The clouds from the Collapse and the Pile twenty-five years ago are still killing. But their lethal capacity today is little to zero, given the time involved. It was what was ingested then, and it turned out, surprise, that the feds knew the air was toxic then for some time and didn’t tell the workers. Surprise. Never happened before and won’t happen again. Everybody’s confident about that. But it was the exposures then which are still killing cops and firefighters, whose numbers can be found, and unknown numbers of construction guys whose numbers cannot be centralized.

As in Israel where people “accept” risk. You may as well, since there’s nothing you can do about it. But if you can avoid it–you probably will make an effort. So that’s not relevant.

The Covid panic can be unlearned, at least in terms of institutional issues (lockdowns) but there are still people who are “concerned”.

But if you insist that the dirty-bomb fear can be unlearned or it can wear out, as with Covid, that’s after a lot of trouble including…well, you know.

My point is that a dirty bomb will have infinitely worse results than the same size warhead in HE, even if the stuff couldn’t be made to fission (is that a verb?).

9/11/2001. Manhattan. Clouds of dust. Asbestos. Asbestos kills, asbestosis, mesothelioma.

Kills.

Kills.

Somehow Manhattan is not a ghost town.

People accept risk.

Radiation exposure is a risk.

I wear a dosimeter every f’en day at work. Have worn “death chips” for neutron dosimetry, worked in High Contamination areas (Sr-90), Airborne Contamination (Pu) areas. You learn what to do if a Criticality Alarm goes off or when a Continuous Air Monitor goes off (too much Pu).

Almost like the Israelis and Ukrainians know about air raid alarms and shelters.

People accept risks in life. It is part of growing up.

Someone taught him that fear. There is no innate fear of strontium-90. Didn’t even exist before the twentieth century. What can be learned can be unlearned.

Point is,,,,,see Covid and other general panics.

I get what you’re saying, but we were taught to fear COVID. We can unlearn it.

People are afraid of a lot of unreasonable things and there are others they used to be afraid of. Unreasonable fears are a cost that prevent reasonable fears from being better addressed, the time and effort spent in education can be well worth it.

We are, so to speak, “up wind” of such an area, and we’ll be trying to convince others, from our position of safety and that will go just fine. The people in question, being asked to go downwind, might not be so sanguine.
They physics of radiation don’t matter in that situation.
I was born in 45. In school, we had air raid alerts. The chem teacher and the physics teacher both were at some pains to explain the situation to us. And “fallout” was a constant worry for some folks. Remember strontium 90? Yeah, that one. Try explaining physics to a guy who thinks he got a belt of it in his milk for breakfast.
I’m just eighty-one and I’m not afraid of very much any more. And I’d have to get a heck of a belt of that dust to live long enough to die of it. Not my problem. Point is,,,,,see Covid and other general panics.

Get yourself a Geiger counter from Amazon, some are under $50. My son got one for Christmas when he was 10 (thought it would be cool to have one). Educate yourself out of your fear by testing bananas from the grocery store and any brick or concrete in your house.

Covid propaganda notwithstanding, no medical procedure is 100% effective.

And with the provisos your proposed treatment(s) have, not a sure thing anyway.
However, my point is not the people who were exposed. It’s the people who weren’t, being encouraged to go where they could be exposed, as opposed to not going and not being exposed. An “almost certainly” isn’t going to sell those folks. You walk past an alley where similar ones have turned the occasional confined breeze into something which, in other times, put your tie over your shoulder. And there’s dust in that gust…. Your geiger counter clicks a few more times than usual that three seconds.
Does the city have an array of instant laundries where you and your clothing can be sloshed clean before returning to home in the ‘burbs?

Remember the Covid over-panics? Gonna be a more relaxed view of things when it’s RADIATION?

Does the USDA have an extra line on the food source including radiation rating for the source? Does anybody trust the feds not to lie?

Thus, the details of levels of exposure, rates and types of radiation, etc. need to get factored into considerations of how serious a given dirty bomb exposure might be. Not to pooh pooh the whole thing, but there may be situations that are clearly survivable with little long term health consequences, etc.

A suitable analysis and education program could be helpful in mitigating the “fear factor” that Richard is suggesting might otherwise override logic and sanity.

The people who determine whether a dirty bomb is a threat are the people who are frightened of it. Hence my mention of Covid/ But remember radon? That’s hardly toxic, naturally occurring, seeps into your house through cracks in the foundation. Lots of stuff done for radon; municipal radon mitigation efforts; maybe redo your basement, live someplace else for a while.

It was scary because it was RADIATION!!! darn it. So a cloud of U235 dust over Manhattan and….more work from home? Real estate prices? Need a subway into town any longer?

You can’t see a Covid virus. You can get a geiger counter. And the people saying it’s just background radiation–of which you have never heard in your entire life to this point–likely live elsewhere anyway. Well, okay, maybe some of it’s not background radiation, but what there is additional isn’t dangerous. That’s going to be a hard sell.
Think there will be film badges available at Walmart in boxes of a dozen, cheap?
My father worked in medical sales. Said there were departments in hospitals where the folks had film badges due to what might be running around loose in a HOSPITAL.

I don’t think you’d be able to calm the populace by pointing out that this stuff ending in “um” is different from this other stuff ending in “um”, and this stuff is okay. That’s science.

And an uptick in….say….some form of cancer….. Might be for another reason including changes in diagnoses or immigrants from someplace where they picked up something carcinogenic earlier in life. But….not suspicious?

Toxic/not toxic. Not the point. Unreasoning fear is.

Do you recall Covid? How much reason was involved in various personal decisions; soggy face diaper, snitching on neighbors not obeying the six-foot or other rule, mindlessly obeying whichever power-freak bureaucrat got some air time…?

And how non-toxic is less toxic than plutonium? Is that the same as zero-toxic? WIll it not trigger a geiger counter? Darken a film badge?

You can’t get a vaccine against RADIATION.