Dirty Bomb Attack

What is a 'dirty bomb'?

What is a dirty bomb? A dirty bomb is usually used to refer to what we call an RDD which is a radiological discursion device. Its where you have radiological material , radioactive material which is then used in concert with a conventional explosive to make a dirty bomb. What's unknown to most people is that the attack in 1993 on th World trade Center by Usef and the truck bomb underneath in the parking structure, that was a dirty bomb. It was overcome by its explosive capability. In fact, in open source information if you get on the internet you would find what was used in that bomb. It just never reached thelvel of dirty bomb they wanted it to be, didn't reach the level of the explosive device they wanted to be because they wanted to collapse the building; but that was a dirty bomb. It is extremely difficult to deal and i think that what groups have found out and looking at how to deploy that kind of weaponery your effect is going to be somewhat limited.

How will we know how to handle a dirty bomb attack?

The successful attack is one in which you have a dirty bomb, and then of course it is aerosolized and it gets in the air and can be carried. So that's why we do a lot of plume studies on dirty bombs. To see if we have a dirty bomb attack. Where would that plume go? How far would we need to go to evacuate? And how quickly? And those are the kind of studies that we do in terms of how to respond to a dirty bomb attack

What's the likelihood of becoming a victim of a dirty bomb attack?

I would say slimand none, with none being near the top. Hard to do, unless you're standing right on top of one when it happens, the radiological effect once it starts to, and we've seen in our study, once it starts to move a certain direction, it's losing in the way of intensity as it moves further away from its detonation point. So I would say slim or none.