I hope leaders throughout the Caribbean have contingency plans in place -or at the least, in development- in order to deal with this almost inevitable threat.

I'm personally not very confident they do...

As potential targets in the Western/developed world are hardened against all manner of terrorist attack, I suspect that islamofascist and drug cartel proxy terrorists aren't so stupid as to overlook Dirty Bomb attacks against softer, less well defended targets...

On September 13, 1987, two scrap metal scavengers broke into an abandoned radiotherapy clinic in the Brazilian city of Goiania. They broke open a machine containing a radioactive material, cesium chloride, and took a pile of scrap away by wheelbarrow.

By the end of the day, both men were vomiting and one had diarrhoea. They sold their scrap to a junkyard dealer. He began showing the "glowing blue powder" to family and friends. By the time the danger had been identified and contained, five people had died, 28 had suffered radiation burns, 249 were contaminated, and 112,000 people had to be tested for radiation.

This was, unwittingly, the Western world's first experience with a "dirty bomb", albeit a small and accidental one, and the message was dark. A recently published study, Dirty Bombs: The Threat Revisited, written by two scientists from the National Defence University in Washington, concludes: "Many experts believe an RDD [radiological dispersion device] is an economic weapon capable of inflicting devastating damage on the US. This paper is in full agreement with that assessment ..."

>>read the whole sobering report>>