Possible New Weapon In The War on Terror – Cockroaches
Cockroach With Detection Backpack
We strive to find stories that are a little on the lighter side going into the weekend. Here’s one that should fit the bill.
The creature that’s expected to inherit the Earth following a nuclear holocaust might also be well suited to help prevent man’s atomic self-destruction.
Researchers at Texas A&M University’s Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute have attached radiation sensors to the backs of cockroaches. They hope public-safety officials will one day send the souped-up insects into situations that are too risky for humans.
“Cockroaches really are the perfect medium for this,” says William Charlton, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the university and a principal investigator on the project. “They can go for extraordinarily long periods of time without food. They exist on every continent except Antarctica. They’re very radiation resistant, and they can carry extremely large amounts of weight compared to their body mass.”
Summary:We propose an integrated nuclear detection system utilizing cockroach-based sensor platforms. The system is able to detect, collect, and predict activities that are related to nuclear weapons and dirty bombs.
The Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute (NSSPI)
He envisions teams of about 20 remotely-controlled roaches — each carrying one of three types of sensors meant to detect different nuclear materials — that would march through areas of up to a square kilometer and send their readings back to an operator via a tiny, low-energy communications system. This would help officials determine if potentially contaminated areas — such as buildings where they suspect terrorists have planted a dirty bomb — are safe for humans.
The operator will be able to manipulate the insects’ forward and directional movements — cockroaches can’t crawl backward — using devices that apply pressure to parts of their antennas and stimulate their leg muscles. “It’s like a cattle prod for cockroaches,” Charlton says.
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Grenade Launcher, Weapons, Map of Military Facility Seized In NJ Arrest
January 25, 2010 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
New Jersey - Somerset County investigators In New Jersey seized a cache of weapons including a grenade launcher and hundreds of rounds of ammunition today from the Branchburg motel room of a Virginia man, who also had maps of a U.S. military facility and an out-of-state civilian community. Authorities have not released details of what the man was planning, but from this report, it appears they may have prevented something catastrophic from taking place.
Lloyd Woodson, 43, whose last known address was Reston, Va., today faces multiple offenses, including second-degree unlawful weapons possession and fourth-degree possession of prohibited weapons, Somerset County Prosecutor Wayne Forrest said.
At the time of his arrest, Woodson was wearing a military-style ballistic vest with a reinforced steel plate and carrying a .223-caliber assault rifle that had been altered to fire .50-caliber ammunition, Forrest. He was also carrying four loaded magazines with hollow-point ammunition, Forrest said.
Branchburg police confronted Woodson at 3:55 a.m. at the Quick Chek convenience store on Route 28 after receiving a call reporting a suspicious person. Branchburg Patorlman Steven Cronce noticed a large bulge beneath the green, military-style jacket that Woodson was wearing, which was later determined to be the assault rifle with a defaced serial number.
Other entities involved in the case now include the FBI, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — both part of the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, as well as the New Jersey equivalent of that task force, Forrest said.
In a search of Woodson’s room, police seized a Bushmaster .308-caliber semi-automatic assault rifle with a defaced serial number, a 37-mm Cobray grenade launcher, a second ballistic vest, a rifle mountable night vision scope, a police scanner, a military-style backpack, a map of a U.S. military installation and a map of an out-of-state civilian community, a Middle Eastern red and white traditional headdress, and hundreds of additional .50-caliber and .308-caliber ammunition along with military pouches and garrison equipment.
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Preparing for The Bio-terrror Threat
November 22, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Featured
The threat of a bio-terror attack on the U.S remains high and may be more likely than you think.
One could be forgiven a little nostalgia for the 1950s and ’60s, when elementary-school students solemnly crawled under their desks in preparation for the impending mutually assured destruction of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. For the journalists here attending a Heritage Foundation conference last week on weapons of mass destruction, they seemed like the good old days.
That’s because another al-Qaida attack on the U.S. could be much worse than 9/11. The CIA figures it will more likely involve a biological weapon than a nuke, and says it could happen in the next few years.
Nuclear proliferation remains a huge concern: Should Iran develop such a weapon, the U.S. geo-political situation could become unmanageable. A nuclear-bomb detonation or other radiological attack in an American city would have immense material and symbolic impact.
But CIA officials particularly fear bio-weapons because, despite the extensive homeland-security apparatus erected since 9/11, things like anthrax are very difficult to keep out of the hands of terrorists. There are hundreds of biological agents that can be weaponized, either from stuff that’s already in America or that is brought in from abroad much more easily than nuclear materials.
Take the microbe anthrax, which is about three microns (a single strand of hair has a thickness of about 100 microns) wide in its granular state, which is what a terrorist would want. Equipment for making such grains is available on eBay for less than $20,000. More exotic killers could include synthetic viruses and such hemorrhagic fever viruses as ebola. Preventing such an attack by an intelligent and focused foe is very challenging. We need to develop the kind of general situational awareness that Israelis exhibit daily — an awareness that has thwarted many Palestinian bombings.
via Read Full Article.
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North Korea Thought To Have 13 Biological Weapons
As if the nuclear threat from North Korea is not bad enough for it’s neighbors, The Straits Times is reporting that North Korea is thought to have up to 13 types of viruses and germs in their weapons arsenal which can be used in biological weapons, as well as up to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons. This according to South Korea’s defense ministry, says the report.
From The Straits Times
The chemical weapons could be deliverable by artillery or missile to cause massive civilian casualties in South Korea, the Brussels-based think-tank said.
The stockpile includes between 2,500-5,000 tons of mustard gas, phosgene, blood agents, sarin, tabun and persistent nerve agents and can be delivered by long-range artillery, missiles, aircraft and naval vessels, it said.
In a report to parliament, the ministry said the communist North has one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
The list of diseases that could be caused by the biological weapons includes cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, eruptive typhus, typhoid fever and dysentery, it said.
The ministry estimated its neighbour’s stockpile of chemical weapons at between 2,500 to 5,000 tons.
via N.Koreas 13 biological weapons.
UAE Seizes North Korean Weapons Shipment to Iran
August 28, 2009 by national
Filed under World Report
The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean-manufactured munitions, detonators, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades bound for Iran in violation of United Nations sanctions, diplomats said.
The UAE two weeks ago notified the UN Security Council of the seizure, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition they aren’t named because the communication hasn’t been made public. They said the ship, owned by an Australian subsidiary of a French company and sailing under a Bahamian flag, was carrying 10 containers of arms disguised as oil equipment.
The council committee that monitors enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea wrote letters to Iran and the government in Pyongyang asking for explanations of the violation, and one to the UAE expressing appreciation for the cooperation, the envoys said. No response has been received and the UAE has unloaded the cargo, they said.
The UAE and Iranian missions to the UN didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The Financial Times reported the weapons seizure earlier today.
EMP Threat – A Single Nuke Could Destroy America
March 30, 2009 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
A sword of Damocles hangs over our heads. It is a real threat that has been all but ignored.
On Feb. 3, Iran launched a “communications satellite” into orbit. At this very moment, North Korea is threatening to do the same. The ability to launch an alleged communications satellite belies a far more frightening truth. A rocket that can carry a satellite into orbit also can drop a nuclear warhead over any location on the planet in less than 45 minutes.
Far too many timid or uninformed sources maintain that a single launch of a missile poses no true threat to the United States, given our retaliatory power.
A reality check is in order and must be discussed in response to such an absurd claim: In fact, one small nuclear weapon, delivered by an ICBM can destroy the United States by maximizing the effect of the resultant electromagnetic pulse upon detonation.
An electromagnetic pulse EMP is a byproduct of detonating an atomic bomb above the Earth’s atmosphere. When a nuclear weapon is detonated in space, the gamma rays emitted trigger a massive electrical disturbance in the upper atmosphere. Moving at the speed of light, this overload will short out all electrical equipment, power grids and delicate electronics on the Earth’s surface. In fact, it would take only one to three weapons exploding above the continental United States to wipe out our entire grid and transportation network. It might take years to recover from, if ever.
This is not science fiction. If you doubt this, spend a short amount of time skimming the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack from April 2008. You will come away sobered.
Even as the new administration plans to spend trillions on economic bailouts, it has announced plans to reduce funding and downgrade efforts for missile defense. Furthermore, the United States’ reluctance to invest in a modern and credible traditional nuclear deterrent is a serious concern. What good will a bailout be if there is no longer a nation to bail out?
Fifty years ago, it was not Sputnik itself that sent a dire chill of warning around the world; it was the capability of the rocket that launched Sputnik. The rocket that lofted Sputnik into orbit also could have served as an ICBM.
Yet for all its rhetoric, the Soviet Union was essentially a rational power that recognized the threat of mutual destruction and thus never stepped to the edge.
The world is different today. Intercontinental range missiles tipped with nuclear weapons in the hands of leaders driven by fanaticism, leaders that support global terrorism, leaders that have made repeated threats that they will seek our annihilation . . . can now at last achieve that dream in a matter of minutes.
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Backpack With 7 Pipe Bombs Leads To Evacuations
March 23, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
Santee California - A man who found seven pipe bombs in a backpack turned them in to the Sheriff’s Department substation Monday afternoon, prompting authorities to evacuate nearby businesses as they neutralized the explosive devices.
The man entered the station on Cuyamaca Street, near Buena Vista Avenue, around 2:15 p.m. and left the backpack in the lobby, Lt. Mike Munsey said. The man said he found the bag with the bombs the night before and one of them was leaking.
The sheriff’s bomb-arson unit inspected the backpack and neutralized each bomb individually, Munsey said.
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UK – Terrorists Attempting To Infiltrate Top Bio Laboratories
November 3, 2008 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
The security services have intercepted up to 100 suspects posing as postgraduate students who aim to acquire weapons material and expertise.
Dozens of suspected terrorists have attempted to infiltrate Britain’s top laboratories in order to develop weapons of mass destruction, such as biological and nuclear devices, during the past year. Read more
Arms Cache Found During Traffic Stop – Dallas, Texas
October 30, 2008 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
Federal law enforcement officers took two Denton County prisoners into custody Tuesday after officers found about 11,000 rounds of ammunition, more than a dozen assault rifles and several other weapons, 20 ski masks and body armor in the truck they were driving on Interstate 35W near FM407.
The cache apparently was being smuggled into Mexico, according to court records. The serial numbers had been obliterated on most of the weapons, authorities said.
Victor Manuel Villalpando, 29, of Burleson and Noberto Estrada, 24, of Fort Worth, face multiple charges.
The case began about 6:25 p.m. Thursday as Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper David Farrell was patrolling on Interstate 35W. He saw a GMC Yukon near the intersection of FM407 with no front license plate, which is required by Texas law.
According to court records, Trooper Farrell stopped the vehicle. The driver, Mr. Villalpando, did not have a valid driver’s license. The trooper received permission to look inside the Yukon, but when he began searching, Mr. Villalpando ran off. The trooper detained Mr. Estrada and called for help.
With the help of a helicopter and officers from several Denton County law enforcement agencies, Mr. Villalpando was found hiding in a muddy creek bed.
Capitol Building – Man Arrested Nearby With IED, Rifle, Ammunition Allegedly Found in Jeep
September 5, 2008 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
A man is under arrest in Washington after an improvised explosive device, a rifle and some ammunition were allegedly found in his jeep, Capitol Police said Friday.
The man stopped to ask police for directions near the Capitol building at about 11 a.m. EDT Friday, at the intersection of 2nd and Independence Avenue Southeast, according to Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. Read more
Man Carrying 10,000 Rounds of Ammunition Arrested After Shooting Traffic Light
September 1, 2008 by national
Filed under Stories of Interest
Los Angeles – A 52-year-old man was being held without bail today on suspicion of shooting at a traffic light in Westwood and carrying more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in his van and storage locker late last week.
Gene Bush allegedly began firing at a traffic light at the intersection of Broxton and Le Conte avenues shortly before midnight Thursday. Read more
Yreka – Man With Bombs and Weapons Was Ready For War
August 21, 2008 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
A police officer and two civilians subdued an armed man who drove to a California probation office with 11 crude bombs, 70 loaded magazines and more than 4,000 rounds of ammunition, police said.
The man, Michael Solano, 54, of Sacramento, was out of jail on bail for a July 18 incident in which police said an explosive device was found in his vehicle at the probation office. Read more
