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One thing i have learned in my (long) life of 27 years is that you can never have too much knowledge and/or you can never be TOO prepared.

To accomplish either of these you must weigh all possibilities, no matter how remote. I would rather have all of this knowledge(some good some bad) then to have not had this thread at all.

I hate to say it but if a bomb such as this dirty one comes along neither you nor I can predict what will happen.

Last time I checked an extensive study has not been performed on such a scenario.

I'm 50 years old and grew up in the Cold War. Spent a lot of years as a survivalist preparing for the Nuclear War eventuality. So the research I've done on radiation and its effects is easily equivalent to several upper level and graduate level courses in radiation chemistry and biology. Just some basic examples of the kind of information you need to know before you can even begin to figure out the deadliness of radioactive materials:

1) what is current exposure to a typical human being from natural sources of radiation? (200 millirem).

2) What is the LD-50 for humans? (450 rem instant exposure, assuming no attempt to help the person).

3) How many biogical half-lives for plutonium-239 in the human body? (about 5, by which time it is in the bone and has a biogical half-life of 10,000 years).

4) What are the different types of radiation? (alpha particles, gamma rays, beta decay electrons).

5) How deadly is Plutonium-239 and what has to be done to it to make it an effective cancer agent? (if ingested, about as deadly as caffeine; it doesn't pass across the gastrointestinal tract very well. To cause cancer in rats so it could be studied, it has to be ground down to the right size at temps of 900 C. Then special blowers have to be used to blow it through the rat cages since Plutonium is so dense it will rapidly plate out onto the cage surfaces.)

And so on and so forth. Radiation is radiation, and having an understanding of it is vital for dispelling hysterical nonsense.