Dirty Bomb Question

[AngryAmish]

Other than liking to hear a loud noise, why make a dirty bomb? Wouldn't it be much more efficient to grind up the nuclear material very finely and just kinda sprinkle it all over. That way you could disburse over a larger area, cause more casualties and render a larger area uninhabitable?

[mmonk]

1. I don't think terrorists from the middle east

are that interested in dirty bombs. They had rather do something symbolic and stunning at the same time with a message. Besides, last time they didn't use any WMD's.

[AngryAmish]

2. Not to give anyone ideas

But I would be really freaked if I found out that half of the Loop was contaminated with very highly radioactive stuff.

[lanparty]

3. Explosives make for very good ....

... Sprinklers.

They just do it all at once.

[Canuckistanian]

4. Now that's the funny part, "causing casualties"

A dirty bomb will be effective not because it will cause so much injury or death but because it's RADIOACTIVE. Yes, you can get severe burns from the right kind of radioactive material, but most people will not be affected if they vacate the area immediately.
Many people have been exposed to massive amounts of radiation and survived. It all hinges on exposure time.
So it will cause mass panic far beyond it's actual damage range. it's a true "terror weapon".

[Warpy]

8. The radiation exposure at the time will be fairly small

except for those people right at the site who inhale dust. The problem is that the dose is cumulative, with repeat exposures adding up to a lethal dose. That means it will have to be cleaned up if people are to live and/or work in the area again, and the cleanup is very, very expensive.

I agree that the "dirty" bomb is just not their style. They'd much rather use our technology against us as they did on 9/11, with only boxcutters, muscle, and piloting skill on their side.

[Sirveri]

5. You'll distribute over a much larger area with a bomb.

Basically what you're suppossed to do is detonate the weapon in the atmosphere, that will spread the radioactive particulates all over the place and then they'll come down with the next range. It's actually similar to how a conventional nuclear weapon works. Detonate as a air burst weapon, that pushes all the air out of the immediate blast zone, then as the air gets sucked back into the vacuum it pulls a whole bunch of radioactive debris with it into the upper atmosphere to float around.

Personally, I think that if they're going to use a Nuclear device, it will not be a dirty bomb, it will likely be a conventional one taken from Pakistan of from a storage site in the old 'evil empire'. Those you can drive up in a U-Haul or even a rent a car and park a block away from your target. A dirty bomb detonated at ground level would probably not do very much in the way of signifigant damage.

[Canuckistanian]

6. Sorry, dupe

[WVhill]

7. A dirty bomb probably wouldn't cause many initial casualties.

The idea of a such a bomb is to disperse radioactive material in a plume to contaminate a large area. The bomb does the shattering and spreading. The dust which would be contaminated would settle everywhere from the tops of buildings to any area open to the atmosphere. That includes being spread by foot and vehicle. Depending on how effective the bomb was, you could end up with a major city contaminated to a degree that would make cleaning up the Twin Towers wreckage look like mowing your yard in comparison.

Besides requiring the long term evacuation of the city, the cleanup, if possible would cost an incalculable amount. Sorry to say the materials are easy to come by in third world countries. Radioactive sources are widely used in medicine and industry. Because they're not well secured, anyone who knew what they were looking for could accumulate a nasty collection.

There was an incident in Brazil that killed many people and contaminated a large area when a medical source from an abandoned medical clinic fell into the wrong hands. If you look it up keep in mind that was an accident.