USPS Irradiation Damages Electronics

meehawl writes: "Bummer. Turns out the USPS's new Electron Beams anthrax zappers can erase and sometimes permanently damage CompactFlash cards. I wonder what other sensitive electronics will get wiped, not to mention seeds, film, some plastics, and so on. I guess it's more reason to use Fedex and UPS, at least unless and until they deploy these beam weapons as well. All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people? Some people think using the beams will lead to more deaths and injuries among operators. Meanwhile, electron beam makers, SureBeam, just got an analyst upgrade." Err, and be careful what you irradiate.

Comments

What scares me most...

[Wakko Warner]

...is what is going to happen when someone smuggles C4 onto a plane in his ass, and gets caught. Full-body-cavity searches for all passengers!

This is rapidly getting ridiculous. And I feel no safer.

- A.P.

So what happens when...

[b1t r0t]

So what happens when someone puts some kind of explosive into a package that detonates when hit by an electron beam?

It's the old "import an animal to destroy a local pest" problem all over again.

Re:So what happens when...

[mmontour]

So what happens when someone puts some kind of explosive into a package that detonates when hit by an electron beam?

In that case, it would explode inside the e-beam machine (possibly injuring nearby workers, depending on the size of the explosive and how well shielded the machine was). Then the investigators would attempt identify the source of the package, and prosecute the sender. It wouldn't be too hard to have a camera taking pictures of each package as it went into the e-beam machine so they'd know exactly which package went boom.

I don't really see the point of this question. Anyone could send an explosive designed to go off at some point in the mail-delivery chain. E-beam treatment doesn't really add to this risk, and it does reduce the risk of people receiving biological agents through the mail. Conceptually, it's a pretty good idea. However, as these stories show, the actual implementation leaves something to be desired.

If it turns out that "normal" mail (paper, common plastics, ink, etc) will survive a radiation level that's high enough to be useful in killing the biological agents, then all that has to be added is a new "do not irradiate" option for the sensitive packages. Mail in this category would be screened more heavily, hand-inspected, require a verified return address, etc.

However, if it turns out that the level of irradiation needed to be useful against biological agents is so high that "normal" mail will always be toasted, then the whole idea is dead in the water.

Re:Five people almost became 200,000+

[graxrmelg]

The poster must not have heard that the last anthrax sent to DC was potent enough to kill "hundreds of thousands of people".

I hate it when I see statistics like that in the media. Sure, it was enough to kill hundreds of thousands if you lined them up and administered a minuscule bit to each, but it's not likely that that would happen. You might as well say that a terrorist had enough knives (one) to kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Re:Are you mad?

[Quixote]

"If the existence of the entire universe, including your happiness, necessitated the torture of even one little girl, would you want it?"

Either way, the girl's a goner... (or am I misreading the question?)

Only five deaths...

[fmaxwell]

All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people?

Although the self-righteous amoung us have pounced on this statement, it's not out of line. We can't substantially change our way of life every time someone dies.

Look at automobiles. A 1981 VW Rabbit (Golf in Europe) weighed about 1,800lbs. A modern Golf weighs in at about 2,800lbs. Most of that weight gain is because of safety regulations requiring everything from stronger bumpers to airbags to bracing in the doors. In another 50 years, will economy cars weigh as much as Chevy Suburbans due to ever-increasing safety regulation?

What if it could be shown that taking people's guns away wuld prevent deaths? In the U.S. in 1998, there were 30,708 deaths from firearms: Suicide 17,424; Homicide 12,102; Accident 866; Undetermined 316. And no rational person could possibly claim that self-defense uses of firearms saved anywhere near that many lives. So does that death toll justify repealing the Second Amendment (right to bear arms)?

We are slowly paralyzing ourselves as a country. We need to realize that we can't legislate or regulate death out of existence. People are going to die, sometimes tragically before their time, no matter how many laws, procedures, rules, and regulations we put into place.

Problem Solved

[clark625]

Please. Most of the threads here are just (forgive me for saying) moronic. "All this for just 5 deaths", "This is the last nail being hammered into our coffin", "Oh dear me... my rights have been violated". Please.

How many people buy a hard drive and expect it to be shipped in an envelope without padding or an anti-static bag? None. You ship me a drive like that, I'll send it right back without testing it. Sure, it might work; but that's not the point. It may or may not work very long. Not worth the risk.

Similarly, now when you ship a compact flash card, you'll have to protect it properly. Duh. A hard drive isn't susceptible to this beam because it is surrounded by the plastic case... which is covered on both sides with about 2 or maybe 3 mil of aluminum. So, from now on, ship compact flash cards wrapped in aluminum foil or, once "professional" baggies are available, use those.

An electron beam needn't be harmful, folks. I can't remember the exact equation of how far the electrons will penetrate, but in my work with Auger Electron Spectroscopy, a 3keV beam only gets me about a nanometer into the surface of a material. Going to higher energy proportionally increases the depth--but really this isn't something that's difficult to shield against. This isn't nearly as big a deal as people are making it out to be.