Radiological warfare

An overview of atomic bombs, dirty bombs and other RDDs.

In 1938, Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, and Fritz Strassmann, three chemists working in a laboratory in Berlin discovered how uranium atoms, when bombarded with neutrons, could be split, releasing energy – a process known as ‘nuclear fission’. The following year, physicist Leo Szilard wrote a letter, signed by Albert Einstein and sent to President Roosevelt, informing him that these discoveries could lead to the creation of atomic weapons.

In 1940, scientists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls published the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum, in which they analysed the feasibility of constructing an atomic bomb using uranium-235. The memorandum explains the concept of ‘critical mass’; the minimum amount of ‘fissile material’ (material capable of undergoing nuclear fission), needed to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. When this mass is reached, the neutrons released from the fission of one nucleus induce fission in other nearby nuclei, creating a chain reaction that releases energy. If the amount of fissile material is below the required critical mass, the chain reaction dies out. The same year, Glenn T. Seaborg and his team discovered that bombarding uranium with neutrons in a nuclear reactor could produce plutonium-239. These discoveries were key to the development of the first atomic bombs; ‘Little Boy’, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945, used uranium-235 as its fissile material. ‘Fat Man’, dropped on Nagasaki on the 9th of 1945, used plutonium-239.

On October 9, 1941, two months before the United States entered World War II, President Roosevelt approved a crash program to develop an atomic bomb; the Manhattan Project. General Leslie Groves was appointed project director shortly after, and he in turn appointed J Robert Oppenheimer to head the project's secret weapons laboratory.

On July 16, 1945, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, a plutonium-based device, dubbed ‘Gadget’, was detonated in a test code-named ‘Trinity’; the first of its kind. Shortly before his death in 1967, Oppenheimer recounts witnessing the explosion in a short clip featured in a documentary produced by NBC in 1965.

Radiological weapons

Most people are familiar with nuclear bombs such as those developed by the Manhattan Project scientists. Less is known about how radioactive materials can be used in a number of other ways for the purpose of warfare.

‘Radiological dispersal devices’ or ‘RDDs’ is a portmanteau term for any device that can be used to disperse radioactive materials. Such devices are often referred to as ‘weapons of mass disruption’. A fact sheet published by the US Department of Health details the various forms these devices can take. The first, and that which most people are familiar with is a ‘dirty bomb’; a device that combines conventional explosives –such as dynamite – with one or more radioactive materials that are dispersed by the blast into the surrounding area.

In 1995, in what is said to be “first-ever attempt at radiological terror” Chechen rebels placed a container with caesium-137 sourced from the core of a cancer treatment device in a Moscow park. Two years later, Chechen intelligence services defused a dirty bomb left near a train line. According to declassified documents recently released by the National Archives, shortly after 9/11 Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned by former Defence Secretary John Stanley, that London and other UK cities could face a ‘dirty bomb’ attack in the near future.

A number of plots were foiled in the years that ensued. In 2002, Al-Qaeda operative José Padilla (‘Abdullah al-Muhajir’) was arrested in the US over a dirty bomb plot. Shortly after, in 2003, it was reported that British intelligence agents had recovered documents from a location in Herat, Afghanistan suggesting that Al-Qaeda possessed the necessary knowledge to develop such a device. Then, in August 2004, Al-Qaeda operative Dhiren Barot and 7 others were arrested in London for plotting attacks in the US and UK that included dirty bombs. A month later, 7 months before the 7/7 bombings on the 7th of July 2005, the BBC aired a film titled ‘Dirty War’ which follows the journey of radioactive materials concealed inside vegetable oil containers, from Turkey to a house in London, where they are used by a jihadist cell for the production of a dirty bomb that goes off near Liverpool Street. The film, available to watch for free here, highlights the difficult balancing act public officials have to contend with when trying to determine how transparent they can be with the public, and the challenges involved in communicating the nature of the threat without causing mass panic and economic fallout.

There is, however, an even more insidious method by which such materials can be dispersed that does not require any explosives. The US Department of Health’s fact sheet also mentions the use of airborne-devices, such as this small plane dispersing a white powder.

In 1941, John Campbell, a science fiction writer and editor, encouraged writer Robert Heinlein to write a story that would involve the use of radioactive dust as a weapon. It was published in the May 1941 edition of the magazine Campbell edited, ‘Astounding Stories of Super-Science’, under the title ‘Solution Unsatisfactory’.

The same month and year as the publication date of the Heinlein story, and seven months before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the Advisory Committee on Uranium of the National Academy of Sciences, chaired by Arthur Compton published it’s initial report. Believed to be the first official government document referencing radiological weapons (RW), the report detailed the various military application of uranium fission which included three possibilities; radiological warfare, taking the form of “violently radioactive materials” which could then be “carried by airplanes to be scattered as bombs over enemy territory”, a power source for submarines and ships, and explosives such as the atomic bombs being developed by the Manhattan Project scientists.

Shortly after, Campbell published a story titled ‘Is Death Dust America’s Secret Weapon?’ in the entertainment magazine PIC.

In 1985, the New York times reported on a then recently declassified letter discovered in the course of a research project by Dr Bernstein. The letter, authored by Dr. Oppenheimer “advised the physicist Enrico Fermi to delay any further work on the plan until ‘we can poison food sufficient to kill half a million men’”. This, in reference to an idea that had apparently been discussed amongst Manhattan Project scientists to use radioactive materials such as strontium-90 to poison the German food supply. According to the article, “physicist Robert Serber, told Dr. Bernstein that project scientists, as early as 1942, had discussed the use of fission products from nuclear reactors as potential military poisons that might even be spread by airplane”. Dr Oppenheimer’s younger brother Frank, also a project scientist recounted “in those days, we talked about everything, any way of killing”.

In 1943, the successor to the Advisory Committee on Uranium, the S-1 Committee, produced a short memo titled ‘Use of Radioactive Material As a Military Weapon’. It outlined two possible military applications for the use of radioactive materials; “a terrain contaminating material,” and “a gas warfare instrument”. The proposed mode of delivery includes the use of airborne devices; “as a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectiles, land vehicles, or aerial bombs”.

The challenges associated with this type of weapon were also discussed; “an off-setting factor in its effectiveness as a weapon is that in a dust or smoke form the material is so finely pulverised that it takes on the characteristic of a quickly dissipating gas and is therefore subject to all the other factors (such as wind) working against maintenance of high concentrations for more than a few minutes over a given area”

If the goal is to avoid detection, this limitation is potentially an advantage. If the particles are disseminated at high enough altitudes and widely dispersed, the concentration of radioactive material at ground level is likely to be significantly diluted, meaning that the particles will not be detectable by handheld Geiger-Muller (GM) counters. More sophisticated devices are therefore needed – such as environmental monitoring stations, or even mobile units like the US military ‘nuclear sniffer’ plane that was sent to Norway to monitor the “mysterious radioactive spikes” that were reported in early 2017.

Going back to the S1 committee’s report, the recommendations made by the group were to study this form of weaponry from a defensive rather offensive angle; “if military authorities feel that the United States should be ready to use radioactive weapons in case the enemy started it first, studies on the subject should be started immediately”. These recommendations led to the development of what became known as Operation Peppermint; preparations undertaken by the US military against the possible use of radioactive materials by Nazi forces during the Normandy landings.

Although the Nazis did not make use of such weapons, there was still an ongoing concern both in the UK and US that the Soviet Union might. An in-depth paper published in 2020, titled ‘Death Dust: The Little-Known Story of U.S. and William C. Potter Soviet Pursuit of Radiological Weapons’ chronicles the history of these weapons in meticulous detail, noting that “U.S. intelligence about Soviet RW activities was practically nonexistent, and certainly was much less robust than the Kremlin’s knowledge of U.S. RW developments”. Indeed, a Central Intelligence Agency Memorandum from February 1950, took the view that; “the USSR does not have available at the present time a sufficient quantity of radiological warfare materials to be useful in a military sense, but they do have the capability of disseminating small quantities of radioactive poisons within the U.S. through the employment of subversive individuals and organizations, if they should so desire”. However, “contrary to U.S. intelligence, Moscow actively pursued radiological weapons for approximately ten years beginning in 1947.”

In the UK, in a parliamentary session concerning The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that took place on the 8th of October 1946, Captain Albert Raymond Blackburn, MP for Birmingham made the following statement: “I do not believe myself that the Soviet Union can produce atomic bombs for five years; but can they produce radioactive dust next year, which may be almost as terrible a weapon? Can they produce biological and bacteriological warfare? I mention the Soviet Union only as an illustration. I suggest we should also consider the Argentine and other countries”.

In 1949, Dr William G. Marley, a British physicist and photography expert who was part of the British Mission to Los Alamos published a report on the military uses of radioactive materials. We were unable to locate the original document, but according to a paper published in 2021 titled ‘A weapon too far: The British radiological warfare experience, 1940–1955’, it; “would act as the bedrock for British Cold War RW policy … Marley significantly expanded upon existing scientific scepticism as to the severe limitations of radiological weapons. A ground attack could be mitigated by heavy rainfall or even the use of a water hose; both would dissipate the fission products and reduce the weapon’s effectiveness”. It is interesting to note that Project Cumulus, an RAF weather modification project aimed at artificial rainmaking, started the same year.

In the US, a report published by the National Research Council (US) Committee on Toxicology in 1997 stated that “during the Cold War, the United States devoted great attention to the possibility that an enemy power might attack with biologic weapons. To prepare against such an attack, the U.S. Army sponsored a variety of tests during the 1950s and 1960s to understand how biologic weapons disperse in various environments. As part of the tests, the Army released particles of zinc cadmium sulfide from airplanes, rooftops, and moving vehicles in 33 locations, mostly cities and towns, in the United States and Canada”. This programme, known as Operation Large Area Coverage or ‘LAC’, was, according to a report published by the National Research Council (US) Subcommittee on Zinc Cadmium Sulfide, “the largest test ever undertaken by the Chemical Corps”. The report also states that these tests “proved the feasibility of covering large areas (thousands of square miles) of a country with BW [bacteriological warfare] agents. Many scientists and officers had believed this possible, but LAC provided the first proof”.

A similar programme was undertaken in the UK between 1953 and 1964. According to a report published in 1999 by the Academy of Medical Sciences it was conducted by the Ministry of Defence, who at the time “perceived that Great Britain was at risk of attack by forces from the former communist countries using biological weapons … Being an island, it was considered that discrete dissemination of toxic biological agents over the entire country might be possible, without the risk of spreading the biological agents over neighbouring countries”. It is interesting to note that in 2018, the UK Defence Secretary announced an £80m investment into an Air Command and Control System to “protect the skies” by supporting “the continued early detection and rapid response to potential hostile or suspect aircraft that pose a threat to UK sovereignty, be that terrorists or state-based actors”.

Sourcing radioactive materials

The kind of radioactive materials that might be used for such weaponry appear to be readily available. According to a paper published in 2015, “the radioactive materials used to make dirty bombs are easily accessible owing to their widespread use in nuclear, industrial, and medical facilities and the lax regulatory programs that oversee these materials … The US Department of State has acknowledged that it “appears feasible” for terrorists to acquire the components of a dirty bomb, because radiological materials are available in almost every country, with many housed in facilities considered to be vulnerable to attack”. For instance, in 1995, it was reported that individuals at the NIH’s offices in Bethesda, Maryland, were exposed to radioactive phosphorus in an apparent act of “radioactive sabotage”.

One material that appears to be particularly problematic is caesium-137, which according to an article published by the American Institute for Physics is “perhaps the highest concern for being used in a dirty bomb”. Abel Gonzales, director of radiation and waste safety for the International Atomic Energy Agency, explains that “it's like talc – extremely dispersible … you don’t need a bomb to spread it around”.

Caesium-137 is a radioactive isotope of caesium. It is a beta emitter that can be used to create caesium chloride; a fine talc-like powder that dissolves in water. Caesium chloride is widely used in nuclear medicine applications. ‘Regular’ caesium chloride has a rather low toxicity to humans and animals, but the radioactive form easily contaminates the environment due to its high solubility. In the same way arsenic displaces zinc and phosphate, caesium can displace essential elements such as potassium; “it is a major source of radiation in nuclear fallout, and since it parallels potassium chemistry, it is readily taken into the blood of animals and men and may be incorporated into tissue”. A paper published in 2021 explains; “in humans, animals, and plants cesium ion (Cs+) behaves like potassium ion (K+) and it is localized mainly inside the cells. Pancreas and salivary glands secrete Cs in the intestine thus eliminating about 14% of ingested Cs with the feces, the remaining 86% is eliminated by the kidney with the urine. Ingested radiocesium can also cause in humans several cases of pancreatitis with secondary diabetes (type 3c), which are both on the rise in the world”. As noted here, cases of type 1 diabetes spiked shortly after Chernobyl, and during ‘COVID’.

In 2018 the FDA issued an alert, warning healthcare providers about the safety risks associated with caesium chloride. Reported adverse reactions mentioned included “QT prolongation (a dangerous abnormality that can impair the heart’s ability to maintain a normal rhythm), low potassium, seizures, potentially lethal arrhythmias, fainting, cardiac arrest and death”. The FDA also stated that it intended on moving caesium chloride “to the category of substances that present significant safety risks in compounding”.

A major incident involving radioactive caesium took place in September 1987 in Goiania, Brazil. Scavengers broke into an abandoned cancer clinic and stole a medical device containing large amounts of radioactive caesium. An estimated 250 people were exposed to the source; eight developed radiation sickness, and four died. Like Chernobyl, the incident demonstrates the fear radioactive materials evokes in people. On October 26 1987, The Washington Post, reporting on the burials of two of the victims, stated that they were met with “angry protests from local residents who regard the bodies as nuclear waste that will contaminate their neighborhood”. According to the article, “a crowd of about 1,000 people threw rocks and stone crosses at the truck carrying the caskets and clashed with police after unsuccessfully attempting to prevent the burial – which they said will depress real estate values and prevent visits to other graves”.

In 2002, The Smithsonian Institute published an article stating that caesium chloride is one of “most insidious orphaned radioactive source” as a result of its widespread availability in certain territories such as the ex Soviet Union. For instance, containers used in a now defunct experimental agricultural project known as ‘Gamma Kolos’ that involved the fitting of tractors with containers of caesium 137, have been, by and large abandoned; “estimates of the total number of devices are vague – anywhere from 100 to 1,000 … not counting stocks of caesium in loose storage in Russia”.

The same year, during a senate hearing, it was noted that “significant quantities of radioactive material have been lost or stolen from U.S. facilities”. To take just one example; in 1998, Greensboro, North Carolina, it was reported that nineteen tubes of radioactive caesium, stored for use in the treatment of cervical cancer, had gone missing from a locked safe in Moses Cone Memorial Hospital. The tubes were never recovered. This is to say nothing of materials that are being smuggled across borders, the incidence rate of which appears to have been rising steadily over the last two decades. An article published in New Scientist in 2004, reporting on the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) findings, noted that in the last few years there had been a “dramatic rise in the level of smuggling of radiological materials”; 300 confirmed cases since 1993, with 215 of them occurring in the past five years (1999 – 2004). Globally, the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies’ global incidents and trafficking database shows there have been 1,205 incidents of “nuclear and other radioactive materials outside regulatory control” since 2013.

These materials also appear to find their way across borders as a result of their ‘disposal’ by various criminal organisations involved in the business of waste disposal. The Italian mafia clans appear to be particularly well versed in this art, and indeed toxic waste ‘disposal’ more generally. In 2007, The Guardian reported that an ENEA manager had paid the ‘Ndranghta clan to dispose of 600 drums of toxic and radioactive waste originating from Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and the US. The waste was to be sent to Somalia.

In 2004, Somalia was one of several countries affected the Indian ocean earthquake and tsunami. It was reported the tsunami brought to shore broken hazardous waste containers. Nick Nuttall of the UN Environment Program in Nairobi explained that “Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting about the early 1990s and continuing through the civil war there … European companies found it to be very cheap to get rid of waste there, costing as little as $2.50 a ton where disposal costs in Europe are something like $250 a ton. And the waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is leads. There is heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is industrial waste and there is hospital wastes, chemical wastes. You name it”.

Soon after, “hundreds of local people have fallen ill, suffering from mouth and abdominal bleeding, skin infections, and other ailments”. The described symptoms are remarkably similar to those said to be caused by a variety of ‘viral haemorrhagic fevers’, including some which were previously discussed in ‘Mal’aria' or Malaria’. These include among others; ‘Ebola virus disease’, ‘Marburg virus disease’, ‘Lassa fever’, ‘Rift Valley fever’, ‘Argentinian haemorrhagic fever’, ‘lkhurma haemorrhagic fever’, ‘Bolivian haemorrhagic fever’, ‘Brazilian haemorrhagic fever’, ‘Kyasanur Forest disease’, ‘Omsk haemorrhagic fever’, ‘Lujo haemorrhagic fever’, ‘Venezuelan haemorrhagic fever’, and last but not least, ‘Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever’, which has recently become a news item and is said to be spread by ticks. Interestingly, a study published in 2017 seeking to assess the ‘subnational pandemic potential’ for four ‘viral haemorrhagic fevers’ in Africa, found that Chad, Somalia, and South Sudan were all ‘highly susceptible’ to outbreaks.

As discussed here, ticks, like other insects and some animals are radio-resistant, and therefore have the potential to contribute to the dissemination of emitting materials. The issue is discussed in the context of animals and vegetation in an article published in 2019 by Forbes titled ‘Chernobyl: 33 Years On, Radioactive Fallout Still Impacts Scandinavian Farmers’. The article explains how “the substance [caesium-137] is taken up from the soil by plants and fungi, which in turn are eaten by sheep, reindeer and other grazing animals … The radiation impacted vegetation to varying degrees, but also led to radioactivity in grazing animals, primarily sheep and reindeer.” In 2017, The Telegraph reported that a group of hunters in Sweden had come across a pack of wild boar in which they detected levels of radiation that were “more than ten times the safe level”.

It is interesting to note that in Norway, where levels had been declining, those detected in meat and milk “suddenly doubled” in 2018. According to the article, “the reason turned out to be an unusually widespread crop of mushrooms that year. Fungi have the ability to absorb a lot of radioactivity, up to 1,000 times more than plants. Those yearly variations mean that there will be a need for control for many years to come”.

Given that fungi are one of the mechanisms for bioremediation, it would appear that once again, this is a cover story. Although there does not appear to be any conclusive, direct evidence that RDDs have ever been used, as discussed in the previous article, the measures taken during ‘COVID’ are entirely consistent with those that would be taken in the event of one or more radiological attacks. The guidance issued by the CDC in the event of such an incident is worth reading. Furthermore, at a rally in September 2022, Trump referred to ‘COVID’ as ‘China dust’; “we’re going to have the country set up properly, like it was before the COVID came in, before the China dust came in”. A similar comment was made the following month; “prior to a horrible, horrible gift that came out of the Wuhan labs of China, prior to China and the dust that they sent over, what a disgrace”. It is unclear what kind of ‘dust’ he was referring to, and to date, for reasons that are even more unclear, no journalist – ‘alternative’ or other, appears to have asked him to elaborate on these comments.

Trump isn’t the only one either; in early 2020, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien referred to ‘COVID’ as ‘China’s Chernobyl’. Later that year, North Korea’s Central Television station told its citizens to stay indoors due to “fears that ‘yellow dust’ which blows in from China could bring coronavirus with it”. According to the BBC article, similar comments were made in Turkmenistan. It is interesting to note that the Wuhan Institute of Virology – where the ‘virus’ allegedly ‘escaped’ from is located approximately 150km away from the Xianning Nuclear Power Plant, which was the object of a news story in 2021 concerning a reported leak.

In the next article, we will be taking a closer look at the zinc cadmium sulphide experiments that were run by British and US military.