Sat, March 1, 2003

On Tuesday night, Nova ran a special episode devoted to the "Dirty Bomb." For any who've managed to avoid the 24-hour cable news networks for the last year (and, please pass along your secret!), a dirty bomb is an explosive that is tainted in some way with radioactive material so that the explosion disperses the radioactive particles to contaminate a wide area. The US narrowly avoided a dirty bomb scare last Spring (or at least that's the story we were fed by John Ashcroft), and since then the concept hasn't really been getting that much airplay.

TiVo was already recording the Tuesday shows I wanted to watch, and I was trapped at the office anyway, so I gave Nova a shot. Generally, their coverage is balanced and insightful. Unfortunately, it appears they've started taking their cues from the Discovery networks. The dirty bomb episode was indistinguishable (except for production values) from the alarmist, sensationalized drivel that Discovery/TLC have been airing since approximately 9-11-01.

It's despicable that the news networks work so hard to scare us, but at least I can see their Machiavellian purpose. Scaring us means more ratings and more ad dollars. Nova doesn't sell ad time! What gives?

The program started off okay. Below PBS's usual standards but okay. A few scientists, a representative from the IAEA and an ex-CIA executive spoke about what radiation is and how dirty bombs are intended to work. Some typically snazzy Nova animation showed how radioactivity works and why it can be damaging to humans. (Here, the scale began to tip toward alarmist, but it was only the beginning.)

After that, the program launched into two back-to-back "scenarios." These are hypothetical estimations of what might happen in a certain kind of attack. Unlike earthquake scenarios or forest fire scenarios, radioactive terrorism scenarios are based on far more variables which are infinitely less predictable. (Not only are earthquakes something we've seen before, they are also natural occurrences that respond in certain somewhat predictable ways.) Randomly, the producers selected Trafalgar Square in London and Washington D.C.'s Metro subway. They then began to lay out what could happen if a certain type of radioactive terror attack were perpetrated. The problem is, they spent far too little time acknowledging that it was all speculative. An expert would come on and say "If, perhaps, the wind at Trafalgar Square was blowing at 3 km per hour, then the radiation could be dispersed over a 200 meter radius within five minutes." And then the narrator would proceed to detail how far the radiation would reach and who would get sick when. But wait! IF! If the gusts were that high! With a change as simple as detonating the dirty bomb on a second floor balcony instead of ground level, the scenario would unfold entirely differently. This is one minor example of the sort of factual details born out of pure speculation on which the Nova scenarios were based.

Even more frustrating was that, rather than present it at the start when discussing what radiation is, the program elected to delay the scientist who explained the typical "background radation" levels until later in the show. He talked about the fact that radiation is a part of our daily lives and that the potassium in our own bodies gives off a certain level of radiation, all of which is normal and survivable. His mitigating impact on the radiation scare of the show came after all the speculation and fearmongering. What a shame.

If the show's point was to show that a relatively inexpensive and simple device could cause a large problem and that it is very difficult to counteract such an attack with our current preparedness and intelligence programs, Nova could have gone about it in a more academic way. In fact, rather than hinting that radiation terrorism will come in one of two forms, they could have spent their time explaining the real threat – such an attack is so simple to execute that there are an infinite array of possible scenarios, making anticipation and preparation impossible. Instead, I got a very Discovery Channel/Fox News feel from the whole thing, which is an approach I'd been depending on PBS to counter rather than adopt.

Besides, why all the worry about radioactivity in the first place? Don't they know that's how most of our best superheroes were born?

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