Nuke in a big American city -- just a matter of time?

[wtmusic]

With America managing to somehow dispose of 50 years of general good will in short order, how long is it before a terrorist with some resources manages to sneak a nuke over the border and flattens uptown Manhattan, the Chicago loop, or downtown LA?

I'm convinced that without some serious foreign policy repair work this is a distinct possibility in the next 20 years. I grew up in the cold war, and still have some old Civil Defense pamplets on preparing for a nuclear war. Gonna dig them out and prepare for survival. When it happens it's going to be every bit the surprise 9/11 was.

Anybody else taking steps, or am I just :scared:?

[mike_c]

1. I agree that it's likely unless the U.S. makes some serious...

...foreign policy changes. Probably too late in any event, IMO. It's not the same world as 40 years ago.

[Must_B_Free]

2. Maybe if we quit opposing Bush they won't need another attack

[LibertyorDeath]

3. The writing is on the wall I wish to hell it wasn't but you can't

run around the world kicking people in the teeth telling them it's for their own good without some major pay back.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. It would have to be LIHOP

Particle detectors can detect nuclear material easily, and the cost of such devices is relatively low, according to any number of lay articles about terror defense. Even an aluminum-foil-leaf radiation detector can pick nuclear energy emissions up; neutron detectors are far more sensitive. The government uses such technology as part of its defensive strategy.

Shielded by water, the neutrons get absorbed by the water, so transporting a nuke in a bottom hold of a ship is doable, but it should be easy to keep a few detectors active on a dock. Exploding a Hiroshima-class nuke (10-15 kT) within the ship, 10-50 feet under water, would reduce its destructive potential severely. If you parked such a ship-bomb on the docks of downtown NYC, you'd probably leave NYU untouched. Move the bomb to the top deck of the ship, and NYU would be flattened.

The point? If a nuke is smuggled into the USA and is detonated at or above ground level, somebody either messed up bad, or wanted the detonation to take place.

--bkl

[wtmusic]

5. Assuming the nuke is brought in near a particle detector, and...

that the nuke is not adequately shielded (which would make the particle detector useless), and the nuke is not in one of the hundreds of uninspected containers which arrive in US ports every day, and the nuke is not one of the new generation of 'suitcase' nukes which fit quite conveniently in the trunk of a car, and...

Not nearly that hard.

[Dogmudgeon]

8. My own take ...

Good points, and probably fatal to most attempts at security, but loopholes are two-way:

First, I'm working under the impression that lab-grade neutron detectors are pretty sensitive, and using two or more, the source of the emmission can be triangulated.

Second, "adequate shielding" is difficult for a small terror cell to arrange; they would likely use the bottom hold of a ship, since water is an excellent shield all by itself.

Third, not every container would have to be inspected -- see the remark on triangulation, above.

Fourth, how powerful are suitcase nukes; how expensive are they?

A cheap-and-dirty Hiroshima type bomb would be much easier to fabricate and move around than something expensive, less powerful, and subject to tight monitoring, like a suitcase or backpack nuke. Of course, with access to al-Saud money, buying an H-Bomb on the illicit weapons market isn't out of the question, either.

Beyond that, I'm a layman with just enough education in nuclear physics to understand the basic ideas. If I've overestimated the precision or power of the detectors, or flubbed some other detail, let me know.

Either way, it's not encouraging, especially with an arrogant holy roller in the White House.

--bkl

[wtmusic]

10. And good points yourself

IMO the most important new factor here is the motivation. With the revelation that Pakistan's nuke plans have made it to Indonesia and Libya, there are just two many people and too much of a cause, thanks to Moron Junior.

[Snoggera]

6. It has always been only a matter of time

for someone, somewhere to obtain and use a nuclear weapon. There has never been, in the history of mankind, a weapon that wasn't used. The US used the Atom bomb twice, and spent the next 55 years attempting to convince the rest of the world that this was a "bad" technology. The rest of the world has taken awhile to catch up, but when even Pakistan has nukes, you know that eventually an event will happen to trigger a launch. Israel also.

Here's a thought. How would the world view and treatment of Palestinians change if they announced possession of a nuclear weapon? Ah, but that is for another forum, perhaps at another time.

edit: too many fingers on the keyboard with their own ideas about what to type (errors).

[wtmusic]

7. Welcome to DU Snoggera

:bounce: :toast: :bounce:

And good food for thought on the Palestinian question. No doubt they would instantly earn respect for their cause...

[JCMach1]

9. Not as easy as all that

because detectors as were stated above...

Also, in large part, the suitcase nuke stories are just that... stories.

Any nuke brought in would have to be quite large and heavy.


Dirty bomb, that's a whole other ball game....!

[megaplayboy]

12. nuclear artillery shells don't weigh too much...

around 60-80kg for a 155mm and 100-120kg for 203mm. Both we and the Soviets built such devices. With a shielding mechanism, it would still weigh less than 500 to 1000 lb, and fit in an SUV or similar light truck. Yield would be around 5kt.

there are several thousand miles of border, I really doubt we can detect a small nuke with some shielding around it coming in anywhere--couldn't they put a small nuke at the bottom of a supertanker full of oil, and detonate once the tanker came in to port? 20kt a-bomb igniting a half million tons of oil becomes a strat nuke, in effect.

that's it,off to bed--pleasant dreams, kids :nuke:

[sleepystudent]

11. I honestly don't think so...

Maybe I am just a hopeless optimist, but I even think that terrorists know the apocalypse that that would unleash onto the world due to American anger-it would get the world destroyed IMO. Basically we really do have all the nuclear bombs, so I think they know what would happen if that was to occur. People would be baying for blood. I'll even admit I might be calling for something on the level of divine wrath if that happened.

Also, I think if there is a threat of a bio, chemical, nuclear attack(God forbid) it could very well be homegrown. People are so fixated on foreign terrorists when we have pretty scary people on our own soil. People are not really profiling some Caucasian Neo-Nazi and that makes it easier for him or her to gain access to stuff that could cause damage. And there a lot of smart crazy loners in America. So we need to be vigilant about other Americans as well.

That being said, I think this is yet another reason Kerry must win-we need real "homeland security" and money should be ponied up to secure the ports and let the cops make sure nothing dicey even has a chance of occurring. Right now Bush is just paying lip service to protecting us.

And after hearing more and more about dirty bombs, I am less and less concerned about them strangely enough-the more you hear about them, the less the psychological factor, which is the main tactic they use with dirty bombs, is applicable.

Also the "suitcase bombs" ( I agree that's a load of hot air) as well as all nuclear bombs, have intricate codes that require a lot of people to activate and set off and only a few people in the military know the activation codes. So if they stole a nuclear bomb, they would need the codes to activate it, but they are close to impossible to obtain and decipher.

[ChrisNYC]

13. I have nightmares many nights

I live in Manhattan, fully realize the disaster of our policies, yet know I will be the one to pay the price. Why is it the guy in Kansas runs our foreign policy, when there is about a 0% chance Kansas will ever suffer a terror attack? I actually have a recurring nightmare where I'm walking down the street and suddenly a gas cloud (similar to the post 9/11 cloud on the city) appears and people are gagging and falling over from gas. The really sad thing is in my own mind, it's a matter of when, not if. Yet I still live here...

[sleepystudent]

14. I live in NYC too...

and I totally see the irony in the people that support the policies never being the ones that have to face the consequences for those policies. We just need to agitate like hell for real security at ports of entry if the foreign policy is fucked for now. Also, I guess I am just oblivious, but I actually don't think about it that much-sometimes flashes of anxiety on the subway or on Wall Street, but I can rationalize it away..."I'm not on the subway at rush hour"..."It's Saturday afternoon, they would want heavy press coverage, so it's cool"... and so on. Crazy, maybe, but worrying about it all the time is not productive.

[ChrisNYC]

15. You have a better outlook

But I work on Wall Street and take the subway or bus during rush hour every day. I'm probably just paranoid, but it's disturbing how many mornings I'm sitting on the bus just reading my book and I have a flash of those buses in Israel that have been blown apart. What better way to cripple this city than to make people scared to use MTA? Damn it was nice when I thought the end of the Soviet Union was the end of major enemies...