Don’t panic June 19 2002

What threat is posed by a dirty” bomb?”

The ingredients necessary to make a “dirty” radioactive bomb are unfortunately easy to come by. A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission report that pre-dates the arrest of dirty bomb suspect Abdullah al Muhajir (aka Jose Padilla) states that, since 1996, U.S. businesses and medical facilities have lost nearly 1,500 pieces of equipment with radioactive parts in them. Some of the lost equipment contains radioactive cesium and cobalt, ideal for making a dirty bomb of the kind that we know al-Qaeda wants to use on us.

Scary, yes. But before you get too worried, remember this: When it comes to bombs, cleanliness is next to godliness.

The dirtier a bomb is, the less likely it is that its detonation would place you any closer to God.

That’s because a “dirty” bomb is not a nuclear weapon in the “Hiroshima” or “mushroom cloud” sense. Good old- fashioned, military-style nuclear weapons cause a nuclear chain reaction that unleashes a blast that can level a large city in an instant. A dirty bomb is a conventional explosive with a piece of radioactive matter stuck inside it. Exploding one would spread radioactive matter, but it wouldn’t cause a nuclear explosion. If a regular nuclear bomb is like a machine gun firing hundreds of bullets per minute at you, a dirty bomb is a near-sighted guy picking up a handful of bullets and throwing them at you. That’s not to suggest that a dirty bomb attack wouldn’t suck. On the contrary, a dirty bomb explosion in a populated city would create huge problems. The following is what experts say would happen in the most likely dirty bomb blast scenario.

First, the blast of conventional explosives would likely kill or maim people in its immediate vicinity. Once it became known that the bomb contained nuclear materials, several city blocks around the explosion would likely be evacuated so the government could determine how much radiation was spread and where. Any area that exceeds that Environmental Protection Agency’s contamination threshold (a level of radiation that would create one more cancer death per 10,000 people) would probably be off-limits until it could be cleaned.

To give you a little perspective on that number, 2,000 of every 10,000 people are gonna get cancer anyway. So if a dirty bomb explodes near you, quit smoking, wear sunscreen and eat better, and you’ll probably cancel out any increased cancer risk from radiation.

The morning after the explosion, some teenage boys will awake to find that they can climb walls, spin webs and date Kirsten Dunst. Others will find that whenever they become angry, they will turn green, grow large muscles, and then go on a destructive rampage. After a few minutes, they will return to their normal size and sit quietly in their ripped clothes lamenting the damage they just caused.

In theory, a terrorist could make a dirty bomb powerful enough to more heavily contaminate an entire metropolitan area. However, it’s unlikely, because possessing highly radioactive materials in the quantities needed for such a bomb is likely to kill the bomb makers before they can detonate it.

What worries me more than anything now is this — if the FBI thought that al Muhajir was gonna detonate a dirty bomb, why didn’t we wait until we found out where and from whom he was gonna get the bomb before we arrested him?

After missing all the pre 9-11 hints that it had, you’ll have to forgive me for being a bit skeptical of the FBI’s ability to stop terrorism.

andisheh@creativeloafing.com??