Polonium-210 Available Through Mail Order 481
Knutsi writes "InformationWeek is reporting that Polonium 210, the radioactive material used to poison former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko is not as hard to get your hands on as some have previously stated. American family business United Nuclear is actually selling the stuff, and other equally exotic materials, on their company website. Could come in handy for the xmas shopping season."
Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks slashdot, but if I wanted baseless scare mongering about the threat of nuclear material falling into the wrong hands, I'd join the Republican Party.
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Eh, why not? It's not like you need polonium 210 to kill someone. A big stick can be used for the same purpose, and rat-poison can also be bought over the counter. And unlike e.g. guns, polonium 210 has other uses than to kill people. Most of those reasons advance science.
Apart from that, why should everything you don't have a need for, need to become "a controlled substance"? I don't know about you, but I have no wish to live in a society where everything is regulated, over-regulated, and then regulated again. I'm for gun control, because guns are a big problem in todays society. I'm not convinced that polonium 210 is a big problem in todays society.
Those things are addictive. Polonium 210 isn't.
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many people think of radiation as this magical, unstoppable death ray; I call this the OMG RADIATION!!1! attitude.
Fact is, there's a whole whackload of far more dangerous things you can get your hands on legally and easily, not least of which is any number of guns, which are also very dangerous when handled carelessly or by an unskilled/untrained operator.
Cigarettes and alcohol are pretty dangerous too, and I couldn't even begin to list the deadly poisons we can stroll into any store and buy completely legally. You can start with the pest control isle, then add the majority of the cleaning isle, and then maybe a lot of the automotive liquids (antifreeze in particular is a dangerous thing if you've got pets or children around), then tack on much of the agricultural isle. Note that I'm not listing products, I'm listing store sections, because that's how readily available these things are.
Honestly, the only reason to prefer radioactive substances to poison someone is because it plays right into the OMG RADIATION!!1! attitude, which even here on "enlightened" slashdot is in ample supply. It's just another deadly poison; no less, but no more.
(To break yourself of the OMG RADIATION!!1! attitude, I recommend the following: Learn about background radiation levels. (If you think that "normal radiation" levels are "zero", you are firmly in the grip of OMG RADIATION!!1!.) Learn how X-Rays work and how they compare to background. Learn about how smoke detectors work; odds are very good that you are within a few tens of meters of an OMG RADIOACTIVE! substance. This will either break you of panicking, or give you a heart attack; either way you'll be free of OMG RADIATION!!1!.)
Here's what you're missing... (Score:5, Insightful)
But *WHY* is this stuff freely available?
It isn't. It's only available in very tiny quantities.
Shouldn't it be a controlled substance of some sort?
It is. Maybe you should read the article, or at least think a bit more critically that perhaps both Slashdot and Information Week are just trying to sell eyeballs here and are willing to overlook the fact that the amount available in incredibly tiny.
It almost seems that there are drugs and booze that have tighter restrictions.
Funny, I don't recall being able to buy arbitrary quantities of Polonium down the street from my local drug dealer (liquor stores included).
I'm curious. Are you always so reactionary to news stories, assume the worst, and don't bother thinking critically, or only when the word "nuclear" or "radiation" is in the article?
Re:Feh (Score:5, Insightful)
No doubt. The United Nuclear company is great, and this isn't the first time that fearmongering affects their very small and valuable business. That, and clueless frat boys who order the largest magnets they can find, just because it's fun to buy objects which have warnings with phrases like "serious injury will occur if you just carry this magnet through a room without planning your route carefully." Science is already being dumbed down by the nanny state; it's the reason that Mr. Wizard didn't endorse a modern update to his old chemistry sets. Timmy doesn't want to see what happens when boring baking soda mixes with boring tap water, but the school gets in trouble for anything more exotic and meaningful.
No you got it backword. (Score:3, Insightful)
Get your fear mongering right.
Remember if you outlaw child pornography, only criminals will have child pornography.
Re:Order yours here (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, Name me one.
Name me one which doesn't cause any effects for several days after ingestion, so I have time to get out of the country and clear all my tracks. And after that, causes unusual symptoms so that doctors will be confused. And, after ingestion, though it causes no immediate symptoms, is 100% fatal no matter what medical support is provided. As well as being tasteless, odourless, colourless and only requiring a minute dose to kill. While not being a great danger to the administrator....
Seems to me you're pretty much stuck with a radioactive substance. And of all radioactive substances, an alpha-particle only emitter is the easiest to conceal from radiological detection.
Unless, of course, you know different?
Re:hilarious Independent editorial by Mark Steel (Score:4, Insightful)
After all history is ripe: the US state dep.t files describe Mussolini as a "Great Man" and Hitler as a "Great and Able Administrator".
This was in 1930s when Hitler enslaved Germany, and forced people into Labor at cheap cost,. Of coujrse companies like GE and others made a killing in Germany before the stupid Jap attack blew their plans.
Blair is not welcoming Putin: It is BIG business which is welcoming him.
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's basic economics (supply and demand) why prohibition of any kind never works. When there is a demand for an item--whether it be guns or crack--be assured there will be someone to supply that demand in exchange for wealth, money.
We can either allow people to do this above board, where things are safe (no bathtub gin or homemade explosive devices that kill the person who bought it and everyone in a 100 yard radius) and disputes can be litigated legitimately. Or you can can do it under the table, in which you create turf wars, black markets, bad quality products (like bathtub gin, impure cocaine, etc).
If it's one thing history has shown us it's public policy cannot do a damn about supply and demand; it can only redirect the channels one must go through to get what they demand. Most citizens who want a gun for themself for protection only won't go to the blackmarket to get one... but the guy who's gonna rob you and possibly kill you, you think he gives a shit about breaking one more law?
Learn some economics and then get back with us.
Re:Loose lips sink ships (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Loose lips sink ships (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that this will draw unwanted government attention to United Nuclear which is already under investigation. So that people with a legitimate need for alpha sources (and, yes, I consider the needs of amateur scientists legit) will find them harder to obtain. If you want to murder someone with poison, there are far easier ways to do it than with polonium-210.
-b.
Re:Feh (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Order yours here (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:antistatic brushes (Score:3, Insightful)
My own rough calculations suggested that a couple of antistatic brushes would be enough to kill someone if ingested:
500 uCi = (500e-6) * (3.7e10) = 1.85e7 decays/sec
Energy per particle is about 5 MeV
(5 MeV) * (1.85e7) = 9.25e7 MeV/s = 1.48e-5 J/s
Assume the material is evenly distributed in a person's body, mass 100 kg: 1.48e-7 (J/kg)/s = 1.48e-7 Gy/s
Applying a scaling factor of 20 (for alphas), this equals 2.96e-6 Sv/s. Multiplied by 86400, 0.256 Sv/day or 5.4 Sv in 3 weeks from the material in one brush.
Not included in this calculation: the fraction of ingested material which is absorbed, the rate at which it is excreted from the body, or different concentrations in different areas of the body. Would these (or other) effects be enough to require a 200x higher ingested dose?
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhm, the vast majority of guns in the US have never, nor will they ever, be used for hunting. And a typical hand-gun is also completely useless for hunting. However, I have nothing against people who are gun-nuts either. If they want to spend their time down at the shooting range, firing at cardboard silhuettes of arabs, it's their choice. What I want to do, is to limit the number of people who choose to keep a loaded gun somewhere in their house, where it waits to be stolen, played with by their children, etc... just because they believe it will somehow "protect" them if 69 ninjas suddenly attack them.
And I didn't say anywhere that I was against guns. I said I was for gun control! Which is a completely different thing than being against guns in general.
Gun control would imply such things as
It's amazing that we have this for cars, but not for guns.
Re:Moo (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as an aside, can you think of any object where this is not true?
Re: any object where this is not true? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Loose lips sink ships (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I might be missing something..... (Score:2, Insightful)
You have not thought this through.
The car analogy. Oh Gods! Cars are driven at high speed on public roads. People operating them had better know how to avoid running into other people, which means understanding traffic laws.
You need no license, no vehicle registration, and no insurance to drive on private property.
Guns cannot be used in public except in exigent circumstances involving prompt commission of a violent crime by someone else. You may also note that it is legal to drive vehicles without a license, without registration, in the event of an emergency.
Guns are not evil. They do not have consciousness or souls. They create no problems by themselves. They are not chemically unstable, radioactive, or biotoxic. (Lead is moderately toxic, but if you want to do something about that, push to unban less-toxic and non-toxic "armor-piercing" ammunition. That term is one of the worst frauds about the entire gun regulation system: the notion that some solid ammunition is "armor piercing" and some is not. It is all a matter of degree. Chunks of metal hurled at high velocity are dangerous. Period. They will go through some stuff, and not go through other stuff. BTW, the worst fraud is that "silencers" are treated identically to guns. Thanks to that bit of genius legislation, significant hearing loss is an ever-present concern for shooters.)
Guns are pretty much undetectable when carried in public, and the means of production (machine tools) are not regulated. There is a large market for guns, like drugs. Reasonably accurate firearms like AK-47s can be made in machine shops; they were made in villages in the Soviet Union during the cold war.
More accurate firearms, and specially treated barrels, require CNC machines and cryo facilities, but those are also unregulated.
The only way to get rid of guns is to fight them like drugs: pick people semi-randomly, and use any excuse you can to invalidate their 4th amendment rights so you can search them, their car, their home.
You worry about known criminals with guns? Keep them locked up, or support the death penalty for more violent crimes. You don't want them walking around with guns? I'd rather they weren't walking around at all. The nature of our society is such that it can't defend against evil if we knowingly allow evil to walk among us.
Even if it were true that a world without guns would be a better place, that world is unattainable. Guns are here to stay until more effective weapons arrive.
The best we can do is:
As for background checks, WHY?! Guns are not the only means of murder. If you're worried that some John Doe buying a gun is a murderer, you should be worried about John Doe whether or not he has a gun. If he's a murderer, he will kill people. If he can't get a gun legally, he'll get one illegally. In the unlikely event he needs to kill someone right now and can't find a gun on short notice, he'll use a brick, a kitchen knife, a chainsaw (GOOD HEAVENS, THEY SELL CHAINSAWS WITHOUT BACKGROUND CHECKS? OHMY SWEET JESUS!), or the Americium from a bunch of smoke detectors.
sorry for the semi stream-of-consciousness nature of this reply, but I don't feel like reorganizing it.