How soon before a nuclear warhead detonates on American soil?

EMINEM · Post by **EMINEM** » Fri Feb 15, 2002 10:50 pm

The number one question that haunts the minds of America's sentinels. Is nuclear terrorism inevitable? Do you think it will actually happen? Why or why not? How can the US better prepare against such a threat? To what extent, social, economical, political, would America and the world change if even one - just one - hydrogen bomb were make it past America's fences and detonated? If 9-11 was a wake up call, reminding us to greater or lesser degrees of what is most important in life, how would the day of this nightmare scenario alter our perspectives?

ThorinOakensfield · Post by **ThorinOakensfield** » Fri Feb 15, 2002 10:58 pm

Who has nukes? Which countries..?

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Feb 15, 2002 11:03 pm

I'd be equally concerned wherever a nuclear bomb was deliberately detonated, @Eminem, to kill people. There won't be just one. If it happens once, all bets are off, and the US will see its mental shields crumble, and face the necessity of joining the rest of a stricken world.

EMINEM · Post by **EMINEM** » Fri Feb 15, 2002 11:04 pm

RE: Who has nukes? Which countries..?

US, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel, China, probably Iraq, probably Iran, probably North Korea. I'm not sure about Britain and the European nations, but the technology is certainly not beyond the ken of their engineers and scientists.

ThorinOakensfield · Post by **ThorinOakensfield** » Fri Feb 15, 2002 11:09 pm

Originally posted by EMINEM
RE: Who has nukes? Which countries..?

US, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel, China, probably Iraq, probably Iran, probably North Korea. I'm not sure about Britain and the European nations, but the technology is certainly not beyond the ken of their engineers and scientists.

So the nations to worry about are Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
Iraq is the only one daring enough to try that.
Everybody knows that we would nuke them so bad, if sent a missile towards.

EMINEM · Post by **EMINEM** » Fri Feb 15, 2002 11:20 pm

Originally posted by ThorinOakensfield

So the nations to worry about are Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
Iraq is the only one daring enough to try that.
Everybody knows that we would nuke them so bad, if sent a missile towards.

I agree, but the damage would have already been done. Annihilating the cradle of civilization will prove to be of little comfort to anyone.

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 12:03 am

We really have to ask ourselves two questions here: 1) Who has the technology to build or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons? 2) Of those countries, who has the will to use them?

Some of our friends have already gone through the countries which either have or can easily get nuclear weapons, and of those, the most hostile to the United States are China, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. The other nuclear states are either on our side or have too much to lose in starting a war against us. China won't attack the United States because our sweatshops are propping up their economy right now. That leaves North Korea, Iran and Iraq, plus any terrorists cells that have the means to buy a nuke from someone else.

No nation will use a nuclear weapon in anger against the United States. Not even Iraq or North Korea. The only nation which could hope to retaliate against the thermonuclear vengeance of America is the Russian Federation, and they won't be the one's firing. Pakistan and India have nukes to use against each other. North Korea wants nukes to use against South Korea. Iraq wants them to use against Israel. Israel has them as a weapon of last resort.

Even a madman like Saddam Hussein knows that unveiling a nuclear weapon will probably get him assassinated, and that using one will get him and his country turned into radioactive dust. Hussein may be crazy, but he's smart enough to back down when he knows he's overmatched, plus he doesn't want to die. He has shown time and time again that if you beat him down, he will go away for a while. To Saddam Hussein, having a nuclear weapon is a status symbol and something to wave around menacingly, but I don't think he'd ever seriously think about using it.

In short, the political stakes of using a nuclear weapon against a major military and economic power (the EU, the US, etc.) are just way too high to use one. The danger is of a small rogue state or terrorist organisation with nothing to lose getting their hands on a nuclear device then detonating it.

Even if a country like Iraq or North Korea gets a high-yield nuclear device (the kind that can destroy a city), they have the problem of delivery. How many countries have Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM's)? You can count them on two hands and, outside of Russia and the Ukraine, they're all in the West. The North Koreans are the closest to developing a long-range ballistic missile, but theirs are still the medium-range variety; they could hit Alaska or maybe even British Columbia, but not the continental US. Iran and Iraq only have short-range Soviet-era SCUD missiles that can shoot about as far as an old German V-2.

Even if you could find a delivery system, thermonuclear devices are not small. The first hydrogen bomb used an atom bomb as a detonator. If you've seen pictures of the first nuclear weapons used in combat (Little Man and Fat Boy), you can see that they're about the size of Volkswagons. Technology has made the devices a little smaller, but not much.

Aside from big ballistic missiles, the only delivery systems are either submarines (and then using a small ballistic missile) or by airplane. It think it's safe to say that no terrorist organisation, nor Iran, Iraq or North Korea have "boomer" subs or strategic bombers, so that leaves terrorists. If I were a suicidal terrorist, I would load a nuke up in a UPS or FedEx cargo plane, hijack the crew and detonate it over a city. That's assuming I could acquire the device, load it on to a plane undetected then take control of the aircraft, and that the USAF doesn't shoot me down on the way.

Any nuclear weapon used against the United States will probably be a small one; something like those briefcase-sized ones the Soviets developed (and then lost) or a device similar to the weapon in the George Clooney movie The Peacemaker. These weapons will not be fission devices, but probably explosives packed with radioactive powder. These devices have some advantages and disadvantages to their use.

First of all, they're fairly easy to build . . . if you can get your hands on radioactive material and if you can manufacture it without contaminating yourself and the delivery mechanism. They're also compact; the Soviets could fit one in a briefcase or backpack.

Unfortunately, they're not really powerful. The radioactive material in them won't detonate itself. Instead, it will use an explosive charge to disperse the radioactive payload, spreading it over an area. Two problems here: If you use too much explosive, the radioactive dust will spread out too thin and lose its effectiveness. If you concentrate it over a small area, you won't affect as many people (fewer people will die or get radiation poisoning).

Even if you figure out a way to deliver a nuclear weapon, a terrorist or rogue state would have to get nuclear material. The Soviets had a lot of it lying around, but not all of it was weapons grade. Still, a terrorists best bet would be to buy/bribe some away from a Russian, Kazak or Ukranian outpost. Discounting states for the moment, how many terrorists organisations can afford nuclear material? Not many. Al-Qaeda, with the backing of Osama bin Laden, was the best bet. Now that they've scattered, their known assest frozen and their supply base destroyed, I don't think they're going to be in the market to buy nuclear material in the near future.

So where does this leave us? I personally do not believe that someone will take out an American city with a nuclear weapon. No one has both the means and the will to do it. What I fear more, and not from a body count perspective, is three or four cells, each armed with a single low-yield device detonating them in major cities across the US. The actual impact would be minimal. The blast would probably only injure/kill a handful of people and the radioactive material would disperse fairly quickly, so its physical cost would be just slightly higher than a car bomb (but probably far less than the Oklahoma City bombing).

The psychological impact would be devastating, though. I see the American public either coalescing together and stomping on some bad guys (real or imagined) or us retreating back behind our ballistic missile shield and returning to the isolationist ways we had in the 1930s.

Disclaimer: If you're wondering how I know all this stuff about building briefcase bombs, I saw it on CNN.

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 1:16 am

Originally posted by HighLordDave
The psychological impact would be devastating, though. I see the American public either coalescing together and stomping on some bad guys (real or imagined) or us retreating back behind our ballistic missile shield and returning to the isolationist ways we had in the 1930s.

I agree with you there - American reaction will go one of two ways - we'll go stomping over some bad guys, or we'll become isolationist in the extreme. Recent events support the probability of the former happening, while our experience with militia groups point to the probability of the latter happening (many of whom firmly believe the U.S. should pull out of the U.N.).

Tamerlane · Post by **Tamerlane** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 1:51 am

Originally posted by EMINEM
RE: Who has nukes? Which countries..?

US, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel, China, probably Iraq, probably Iran, probably North Korea. I'm not sure about Britain and the European nations, but the technology is certainly not beyond the ken of their engineers and scientists.

Your forgetting the shocking state of corruption within countries such as Russia. Nuclear scientists who have not been paid in months have often resulted in selling U-235, as means to feed their family. U-235 to 238 are generally the preferred raw components needed for a bomb to work properly.

Also France, Britain and a number of Eastern European countries, hold nuclear weapons or have the capability to create nuclear weapons as a by-product of the fall of the Soviet Union.

Gothmog · Post by **Gothmog** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 3:13 am

Hoo boy!

I hate to rain on this parade, but nukes have been detonated on American soil since the 50's. Anybody ever hear of Los Alamos or the Nevada testing grounds?

And before we get too self righteous building boogey-men out of the North Koreans or Iraquis (sp?) lets remember one thing. In the entire history of the world, only ONE nation has ever been so callous as to use nuclear weapons against other human beings. And that winners of that unfortunate "honor"...

Us. Americans. The good 'ol USofA.

And don't bother with any of that grade school revisionist history drivel about us not having a choice or doing it to save soldiers lives...Japan was practically begging to surrender, but we spent a LOT of money on our little toys and we damn sure were going to use them.

I'm personally a LOT more worried about the attack on our Constitution and civil liberties than I am about the propaganda our so-called journalists are spewing these days. Thank god for Bill Mahr. At least one American with access to mass media has the guts to speak the truth.....

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 8:58 am

@Gothmog:
Not to revive an argument that got ugly at times, but see some of my comments over on the Was dropping the A-bomb right? thread. Yes, the United States government has been using nuclear weapons on American soil for years (and even using unsuspecting American soldiers and scientists as guinea pigs), but those don't figure in to this argument because the were not used in anger; we knew when they were going off, we knew where and we knew they wouldn't devastate any population centers.

@Tamerlane:
I am sure that Russian scientists are selling U-235 and U-238 (and probably some plutonium too), but their clients are probably states (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, India, Israel). The problem for them, as I said before, isn't necessarily the technology, but safely being able to manufacture a nuclear weapon and a delivery system. In my opinion, that's the major obstacle for terrorists using a thermonuclear device; they don't have either the facilities or the means to build and bombard an American city.

ThorinOakensfield · Post by **ThorinOakensfield** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 10:46 am

Also Saddam would use his nukes on Iran.

Gothmog · Post by **Gothmog** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 6:45 pm

we knew when they were going off, we knew where and we knew they wouldn't devastate any population centers.

Who is we? The civillians living near the test range knew the bombs were going off when they felt the shockwave and saw the cloud.

And I don't get this "not in anger" bit....is it worse to be killed by an angry terrorist or an idiotic and irresponsible government?

Civillians...yes, civillins died by the hundreds for our nuclear program.

Oak ridge, Tn. "Let's inject people in the poorhouse and state mental hospital with plutonium....'cuz we need to see what the effects will be."

And the HUNDREDS, yes hundreds of civillians irradiated by the "Ivy-Mike" shot had no idea that the deadly fallout was killing them as they stood and watched the cloud rise. Six towns...populations centers, albiet small ones, were devastated because our nuke-happy military brass couldn't be bothered by a little wind and ran their tests DESPITE being told repeatedly that the wind was wrong for the shot. They knew the effects would be carried off the test range....they just didn't care.

And we have the gall to call other countries "terrorist".

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 6:51 pm

To quote (from memory) the ever amusing Rich Hall:

"Isn't it scary, countries like india and pakistan having Nukes, i mean the US worked on an upward scale with their technology, you get the car, then the radio then the TV, then onwards to Nukes, but some of these countries are like; Guy sitting in a desert charming snakes with a whistle to...Nuclear weapons, in one giant leap."

I think it will greatly depend on the responsibility of the nations involved, how much can one rely on the temprament is anyones guess.

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 7:53 pm

You're comparing apples and oranges. The original question posed in this thread was basically, what if someone blew up a city with a nuclear bomb?

That's wholly different that the United States's nuclear testing program(s), which you rightly point out harmed many more Americans than we will probably know about. People used to line up in Las Vegas to watch nuclear tests; aside from the gambling it was actually a tourist draw for the city. The results of those tests and the details of those programs are just now coming to light, so their impact is lessened because of the time elapsed and because of the spin on the bombing.

You're also wrong about two other points. First of all, the "revisionist drivel" isn't that we used nuclear weapons in order to preserve lives. That has been the prevailing train of thought and rationale for the last 57 years. In the early 1990s, historians, political scientists and America's critics began saying that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary. Citing many humanitarian reasons, and with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, they put forth the revisionist position which you have taken.

Second, the Japanese were not "practically begging to surrender". If they had wanted to capitulate, they could have at any time and the world would have been a better place for it. However, they rejected the Potsdam Declaration, declined to entertain envoys from the Allies and there were many strong elements in Japan that wanted to fight to the last man. The fighting on Okinawa ended on or about 21 June 1945. The first atomic weapon was dropped on 6 August. If the Japanese had wanted to surrender so badly, why didn't they do it when there was a lull in the fighting?

ThorinOakensfield · Post by **ThorinOakensfield** » Sat Feb 16, 2002 8:18 pm

I don't think the Japanese believed that the US would go as far as to nuke their cities for peace.