Saturday, October 08, 2005

Scary moment

The plains are dreadfully boring, or at least as seen from I-80. I did have one exciting moment, if you can call it that. I was driving behind a convoy of trucks carrying black metal cases and found myself stuck between the first and second truck. I then read the wording on the black cases and saw that the convoy was carrying nuclear waste. Lovely. I was a little surprised that there wasn't any visible security. I think you can make a radiological or "dirty" bomb with nuclear waste. Getting the most effective material via theft would be suicidal but for terrorists that's OK. (Recently) living in the City Most Likely To be Nuked, you think about these things.

Anyway, if you are interested in means to deal with nuclear terror, you should read Graham Allison's Nuclear Terrorism. The tone is alarmist and you have to take a lot of what he says with a shaker full of salt, but you get the basic problem (loose fissionable uranium) and means of dealing with it. If you want to know all about nukes the one book remains The Making of The Atomic Bomb. This book has it all, physics, politics, use of weapons and the means of eliminating them. It is probably the best non-fiction book I have ever read.

1 comment:

John Mitchell said...

Good luck on your journeys. I've sent you an email with a contact in PDX you should meet after you arrive and settle in.