filled it with used pinball machine parts."
Posted on 10/30/2001 6:33:30 AM PST by PrivacyChampion
FOX NEWS just reporting that there is a potential risk of a nuclear terrorist attack against the US, maybe within the Continental borders with a 'dirty nuke' that has been smuggled across the Mexican border.
This is the threat that AG Ashcroft warned about yesterday.
Secondly: A nuclear attack, of any kind, on this nation REQUIRES a retaliatory strike. This would bring us to DEFCON 1. NORAD is in command and at the service of the President of the United States. All nuclear capability is now aimed at the enemy that attacked us. These forces are NOT little dirty bombs, they are weapons of TOTAL destruction for lots of miles, and lots of people.
If the muslim extremists really want to go that far, they have chosen the wrong path to travel, and the wrong man in the Whitehouse to do it to. They have also chosen the wrong people to put the question to. We want to nuke 'em now, you attack us with nuclear weapons and you will "reep the whirlwind". That pretty much would go for "anybody with the terrorists".
We are a people slow to anger, but when attacked, and attacked, and attacked again, on our own beloved soil, and our brothers and sisters being slaughtered, then you have angered the sleeping tiger. This tiger turns into an eagle and he will hunt you and kill you. His talons will destroy you, your land, your family, your neighbors. His citizens will stand together and they will fight, and they will fight like you have never seen people fight before.
If the muslim extremists put the nuclear option into play they will loose everything in about 70 minutes. Don't push THAT option. We have no way to go if they push THAT option. Not that we would care about exercising that option.
Not to my knowledge. He's very involved with his children and his church. My kids leave all the political stuff to their parents. Just wait until they have to deal with the public schools -- then they'll get interested in government!
Interesting choice of radionuclides. This is one I wouldn't be that concerned with. Strontium 90 is chemically similar to Calcium and is concentrated in bones. Because of the milk-nusing infant connection, strontium 90 can be a large theoretical danger for milk drinking infants or for small children. The reason is that small children take much more calcium into their bodies for bone building and have much less mass for self shielding and Strontium 90 deposited internally in bones can interfere with bone marrow blood cell production. Now if you assume that folks won't be eating any contaminated food for a while, the path for the strontium 90 to get into the bones disappears.
According to my ancient (1970) copy of Radiological Health handbook, Strontium 90 has a 28.1 year half-life and an activity of 141 Curies per gram. It appears to be a heavy Beta emitter (0.546 MeV) and no direct gamma radiation. There is some heavier beta radiation from daughter decay Y90 to Zr-90 (2.27 MeV). But lets focus on Strontium 90. According to the "Rules of thumb" in the Handbook, "When the beta particles form a 1 curie source of 90 Strontium-Y90 are absorbed, the bremsstrahlung hazard is approximately equal to that presented by the gamma radiation from 12 mg of radium."
When I use to do radiation dose calculation, we figured that if you avoided ingestion, that normal clothing would protect you from virtually all the alpha and most of the beta radiation. Gamma ray protection requires lots of shielding (read that mass) and that is the type of radiation that kills most folks in a traditional nuclear bomb event. Again, if people can leave the contaminated area, aren't forced to eat food grown or contaminated by the nuclear material or water contaminated, they have much reduced danger from nuclear fall out. (In a nuclear war or after long term atmospheric testing this isn't an option.)
If I were to choose isotopes for contamination, I would favor Plutonium as an alpha emitter (real messy to clean up easily as the pultonium can sinter and be moved around by the recoil from the alpha particles) or Cobalt 60 for its gamma rays.
I would rather be lazy and not get out the calculator to determine what 141 Curries per gram is into Curies per pound nor do I relish various shielding design tables. Being lazy, I will look at the transmission through lead of gamma ray tables for radium, cobalt 60, cesium 137, gold 198, iridium 192, tantalum 182 and sodium 24. That table shows that 30 cm of lead will reduce them all by a factor of over 0.0001. This means that a Curie of heavy gamma emitters with 30 cm of lead shielding will be attenuated by over a factor of ten thousand. (For Co60 or Ra, 20 to 22 cm has the same factor of ten thousand, it is the short half life sodium that is the nasty stuff.)
I just pinged you from that thread... check your mail.
The idea is to contaminate an area with radioactive materials that will make it uninhabitable until a clean up is done.
Paranoia is the goal, not loss of life.
We're talking about a missile with a radioactive warhead, not a cherry bomb. The "small explosion" you refer to is only small in comparison to an atomic bomb. The impact is still large enough to kill thousands in a heavily populated area, while the fallout would be enough to kill thousands more.
The ensuing hysteria and panic of trying to evacuate a major metro area under such condition would just be icing on the cake for the killers.
Other than all that, your assessment is pretty much dead-on.
I heard this story on FoxNews, and presumed that I could learn more online, but have not yet found an article.
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