There are the glass workers of Mirzabad, the leather workers of Kolhapur and Agra, the silk weavers in other cities, and so on.

FORBES: Saving India's Silk Weavers

Blast-resistant windows protected many workers at the Pentagon from flying glass, according to House Administration Committee Chairman Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio.

CNN: U.S. Capitol getting security overhaul

Netting is being hung on their facades to protect workers at the site from falling pieces of glass or concrete.

CNN: New York issuing 'recovery notes' to help city rebuild

At about the same time, the nuclear industry started using force feedback devices to help workers manipulate hazardous, radioactive materials with slave arms through thick, leaded glass.

FORBES: Desktop fingerprints

David Sanderson, a physicist at the Scottish universities' research and reactor centre, says that while this would need heavy investment (and a lot of workers), plutonium can be mixed with waste and vitrified into storable glass blocks, so making it unusable in bombs if any terrorists managed to steal some.

ECONOMIST: The nuclear industry

At a pace which astonishes international relief workers, especially those who know aid-addicted Bosnia, they are ordering timber from Montenegro, glass from Bulgaria and bricks from Serbia.

ECONOMIST: The market-minded Kosovars