Statistics concepts and applications

¶ … NBC Nightly News announced the arrest of an alleged Al

Qa'eda member, Jose Padilla. Padilla was plotting a terrorist attack, by planting a dirty bomb on Washington D.C. This attack is way beyond the abilities of Padilla or any terrorist organization. The Provisional Irish Republic Army (IRA) has never been able

to make a bomb that would the damage that NBC has stated.

Andrea Mitchell reported, "A radiation bomb is not a nuclear weapon." "But experts say it can still cause serious health problems, economic damage and widespread panic. A bus loaded with 4,000 pounds of TNT, almost four times the size of Oklahoma

City, but this time with a radioactive substance commonly used in medical tests, blows up outside Washington's Air and Space Museum. In a just completed simulation, hundreds, perhaps thousands die immediately from the explosion. 10,000 more in the area die years later from cancer-causing radiation. With winds of 10 to 15 miles per hour,

no rain in the forecast, the plume contaminates a quarter of the nation's capital, exposing hundreds of thousands more people."

This attack is way beyond the abilities of Padilla or any terrorist organization.

The Provisional Irish Republic Army (IRA) has never been able to make a bomb that would the damage that NBC has stated. A school bus loaded with 4,000 pounds of TNT

would be equal to about 15,000 pounds of the Ammonium Nitrate mix used by Timothy

McVeigh, to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. A large number of people would only die from cancer if they hung around the site of the blast.

There is a limit as to how lethal the radiological components in a workable dirt bomb can

be. If they were highly radioactive, they would kill the bomb-makers and melt the container long before the bomb could be delivered. Strontium-90, which is a likely candidate for use in making a dirty bomb, would only be a threat to one's health very rare circumstances, and that could possibly result in bone marrow cancer. Also, the mushroom cloud of smoke would not spread as widely as NBC stated.