Posted on 02/24/2005 6:22:27 AM PST by traumer
“Dirty War” The first of three movies HBO will share with PBS in coming months, this docudrama imagines what kind of panic would break out were terrorists to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” in downtown London.
As I wrote last month when the film aired on pay cable, “Although the hypothetical attack is deadly, the most riveting scenes in ‘Dirty War' record the bomb's aftermath, as London's emergency forces buckle under the ensuing mass panic.”
The public TV version will be missing a few frames, which is great timing given the decision by PBS to sanitize a “Frontline” war documentary that aired Tuesday. The most notable thing missing is a scene of a woman being stripped naked and given a decontamination shower.
PBS decided that was, what, too dirty? Yeah, and I understand that next week, in deference to viewers who are offended by displays of raw covetousness, PBS will bleep all the appraisal prices from “Antiques Roadshow.”
The movie was not PC in the least.
The bad guys were conniving and coldblooded Islamic fundamentalists, the cops and firemen were good guys but completely unprepared for the situation, and the politicians were mostly interested in covering their own asses.
They didn't even divide the politicians into fat white conservative men and do-gooder superwise liberal minorities like an American production would certainly have done.
".....warning to the cordoned victims to avoid drinking, eating or touching their mouths, again, because it might aggravate the inhalation problem."
Figures.....did they also say that folks should have stopped breathing when the dirty bomb detonated? I'll bet not....
Touching your mouth after external decon would in fact be insignificant. "Dirty" bombs are/will be constructed so as to generate and spread fine radioactive PARTICULATE as wisely as possible, to cause insidious "radiation sickness"......they are not a nuclear or "neutron" detonation or reaction. Radioactive particulate is spread by conventional explosives OR OTHERWISE DISBURSED without an explosion.
Having been exposed to breathing such dust prior to a rinseoff, I would have no qualms about hand/mouth contact, considering the repeated inhalations (breaths) of particulate-laden air into my particulate-trapping lungs.
Of course not, that would be absurd.
I'm so glad to hear that. I can't imagine anyone who grew up with my Dad would have been either ;)
I just saw this for the first time on my cable network...
I thought it was pretty good, and did not think that the nudity during the decontamination scenes was over the top or inappropriate...
I believe it is something that everyone should not be surprised in the least if this were to happen for real in this country...
The sooner some people get over the nervous ninny factor in a dramatization of something that could happen, anywhere...
The sooner we can effectively prepare for it, or better yet do the things we need to do to prevent it as best we can...
Otherwise, be prepared to be stripped, washed, scrubbed, all your posessions on your body destroyed, and be very uncomfortable at the very least...You will not have a choice...
The people who won't get that treatment are the ones we will never see again...
Reality really stinks if you ask me...
"Dirty War" was, and likely still is, available at Blockbuster.
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