It's always
amusing to get a couple of emails, as we did last night, about our item discussing dirty bombs. Apparently, we gave so much information, terrorists everywhere would be inspired to hijack their smoke alarms and use the material to blow us all to bits. They would never have thought of it before our programme.
I greatly look forward to the terrorist trial where the conversation between prosecution and defendant would run:
PROSECUTOR: And what was the genesis of your terror plan? Did you travel to a school overseas? Did the war in Iraq push you over the edge? What turned you from a mild-mannered janitor into a perpetrator of mass murder?
DEFENDANT: I was having my tea listening to PM on Radio 4 one evening, when a woman came on describing how to make a dirty bomb. Prior to that, I had no terrorist feelings, and if I had done, I would never have thought of scouring the internet for information on explosives. No, I'm so grateful to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ for broadcasting this detailed account of how to maim and kill. As a result, I started paying the licence fee. It really is terrific value. And have you heard the Archers?
JUDGE: Order in court.
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Well, I seem to remember that your interviewee said that it would require a huge number of smoke detectors to get sufficient material to make a bomb.
The only people who might have such devices in such large numbers could be (a) Fire Brigades, (b) DIY stores and (c) the manufacturers of the alarms.
This presents some interesting scenarios. We clearly need to ensure that MI5, or whoever, keep a close eye on such establishments .....
I've already mounted a 24 hour guard on my two devices, so no chance there!
I really enjoyed that piece last night. I love it when a contributor is able to express an obviously expert opinion - and thus opens your eyes to something that you might never have considered. My first instinct was to rush off to check that our smoke detector was still there. And there is was, safe and sound, in its packet, as it has been since we bought it. Oh, ...
Actually, the bit that really felt like a revelation was the apparent implication that you could effectively *fake* a dirt bomb using a small amount of available radio active material. If you want the real thing - lots of contamination, death, destruction, etc, then obviously you have to head on over to "bombs R us" in the black market (other illegal weapons suppliers are available) to get a substantial amount of your radio active contaminant of choice. But if you wanted to cause terror, then a small bomb with a small amount of radio active material would cause all sorts of problems - because there would be a delay between picking up that radio active debris was present and establishing that it was at such a low level as to cause little or no problem. I guess that delay is the home of the "terror" in terrorism. Along with the damage caused by the actual explosion, obviously.
Dear Big Sis, what makes you think that MI5 do not already have Fire Stations, DIY stores and alarm manufacturers under surveillance....!!!!
Actually having been coerced into watching an episode of Spooks recently - never again- (presumably other silly badly scripted spy shows are available, sadly) the thought of MI5 undercover at Fire Stations seems eminently believable compared.
What caught my ear on this item (as well as the previously noted snigger) was the interviewee divulging that it would be cheaper to buy the radioactive material on the black market. I found myself wondering aloud if that's because smoke detectors are so vastly overpriced, or what?
Don't worry about PM being implicated in the plot. There was a TV news item last night so they are just as responsible. I think they said he needed to stockpile 10,000 smoke alarms.
Now, where did I put the weedkiller?
Valery (currently 4), that struck me as well! I decided that it was all to do with the glossy packaging (and associated "smoke detectoring" gubbins) rather than profiteering. Presumably, when you buy your chunk of caesium-137 on the black market, it doesn't come in a blister pack. However, as we all know (!), it's Americium in smoke detectors. I just googled and found an article claiming that one gram of americium oxide is sufficient for about 5000 smoke detectors...
Anne,
You're probably right about MI5 .... And I noticed the dog looking suspiciously at the smoke detectors (also in pack, like JH's!). Do you think he's in their pay?
LOL!
Big Sis
Dear Big Sis, re the dog - without a doubt! If the yanks can train dolphins to kill there's no saying what they could do with a dog.
Val (4)
You can get smoke detectors free from the fire brigade, and they'll install them free as well, at least hereabouts. I also know several examples of hundreds of tonnes of f***r stored in close proximity to thousands of gallons of d****l.....with easily borrowed transport, as well.
Has anyone read The Monkey Wrench Gang? If not, why not? A triplet of quotes from the author, Ed Abbey:
Only the half-mad are wholly alive.
~
South of the border: The Hispanics despise the mestizos, the mestizos look with contempt on *Los Indios*, the Indians take it out on their women and dogs.
~
Proverbs save us the trouble of thinking. What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.
The middle one may be offensive to some, for which , if needed.
xx
ed
Wow! Were you listening to the radio just now (12.02)? I thought my head was going to explode - hm, I wonder if that is down to Vyle's weedkiller...
Anne, your right - Especially when it's a collie, like mine!
Incidentally, does anybody else have a dog who trains its owner?
Whilst not claiming that Wikipedia is the source of all that is true in the world, I've just read that Americium is fissile - and that its critical mass is approximately 60 kilograms. Now I'm worried - that's only 300,000,000 smoke detectors. That's, what? A couple of billion quid? And we thought the only threat was from a dirty bomb.
OK, I'm relaxing a little because I'm thinking that you'd have to extract the metal from the oxide and so you would need more smoke detectors than that. And some sort of processing plant. I'm definitely going to watch the dog carefully, though.
Hello everyone. I haven't got a dog. Will my smoke alarms be safe or do I need to put some sort of anti-theft device around them?
Assuming you got enough smoke detectors you could even turn it into a fusion bomb by buying several billion of those little glowing keyring things with tritium in them.
Just need some sticky-backed plastic and some eggboxes and I'm sure that would work fine.
Hi everyone.
I don't have a dog and I don't smoke either.
Should I be alarmed about this?
Just think how different the Archers would have been if Phil had a smoke detector in his barn the night ITV started.
Grace would have survived. There would have been no David and therfore no Ruth to do the dirty with Herdsman.
Oh! wrong blog!
i was wondering if PM can top the 12 o'clock news bulletin and broadcast three or more tracks running at once. What a listening challenge that would be!
I'm now worried about my fire alarm after last night's report -- it has started making a strange noise and the dogs are barking at it...............and it has a newish battery.
Good grief, Fifi (16)! Are you saying that you can get "people alarms" now? I know you can buy the "personal alarms" - and they are, indeed, alarming when they go off. I don't think they have anything radio active in them, though.
Just checking through the general opinions on here, Drinks, I think you should be OK - but keep an eye out for any stray dogs which show an interest. To be extra safe, though, you could perhaps use a bicycle lock on each one? Or is you want to be slightly more high tech, one of those kensington lock things that you use on computers. (I only mention these because I didn't know what one was until about a week ago.)
I think that Adam Naylor will be getting a visit from the people in Spooks. I can't believe that he's posted in such detail about how to make a nuclear bomb.
Hey Adam, so you saw that feature on Blue Peter as well?? "Now children, tonight we are going to show you how to make a dirty bomb.......and here's one I made earlier"
......Meanwhile down at Ambridge, Ed Grundy is just finalising his plans to detonate his dirty bomb on the London Underground. But first its time for a nice cup of tea..........
But fear not Eddie, Jeremy Vine had a similarly helpful gentleman on air the other day giving very helpful instructions on how to basically put a stop to the world, so he beat you to it!
Big Sis - yup mine was training me at lunchtime. Resolutely presenting me with his ball in what can only be described as a flourishing manner ie throwing it at me. Why? because I was eating cold roast chicken.
Off to check the smoke alarm's still on the ceiling.
Coco,
For a moment there I thought you said it had a Jewish battery - whew!
xx
ed
Thanks for the reassurance John H, but I like the sound of a Kensington lock. What does it do? Does it make a noise like an expensive High Street shop if someone tries to steal your laptop? Where can I get me one??
I, too, have smoke alarm still in its original packaging - there seem to be so many of us.
It would be quite worrying if the problem of landfill disposal of the packaging wasn't a greater worry.
Aperitif (23)
Kensington is the brand. Computer shops should sell them, or mail order from someone like Misco. Could set you back £35.
BTW, getting back to the top topic, "It's always... nice to see the latest postcards (hint, hint)."
Drinks, you'd think, wouldn't you?
I have to admit to googling in an attempt to make a similarly silly suggestion but in the time allocated couldn't locate a single daft reference.
Perhaps the best thing to do with your smoke detectors is to put them altogether somewhere safe.
Also, on my work laptop, well, my other work laptop, I have an icon that brings up the print queue for the printer I usually use. I do this so I can send a job to the printer and see when it's cleared - with the expectation that when I make my way to the printer, it will at least be printing. Whenever I don't check, I get to the printer to find that it's out of paper and there are a hundred jobs backed up - or else somebody is printing a thousand page doc. The point? Frogging is similar - if you preview, you don't make mistakes, if you don't preview, you do.
Having read the contributions regarding dogs and smoke alarms, I enlisted the help of my resident Dobermann to test out which household appliance she would guard in the case of emergency,I.m afraid the smoke detector came bottom of the list in fact when the thing was tested she ran screaming for the safety of the dinning room table where I found her laying on her sag bag which she had dragged in with her, shaking in fear in case the nightly firework displays had begun early. Needless to say the fridge was top of her list of objects to either guard from all comers or the first thing to throw out of the window before following closely behind.
If the report I have just heard on the Radio 2 news bulletin is true ,then the fire brigade recommend landing on a donkey instead of cushions in case of an emergency evacuation.
John H,
Um, if that was a subtle attempt to draw my attention to some error I'd made it was too much so for me. I am an exception to your rule (I do love to be exceptional) - I always preview; I always make mistakes... hey, ho...
Kodi (27)
Are you sure you didn't mis-hear the advice about what to land on?
I hear one's ass is the traditional site of unplanned landings..
.. and there's a verse about that in the Hedgehog Song. Anyone care to hear it?
Kodi,
You're not supposed to test the smoke alarm with ResDob around - no wonder s/he doesn't like it!
But I've heard MI5 don't recruit Dobies ... something to do with them being German, the War, etc. etc.
Welsh terriers are very popular though!
Kodi, donkeys, don't talk to me about donkeys, makes all the diodes hurt down my left side. My (apparently hasn't arrived yet) postcard has a donkey on it....
Eddie: "Mild-Mannered Janitor"?
Wasn't that Hong Knog Phooey?
... I think we should be told ...
Charles (30)
I think I've got a recipe for that somewhere...
Drinks, I was referring to my mistake - in an earlier post. Mind you, talking of mistakes, Charles' gave me the biggest laugh. And not just because I spotted the "Mild-Mannered Janitor" reference too!
To everyone who still has their smoke alarms in the original packaging. Don't feel too bad. Ours are installed, as per instructions, in hall & upstairs somwhere, batteries regularly changed, tested, etc. About a year ago, I had a dreadful cold which meant I could smell & taste nothing at all. Family went out, leaving me alone in the kitchen, door shut. In front room, newly installed woodburning stove giving out excellent heat, & at the same time drying some wet wood on top which husband had left there for a couple of days before attempting to burn it. after a couple of hours, I came out of kitchen, to SEE (not smell, you understand) house filled with smoke, & on going into front room discovered wood on top of stove now with glowing embers on it, no doubt ready to burst into flame in a short while. And what had the smoke alarm told me? Absolutely nothing at all. And some months ago, husband left a pan with small amount of oil on kitchen stove, got distracted & it burst into flame. And from the smoke alarm? Not a murmur. But how does the alarm react if you open the oven door a bit wide when the door to the hall is open? OOOOOH - PANIC--- weeeeooohhh weeeoohh.
So if any dogs are looking for a couple of smoke alarms - step right up. Mind you, they'd have to get past the cat, & that's no mean feat, given his size.
Annasee, I wonder if my cat could get past your cat - she's as wide as she is long. Keep trying to put her on a diet but she beats me up.
Well, when she's not trying to drag badgers through the catflap, that is.
Annasee (35), reminds me of the time I saved an important building. I was in it, and heard a noise, a kind of yell that made me leave my room. Down the corridor smoke was billowing from a room. I went back and grabbed a fire extinguisher, ran and helped the guy who had yelped get the fire under control (i.e. kept it under control while he got more extinguishers). It was sheer chance I grabbed the right type of extinguisher (CO2), and with a wide nozzle (needed to keep fire under control while more were rounded up).
It was the only significant fire in that time. It was the only incident for which the fire brigade was not mobilised. The smoke alarm that was just outside the door, and in the billowing smoke detected nothing. I raised merry hell that the smoke detector did nothing, and in part joked that it must be immune since the head janitor smoked a pipe and his room was next to the one that caught fire.
So what with that, and smoke detectors going off when you make toast, I have rather little faith in them.
Yes, I too was amsued by the Hong Kong Phooey - or however the lovely Charles wants to spell it - reference. But it was his cat that was really the hero. Maybe cats should guard smoke alarms?
Could be...
Fire extinguishers can be funny things too. I used to work in an industrial hazards group - which is basically a "does what it says on the can" sort of thing. Our particular speciality was fire and explosion risks. One day, some of our colleagues in another part of the site, working away in their brand new fume cupboards, had an accident - it caught fire. We went along to investigate and tried to replicate the conditions which caused the fire. This time, though, I was on hand armed with an extinguisher. Well, we did a good job, and pretty much as expected, the conditions were repeated and the cupboard started to burn - I tried to put a stop to it but the extinguisher didn't work. Fortunately, the lab had others and I grabbed one and the fire was put out. It did mean that I had to use a CO2 one rather than the BCF we'd planned. Naturally, the extinguisher ad to be checked to determine if the failure was mine, but it was found to be faulty. It just makes you realise that if you want to protect yourself, you need to think carefully about how to do it - not just pay lip service.
Our smoke alarm objects to the grill being switched on, regardless of how clean the grill pan is....Outcome? We have to shut the door between the kitchen and the alarm when the grill's in use. How useless is that? How useless was it when TD put something under the grill to keep warm and it went on fire and shorted out the grill?
Still at least we didn't have the flapping the newspaper at the alarm to shut it up, to contend with, while we put the fire out!