We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Radiological Weapons Containment Vanguard Response Systems, a Canadian company, is now testing equipment for containment and mitigation of the effects of radiological weapons.
This type of weapon, now commonly mis-labeled a ‘dirty bomb’, is a conventional explosive device packed with bits and bobs of medical or other radiological sources in place of bolts and nails. Such bombs would kill few if any persons not killed in the initial blast. They are weapons of mass annoyance rather than destruction and have entered the WMD lexicon due to the modern phobia of all things ‘nuclear’.
Vanguard supplies various sizes of containment ‘tents’ which are placed around the weapon. The tents are then filled with a foam. Should the device explode, the kinetic energy is soaked up by the foam and tent. They claim all of the bomb fragments are thus contained.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Is this a good thing, because if a dirty bomb is discovered and thus blanketed it can be cleared up with little fuss? Or is it a bad thing, because it encourages the view that elaborate containment is needed, and thus fortifies the panic when an unblanketed d/b does explode?
I tend towards the latter view. Any actual d/b will be mostly harmless but attended by months of hullabaloo and exclusion for decontamination, and years of extra pseudosecurity and increased insurance premiums, while plastics factories continue to catch fire and scatter poisonous by-products sensibly unremarked. Cf the contrasting treatment of rail crashes and motorway pile-ups.