Your information about dirty bombs is incorrect. If you want a serious dirty bomb, look at the filthy bombs that our government wants to ship all around the country for the next 25 years: all those shipments of radioactive waste stuck onto trains and whatever being (maybe) trucked to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Some 25,000 shipments over the next 25 years criss-crossing the country.
That's a "filthy" bomb running through lots of nice downtowns and such. I don't know how destructive those can be because they're really not bombs but they are a big issue.
Nova did an interesting report on dirty bombs. They had a graphic which showed a bomb going off, I believe, in central London. Those immediately around the bomb would obviously be badly affected but the radiation would quickly dissipate over space, carried by the wind and peter out in power pretty quickly.
It's our REACTION that makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 911's 19 thugs with box cutters led to the toppling of two governments and chaos in the ME.
pbs.org
Q: What are the differences between a dirty bomb and a nuclear bomb?
Kathleen G.
Lake Zurich, IL
A: The differences between a dirty bomb and a nuclear bomb are profound. A dirty bomb is not a nuclear bomb even though it uses radioactive material. While a nuclear bomb is surely a weapon of mass destruction, a dirty bomb is at best a weapon of mass disruption.
Few people, if any, would die shortly after exposure to the ionizing radiation from a dirty bomb. Perhaps many (at most hundreds) would die from the conventional bomb blast associated with a dirty bomb. In contrast, many thousands to tens of thousands of people would likely die from the explosion of a nuclear bomb (assuming one roughly as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb, which was modest compared to modern nuclear weapons).
As Dr. Allison writes in the companion essay on this Web site, he has "compared the difference between a dirty bomb and a nuclear bomb to the difference between a lightning bug and lightning."
========= If I remember correctly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki cost some 300,000 lives over the course of some years. Not all died from the blast itself but from the effects of radiation, burns and other injuries. That was over half a century ago, there's a US nuclear sub that is the third most powerful nuclear "country" running around out there. Bush is gleeful over the development of tactical nuclear weapons that would take out bunkers and kill 50,000 at a clip.
So far, no terrorist group is anywhere close to being as murderous or as dangerous as a GOVERNMENT. We should spend at least ten times as much time and effort watching out for governments (including our own) as we do for terrorists.
How much do you want to bet that those 'tactical nuclear weapons' will lead to the real suitcase bombs that people are so frightened about. The public funds the R&D, the government builds the blooming things, the technology leaks and someone takes advantage of it. |
