No, wait! My corpse will
No, wait! My corpse will be irradiated! Further expert testimony on nuclear annhilation from the New York Times. Just compare today's Standard Media, Inc. Risk Assessment
"Dr. Kelly offered a case study of what might happen if a dirty bomb containing a cobalt food irradiation bar exploded at the southern tip of Manhattan on a day with a light wind blowing toward the northeast. He calculated that Manhattan as far north as Central Park would be contaminated at levels similar to those in the permanently closed zone around the Chernobyl power plant. Manhattan would have to be abandoned for decades, Dr. Kelly said."
with yesterday's:
"Such a weapon [a dirty bomb] could contaminate dozens of city blocks with radioactivity, but not kill a soul, the officials told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. Or it could cause a few more cancers later in life for its victims -- say, four additional cancers in 100,000 people."
Of course, yesterday they were talking about a bomb laden with less-deadly strontium and cesium isotopes, and today they're talking about The Big Ugly, Cobalt-60.
Isn't it a pity we don't spend more on science education, so that the general public could decipher all of this and make decisions about just how worried to be! Would it kill anyone to publish a handy, bullet-pointed chart, instead of just releasing declaration after contradictory declaration with little or no context?
This reminds me of being told in October to "be vigilant" without being told a single thing about what to be vigilant about. In this time of crisis when the public--especially the urban public--needs to be involved in homeland defense, the media has been inexcusably remiss in providing clear and cogent information. "Duck and Cover" may have been laughably ineffective as a method for surviving a nuclear strike, but every schoolkid in America knew about it. We need something similar: "Six Suspicious Signs: Be Aware In The Subway!" or "How To Spot A Bomb."
For my own part, I think the likelihood of a loose Russian nuke falling into the hands of our enemies is far greater than the use of a dirty bomb. To make the highly effective cobalt-60 bomb would require the theft of the most tightly controlled radiation source in the country, along with appropriate shielding and protective gear, so that they could transport the material, store it, and grind it into powder without dying. Also from today's NYT article:
"An individual physically handling an unshielded single source rod [of cobalt-60] would receive a lethal (death within weeks) dose in about a minute, and an incapacitating dose (immediately deadly) in about 20 minutes."
There you have it.
Gosh, I feel better already.
