Station III - The Neolyte Station

BANG!

by Michael G. Crawford

Tenson pulled the mini-PADD down, dreading the exercise, yet understanding the warning which had prompted it. It wasn't every day he saw a TERRCON 2 condition, let alone one that directly effected his surroundings. And when it also was followed almost immediately by Top Secret Intelligence information, it was not only frightening, it was sobering. As if he needed that kind of shit right now anyway.

It was ludicrous. Terror Condition 2 meant immenient danger of terrorist action. Not a threat but a promise. Shit! And "things we going so well" he thought to himself with a sarcastic mental grimace.

More frightening, and a marvel to experience, was the import of the intelligence information. Not only was Station III threatened with nearly certain Terrorist attack, it was being threatened with the worst case scenario, nuclear attack.

It was clear that some pretty heavy players were involved, after all one just didn't lift a nuclear weapon into the sky without a substantial purse to dig into, but the threat seemed to be clear.

The mini-PADD in his hand was his own compendium of Terrorism and related facts that he had put together over the years as a security specialist...this prior to his assumption of the command track challenge. He guessed he should make a copy for the very ernest new Station Security Officer, yet part of him wanted to selfishly hold on to it...keep it close. Information was power. But the command side dictated that this would be a gross negligence of duty. No, he would hand it over nearly willingly. He only hoped the sensitive woman would appreciate the years of research and experience that the PADD represented.

He sighed to himself as he thumbed to the weapons section. Organized like a web page on the Worldwide Web, he "clicked" on entries using his thumbnail, and wound up quite quickly in the section dealing with Nuclear Weapons.

Based on a ancient piece of data compiled by a student of things nuclear, Carry Sublette, the piece was an excellent monologue on the effects of nuclear blasts. Unfortunately the material was based upon ground burst data, not space burst, so much of what he would learn here didn't apply.

Of course, if a nuclear blast occurred anywhere close to Station III, it really wouldn't matter. But curiousity had him reading it all again to refresh his memory. What was especially scary was the the blast radius information:

"A convenient rule of thumb for estimating the short-term fatalities from all causes due to a nuclear attack is to count everyone inside the 5 psi blast overpressure contour around the hypocenter as a fatality. In reality, substantial numbers of people inside the contour will survive and substantial numbers outside the contour will die, but the assumption is that these are two groups will be roughly equal in size and balance out. Based on the Japanese experience, this rule of thumb will actually underestimate the long-term fatality count resulting from the immediate effects of an explosion by a factor of 2 or more, and it completely ignores any possible fallout effects."

Tenson shivered at the thought, wondering how the author could have been so dispassionate in the writing. Chalk one up for the impartiality of the scientist. Good writing, though.

"The chief delayed effect is the creation of huge amounts of radioactive material with long lifetimes (half-lifes ranging from days to millennia). The primary source of these products is the debris left from fission reactions. A potentially significant secondary source is neutron capture by non-radioactive isotopes both within the bomb and in the outside environment."

Tenson surmised that those isotopes now themselves became radioactive and thus the secondary danger. Since isotopes could be found in just about all material, it stood to reason that things not radioactive before a nuclear blast, now became radioactive, emitting excess neutrons and energy at will. Rather nasty and deadly.

"When atoms fission they can split in some 40 different ways, producing a mix of about 80 different isotopes. These isotopes vary widely in stability, some are completely stable, while others undergo radioactive decay with half-lifes of fractions of a second. The decaying isotopes may themselves form stable or unstable daughter isotopes. The mixture thus quickly becomes even more complex, some 300 different isotopes of 36 elements have been identified in fission products."

Tenson read on, soaking up the different mathematical models and descriptions once again making himself a mini-expert in this area. He saw the opportunity for forensic detection of post nuclear events in the decay rates of the isotopes, the effects of water bursts versus ground or air bursts, and the debris fields associated with each. He noted that an air burst was probably as close to the space burst data he needed. The plume of solidified waste particles in the air would be dessiminated over a wide area in the atmosphere, however, he surmised that in space they would expand outward from the blast until their initial kinetic energy outward was expended by the slight friction of space or came into contact with solid objects.

Well great, if Station III were blasted, then they'd be able to figure it out cuz their would be radioactive debris. No Duh!

He rubbed his eyes and shut down the PADD. Useless. What he needed was some means to detect weapons coming near or aboard the station. A well shielded neutron source (i.e. a well made weapon) should be just about impossible to detect. He remembered the role of an old agency called NEST (Nuclear Energy Surviellance Team?) that had neat ways of detecting nuclear devices from some distances. He wondered if he could access that kind of information.

He turned to his own workstation and began the arduous routine required to log into the secure section of MILNET, the government's defense related research network that was isolated from the INTERNET.

After some twenty minutes of challenge and authentication, he finally was able to post his question to the great god of information the Defense Department Data Clearing House. Hopefully he would get a reply before he had gray hair. Closing out and tearing down the secure session, he ran his file munger to erase any spurious data records someone might be able to spoof, and then powered the workstation down.

"Well that was pretty unproductive" he said to himself. He stood up and grabbed the PADD, and set off to bestow his gift upon the rather clever young Security Chief. He had a feeling the young woman was a lot like him, and just might turn out to be a hot shit security op like his former self. Best not let her know about his former life, or the pressure might be too much. He grinned at his inventiveness and closed the door to his little office. It was going to be a strange day, that was clear.

writers@mcint.com
Last Updated: July 10, 1996