Cesium for dinner anyone?

"This is not Dr. Strange-love - no this is much, much worse. Why? Because it is real..."

As much as the bad guys would like to have a Hiroshima type bomb going off in NYC or WDC, it probably is not going to happen. As least in the near future. And would the bad guys like this? Absolutely! But after 9/11, a dirty bomb would work just fine, thank you!

As many have probably heard, the good guys (a consortium of US, Russian and others) have broken up (again) a band of thugs trying to sell cesium on the black market. So what? What is cesium anyhow? Well it depends. Some is fairly benign (it is however, radioactive). A select few parts of cesium very dangerous. For example, Cs-135 (a part of the Cesium family) had a very short shelf life of radiation. Not too bad if you consider a short half-life of 2 million years or so.

That is the kind of crap (I don't know if it was Cs-135 or some other kind of cesium poison) that was stopped by the FBI in the Euro Zone. I can't even begin to describe the disruption and major expense even a small dirty bomb would have if detonated anywhere in this country.

However, if a dirty bomb which had "teeth" was placed in a vital area of NYC or WDC, it would do incredible damage. And if we don't take this threat seriously, if we don't secure our borders, science fiction, with become then become science, and then then become reality.

What do we do? First recognize we have tons of spent radioactive fuel around the world. And I mean tons. First off, a dirty bomb is not that hard to build. It is one heck of a lot easier than a fission bomb. And harder to detect.

But just think about this for a minute. A dirty bomb going off on the corner of Wall and Broad in NYC. The financial damage might be incalculable. And if one went off by Capitol Hill in Washington - we might have to move the capital back to Philadelphia - like forever.

We need to understand. We need to wake up. 9/11 was the first step. The grooming. The next step will be worse. The third step will be even worse. What the bad guys are counting on is neglect. And we are doing a very good job on helping them out.

It is up to us. Go back to sleep, put our "coexist" bumper stickers on our cars, or see the threat. In the eyes of us Americans, this is our homeland. In the eyes of the bad guys, this is the target.