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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.
The karma in this case seems rather disproportional. Yeah, what they did was horrible, but death, esp such an ugly death, seems a bit out of balance.
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 completely and utterly disagree.
You clearly haven't been the victim of any robberies at gunpoint. It is terrifying and life-changing and most victims usually end up with some sort of PTSD. It takes a sick and depraved mind to commit such acts, and those responsible fully deserve death. There are far too many people in this world to allow people who are willing to kill to continue to breathe the same air as the rest of the population.
By any chance was it a 1964 Chevy Malibu?
Which is defined as Karma, for your convenience.
Having been jumped and beating unconscious, I still do not wish a painful horrible death on the people who did it.
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
Here you go: The Goiânia accident.
It wasn't an X-ray machine though, but a device for radiotherapy.
Fortunately, X-ray machines are harmless when powered down.
Yeah, you see, but you're being rational about it. Others seem ready to be driven by unabated hate.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
How badly would the drivers have had to been beaten for it to be more proportional?
I thought the US was supposed to be a christian country and slashdot was supposed to be am mostly american site (I say mostly because I am actually british)?
Didn't Jesus say:
'You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.'
So in other words even though there are shitty people in the world then anyone who considers themselves a christian should strive to not seek revenge against such people by killing them or wishing them to be killed. Instead they should forgive and leave any judgment for the lord. Wishing an agonising death upon them would then surely never be proportional, no matter how harshly they beat their victims.
But of course nobody in the US seems to actually give a shit about this part of Jesus' teachings or else you would not have the death penalty.
I dont read
They could have been intending to use it to make dirty bomb what could have exposed hundreds, if not thousands to such an ugly death.
The dirty bomb, as a weapon of mass destruction, is a myth. Disperse the radioactive material far enough to affect a large number of people, and you disperse the radiation as well. The concentration of radioactive material decreases as the square of the radius of the area of dispersal.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And yet, this seems to be the very premise of America these days.
I believe in karma, which is why, when I do something bad to people, I assume they deserve it.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
Being the one beaten is one thing.
Being a friend or relative of the one attacked usually is far worse. Stuff like having a friend's son whom you grew up with tasered to death (the thieves wanted to know "where the valuables were", and kept pulling the trigger until the victim's heart gave out) makes one not really empathetic with violent criminals who do this sort of stuff.
I don't think this one was karma but rather Darwinism. I'm sure the containers had plenty of warnings. They were crooked and DUMB.
There's a difference between wanting them killed and finding them dead as a result of their crime a convenient outcome.
Every time a would-be-criminal ends up killing themselves because of their own stupidity, I smile.
They will, without a doubt, die...
Or at least 93% of us, since 7% of all humans who have ever existed are alive today.
The karma is not for what they did but what they could have done with it.
Good point. And your mom should be charged with prostitution, because she could do it.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
If the loot starts to glow, just say "No"
In this particular case, and especially given the amount of crime in Mexico, it does not surprise me that the truck would be unmarked. And it doesn't really matter if the cargo is marked: carjackers aren't going to rob you at gunpoint and beat you up then take the time to look at the cargo and see if it is worth stealing. They are just going to drive off. I am surprised that the hospital didn't at least hire a security service to escort the shipment; I would assume even(maybe even especially) in Mexico contractable security services are common. Maybe they just aren't trustworthy or capabale enough?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The dirty bomb, as a weapon of mass destruction, is a myth.
Absolutely correct, however a dirty bomb isn't really a weapon of mass destruction, it's a weapon of terror. Given the fear economy that has been driving the US for the last decade or so, I imagine it would be a highly effective weapon too.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
This, right here.
There is no call for capital punishment on a carjacker. However, if a couple of them die painfully after giving a couple of innocent folks a severe beating, doing so at gunpoint, and all because they were too dumbassed to ignore the warnings splayed all over the container?
I really cannot bring myself to feel bad about the outcome.
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. From the moment when you point that gun at someone, your life is automatically forfeit should you die as a result of committing that crime. It doesn't matter if you died instantly because the victim shot back, or because every orifice you have is slowly bleeding out of your swollen body due to radiation exposure... you got what was coming to you.
Oh, you're dying a painful death from the stuff you stole and some bleeding-heart type on Slashdot says I should show you some sympathy? Okay: you'll find sympathy in the dictionary between "shit" and "syphilis".
On the plus side, maybe the next person contemplating violent acts to get what they want will think twice because of these two Darwin Award winners?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
Sheesh? All I was suggesting is that asking why they choose one method of theft over another is, well.... because they are likely dumb and it didn't even occur to them.
It might be worth considering that just because a person is wrong doesn't mean that is the end of the story. Criminals are generally a symptom of larger social issues. Morality is nice and all, but, just stopping at the morality of it and deciding they were wrong; is simultaneously correct and useless. You may as well be pointing out that water is wet.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
My mother was a drunkard and crazy. I was 12 and had to feed her and my two brothers.
Yeah, I stole. Robbed bread trucks, soda trucks, I would go into busy pizza places and just grab a pie off the counter and walk out.
It was always a last resort, it was always about basic survival.
And if I had to do it again, I would.
You clearly had other avenues to get food and shelter.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Goiana was Cesium-137.
There have been several incidents with Cobalt-60 sources, including one in 2010 in Dehli, India, and another in 2000, in Thailand. And in some cases, the radioactive material has ended up being recycled into new products; for example - incidents which actually happened: water-dishes for pets, and belt-buckles sold from discount websites. In these cases, the radioactivity was detected by random spot-checks. There are probably products out there that have incorporated recycled radioactive substances, which made it through spot-checks and are sitting in people's homes, making them sick - and there is no way for us to know.
With regard to the cobalt 60 source: Wikipedia says it was 111 Tbq.
"Example: a 60Co source with an activity of 2.8 GBq, which is equivalent to 60 g of pure 60Co, generates a dose of 1 mSv at one meter distance within one hour."
A 1 Sv dose in 1 hour, is lethal.
Extrapolating 111 TBq to 2.8 GBq; (111,000/2.8 = 39,642 ...); so multiply 1 mSv by that, and you get 39.6 Sv per hour.
If they took it out of it's casing, they'd receive a lethal dose of radiation in less than 2 minutes. (depending on how close they stayed, and how long they stayed near it). Staying at least 400 cm away, would mitigate much of the beta particles, but not the gamma rays. Gamma rays are attenuated by the inverse square law, like any radiant energy. So distance is also your friend, but better still, an inch or so of lead.
They would not start feeling symptoms, until an hour or two later. Dizzyness, headache, nausea, vomiting. Later - worse symptoms appear. It will probably take a few days for them to die, and they may seek medical treatment, which may save them, depending on how long they were in close proximity to the unshielded source.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
How many cranes did you steal to feed your family?
Usually about one each week, which is how long the meat would last before going bad.
They're slender birds so you'd might not think that one could last a family of four (myself, my mother, and my two sisters) that long, but in desperate situations people learn to make do.
> better still, an inch or so of lead.
depends. An old friend worked with medical radio-iodine, which emits high energy gammas. Part of her job was introducing new medical staff to the procedures. She would bring in the standard lead drapes and a Geiger counter and ask them all if they understood radiation precautions. They would of course say yes; she was just a little old lady (her own description), after all, and they were Doctors and Nurses.
She'd hold up the Geiger counter near the patient who had taken the radio-iodine dose, and the Geiger counter would click away steadily.
Then she'd put the lead drape in between patient and Geiger counter -- and the counter would roar.
Then she'd smile and say:
"... I know you all understand secondary radiation, and how gamma rays mostly go straight through tissue like you and me without interacting, but if they hit a really dense material like these lead drapes, they knock off a huge number of electrons that become charged particles that will interact far more readily with tissue, that's one of the reasons we call it ionizing radiation.
"So who wants a drape?"