http://www.ki4u.com/#3 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I dont know how to get a pitcure on here but this map shows what would happen if they plan on using the wind to their advantage.

Thanks for all the links guys

[meyer]

I suspect that the geiger counters are working overtime all over the country tonight. I would think that if there is such a bomb somewhere in the US, it will be quite dirty even before it is detonated. If it is detonated. If it exists. That means that it will be relatively easy to find compared to something less crude. Still, even a big glaring needle can hide in a haystack pretty easily.

[blam]

"Sorry, not true. Potassium iodide is ONLY a preventive if the "dirty isotope" is radioactive iodine, and then it only protects the thyroid gland. Any other isotope, taking potassium iodide is useless."

Okay, thanks. Still learning.

[OK]

I don't want to minimize this because if it is used it could kill a lot of good people.

On the other hand, radioactive contamination dangers are overrated. Take Chernobyl for example, which was much worse than one of these dirty bombs would be. The only deaths were those people actually at the plant fighting the fires. All of the surrounding areas where contamination was believed to be dangerous resulted in no deaths. People who have defied the authorities and gone home and eaten food from their gardens are fine.

At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those who survived the immediate radiation burns lived long healthy lives. Their children were not born freaks either.

Strange but true. The human body was developed in an environment with radiation omnipresent. It is more resilient than generally thought.

[Yup!!]

The bomb will be in the Heartland. This is what they said ,isn't it?

Yes, I believe that is what they said.

[Libertarian_4_eva]

If new york city had a dirty bomb explode inside of it the whole city would be closed off for the before mentioned 30,000 years or longer maybe one or two outer parts of the city like brooklyn and parts of staten island would have to be abondoned as well buildings left standing for us to show countless generations of americans.

It depends on how high up or were the bomb is exploded to determine how much is affected.

[eno_]

A nuke or dirty bomb was my guess when I heard a news item (a couple weeks ago now, as I recall) saying we might use UAVs to scan the U.S. The only thing I could think that one could find that way is a radioactive source.

[WIMom]

What type of effect would this type of bomb have in a subway system?

[blam]

"I literally have the Pacific Ocean at my back door. Oregon Central Coast perfect!"

Lol, oceanpearch, get on your boat and go west.

[Styria]

A dirty nuke is simply a ground burst. Air bursts have most of the radioactive material dispersed into the upper atmosphere, and it spreads around the world at levels your body handles every day. Ground bursts leave the radioactive material stuck to things, and much more of it stays. People got sick for a while after Hiroshima, but it's still a city and they still live there. A ground burst would mean not living there for centuries or more.

In I think our first nuclear tests after WWII, we did an air drop ("Baker") over captured ships and other ships that we didn't need anymore. It was a mile off-target. Ships were spread out even farther than that, but the results weren't that spectacular. Then the "Charlie" test had a nuclear bomb on a cable 50 feet underwater beneath a transport. When that went off, the ship rode the blast a mile into the air before disintegrating, and a mountain of water came down on everything. There were battleships and carriers that survived both blasts, but when they came back to them the second time, the water stayed kind of hot and men were getting sick from being on those ships for too long. They couldn't wash the radioactivity off, and one of the worst things was that barnacles on the sides were actively filtering radioactive waste from the water and holding it against the ships.

There is a balance, though. Ground bursts leave the best concentrations of radiation, but it takes an air burst to get a good blast radius.

The dirty bomb is none of these. It just blows up the side of maybe one building, but the debris from it will be spread all over and be very poisonous for a long time.

[MHGinTN]

There is no VRWC, hillary.

[alloysteel]

Trying to get this straight - the principle is to use an explosive weapon not for its concussion effect, but as a means to scatter as widely as possible, with minimum expenditure of devices, substances of biological, chemical, or radioactive nature. Puffing anthrax spors out of an envelope is not enough, obviously. Placing them in a canister that is hurled high in the atmosphere, and then scattering over a much wider area. Same with, say, plutonium, or mustard gas, of which the long term effects are slower, but devastating in their own way.

This is evil. It may be a long time before the last American to die of the effects of these insidious schemes finally does, and that death will be ugly, because by that time, it shall be so senseless and meaningless. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you.

[Fester Chugabrew]

"The bomb will be in the Heartland. This is what they said ,isn't it?"

Heads up, Disneyland.

[Zipporah]

I read a post here a few weeks ago..with an article about a bomb that could 'spray' nuclear material over a large area.. In that article it was called a dirty bomb.. people laughed at me and said that was ridiculous..

Does anyone recall that post?

[blam]

"The port of LA is considered a very serious target."

Quit it. My son is in LA. I worry more about him than myself.

[Benjamin Dover]

Everybody has heard about the supposed bogus e-mail about not going to the mall on Halloween. Also some psychic named Sollog predicts a suitcase nuke to take out the US government within 60 days of 9-11. I suspect the "Mall" in the e-mail refers to the Mall in D.C. If a dirty bomb does what you guys say, if it were detonated from the mall, it would contaminate virtually everything sacred to our country. The Mall is a pretty big open field. I could see where it could be pretty easy to go undetected. The monuments, the capitol, the White House, the Smithsonian...everything. Just speculating out loud.

[AndyJackson]

1. There is no such thing as a "clean" nuclear explosive that uses fission. The yield tells you how much material was fissioned which tells you the amount of radioactive waste that is created. It is the fission products that are the really dangerous and radioactive stuff - not the unfissioned uranium. The detonation of a any nuclear explosive on U.S. soil is unlikely as we would have no choice but to retaliate.

2. A radioactive dispersal weapon is a very different matter. The affected area is largely determined by the carry of the plume of material that is sent up into the air by the explosion and this is a function of the size of the explosive device as well as wind patterns and other weather factors. In other words, the area is likely to be at most a couple of miles downwind of the point of explosion, and probably much less. The number of people who would be killed is probably fairly small as evacuation and decontamination are pretty effective. Remember that the handlers of this device are just as exposed to radiation as the intended victims, very much limiting just how much radioactive material they can handle. Even if they are suicidal, they must be able to survive handling it. The impact will not be so much the number of people killed - and the greatest dange will be from the high-explosive - but the denial of expensive real-estate and the cost of clean up.

[FUSSBALL]

Disneyland....Which heartland are you thinking of?