Nukes and Terrorists, Reality

[savage4presiden]

Read this:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45246

It shows how Bushs' failure to secure our southern border has enabled al Qaeda to bring nukes into the U.S. This is an outrage. If a nuke goes off in the U.S. I hold Bush responsible.

[Java King]

I don't think they're that advanced. Don't believe everything you read. The best they can do is hijack a plane & crash it into a building. If they were so powerful don't you think they would have done a nuke instead of a plane? All the WMD training I've been getting lately focuses on conventional bombs with chemical, biological, or radiological (dirty bombs) not nuclear.

[savage4presiden]

You don't have to be very advanced to make a call on your cell phone.

[Java King]

You don't have to be very advanced to make a call on your cell phone.

I understand your concern Savage but remember this. All those suitcase nukes from the cold war era have been poorly maintained over the years. It is a very complex and dangerous type of bomb to maintain. The terrorists could get killed themselves by the radiation alone. My recent haz-mat/WMD training focused on chemical/biological attacks and "dirty-bombs" which is not anywhere near what a nuclear bomb can do. If they had a working nuke don't you think they would have detonated it by now? They've had plenty of opportunities and the best they can do is conventional explosives & planes. I'm not too concerned about nukes & neither is most of the Emergency Services around me.

[savage4presiden]

I hear what you're saying. The thing is, though, that if it was that easy to bring nukes, even if they're faulty nukes, into the U.S. then what else have they managed to bring in? I know that al Qaeda could have attacked the U.S. any number of times in the past, but they are obsessed with dates of significance. The Madrid bombings occured 911 days after the trade centers went down. So, even if they have nukes that doesn't mean that they're not waiting for the next significant date.

[Stonie]

s4p,

The only people with the knowledge and know-how to make nukes small enough to fit into a backpack/suitcase are U.S. or Russian nuclear scientists.

Also, did you know that U.S. taxpayer dollars pay the salaries of Russian nuclear scientists at Arzamas-16 and elsewhere?

DPRK & Pakistan's nuclear programs are nowhere near this capability.

If I were you, I'd worry more about what's in the water you're drinking or the food you're eating. In my opinion, biological WMDs are far more likely than nuclear WMDs.

Thank god.

[ProWriter]

...The only people with the knowledge and know-how to make nukes small enough to fit into a backpack/suitcase are U.S. or Russian nuclear scientists...If I were you, I'd worry more about what's in the water you're drinking or the food you're eating. In my opinion, biological WMDs are far more likely than nuclear WMDs.Thank god.

They don't need to construct a sophisticated, self-contained suitcase device. Any decent physics student could build a fission device and the only real obstacle is the relative unavailability of weapons grade fissionable material.

The half-life of U-238 is in the many thousands of years, so, regardless how poorly maintained those old Soviet weapons are, as functioning devices, their fissionable cores remain intact for extraction and reuse indefinitely. Any physics student capable of building a working fission bomb is also capable of transporting the one or two kilograms of material in lead-lined containers into this country, either over borders or in the 98% of the 2000 shipping containers per day that DON'T get inspected at the ports.

All they have to do is unseal the material and assemble it into a device in a basement relatively close to any intended target. If they do it right, there's absolutely no need to take the device outside, or ever expose it to any of the radiation detectors so prominently displayed around sensitive, high-profile targets. Smuggle the material into a rented loft a few blocks from City Hall in Manhattan, assemble everything inside the apartment, and just blow themselves and everybody within a mile radius (including my office) up to meet Allah.

Their concept of time is very different from ours, so it may not happen immediately when they first acquire the capability. It may not be for another six years, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, for example, but I believe it's only a matter of time, and I just hope to be working/living somewhere else when it does.

[retired]

s4p,

The only people with the knowledge and know-how to make nukes small enough to fit into a backpack/suitcase are U.S. or Russian nuclear scientists.

[/i][/b].

Countries with Nuclear Weapons Capability

Acknowledged: Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, United States

Unacknowledged: Israel

Seeking: Iran, North Korea

[savage4presiden]

As I understand it, the article mentioned that they already had nukes. Assembled nukes. I also understand that their trigger mechanism needs to be replaced every six months; however, this is relatively simple.

[Stonie]

ProWriter,

The subject is backpack/suitcase nukes here, not basement nukes.

My statement still stands.

I wholeheartedly agree with what you said about building nukes on-site. I have no idea what sort of access nuclear physics students have to nuclear material in other countries, but in the U.S. the NRC is on top of things.

retired,

Just because a country has declared nuclear capability doesn't mean they are capable of making a bomb small enough to fit into a suitcase or backpack.

Russia did in fact make them small enough to fit into suitcases (250 of them I believe), and I have no doubt in my mind that we did too.

[ProWriter]

ProWriter,The subject is backpack/suitcase nukes here, not basement nukes. My statement still stands...I wholeheartedly agree with what you said about building nukes on-site. I have no idea what sort of access nuclear physics students have to nuclear material in other countries, but in the U.S. the NRC is on top of things.

Sorry, my mistake. I thought the topic here was TERRORISM and NUCLEAR TERRORISM. In that respect, if they manage to set off a bomb, who cares what the particular device is or whether it has a handle on it?

"There is virtually no doubt among intelligence
analysts al-Qaida has obtained fully assembled
nuclear weapons, according to Williams.
The only question is how many. Estimates range
between a dozen and 70. The breathtaking news
is that an undetermined number of these weapons,
including suitcase bombs, mines and crude tactical
nuclear weapons, have already been smuggled into
the U.S.

[Stonie]

Yeah man I'm with ya. You obviously know your stuff!

I just think that out of the 3 WMD possibilities, that a nuclear attack is the least likely to happen.

[pkagel]

Well, I'll tell you what, I currently work at a nuclear power plant while waiting on my background check for the PD so I can take that lovely 60% pay cut(even more if you factor benifits) and the NRC is very on top of things. We have more than 400 security personnel who are mostly former USMC and are better outfitted than any police force that I've ever witnessed. I work on most all the intruision prevention equipment and needless to say, you ain't gettin' in. This place is locked up better than any prison out there.

I will tell you about one piece of equipment we have because it could serve most LE agencies rather well. We have a portable explosion detector I'll try to explain in non-geek terms. Basically you take a swipe of something and then put it in the machine and it alarms telling you what is on the swipe if it is set up for that material. It can also be set up to detect drugs. Now here is where it could get real cool for LE. If you were to walk up and interview a witness you could swipe the door knob on the way in, take it back to your car and that would, in theory, give you PC to get a warrant so search. The machines cost us about 35K so they aren't cheap but their uses are awsome.

in the U.S. the NRC is on top of things.

[Interceptor]

Read this:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45246

Blah blah blah blah blah blah I hold Bush responsible.

You really think Kerry would have done a damn thing differently and that we would have secure borders if he won the election? Don't get me wrong, I'm ****ed as hell that we haven't secured out perimeter as well, but don't think for a minute the other side would have done anything differently. You would hold Bush responsible if a meteor hit the planet, saying he should have done things differently to prepare for it.

[Interceptor]

ProWriter,

The subject is backpack/suitcase nukes here, not basement nukes.

My statement still stands.

I wholeheartedly agree with what you said about building nukes on-site. I have no idea what sort of access nuclear physics students have to nuclear material in other countries, but in the U.S. the NRC is on top of things.

retired,

Just because a country has declared nuclear capability doesn't mean they are capable of making a bomb small enough to fit into a suitcase or backpack.

Russia did in fact make them small enough to fit into suitcases (250 of them I believe), and I have no doubt in my mind that we did too.

I seem to remember hearing something a while back that during the cold war, we had back pack nukes that a soldier could carry into battle.

I also read an article somewhere a few months ago that listed a frightning number of nukes that we had lost either to crashed bombers or sunken subs. I think they recently found one off the east cost that the plane had to drop due to some trouble, and they were trying to recover it. Scary as hell to think of a nuke as something that you just lose.