Pakistan has placed ads warning about “Orphan Sources” of nuclear isotopes. The term “Orphan Sources” is from the BoingBoing article and I have dutifully added it to my “idea list” as a possible good sf title.
The disturbing thing is that there must be a reason behind doing this. Are misplaced isotopes common enough in Pakistan that you need to put posters up around town to warn people? No one takes an action like this without a payoff. What is the payoff here?
Another interesting thing is that American pundits seemed to be shocked, shocked that that there are isotopes in Pakistan. Politicians are making fumbling announcements that mostly question the wisdom of putting up the poster. Why aren’t they questioning why there is a need for the poster?
I have my emergency pack ready, including instructions to my brother’s house in Rochester. I expect a dirty bomb any day now, but I am not sure that New York is an imminent target. I would not live in Tel Aviv for any amount of money. It is only a matter of time, now.
I read a story in a 1948 Astounding Magazine about terrorists who smuggle nuclear material into New York City on the dials of thousands of cheap glow-in-the-dark watches. They make it through customs because, although radioactive, it is at a low level of radioactivity and watches with radium dials are expected to be slightly radioactive. The terrorists scrape off the glow material, dissolve it in solvents, and let the fissionable material settle to the bottom. This was a story from 1948, proving my thesis that good science fiction is ahead of its time by 50 years on the average.
My friend John is writing a techno-terrorism thriller. I have talked to him about the watches. I just thought of another way to get fissionable material into the country. Uranium is used as a yellow die in glass and glazes. You can make a rich gold color or a pale green-yellow color from uranium salts. This is no longer done in because the uranium is toxic, but stained glass used to have a uranium salt added to it to make a golden yellow sun tone. Typically the glass contains uranium in concentrations of 1%. If you bumped that up and made glass, you could create stained glass masterpieces. The radiation detectors would pick it up, but the coast guard or customs would let it through because it could be shown that the radiation came from the glass. The trick would be to include pellets of pure fissionable material embedded in the lead that holds the stained glass in place. The uranium glass would be the red herring, masking the pellets hidden in the lead.