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Thieves Who Stole Cobalt-60 Will Soon Be Dead
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Washington Post reports that the carjackers who set off international alarm bells by absconding with a truckload of highly radioactive cobalt-60, used in hospital radiotherapy machines, most likely had no idea what they were stealing and will die soon from exposure. The robbery occurred as the cobalt-60 was being driven from a public hospital in the border town of Tijuana to a storage facility in central Mexico. While waiting for daybreak at a gas station in the state of Hidalgo the drivers were jumped by two gunmen who beat them and stole the truck. "I believe, definitely, that the thieves did not know what they had; they were interested in the crane, in the vehicle," says Mardonio Jimenez, a physicist with Mexico's nuclear safety commission. The prospect that material that could be used in a radioactive dirty bomb had gone missing sparked an urgent two-day hunt that concluded when the material, cobalt-60, used in hospital radiotherapy machines, was found along with the stolen Volkswagen truck. The cobalt-60 was found, removed from its casing, in a rural area near the town of Hueypoxtla about 25 miles from where the truck was stolen. Jimenez suspects that curiosity got the better of the thieves and they opened the box. So far the carjackers have not been arrested, but authorities expect they will not live long. "The people who handled it will have severe problems with radiation. They will, without a doubt, die.""
or gain superpowers.
Instant Karma is gonna get ya...
Title says it all.
On my lunch bag when I put it in the fridge at work I put
"Strontium-90 - RADIOACTIVE" on one side
The other I put
"LIVE SPECIMEN - BIOHAZZARD"
I nominate these guys for the Darwin award!
You've been watching too much tv
I wonder, in your car, having some properly shielded container looking precious with that kind of stuff in it would take care of car thieves for good?
"Kiss Me Deadly".
They could have lived long enough to sell the material to someone nefarious.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
In some cases yes. The L3 band used by the GPS satellite system is used to detect and report nuclear detonations, but I do not know if a small amount of cobalt-60 would be detected by a satellite 26,000 kilometres away.
By any chance was it a 1964 Chevy Malibu?
I am going to stencil "Cobalt-60" on every thing that I own that could be of interest to the thieves.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sometimes thieves strike it big and sometimes they get caught, and sometimes they wind up dead. Hopefully they won't suffer for too long.
All too aware of Cobalt -60. Iron 59 will undergo neutron proton reaction and become cobalt 60. It's the most common isotope of concern in reactor compartments. It has a long half life but it's decay produces a gamma of 7 MeV (mega electron volts).
If this is really source material for X-ray equipment, then why wasn't it well marked and locked in a relatively difficult container requiring a blow torch to cut through?
yeah geostationary orbit sounds like way far way, but maybe could be from satellites oribiting ~500km over the blue dot
The difference with about 100 Americans on the road today, is that at least they know it in advance.
Ted Nugent disagrees.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You might be able to pick up the gamma, but alpha and beta would be stopped pretty quickly by the air, atmospheric water etc. Co-60 is a beta/gamma emitter, so it's possible in theory, but I'd imagine pretty unlikely. A better bet would be to put out a story that the thieves will be seriously ill or dead within a few days so they panic and "hand themselves in" at a hospital.
Best damn car on the lot.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I know Cleveland BioLabs is working on bacteria which impact acute radiation sickness. Would be interesting if they could try it on these thieves if they would turn themselves in.
*Disclaimer* I own CBLI stock and would obvioiusly like their stock to rise, but more importantly would like them to succeed as risks to radiation exposure from old nuclear power plants grows.
The L3 band doesn't detect anything (how would that work?).
GPS satellites carry optical sensors looking for the very characteristic
flash of a nuclear explosion. There is no such thing as "radiation detection
from space" (except, of course, if you are looking for cosmic rays).
We can identify radiation sources in the sky with pinpoint accuracy.
Yeah, multiple times what the sun will put out in its lifetime against the vast vacuum of cold space. Aside from that you mostly get infrared, radio and visible light. All three useless in this case given the background of where you're looking for it. So, this is a little different. And even at that there are forms of radiation we have a very hard time detecting the origins of with any real accuracy. If you want to dispute this I'll leave it to you to provide the proof.
But now there's an international news story about cobalt-60, how deadly it is, and how amazingly simple it is to steal from Mexico.
So we can expect a dirty bomb any minute now.
Thanks MSM!!!!
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
In the 1990s when some stuff went missing in Istanbul the International Atomic Energy Agency flew a grid over the city with a helicopter dangling some equiment underneath that could pick up these levels of radiation.
Geiger-Mueller detectors work on the photoelectric effect. Point source radiation is an inverse square law. You wouldn't detect this stuff even a few miles away. Reactors hardly release any isotopes. It's the thermals that show up on satellites
It depends on the exact type of radiation and such, but the big thing is your uncontained. They wouldn't have been able to detect the material until the container was opened, which the thieves didn't do immediately.
When they found the material, that's exactly what had happened: the thieves had opened the box. But they had also already run away, which is why the thieves still haven't been caught.
Apparently the "RADIOACTIVE YOU'LL DIE IF YOU OPEN THIS!!!" markings aren't that universal (fortunately).
Oh, come now, you and I both know that if such a box were shipped to the general Slashdot population, we'd lose around 80% of the posters here, each one a horrible, inconceivably painful death predicated by the thought or outright declaration of "I'm not going to let someone tell me what to do! I know full well that's exactly what I'd do if I had something I didn't want THEM to see, so I'm going to open this up and immediately rub its contents, whatever they are, directly on my genitals just to show the world THEY CAN'T EVAR CONTROL ME!"
If so, they deserve to die.
the punishment is certainly dire, but mexicos lack of preventative efforts should be called into question. Was the vehicle marked as carrying radioactive cargo? why was there a layover of such dangerous material? were there warnings in multiple languages? pictographs from local health and safety agencies are surely readily available. the GHS is surely used in Mexico
https://www.osha.gov/dsg/hazcom/ghs.html
two people are dead and numerous others exposed because they either did not know what the truck contained, or could not read the ample warnings. Mexico has a 93% literacy rate. there is no excuse for this accident.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's too bad they found that cobalt. If not, they would have lived forever!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
cured their cancer and save hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.
I was about to look into whether they had ground based sensors for such radioactive materials, I've heard about them being suggested for security purposes. Then I remembered we are talking about an incident where a truck full of pretty radioactive material was stolen in Mexico, so I'm just going to say "Maybe we should just wait for the thieves to turn up dead rather than give them another truck full of expensive equipment to sell for scrap."
Think X-Files did a take on this but it was fungal infection instead of radiation
I think he put "glowing" in quotes to indicate we should have sensors that they can fly around with to find the stuff...not actual green blob stuff....like in the Peacemaker!
will work for dragon quest localization
The all new 2015 Toyota Camry with nuclear anti-theft aka pandora's box protection (pbp).
Physics pays no favorites.
Nature is not a friend.
Perhaps others will learn by their mistake.
Unfortunate, but I've little sympathy for them. I am sorry for their families and hope they don't contaminate them.
Peter AI6PG
You really shouldn't be talking about stupidity.
ISO 21482 is pretty universal. Doesn't solve any of the nastier issues of cross-cultural-communication-without-shared-assumptions; but either that symbol, the old trefoil, or both, are about as iconic as warning labels get.
Now, as for this 'cobalt 60 in those drug shipments' concept, it might expose the mules (who tend to be low level and treated as expendable anyway) to enough radiation to kill them, slowly; but the major effect would be on the customers: ie. the coke-snorting Americans whining about them. You wouldn't be the first to suggest this... particular approach, the winning the war on drugs; but I bet you'd learn some interesting things about who does drugs once the casualties start to pile up.
Two guys showing up at a hospital asking for radiation treatments are pretty easy to find.
Sure. If you'd point a space-based gamma ray telescope at Earth, and said telescope be sensitive enough, you'd surely see the "glowing" truck. I'd think the resolution and sensitivity of such telescopes is such that you'd be lucky if it would be a glowing pixel, though. It's a simple enough matter to check how many gamma ray telescopes are pointed down and used for land surveillance. My bet: zero.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
This could have been a major heist if they had pulled it off. That would have been a lot of moolah for them for sure along with the kind of lasting infamy they make movies about!... What? They are an instant aesop: Dead men walking, killed by the very treasure they coveted. To ridicule at this point is almost literally beating a dead horse... or theif in this case.
They probably don't. They felt nausea after first handling it, then after that passed they felt fine. They will continue to feel fine for maybe one to three days during what is called the "walking ghost" phase, after which their bodies will start shutting down and they die a very messy and painful death.
If they had strapped it to a quadcopter and flew it to the homes of rival cartel members.
As dangerous as these small pellets are if you handle them, they are putting out such a tiny fraction of the radiation of a star it's (not even) noise. You have to be within a few feet of this Cobalt to get a lethal dose, but a big supernova could fry the whole planet if it occurs in the same arm of our galaxy
The L3 band is the transmission band used to communicate with the base stations on the ground. The disturbances themselves are detected using the satellite's onboard instruments.
The GPS satellites are incredibly sensitive to atmospheric disturbances and can detect anything that causes interference with radio transmissions, such as electron emission from a subterranean nuclear test. It is not necessary to detect the emission source itself, just the effects of the emission.
And there's a reason we use space telescopes to watch the sky in X-rays and gamma-rays. That's because they don't travel far in the atmosphere.
I bet you'd learn some interesting things about who does drugs once the casualties start to pile up.
Indeed, there have been cops, judges, and prosecuters in the news in Illinois in the last year who were busted for cocaine. There are the mayor of that Canadian city and the ex-mayor of DC. Look at Rush Limbaugh.
I look at "war on drugs" politicians like I look at right wing politicians who constantly decry homosexuality, how many of them have been kicked out of the closet?
I don't know if the GP is an idiot, a troll, or a government shill. He advocates a painful death for drug users? I smoke pot and advocate HIS death. Alcohol, tobacco, and coffee are all addictive drugs. Marijuana is not.
All of society's problems that are attributed to drugs are really problems that stem from the laws against them.
Free Martian Whores!
it was a 'bad thing'.
Agreed, we are talking something radioactive but it is only dangerous at most 6 years before it decays into nickel.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
It's nice to see these armed thugs die.
If only all such cases could end this way.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
A worse punishment would be for them to have to live the rest of their lives in Tijuana. I'd say they got off easy.
The satellites aren't looking for radiation in that manner. There's a characteristic double flash of light from a nuclear detonation that is deemed the signature.
they have guns right? It's up to them how painful and horrible it is.
it can be quick and painless if they like.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Yep, reading on CO60 it's not as volatile as you'd think unless you come into physical contact with it. Hell it's half life is only 5.7 years.
Besides if it's in the container, designed to contain the radiation, how is a satellite going to detect that radiation not being emitted from that container?
Best bet to catch them is do what they did and say they will be dead soon, which not knowing if they in fact came into contact with it or not is overstating the facts.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Um thats all fiction. No, radioactive metal looks like normal metal, feels like normal metal and smells like normal metal. It simply kills you in 48 hrs. Violently with lots of hair loss and vomiting blood.
Shhhhh, here have a bowl.
That's the traditional way, yes. There's a more recent method (which may not involve using the L3 band for communication) that operates by detecting atmospheric disturbances caused by shockwaves and electron emission in the atmosphere. The double flash will not detect subterranean tests, but looking for radio communication interference will. It's a roundabout method but researchers were able to detect North Korea's subterranean tests this way.
They will, without a doubt, die...
Or at least 93% of us, since 7% of all humans who have ever existed are alive today.
Seen leaving the scene of the crime here: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bI0WbLHBXyY/Tix4ZFMCZ_I/AAAAAAABoSM/1YqK064jHsY/s640/back+to+the+future+whitewalls.jpg
and I think they need to get their engine checked.
There are certainly radiation detectors that are deployed today, but they aren't in "the space". They are on highways and rails and in ports, the places where radioactive materials would have to travel through to reach their intended destination. And they are powerful enough to detect radiation in their immediate area, not tens of miles away.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
with satellites, big doses of uncontained radioactive materials? Shouldn't such materials be "glowing" to sensitive sensors from the space or something ?
Depends on the type of radiation. Alpha decay can be dangerous (as with polonium, definitely not to be taken internally); but alpha particles are pitiful penetrators, so you'd see essentially nothing, even with a theoretically perfect detector, even a few meters, maybe tens of meters, away.
Beta rays penetrate better; but still aren't terribly punchy, and I'd be surprised if you could see much of anything from space. A low-flying survey aircraft, perhaps; but not orbit.
Gamma rays are attenuated by the atmosphere, though sometimes you can see the byproducts of those interactions, and some do get through, so that might be viable. No idea how good the resolution on contemporary gamma detectors is, though, trying to find a pinpoint dot against the background chatter of cosmic background and assorted minerals could be pretty hairy unless gamma detectors have resolution approaching that of visible light optics, and I'm not sure that they do.
The drugs flow to the US so you'd just be killing our suburban teens with those shipments. Also, large parts of south America are supported by the cartels. They are effectively the government in those areas. If the cartels just vanished one day those ares would just devolve further into lawlessness. The majority of south Americas problems revolve around the US's idiotic drug policies and trade practices. Fix those and everything else would follow suit.
Those two idiots.
If he doesn't die soon he'll stop glowing. Colbalt-60 has a half life of a little over 5 years
If the loot starts to glow, just say "No"
Just not in the Simpsons anymore
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
This is typical straw man garbage. Paying fast food workers a living wage would not require Burger Death to pay more for labor than they get for their burgers. And it won't cost jobs either. Raising the minimum wage always helps the economy - look it up.
Idiots like you are why the places you are from are places worth avoiding.
Planet Earth?
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
I'm going to open this up and immediately rub its contents, whatever they are, directly on my genitals just to show the world THEY CAN'T EVAR CONTROL ME!"
That sounds slightly more like 4chan than Slashdot to me.
Of course, they'd also say "Just received this box of death in the mail, WAT DO?" and possibly a "post ending in 03 decides".
I expect that the /. crowd would be more apt to test their Geiger counters, and possibly put on a bunny suit first.
Dude, having been in the business for over 30 years, I can tell you... the tech world *IS* the lowest common denominator of our society.
Seriously, you think having code monkey skills make one empathetic, rational, or kind? Guess again.
That's certainly what I've read. Am I wrong in thinking that this assumes a thermonuclear weapon design? If so, does that mean the satellite network might miss the detonation if someone managed to cobble together a simple gun-type fission bomb that doesn't need a nuclear primary?
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
They stole a truck with no idea of the cargo's value or importance, and probably didn't even care if someone else could die if they stole it. It might have been medical supplies, vaccines, food rations, anything. And if they'd gotten involved in a high speed pursuit they could have killed someone just running away. Not to mention their willingness to threaten deadly force in the act, which would have given the driver grounds to use the same in self defense, even without the cargo being lethal.
Which would itself only increase any self defense fatality in being justified if the thieves had gotten shot.
They jacked a rig, had no concern for the value of human life, and it bit them in the ass. To be blunt, they had it coming.
The fact that the authorities aren't even going to be responsible for punishing them means they have nobody to blame but themselves.
It sucks enough hearing your doctor say you're going to die, but to hear it on the worldwide news? Damn.
I'll also bet that all the truck thieves in Mexico is getting a call from their mothers today, worried sick, wanting to know if they're OK.
He's called Captain Mexico.
You can see him shouting and flying here
http://bit.ly/1d1KsAL
Disclosure: I'm also Mexican
Yeah, because South America was such an awesome place in the 1800s.
South America is screwed because the way the Spanish divided the land created permanent lords and peons, and most of the countries never fixed it.
"ie. the coke-snorting Americans whining about them. You wouldn't be the first to suggest this... particular approach, the winning the war on drugs; but I bet you'd learn some interesting things about who does drugs once the casualties start to pile up."
Yes, a lot of Americans and Europeans would die. And I bet a lot of Canadians would as well.
I guess you're too lazy to read up on the subject and instead jump straight to bashing Americans. I know its easy and makes you feel better about yourself. But please try to at least make an effort to sound like a smug, smart ass. Here, I have done the work for you, since you appear to be incapable of doing it yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Effects_internationally
Improved cooperation of Mexico with the U.S. led to the recent arrests of 755 Sinaloa cartel suspects in U.S. cities and towns, but the U.S. market is being eclipsed by booming demand for cocaine in Europe, where users now pay twice the going U.S. rate.
OOPS! Bet you didn't see that one coming ... did you?
http://newamericamedia.org/2013/02/mexican-drug-cartels-eye-spain-as-their-new-home.php
http://www.mexicogulfreporter.com/2013/04/mexican-drug-cartels-have-strong.html
http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysis/mexican-drug-cartels-eye-europe-238202.html
Sorry to be a dick but as an American I am tired of ignorant people outside of the USA painting every American as an ignorant slob.
doesnt the danger remain? The total rads you get is not as important is not as important as how you get those rads. If you inhale a particle, your body cannot dispel it and it will mutate your genes and kill you with cancer. Even minimal radiation, if constantly directed at you by an internalized particle will still kill you.
I know Cleveland BioLabs is working on bacteria which impact acute radiation sickness.
I initially read that as
I know Cleveland BioLabs is working on bacteria which impart acute radiation sickness.
I thought "WTF? Biological+radiological warfare in America AND it's not a state secret? WTF?"
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Short answer: No. Long answer: What do you mean "big doses"? There are many sources of gamma rays in the atmosphere (when stuff like cosmic rays hit it, you get a nice shower of gamma rays and other neat thingies). Maybe if you have a gamma spectrograph you can filter out just the cobalt-60 gamma rays, assuming they're unique? In that case you just need to worry about the fact that the surface is huge and gamma detectors are non-directional. That means that to scan a point on the surface you need to point straight at it. Unless you have a massive constillation of sats that means each "square" you scan will need to have a pretty high CPM for there to be a statistically significant number of counts during the scan. Due to the inverse square law, your satellite in LEO will only see a few CPS if somebody within 1KM of the source is getting several MILLION CPM. That translates into radiation sickness within a few days. For being 1KM away. Don't even ask about being in the same room as it! And of course the area you're scanning in 1 second is pretty huge so this detector wouldn't be much help locating things. And that's assuming no background radiation on the same order (or higher) CPS.
This would change if you have a gamma ray vector spectrograph that lets you measure the exact frequency and vector of each gamma ray it detects. But right now I think the filters are pretty fuzzy AND the techniques used are all non-directional. Even assuming perfect filters and vector detectors, the counts have to be huge before they show up in space right when you're looking. And I think the assumption you even can filter so you won't see any background ticks is incorrect, but I have no idea what kind of spectral distribution the Earth's gamma background has.
The reason you can have satellites that detect and locate the gamma bursts of underground nuclear tests is because of the B word. If it's a burst then you can triangulate between satellites even though their detectors are scalar not vector. That's because the sudden uptick that each satellite sees is tied to the same physical event. If you're looking at decay emissions then the counts are not synchronized so you can't triangulate. Oh, and also the gamma ray burst from an explosion is pretty big compared to the decay from a few kg of cobalt-60.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
No, it becomes half as dangerous in about six years. That's still pretty dangerous.
If they intentionally pry open a big heavy thick box covered in warning labels and radiation symbols and start making a Cobalt-60 sand castle, then YES THEY DESERVE TO DIE LIKE THAT.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Slow-motion biological warfare may be more plausible.
Sooner or later some hostile country is going to figure out how to modify the flu or common cold so it sets the stage for massive (10%+ fatalities) cancer over a 10-20 year time frame, and combine it with a "trigger" so the cancer part only affects people with certain gene markers, such as a particular family, clan, or ethnic group.
Imagine if North Korea figured out a way to make and distribute a cold virus that killed 10% of infected people of European descent within 10-20 years? Or what if, instead of causing fatal cancer in 10% of victims with certain genes, it causes infertility or loss of sexual desire in 50% of that group or (by manipulating egg cells and sperm-generating cells) the future children of that group, resulting in a greatly reduced population a generation or two down the road?
The hard part will be 1) getting it right, 2) making sure it doesn't mutate and kill you or others you hope will survive 3) make sure you don't get caught, and 4) make sure it's not easy enough to copy-and-modify that one of your enemies uses it to create a cold that will kill "you and yours."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Afraid so. The double flash is a result of shockwave/fireball interaction. From Wikipedia:
Also:
(This is from the entry for Bhangmeter, which really is the technical term for nuclear detonation sensors.)
You'd get the same effect regardless of the source of prompt X-rays, fission or fusion.
No way!
Inverse square law makes it practically impossible. Typical activity of the (fresh!) cobalt teletherapy unit is ~300 TBq. Lets say that your gamma telescope is so efficient that it collects 1/3 of all the gamma rays emitted if placed 1 m from the source (in other words its inlet aperture is about 3.46 m in diameter and the detector has 100% quantum efficiency). That gives you 1,000 billion counts per second. Now put your telescope in a (very low!) orbit, say 500 km. Due to the inverse square law you now detect 4 counts per second. Because you want some spacial resolution to get your "pixels", the detector needs to be segmented. If you want 100x100 matrix, the count rate per segment is now 10 000 times lower. In order for your pixel to emerge from the background (which is orders of magnitude higher), you would have to count for years.
This is all assuming that your field of view is ideally covering the area you want to search. Your orbit is not geostationary and your telescope is is above the target area only once in a while. Oh, BTW, I completely forgot the atmosphere attenuation for the 1.33 MeV Co60 photons (half value layer for air is about 9 m). That alone kills it completely.
It would be a nice stunt in a Hollywood movie, but in reality it simply does not work.
Don't just eat the taco: be the taco?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Great reply, thanks! :)
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
but recently there have been lots of Giant Mutant Seagulls cropping up in all the traffic video cameras in Seattle recently. ... maybe they're hungry?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm at least going to want to do it... On the Beach.
Seems to me that the device itself had to be relatively harmless unless you managed to actually crack it open and get directly at the cobalt. Maybe this was a very old device, but after previous deadly incidents of ignorant people getting their hands on such things, I would think they would be manufactured such that it would be REALLY difficult to get at the cobalt inside. Maybe if you stare into the bore of the thing for a while though?
If the cobalt had actually been accessed/exposed then I would expect them to have a nasty hot clean-up exercise on their hands, but the Mexican authorities seem awfully unconcerned.
I suspect they are just trying to scare the shit out of the thieves, perhaps to motivate them to turn themselves in hoping for some sort of treatment.
G.
You're a heartless, stupid asshole.
Correction, most likely an arm chair redneck wantabee trolling away on slashdot. I am certain if this was the 1950's they would be using terms like "wetbacks". Bigotry and racism is alive and obvious in the US and elsewhere. Certainly these crooks were stupid to ignore the warnings and open the containers IF THE PACKAGE WAS EVEN MARKED.
I suspect that the containers were not even marked and neither was the truck. In Mexico the transport company and shipper most likely avoided some tariff or transport inspection fee by shipping the containers in an insecure and unmarked way. In most countries the shipment of radioactive materials requires some permits and source to destination confirmation of shipment.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
You still don't get it.
Minimum wage == minimum skill. Why do you hate the unskilled?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I am no nuclear scientist, but I thought radiation sickness and death was a factor of emission of the source and well as time exposed and distance.
The exact details of the source can be found here(111 TBq):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt-60#Safety
However all they did was find the material, unshielded. They don't know how long the thieves had been exposed to it. Unless the level was high enough that any unshielded exposure would lead to insta-death (which I find hard to believe). It could be that their exposure was reduced to opening it, discarding it, and leaving, so on the magnitude of minutes. Anyway they seem to be missing 2 or 3 variables to make such a assured claim.
I don't know how to calculate a lethal dose from the indicated source strength to figure out the amount of time needed. Looking into it, calculating TBq (or Curie) into Gy/h (or rads/h) looks pretty complicated. Found an online tool, but it doesn't seem to work.
Anyway far from "They will, without a doubt, die.", unless it is of that insta-gib variety.
Here is a mortality chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome#Signs_and_symptoms
2-6 Gy seems bad but possibly treatable, while 6+ means you are probably going to die regardless of what you do.
Something emitting enough gamma in all directions to be lethal within days at 1 Km plus ranges will generally not have a "same room" around it, unless we are talking a very well armored and solid form of construction and a rather largish minimum sized room, with the walls kept well away from the something. You really couldn't stay in the same room with it once it starts, just in the same rapidly expanding volume of superheated gasses.
Who is John Cabal?
“And now, young cobalt-60 thieves...... You will die.”
Very informative. The half-value layer for air being 9m just about does it. Alas, what is the background noise of the detectors in typical gamma ray telescopes?
Alas, I had a good hunch: "you'd be lucky if it would be a glowing pixel" :)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
All of society's problems that are attributed to marijuana are really problems that stem from the laws against it.
There, fixed that for you. I'm fairly certain legalizing things like meth and cocaine wouldn't do much to aid the addicted. Just because one drug is harmless doesn't mean they all are.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Maybe, but this stuff is a gamma source, so it would be detectable at a fair distance. (vs. alpha and beta that wouldn't make it out of the truck.)
Yep, reading on CO60 it's not as volatile as you'd think unless you come into physical contact with it. Hell it's half life is only 5.7 years.
The shorter the half-life, the more volatile it is.
Well, there are imaging gamma ray space telescopes out there, so the imaging part is handled. If you had sufficiently strong terrestrial gamma source, you could image it. Such a source, if omnidirectional, would probably sterilize everything around it for many miles, though. You pretty much need an astronomical gamma ray source in order for a gamma ray telescope to pick it up :)
Another important snag, as it turns out, is the atmospheric absorption: the half-length for Co60 gamma rays is 10 metres. So, for all intents and purposes, the atmosphere would completely shield anything extraterrestrial from the radiation of this Co60 source.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
It is interesting that it was lost to the point that they reported it to the media for help finding it, but then found by the roadside immediately after they pulled it out of it's radiation shielding.
A few years ago a guy traveling home from a radiation treatment (prostate thing, not marrow irradiation) was pulled over after a radiation sensor detected his car and police were notified in Seattle along the I-5 corridor. Cobalt 60 might be detectable from space, or at least a low flying airplane with the correct hardware onboard.
moox. for a new generation.
Depending on the solar cycle, in space,around the earth, one could detect about 10 heavy particles per second per cubic cm. I have no idea how it translates to a number of secondary gammas. This may look like a small fluence, but bear in mind that our imaginary detector has 3,5 m in diameter.
Look at Rush Limbaugh.
Getting hooked on prescription painkillers is kind of different from getting hooked on completely illegal drugs like FUCKING COCAINE AND HEROIN that you have no business having in the first place.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Ok, sorry, Mexican cartels have convenient proximity to the US; but are, obviously, pretty willing to do business with anybody who has money and wants drugs.
Were you to poison the goods, you'd get a few dead drug mules and a somewhat interesting look at the cokeheads of most of the developed world. Happy now?
Actually, getting hooked on prescription painkillers is frequently pretty similar to getting hooked on heroin, and a not terribly uncommon way to get started. Most of the painkillers worth bothering with are zesty opiates, the user's supply of which will dry up rather suddenly once their medical excuse and/or supply of flexible doctors does. Street opiates have purity issues, and aren't covered by insurance; but dealers can be more accommodating of non-prescription users.
I"m more worried about the scum that thing Justice for stealing a truck is death then I am about people who steal trucks.
Take it up with God, you bleeding heart idiot.
It really depends on what happened, and some idiots on /. are too stupid to do anything but break an issue into 2 parts. Don't commit any crime at all/Die of you commit any crime.
Try to steal from me, and I will personally ensure your pathetic, worthless life comes to a violent and ugly end, you god damn parasite. You are a piece of shit.
Glad to see you are level headed enough to say sorry. Again I am sorry to have lashed out.
He was twelve, you sociopathic git. Do you really expect him to know what resources are available to him at that age given his background? What the fuck is wrong with you?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
With that user id? It's a troll account.
I'm fairly certain legalizing things like meth and cocaine wouldn't do much to aid the addicted. Just because one drug is harmless doesn't mean they all are.
It would still help. Particularly for methamphetamines, in general, legalizing them would make treatment more accessible and easier to administer. Plenty of addicts don't ever seek treatment because they're afraid the hospital will inform the police (whether or not the hospital actually has such a policy). Worse, plenty of relatives of addicts don't try to get their addicted relative treated for fear they would be convicted for possession themselves, even though they don't use the drug.
Legalizing followed by regulation akin to alcohol regulation would also reduce the number of accidental deaths due to overdoses, as well as side effects from products that have been cut with something dangerous. Accurate labeling of known dosages and ingredients would reduce healthcare costs and the rates of injuries and fatalities.
Alcohol isn't harmless. It killed my cousin earlier this year. It's currently killing my uncle. It killed my friend's mother. Tobacco isn't harmless. It's killing my mother's sister. It reduced her quality of life to near nothing a very long time ago. Harmlessness isn't a criteria already, so what's the problem?
Apologies to Steve Goodman
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
They had no idea what they were stealing. Otherwise, they wouldn't have opened the cargo and given themselves a lethal dose of radiation poisoning.
Guilty of crimes not even committed. Gotcha.
They beat up the drivers, not shot them.
To be blunt, you're a bloodthirsty authoritarian thinking with his lizard brain. No, people who commit assault and grand theft cargo do not deserve to die. You wouldn't be from Texas by any chance, would you?
What's in the booooooox?!?!?!
I'm fairly certain legalizing things like meth and cocaine wouldn't do much to aid the addicted.
It's better than sending them to prison, AKA Criminal University. If their drugs were cheaper they wouldn't be stealing from me. I never knew a cigarette smoker or alcoholic stealing to support their addictions.
Legalization would end the drug violence, just as Prohibition's end ended the violence of the illegal liquor trade. All the arguments for Prohibition as well as against it still apply in today's prohibitions, and history shouldn't be ignored.
Free Martian Whores!
Actually, getting hooked on prescription painkillers is frequently pretty similar to getting hooked on heroin,
While the chemical addiction mechanisms may be similar in similar kinds of drugs, the issue being discussed was not chemical but societal. In that context, getting hooked on prescription painkillers is very much UNlike getting hooked on heroin. The primary difference being that heroin is not prescribed as a recognized medical treatment for pain. The mechanism for obtaining the two are also vastly different. It is relatively easy for a law abiding citizen to obtain the initial doses of the prescription painkillers that lead to the dependency, while obtaining the initial heroin samples automatically removes the user from the 'law abiding' category.
Thus, trying to equate a Rush Limbaugh dependence on Oxy that led to illegal purchases with a heroin user is disingenuous. The former starts with "this pill was given to me by a doctor to relieve my pain. I still have pain, so I will take another one." The latter starts with "I enjoy the high that this illegal drug give me, I'll do it again for fun."
Thanks, I needed that.
Free Martian Whores!
The only societal differences are artificial. There's no difference between Limbaugh and a junkie with a needle in an alley.
Free Martian Whores!
Minimum wage == minimum skill. Why do you hate the unskilled?
Kind of a ridiculous question. I don't. I just want better opportunities for them.
You might as well ask me why I hate children for not supporting their ability to work for a living.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It would not feel like normal metal...perhaps curiously warm normal metal.
The only societal differences are artificial.
Artificial or not, they are real and significant in this context. Were it as easy to fall into a heroin dependence as to fall into a prescription painkiller dependence, then these "artificial" differences would be moot. Since becoming a heroin addict requires use of an illegal compound from the very beginning, and painkiller addiction does not, there is a difference. You can't accidentally become a heroin addict, but you certainly can become a prescription painkiller addict that way.
There's no difference between Limbaugh and a junkie with a needle in an alley.
Yes, in the societal context, and in the mechanisms involved in creating the addiction, there are significant differences. You can label the source of the difference "artificial", but calling NutraSweet an artificial sweetener doesn't make it taste any less sweet.
You rebutted his "coke snorting Americans" with an article that says most of the Mexican coke is snorted by Americans but the Europeans are catching up? Hm....
Uh, everyone is going to die. I assume they meant the thieves will die "soon".
Think of it as evolution in action.
Well, sure, if you are agnostic, and then go on to believe in magical wizards in the sky or someone named jesus who isn't your gardner, than yea, you're not really in my rational human being category...but you're at least thinking.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
The cobalt source is said to have been found in a rural area. What about the exposure of the people who found it?
Volatile is a term used to described substances that evaporate quickly at normal temperatures. Cobalt is a metal that melts at 1500 C, so it is not volatile at all unless you compare it to Tungsten..... Radionuclides with a short half life generally are more active as far as emissions go. From what I read, the thieves removed the Cobalt pellets from the device, so they at least were in close proximity to it. How fast they die / if they die depends on the level of contact as well as how old the Cobalt is.
"The life of a repoman is always intense."
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Where they snort the isotope thinking its coke. You are dead and there is fuck all they can do about it. Tylenol overdose does the same thing too though if its not treated in time. You get mildly ill first. Then you get better and suddenly deteriorate since your liver is cooked. Very freaky shit.
Mexico is going to see a whole lot of trucks with a nuclear sticker soon, if this proves to help being stolen.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
That is why you analyze things in rem (or Sv) not rads. Google ALI (annual limit on intake) and you will get a chart for each nuclide. It will tell you how many rem you get over your lifetime (50 years) from inhaling or ingesting a radionuclide. 1 rem gotten from an external gamma emmitter is the same as 1 rem from ingesting an alpha emmitter. There are some subtle nuances beyond that, but this is an accurate way to conservatively assess your health risk.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
My comment was general, not targeted at this particular situation. Hate implies irrationality, and you precisely do not want on emotion when dealing with crime of any sort. You end up with the mess we currently have. Because people don't fucking think but simply act like animals without higher cognitive functions would.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
You want them to never have a job.
Someone without the minimum skill is unemployable.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This is a tragedy about to occur.
When you live in poverty, and have no work to earn money, you do what is required to feed your family. You may not have much education, or understanding of the dangers, so, ....
You bring the cobalt home, or to a friend's place, or even to a crowded church where you hide it. The secondary effects of the theft will be the large number of innocent deaths or illnesses.
Sad, sad, sad.
Already, the plans are underway to insure that there is a safer way to transport hazardous material. Why learn what to do with this theft by ignorant people.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Just look for glowing corpses!
Good thing this didn't happen in the U.S.A. Otherwise the families of the robbers would be suing the hospitals for wrongful death.
Are the authorities who allowed this to be shipped without sufficient protection and oversight.
The thieves are scum, and will probably die. I'm ambivalent about that. It's a horrible way to go, but they brought it upon themselves. C'est la vie, or perhaps C'est la mort.But it's just luck that (we hope) the only victims of radiation exposure were the thieves themselves.
What if, as has happened way too often, innocent bystanders had also been exposed? With the thieves down, the people who need to be punished are the owners and regulators who endangered the public by allowing dangerous cargo to be shipped without guards, or at least a relief driver who could take over when the first guy needed a nap in the middle of a bad neighborhood.
No need to vote. The winners of the 2013 Darwin Award (every last one of them) are these two criminal geniuses.
Not so much; people buy their drugs from one cartel or another. One is state sanctioned, and the other not officially, but still, nonetheless, state sanctioned.
The ridiculous dog and pony "crime" show that was *created* with government policy and continues to be perpetuated *by* government policy serves it's purpose. The money still flows where everybody wants it to, and it's just business as usual.
My issue with you and Limbaugh isn't that either of you may or may not currently still be addicts that are still lying about it. My problem with both of you is that you pretend that your addiction is somehow more acceptable and justifiable.
Limbaugh was not unaware of the addictive properties of his drug of choice. Simply choosing a "legal" drug over an "illegal" one does not put you or your asshole supporters on any kind of moral high ground.
You want them to never have a job.
Someone without the minimum skill is unemployable.
Odd. It sounds like you think people are entitled to never learn new skills, but aren't entitled to be able to support themselves through work. It's a strange world you propose that values ignorance more than life.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Dirty Bombs are not practical for exactly the same reasons why these knuckleheads will be dead soon: it's not practical to construct and deliver a dirty bomb IN PRACTICE exactly because it's simply Epic Fail in a lethal sense to do so. Even if you use sacrificial "sponges" do the work, you can't practical achieve the goal without being noticed or killing the messenger/deliverer.
Ghandi came around nicely once he was in charge and had to deal with West Indian (Pakistani) muslims.
Eye for an eye? No, Ghandi believed in preemptive blinding of his enemies. Pacifisim was when he didn't have power.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Darwin Award winners
They wont be dead. The true story when it broke about the theft was that these people may be in danger and exposed to radiation. Please come forward so we can treat you before you die.
US Law enforcement is quite remarkable to ask some twit to come forward that according to news reports is about to suffer a painful death.
As they touch hands between the trucks window.
He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. -- The Sphinx, Mystery Men
Do you think every crime is as black and white as the premise... don't you have the slightest bit of imagination?
Their motive is unknown, and their apparent ignorance of the target's value suggests they are very unlikely to be professional criminals... hmm, petty criminals jacking a truck, how many sorry stories could possibly fit that picture. But by all means feel free to stick with your 3 year old perception of the through and through evil "bad guy" living it up in his evil layer with all the mountains of monies he stole. Or is it the ignorant degenerate that deserves to die? who's morals are we judging again?
For those who feel otherwise, look at it this way: When you use a lethal weapon to commit a crime, you state to the world that you are willing to kill innocent people in order to get what you want, no matter what.
According to whom?... you have no knowledge of the perpetrator's intent, and as a matter of probability the majority of "lethal weapon" wielding criminals will not only lack intent or willingness to kill but also hot have a lethal weapon at all... All that is needed is the appearance of a threat, most people are not willing to bet their life on the higher probability of a false threat... that's why it works, how do you know they weren't using toy guns? can you kill someone with a toy gun or a banana under a jacket? are you still certain that they deserve to die for wielding a "lethal weapon"?
I don't know who they are or why they did it or if there was a real potential to cause lethal harm... and my point is that nether do you. Unknown motives should not default to "Super Villain" and breaking the law or being ignorant !== "morally bankrupt moron that deserves to die", not all crime is committed out of greed..."
Unfortunately it would be a very effective weapon. The more the government tried to explain that the radiation was relatively mild, the more people would say "the government is lying to us to avoid a panic, and to cover up their incompetence" and panic. Many people would flee, but they would be labeled as "radioactive" and would be violently expelled from wherever they tried to settle in. And general lawlessness. It would be ugly.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Six people tested for possible radiation exposure have been released from hospital but remain under detention as suspects in the theft of a truck carrying highly radioactive cobalt-60, officials said Friday. Of the detained men, ages 16 to 38, only the 16-year-old showed signs of radiation exposure and he was in good health
[...] Hidalgo state Health Minister Pedro Luis Noble said earlier Friday the men suffered from skin irritations and dizziness, but that none were in serious condition. Only one was vomiting, a sign of radiation poisoning.
[...] "It's quite an operation and it is in the process of being planned," he said. "It's highly radioactive, so you cannot just go over and pick it up. It's going to take a while to pick it up."
With nothing inhaled or ingested and with proper treatment, even the 16-year old is likely to be fine. So long as the free radicals are mopped up, the infection is cured, the gut bacteria brings out its dead and recovers... and (remote possibility) some bone marrow is transplanted, it is completely survivable.
As to the real chances of this fellow developing a long term cancer or anemia, Marie Curie died in 1934 from radiation induced anemia some 15 years after WWI where she stood at the business end of many mobile X-ray units (invented by her). Some 30 years after she and her husband had stared experimenting with the properties of radioactivity, even hosting "radium lawn parties" at home. The life long exposure Madam Curie received was immeasurably immense, and yet to survive to the age of 66... well, it should put things in perspective about the resilience of the human body AND the remote possibility of fatal cancers.
Much of our data is based on the health effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors and those who succumbed soon after. While these poor souls' conditions were very well recorded, it is impossible to accurately gauge the total rad-count received as it was a combination of exposure, inhalation and ingestion, their total dose could have been a magnitude higher than was ascribed to their condition, which leads to over-estimation of radioactive danger.
Chernobyl amazed medical science by the number of people who received intense exposures, and survived.
Madam Curie's husband did not succumb to radiation, he was killed when he was run over by a horse drawn cart. So the moral of the story is, don't go nuts worrying about radiation. Watch out for spooked horses.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>