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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27147 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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Compared to what happens if you try to order the wrong chemicals from a supply shop, that'd actually be worse.

May I remind you that the state of shipping security is an absolute joke. People order clearly labeled radioactive material online. Have it shipped over a weekend through USPS and no one even bats an eye, EVEN WHEN IT'S not packaged safely.

So I'm actually not surprised you can just order some bioweapons online and some clueless numbskull with ship them to you and you'd get your package left at the curb.

I'm honestly shocked we haven't had a tragedy related to shipping iffy stuff and those delivery truck thieves.

This here. I once ordered some (depleted) uranium for shits and giggles; imagine my surprise when it actually turned up and then I had to dispose of it...

Depleted uranium is barely radioactive - to the point where it is used in preference to lead for radiation shielding because of the higher density.

Like almost all heavy metals, uranium is a dangerous chemical poison, but you can order lead in the mail and expect it to arrive with no issues, and nobody has a problem with this.

Yeah, the limited quantity and type A rules seem a little awkwardly designed, either to prevent shipping accidents, shipping theft, or radioactive boyscout incidents. At the same time, the thresholds for serious levels of radioactive material seem more sufficient... if they're obeyed religiously by people who often have little or no ability to verify or validate them. And while most orphan source incidents have occurred outside of the United States, there have been incidents within the US, including relatively recent ones.

That said, the concern here is less someone porch-pirating vials of virulent disease shipped to a legitimate user, and more someone that (given the variety of materials!) probably didn't steal them from a nearby lab. If you go to Sigma-Aldrich as a rando and try to over a ton of uranium, they'll not only say no, they might send your info to the feds. Same for even small amounts of red phosphorus, which was actually a nontrivial problem for the LK99 replication crews.

I'd assumed that was the case for a lot of biologicals, but perhaps not. Unreported mass thefts of infectious agents would be bad, but even if Zhu had ordered them through a cooperative mainstream lab which did have conventional uses and then passed it on to Prestige, it seems like the sort of thing that the feds should be kinda interested in at least tracking down.

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