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Instilling Fear Through Dirty Bombs Essay

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People often associate the word bomb with the idea of a weapon of mass destruction, but in reality fear can be a weapon in of itself. Such is the case of the dirty bomb, it is a weapon aimed at instilling fear in the local population thus making it a weapon of mass disruption. The similarities between a dirty bomb and an improvised explosive device (IED) are remarkable. In our modern wars of Iraq, Afghanistan and several other theaters of operations the IED has been the weapon of choice for insurgents. They are cheap to make and can be constructed from left over explosives and shrapnel producing elements, these same qualities are shared by the dirty bombs. The primary and often overlooked effect is the fear that it instills in the groups …show more content…

Gunmen overpowered the driver in the early-morning hours of last Monday in Hidalgo state about 30 miles north of the capital and made off with the truck and its cargo. (Wilkinson, 2013)
This event goes to show how a simple truck hijacking could have produced a large amount of materials for several dirty bombs. Fortunately in this case law enforcement acted quickly detaining the individuals and recovering the radioactive waste. The explosive component is no impossible task to attain either, gun powder from Wal-Mart will do. There have been documented occurrences where the exploding component of a simple dirty bomb was comprised of traditional dynamite (King, 2004). That shows, that any terrorist organization with the least amount of motivation could easily gather the materials required to cause destruction. The ease of acquiring materials for a dirty bomb is dwarfed by the simplicity that it takes to construct the device. As mentioned earlier individuals looking to cause destruction among the local population coupled with the basic knowledge of explosives can create a device to create such a weapon. The construction of a dirty bomb can be as simple as combining an explosive component, a fuse, screws and or nails along with the radioactive material all enclosed in a case.
The reason that the dirty bomb is such an imminent threat is because of the ease of making it. If terrorist wanted

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