Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear Scanning Catches a Radioactive Cat On I-5
Jeff recommends Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat's story from a community meeting with Northwest border control agents. Seems their monitoring for dirty bombs from the median of Interstate 5 caught a car transporting a radioactive cat. "It turns out the feds have been monitoring Interstate 5 for nuclear 'dirty bombs.' They do it with radiation detectors so sensitive it led to the following incident. 'Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour... Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope [in the passing car]. The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot.' Did he find a nuke? 'Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier.'"
Schrodinger
Schrödinger cat is not amused
Now, how do you explain that you've just had radiation treatment to the mindless TSA buffoon who's found you're radioactive?
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Please, please, please, somebody tag this catscan.
I heard it hated to be observed.
1. I'm remodeling my house. I go down to Home Despot/Slowes and buy a dozen smoke detectors. Would I get pulled over for being a suspected terrorist?
2. I'm a cancer patient undergoing radiation therapy. What can be done to prevent the horror of being pulled over by the KGB? Would it be reasonable to issue "radiology patient" tags, like they issue handicapped tags for the handicapped?
3. What is the false positive rate of such monitoring? Here, we have a cute example of a sick cat setting off a false positive. What about other incidents like this that fail to get into the newspaper?
Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Actually I believe there have been lots of similar events. A friend of mine is a member of some service organization and was on a club outing to nearby Canada by coach. On the border crossing back to America, they were stopped at the crossing when the border guards told the driver to shut the coach down and they boarded it. The club members were apprehensive as they had been replenishing the club alcohol stash and had a bit more than the legal duty free limits in the storage areas.
The guards finally identified one older gentleman and questioned him, only to find out he had been a radiation trace injection four weeks previously. They were cleared and went on their way.
If they have this equipment at all the major crossings and on the interstates, imagine the cost and the amount of money that has been spent on these type of projects.
CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
Its purr could attract law enforcement officials.
You never know with those feline terrorists.
Perhaps it was a persian cat? You can never be too careful with those Al-Qaeda supporters
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
True, but since there are legitimate reasons for emitting radiation they should take that into account. The last thing people (or cats) undergoing radiation therapy for cancer need is to be stopped and searched on every corner
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
FBI goon: "What's the matter??? CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE?"
1) Depends on the design of the detector. There's no chance the alpha particles from the Am-241 will be detected, as the cardboard box the smoke alarms are in will stop those, but the photons might be. The cat's scan residue (rimshot, please, along with everyone else in this discussion--but I would guess it's Tc-99 residue from a Tc-99m scan) was picked up by this detector system, so assumedly the Am-241 gammas might as well. That said, I don't know what activity is usually used smoke detectors (and I'm too lazy to look it up), or what activity is usually administered to cats during vet. nuclear med. procedures; questions like these are ones of quantity. You might well be stopped. From their perspective, you might well be buying twelve Am-241 sources to line the casing of a bomb.
2) I was under the impression that oncologists were in the habit of doing just that--giving "doctor's notes" to patients with outpatient implanted brachytherapy seeds or devices. Being treated with a linear accelerator would not be likely to leave a perceptible amount of radiation in your body (photoneutrons from high energy linacs might cause some activation, but I don't think that it's generally a serious concern as far as setting off radiation alarms). Would it also bother you that you might well set off radiation alarms at nuclear power plants, if you happened to work at one, while being treated for your cancer?
3) From a machine perspective, this was not a false positive. From a judicial/social standpoint, it was. I don't have much more to add beyond that.
I'M DA BOMB! LAWL!!
KTHXBAI
To make things worse a dirty bomb detector is a bit like having an Easter Bunny detector. It may create employment and the impression that something is being done to detect the kiddies but it's worth considering what phyicists think of the idea instead of various poorly educated coke-addled political advisors.
Obviously a slashdotting geek to the very core. I'll take a hot pussy on my lap any day of the week.
Just callin' it like I see it.
C: The man didn't have the right form.
S: What man?
C: The man from the cat detector van.
S: The looney detector van, you mean.
C: Look, it's people like you what cause unrest.
S: What cat detector van?
C: The cat detector van from the Ministry of Housinge.
S: Housinge?
C: It was spelt like that on the van (I'm very observant!). I never seen so
many bleeding aerials. The man said that their equipment could pinpoint
a purr at four hundred yards! And Eric, being such a happy cat, was a
piece of cake.
S: How much did you pay for this?
C: Sixty quid, and eight for the fruit-bat.
S: What fruit-bat?
C: Eric the fruit-bat.
S: Are all your pets called Eric?
We seem to be missing the real news here -- this has to be the first cat that can drive a car on the interstate, right?
"Feed cat Plutonium pellets with kibble. Wrap cat in detcord. Place timer on cat and set for five minutes. Release mouse on crowded street. Release cat after mouse. Run. Remember to face Mecca at 4:29 after you release cat." "Oh, don't forget to plug ears."
This is a story about Schrodinger's cat. This is exactly the kind of result you should expect.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Instead, I find that most comments are Insightful and Informative.
Come on people, a RADIOACTIVE CAT!
Oh well, I guess this may be given an Insightful too...
"Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour," Giuliano told the crowd. "Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope [in the passing car]."
That is the impressive part, they didn't have to "cut" open the cat because they knew what they were looking for inside a car passing at 70MPH; all they needed to know is how much and in what form. A therapeutic amount in a cat is no problem isn't a problem, half a Kg for a car bomb is a problem. Another interesting point is while he didn't actually say it, it sounds like these things are quite portable and was contained in the vehicle.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
i can haz cat scan?