THE HANDSTAND

JULY 2002

Neutrons in a fusion reaction disperse with vastly enhanced speed over mere radio-activity and therefore can be utilised in crowd control of the lethal type really effectively. Such weapons can be exploded above ground - the idea is that thermal radiation(heat and blast) would be minimal while the neutrons keep going until absorbed by everything in the target area. There is a lot of data around about the "yield" of these weapons in shells of different size and some military officers have, in the late '70s, drawn attention to the fact that many of them will be much more destructive than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. They are also known to have been developed in Israel. However, deployed as a barrage in fullscale war, shells would decimate both sides, military soldiers and thousands of civilians. Recovery of such strategic territory for agriculture, and habitation thereafter would be difficult for a long time. Nevermind, the soldiers inside the enemy tanks would be dead and the tanks availabe to be re-deployed by "our" men....? The radiation dose planned will allow our men recieve only 50% of that for the enemy,and although incapacitated for 30 minutes our man would be able to reverse the enemy advantage. Nevertheless our man is certainly doomed by his dose and will die a few days later.Even if outlasting his doom he will be a "helpless man", BUT THIS THEN TURNS HIM INTO A WEAPON IN HIMSELF (described in military jargon as "the walking ghost"), IN THAT HE WILL HAVE ENOUGH STAMINA TO CONTINUE THE FIGHT AS ORDERED,UNTIL HE DIES, (AND WILL NOT THEREAFTER BE A BURDEN TO NATO.?)

Description of effect is: Neutrons collide in living cells,destroying chromasomes and swelling the nucleus, turning body fluids into peroxide. Neutrons dumb down the recipient by primarily attacking the nervous system above all else.

The greatest drawback to these delightful military innovations is that the enemy might not use similar precisely careful "target packaging" and may explode old fashioned atomic weapons that would hamper military advances with destroyed roads, and bridges and the facilities of shelter which would be only an upthrust of debris throughout the military area, disabling troop advances.Only the exchange of a barrage of these individually enhanced weapons would enable one side to turn the enemy's expected deployment of millions of troops. Under such circumstances so much radioactivity would be absorbed by the soil, and cause such devastating civilian disabilities, food production would be decimated for many decades.These results would hardly differ from the explosion of one powerful hydrogen bomb.

Radiation used be measured in "rads" that were easily comprehensible, as dose measurements, to the enquirer . Therefore canny political scientists altered the dose description in the 1980s. It was split up into several complex determinations and one can easily give up assessment in despair.The point is that these bombs and shells must give out a dose of 5,000 to 7,000 rads to tank protected troopsto kill them, or 2,500 to 3,500 to kill ground troops... 3,000 rads incapacitates a soldier, whose death will occur several days later. But only 650 rads will create the "walking ghost" who can continue under orders to decimate the enemy until his death. If the "walking ghost" is released alive from the strategic area his cell mitosis will nevertheless be effected, causing a long-term genetic effect inhibiting normal cell replacement.And if our man had had only 30rad exposure the mutation rate of cells in his progeny will have doubled, that may result in terrible infant deformities for his children. By the 1990s in many hospitals doctors in civilian life were already encountering deformities in young children, hitherto unknown, and which they hardly knew how to treat. Fallout from the heavy radio-active explosions of testing had begun to take its toll. If a single neutron collides with a strand of DNA in a sperm or egg-cell the probability of long-term genetic damage is high. Leukemia is one of those dangers.

These "enhanced radiation " weapons are particularly dangerous because of descriptions that mislead. Deployment would "make possible nuclear warfare that is limited and tightly controlled". As we see above, the results among troops and civilians cannot certainly be calculated and are certainly as little "humane" as chemical weapons, that have been long outlawed by international treaty. Treaties that can now be denied, flouted or dismissed, as we have recently experienced, in the modern world of the New World Order. Does this herald more self-destructive violence in a new millenium?

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Characteristic of the American manner of naming, these bombs above were called "Small Boy" and "Fat Man."
These notes have been absorbed from cautionary tales by Fred M Kaplan in Scientific American.Vol.238, Number 5.

.jocelyn braddell©june 2002