B.A the question!

[micky1up]

you cant take water on the plane ,you cant wear a cross if you work for them but if you want to smuggle highly toxic radioactive material (polonium 210)hey no bother straight through all the checks no problemo security man your having a laugh



why has noboby in the press asked the question how could this happen with all the security checks at the moment

[KevinB]

Because they're all morons and we all know that breast milk is more dangerous than radioactive material.:damn:

[Linton]

I work at an airport and every time i go airside I have to take off my jacket and shoes before going airside.I could have a spearfish torpedo in my bag but not my tooth brush.If I ever get to meet the civil servant that wrote these rules I will have a frank discussion with him!!!!

[STEED]

If I ever get to meet the civil servant that wrote these rules I will have a frank discussion with him!!!!

GO FOR IT LINTON AND DON'T BE TAKEN IN WITH HIS DOUBLE DUTCH TALK. :yep: :yep: :yep: :yep: :yep: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up:

[micky1up]

I work at an airport and every time i go airside I have to take off my jacket and shoes before going airside.I could have a spearfish torpedo in my bag but not my tooth brush.If I ever get to meet the civil servant that wrote these rules I will have a frank discussion with him!!!!


ive a spearfish torp in my pocket or so the wife says :lol:

[Linton]

A number of years ago I was banned from taking my wife on the spare seat in the cockpit.I have been married to her for almost 17 years and trust her implicitly-she owns all our assets for tax avoidance!!Yet some civil servant banned me and my colleagues from allowing this practice as it is a security risk.
Some of the lo-co's do not provide food or drink to their crews gratis so they bring their own.The new rules stopped this for many meal choices-have you ever heard of an explosive chicken tika?They also stopped pilots taking contact lens fluid and a whole list of other items.
So if you see a pilot in his nhs glasses who hasn't been allowed to carry his deodorant,tooth paste etc and has been living on ready made sandwiches for a few days please excuse his appearance and remember the person who made these rules in the first place!!
I and many others could fill pages on this and if you look at prune you will find pilots making the point more eloquently than I.
I am sure there are a number of airline people who would love to meet the rectum that wrote the rules.I have asked the wife for new work socks for christmas as everybody gets to see them when i walk shoeless through security!
I forgot to add that every airliner has a foot long axe that is kept in the cockpit-perhaps the civil servant would like a demonstration of how sharp it is!!

[tycho102]

The polonium is interesting.

It emits very low energy beta, neutron, and gamma radiation. Such that it can be completely attenuated by a lead-lined snuff box. It's a highly active alpha emitter (~138 days halflife). The toxicity of polonium is pretty much the same level as with uranium and plutonium, meaning that even if the radiation didn't cause significant damage, the metal is still highly poisonous. Although, I have not found it's specific reaction mechanism. Uranium and plutonium pull hydroxyl groups off molecules, resulting in a lot of disfunctional enzymes and other proteins, and polonium probably does something similar. It's also fairly common with industrial applications, so it was a pretty good choice.

I still do not rule out Putin or the Red Mob.



However, we should all be sh*tting and/or urinating our pants over this. This stuff got spread all over the place, and was never detected. When ingested, alpha particles do 20x the damage that a neutron emitter would do. One gram of this stuff (it's very dense, so it doesn't take much for one gram) will have you bleeding from every single muscosial membrane in your entire body.

I imagine it was put into whatever was being drank at the restaurant. Probably doped into a tablet which was designed to solvate into polar liquids (water, wine, beer). If any of the liquid got on someone's hands, they'd still be spreading it even after washing them.



A very wicked security issue, not to mention the actual murder.

[CCIP]

I wonder to what extent airports are equipped with the neccesary tools for detecting something like this. And whether they're up to various ways of concealing miniscule doses of this.

My bet is that they probably aren't. Doesn't mean that we should all be running in a panic, I might be Russian living abroad but I don't expect that one of these will end up in my drink anytime soon. And, let's face it, there are so many ways that someone with resources could assasinate a person anywhere in the world, that spending huge resources on combating one of them so specifically is probably not even really worth it.
Once you do, they'll just pull out the next card from their stack.

The real issue is managing these things reasonably and minimizing risks, not going up in panic over it. How many of these air travel security issues have we seen in just a few months? It's all fine and good making air travel terror-proof, but not to a point where it gets passenger-proof along with it.

[U-533]

I ranted and raved for 30 mins here to post about the stupid things we allow to happen.

I hit the 'Submit Reply' button it went somewhere.

I guess yall didnt need to read it.