A geneticist gets kidnapped and they're worried about a dirty bomb? Now a plague bomb I could understand, but a dirty bomb is well outside said expert's area of expertise.

at MattII; yep, i think everyone will notice that! editor, editor, where are you?

And they couldn't use drones, why?

It might make more sense to put a detector on every Fedex, UPS, and USPS vehicle. They seem to cover about everywhere on a daily basis. And I also wandered what a geneticist had to do with a dirty bomb. A physicist or a chemist might make sense but a geneticist?

They may instead stumble on how much radiation is actually released through reactor waste on to the public.

A Bomb? Ha! How about a plague set up. And you don't need a bomb. A simple spay can will do... Just saying.

actually, they have detectors in a lot of those silly multicolored statues all over downtown DC. they are elephants, donkeys and bears .... i think the Agency put them there.

It seems like a dirty bomb could easily be hidden in a cheap lead case. A co-worker of mine served on a nuclear aircraft carrier. They did a sweep of the whole ship and found the highest level of radioactivity on the deck.

Let's play Nuclear Pokemon! Some of their checklist papers looked kind of kindergartenish, didn't they? I agree with arming FedEX and UPS trucks with detectors like the fire trucks already have. And drones would be much quicker and do a more thorough search pattern. Perhaps combining the two would be the best bet. And, of course, I'm also wondering why a geneticist would be associated with any bomb, let alone a radioactive one.

We need an app like GammaPix on every smartphone that can detect radiation. They can constantly monitor background radiation, and when they get a "hit", they record intensity, time, and location, and can "phone home" an alert in real time. They use a high resolution imaging cmos, that is blacked out, so no photons can hit it, then look for the video noise radiation induces. Enough apps like that and phones they can work on, and nuclear terrorism will be a thing of the past.