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I think there is a more fundamental issue that is being overlooked in the press and in our discussion. A terrorist attack is, at its most basic level, a publicity stunt - an attention-getting event designed to focus public attention on the terrorist's cause.
To the best of my recollection, every terrorist attack in my lifetime has used death as the attention getter - the event is intended to generate a body count, which in turn gets the attention of the public, the press, and government institutions. Without the body count, how much publicity can the terrorist expect? This is an important concept, because a terrorist organization would have to abandon this approach to begin thinking of a dirty bomb as a useful technique. An attack that simply renders the attacked location a place to avoid and may increase the risk of illness years in the future would be a dramatic shift in goals for a terrorist. And it carries the opportunity to fail - if the quantity of radioactive material can be cleaned up and there are no news items about people being harmed, the resulting publicity would associate the terrorists' cause with failure, ineptitude, ineffectiveness, etc. Something terrorist are not after.
I don't recall any terrorist attacks that weren't designed to kill people immediately. If such attacks have happened and I simply don't remember them, it illustrates my point.
I can't see spending significant amounts of time, money, and energy to protect against an attack designed to merely irritate the target population - body counts are more effective at getting the desired attention and are, therefore, more likely to be the method of choice.
Bob Flood Nevada Test Site
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