NOTE TO PERSONS IN THE AREA: All debris is United States Government property and is critical to the investigation of the shuttle accident. Any and all debris from the accident is to be left alone and reported to Government authorities. Unauthorized persons found in possession of accident debris will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Taken from NASA.

All afternoon, since the shuttle explosion I have been listening to a rolling news station in Washington. All afternoon, Nasa has been repeating ad infinitum that the debris is dangerous and not to be touched. There is talk of quarantining huge swathes of eastern Texas and far beyond. One man, a barber from the town on which the debris is falling, talks of tingling in his mother’s fingers after she touched something that came down. So far, 27 people have been taken to hospital after getting too close to the debris.

What was really on that Shuttle?

Reminds me of the plot for The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton’s first book. Courtesy of Amazon:

A Nobel-winning bacteriologist, Jeremy Stone, urges the president to approve an extraterrestrial decontamination facility, to sterilise returning astronauts, satellites and spacecraft that might carry … an “unknown biologic agent.” The government agrees, almost too quickly, to build the top- secret Wildfire Lab in the desert of Nevada. Shortly thereafter, unbeknownst to Stone, the US Army initiates the “Scoop” satellite program, an attempt to actively collect space pathogens for use in biological warfare. When Scoop VII crashes a couple years later in the isolated Arizona town of Piedmont, they end up getting more than they asked for.

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