From: Ed Kummel <tech_ed_at_yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [NTLK] airports and Newts [Tangent: Amtrak]
>traveling within 50 miles of Chicago is carrying 5 car
>loads of liquid chlorine...A simple fertilizer bomb
>would be enough incindiary to vaporize all that
>chlorine and the resultant cloud would effectivly
Big tangent here, anyone please respond to me off list for additional discussions...
Probably not, at that distance, given adequate mixing with the air. The
chlorine would also react with water vapor, producing hydrochoric acid
gas (far less toxic), which would then react with other things. The DOT
recommends 5 miles cleared downwind from a major chlorine release. 50
miles away in Chicago, you might smell something like a cat litter box -
ammonia to be sure but well below lethal levels.
As a general FYI (and only Time Magazine has touched on this) forget
"high-tech" attacks. Anthrax is not contagious; and for botulism, ricin
or anthrax to be effective, you'd need to drop dozens or hundreds of
TONS over a relativelly small area. I know what 'Ripleys Believe It Or
Not' says, but the classic "a teaspoonful of botulism can kill everyone
in the US" scenario is if everyone lined up and was injected
intraveniously with the exact amount.
Smallpox is extinct - the only two surviving samples are at the CDC in
Atlanta and the Russian State Centre for Research on Virology and
Biotechnology. Some of the "smallpox" outbreaks in the 1980s cited by
TeeVee apparently were monkeypox. Ebola, bubonic plague?; Too difficult
to culture. And don't forget the CDC's National Pharmaceutical Stockpile!
Forget "nerve agents", besides being unstable and easy to treat
(atropine, or "bee sting sticks", sarin and somin act similar to "wasp
and hornet spray") the raw materials are tracked in the US. Even if it
was made overseas, you'd have to get it into the US (again, see the
"dozens to hundreds of tons" comment above). It would be so difficult to
work with I can't imagine the terrorists surviving loading the plane.
Water supplies? Again, the "solution to pollution is dilution". You
would need a LOT of any material to affect a resevoir. I'm assuming even
the most incompetent security detail could spot 10 - 20 tanker trucks
backed up to the local swimming hole. Municipal water supplies are
tested continuously, and chlorinated, UV treated or ozonated for
biollogical agents.
Forget nuclear attacks. No Middle East nations have ICBM capability. In
the US, all ports, tunnels, border entries, airports, etc., have
radiation detectors. They do. Also besides the fact that manufacturing a
nuclear bomb is far harder than TeeVee says. True the secrets are out,
but I also know how an IC is made, and I ain't likely to produce a
successor to the Pentium in my basement! A possible but unlikely
scenario is either a conventional bomb "doped" with radioactive material
so as to contaminate an area, or an amount sufficient to produce a
"sub-critical flash". But again, it's not likely to get in this country.
These people are unsophisticated thugs. They might threaten you with a
knife or a gun, but that's about it.
I'd worry more about two fanatics on a subway or train car, one with a
gallon jug of household bleach, another with a gallon jug of ammonia
cleanser. These two combos make chlorine gas. Not a lot, but in a
confined area it can be deadly.
--Mark Rollins Remembering a lot more about his grad school toxicology courses that he'd rather...
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