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Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

The headline is click-bait. Per the article:

Obama told the group of 50 heads of state and foreign ministers in Washington on Friday to imagine that a terrorist group had bought isotopes through brokers on the so-called dark Web. One shipment was picked up in transit by radiation monitors, but others were thought to be still on the move. The terrorists were believed to be planning to use a drone to distribute the material.

Not entirely implausible, and the most dangerous proposed use of radiological material I've seen. Imagine valuable real estate such as farmland, water sources, or Manhatten.

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I agree it's not implausible, and I think they'd be remiss to not consider the possibilities in regards to using new tech in this manner. However I don't necessairly see it opening many new possibilities.

Sure a drone changes the method somewhat. But replace dark web with cash/corrupt state, and drone with small dirty bombs, and people have been talking about similar scenarios for decades.

Interesting to see how these doomsday scenarios change over time.

I remember in the early aughts, after the fall of Russia, there were rampant rumors terrorists had figured out how to build a small nuke in a suitcase and then could detonate it in Manhattan or Chicago. They would acquire the necessary plutonium from shady Russian arms dealers. There were reports of how much radioactive material was completely missing and of course, there was a good chance it was already in the hands of the bad guys.

Now you have people spooking us by saying arms dealers on the "dark web" are going to traffic in weapons grade plutonium, and terrorists will acquire enough to build a small nuke and deliver via drone.

Same scenario, different delivery methods to take into account the new boogeyman, the "dark web" and the shady people who do business on it.

did anyone ask question "why anyone would do that?"

Dirty bombs are a hugely inneffective weapon. You are taking a radioactive material at high (dangerous) concentration and spreading it around an immense area to low (less dangerous) concentrations, where the wind will easily carry it away in a plume. The conventional explosion will kill and maim more than the radiation.

If you want to use radioactive materials to harm a large populace, hide it in a reflective box with a tiny opening on one side so it emits highly concentrated ratiation in a tight directional beam. Install box at chest height facing a busy street. The repeated exposure at high concentrations will do way more than a dirty bomb's easily detected scattered low concentration will.

Source: Formerly worked in the world of defense.

> Dirty bombs are a hugely inneffective weapon. You are taking a radioactive material at high (dangerous) concentration and spreading it around an immense area to low (less dangerous) concentrations

I agree they are ineffective for tactical purposes, but they work for terror purposes. A dirty bomb's effect is limited to the small area around the blast; a drone could cover a much larger area in valuable or critical real estate.

The cleanup could be much more expensive and time-consuming to cover a wide area: Concentrations would be less dangerous but they could be dangerous enough, and regardless of the true danger, the public will insist on a cleanup.

It seems to me the title chosen by the Bloomberg author just selected the most interesting part of the article, I don't see it as inaccurate. Why do you consider that a click-bait?

It extracts sensationalist terms from the article and strings them together.

The drones aren't 'nuclear', only their payload is (and that's more accurately 'radiological'), and they don't come from the dark web, the radiological material does.

>planning to use a drone to distribute the material.

lol? Correct me if I'm wrong but drones don't exactly have good carrying capacity. Don't see them carrying a heavy amazon package let alone a dirty bomb.

a) Not all drones are small:

https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/daily-news-article/obama-ad...

b) Even small amounts of radioactive material spread over some city area would probably cause blockades of that part of the city. It's also something that disrupts the life and work there. The Belgian airport remained closed for days after the attack.

Those are limitations of most drones today. At CES this year a drone that can carry a person for 30 minutes had its debut -

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/07/first-pass...

There's videos of radio controlled model jets on youtube that look pretty competent too -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ9dSrrBN28

Does it have to, though?

Look at what 93 grams did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident

> The Goiânia accident was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, at Goiânia, in the Brazilian state of Goiás, after an old radiotherapy source was stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 were found to have significant levels of radioactive material in or on their bodies.[1][2]

In the cleanup operation, topsoil had to be removed from several sites, and several houses were demolished. All the objects from within those houses were removed and examined. Time magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters" and the International Atomic Energy Agency called it "one of the world's worst radiological incidents

Depends on what one calls a "drone". Two reasonably small RC helis can lift a full person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77uK19KxMuI

IIRC, those machines have a severely limited distance & flight time.

Not to mention, consumer electronics aren't very radiation hard. I would not be surprised if strapping some nasty isotopes to a DJI phantom causes it to malfunction.

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