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Next Step For US Body Scanners Could Be Trains, Metro Systems
Hugh Pickens writes "The Hill reports that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says terrorists will continue to look for US vulnerabilities, making tighter security standards necessary. '[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through,' Napolitano said in an interview with Charlie Rose. 'I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime.' Napolitano added she hoped the US could get to a place in the future where Americans would not have to be as guarded against terrorist attacks as they are and that she was actively promoting research into the psychology of how a terrorist becomes radicalized. 'The long-term [question] is, how do we get out of this having to have an ever-increasing security apparatus because of terrorists and a terrorist attack?' says Napolitano. 'I think having a better understanding of what causes someone to become a terrorist will be helpful.'"
But unlike the 3 minutes at 30,000 feet, the radiation is lower power, designed to scatter off your skin.
That means that 3 minutes a 30,000 feet your entire body (insides included) is hit with the same amount of power: in a scanner only your surface area (skin) is hit with 3 minutes of radiation exposure at 30,000 feet in just under two seconds.
Assuming that the radiation needs to penetrate 1 mm or less to scatter, an average male's body surface area is 1.9 m^2 (165 lbs 5'9") making an exposure area of 0.0019 m^3
Likewise an average male weights about 75 kg (165 pounds) with an average conversion factor of 1.015 kg/l coming with a rough value of 70 l for an average male's volume.
A little math and you find out that (0.0019/70) the entire in machine dose is hitting only 1/36842 of your body, or about 0.0027% of your body.
Normalizing for exposure per second E = Rate(at 30000)*180(seconds), and E = Rate2(in machine)*2(seconds). Leads to Rate(at 30000)*180(seconds) = Rate2(in machine)*2(seconds). A little more math, an you realize that the rate of exposure is 90 times faster in the machine.
90 times faster exposure of only 0.0027% of your body means that the "only three minutes" argument is true, but misleading. Such things can only happen in a culture where most people are mathematically illiterate.
To make a mathematical analogy. Assume the exposure in the air is like having a match light each second. You feel the heat of one match for 180 seconds. Then standing in such a machine is like being exposed to 36841 matches being lit 90 time a second for 2 seconds. That's 3315690 matches per second for 2 seconds. It's a 3 million plus fold increase in exposure rate.
By the way, 1 million matches lit creates a fire column 3 to 5 meters in size over 10 meters tall. For the Americans, that's 10 to 16 feet wide and over 40 feet tall. I don't want to know how how big the fire column would be for a 3.3 million match lighting experiment.
Anonymous@DHS:
"The terminology contained within the reported memo is indeed troubling. It labels any person who “interferes” with TSA airport security screening procedure protocol and operations by actively objecting to the established screening process, “including but not limited to the anticipated national opt-out day” as a “domestic extremist.” The label is then broadened to include “any person, group or alternative media source” that actively objects to, causes others to object to, supports and/or elicits support for anyone who engages in such travel disruptions at U.S. airports in response to the enhanced security procedures."
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Those of us paying attention knew exactly what he was, but voting for McCain/Palin was simply out of the question.
I wasn't aware that Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin were the only two choices on the 2008 ballot.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You can be too smart to be a police officer. I don't see why it shouldn't extend higher in the ranks.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
They weren't terrorists. All of them had specific targets - people or Government buildings - in order to take those targets out: they were murderers. They were NOT targeting groups of Americans for the sake of creating terror.
They were targeting the government for the sake of creating terror in those working for the government. Both the 90s right wing terrorists and the 60s left wing terrorists.
What that means is that they had become so jaded that they thought that terrorizing the people to change the government wouldn't work, so they terrorized government officials instead.
You're right in that this isn't really 'traditional' terrorism, but traditional terrorism is incredibly stupid and only causes a backlash. If Terrorist group X starts killing civilians randomly, civilians will run to the government for help. If, OTOH, X kills government workers, government workers will quickly find other jobs, crippling the government.
But that really is 'terrorism', just aimed at government civilians instead of other civilians.
However, while that point is valid, the 9/11 attackers did the same thing. The 9/11 attacks were against the White House, the Pentagon, and...the World Trade Center. And what that means is that they appear to think...um...the military and big business run US foreign policy.
Instead of thinking of 'the US government' as a discrete entity, they saw it linked inextricably with big business, and decided they'd terrorize bis business also, who they also think are attacking them.
This is, incidentally, probably more accurate a world-view than the left- and right-wing terrorists in the US, which seem to think that domestic policy is set at Federal buildings.
Of course, the US population doesn't see it that way.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Trains? Didn't you watch old cartoons as a kid? When we want to derail them, we don't need to be on them, and if we are, we have wasted some kamikaze brothers who could have better employed elsewhere.
I'm old enough to have met people who fought in the resistance against the Nazis in WWII.
One of their favorite targets was troop trains. The Germans had a great railroad system.
All they had to do was remove the spikes, and the train would be derailed. On a winding mountain road, it might go tumbling off the cliff.
One guy said that they would remove the spikes, fill the hole with gasoline, and replace the spikes, so that it would explode when the train rolled over it. I couldn't figure out how that would work, but he killed 600 Nazis.
I'm glad the war is over, and the Germans have returned to sensible things, like solar power and molecular biology.
I hope we (and the Arabs) can join them soon.