Dirty Bomb in Boston?

[ChristinaB]

Breaking News:

They are out looking for it now with teams with Radioactivity detectors.

Note: no bomb has gone off, they just think someone in Boston may be putting one together.

[ThaSaltCracka]

how can you possibly have breaking news without a link?

[ChristinaB]

[ QUOTE ]
how can you possibly have breaking news without a link?

[/ QUOTE ]

I heard it on ABC network radio news at the top of the hour.

Not all breaking news is on the internet. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

[ChristinaB]

Mass. Security Officials On Alert

State Safety Officials Meeting At Bunker

POSTED: 3:35 pm EST January 19, 2005
UPDATED: 4:11 pm EST January 19, 2005

BOSTON -- The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has been placed on standby, and public safety officials are meeting at the bunker, officials said Wednesday.

There have been reports that the FBI office in Boston received a call from an FBI office in California warning officials about a suspicious person that may be in the area. There have been no specific threats made, but FBI agents in Boston have been put on alert, and officials started to gather at MEMA at about 1:30 p.m.

News 9 and TheWMURChannel.com will have more information as it becomes available.

[ThaSaltCracka]

damn, lets hope everyone stays safe.

[nicky g]

To reassure a little: there was a programme on the BBC called The Power of Nightmares which claimed a dirty bomb would cause next to no casualties. The following is an excerpt from the programme:

"But, in reality, the threat of a dirty bomb is yet another illusion. Its aim is to spread radioactive material through a conventional explosion, but almost all studies of such a possible weapon have concluded that the radiation spread in this way would not kill anybody because the radioactive material would be so dispersed, and, providing the area was cleaned promptly, the long-term effects would be negligible. In the past, both the American army and the Iraqi military tested such devices and both concluded that they were completely ineffectual weapons for this very reason.

[ CUT TO INTERIOR , LIVING ROOM ]

INTERVIEWER : How dangerous would a dirty bomb be?

DR THEODORE ROCKWELL , NUCLEAR SCIENTIST AND RADIATION RISK EXPERT : The deaths would be few, if any, and the answer is, probably none.

INTERVIEWER : Really?

ROCKWELL : Yes. And that’s been said over and over again, but then people immediately say after that, “But, you know, people won’t believe that, and they’ll panic.” And then all the people working on this project, you know, the defence and so forth, breathe a big sigh of relief because they got their problem back: you know, we’re gonna all panic. I don�t think it would kill anybody and I think you’ll have trouble finding a serious report that would claim otherwise. The Department of Energy actually set up such a test and they actually measured what happened. And they—they—the measurements were extremely low. They calculated that the most exposed individual would get a fairly high dose—not life-threatening, but fairly high—and I checked into how the calculation was done, and they assume that after the attack, no one moves for one year. One year. Now, that’s ridiculous.

[ CUT TO ANOTHER INTERIOR , LIVING ROOM ]

LEWIS Z KOCH , BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS : The dirty bomb—the danger from radioactivity is basically next to nothing. The danger from panic, however, is horrendous. That’s where the irony comes. This—instead of the government saying, “Look, this is not a serious weapon; the serious danger of this is the panic that would ensue, and there is no reason for panic. Don’t panic.”

Power of Nightmares

Hopefully, the programme is correct.
I think the programme is available on bittorrent.