What is *categorically* wrong with a nuclear response to a biological attack?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Regarding recent US nuclear launch policy changes...

Assuming a nuclear response is appropriate to a nuclear attack, whether as deterrent stance or practical tactics, why would a biological attack be so different?

What is informing this is thinking of a biological attack as something less extreme than a nuclear attack.

That has been the case in the past but that is not a good basis for doctrine. A biological attack is conceptually at least as extreme and alarming.

We have developed and will continue to develop gene-manipulating techniques that were unthinkable a few decades ago. Having some existing germs lobbed at you is one thing but none of us can say what modern engineered bio could be capable of. We literally do not know. What techniques and discoveries will next year bring?

Some anthrax mailed around is not any sort of existential threat but if a technologically advanced state actor wanted to develop bio-weapons at least as devastating as a nuclear attack it is well within the realm of possibility.

If a state actor unleashed a lethal designed organism, like say ebola engineered to have a two week communicable latency, it would be as bad as any other weapon folks can dream up.

Ironically, in our stupid panic over Saddam's supposed smallpox stockpile (intel based almost entirely on the fact they had a refrigerator of smallpox vaccine labeled 'smallpox') we laid in enough smallpox vaccine that the US is now in a position to use smallpox as a weapon against all the nations who don't have vaccine stores.

Now ask yourself, if the US vaccinated everyone here and then lobbed a bunch of smallpox into some hapless nation would that be clearly less extreme and less in need of deterrence?

Seriously... think it through. Would anyone on Earth say, "Well, it's just killing off 10-20% of the population of an enemy... it's not something serious like if they nuked anyone."

Leaving aside whether we should nuke anybody, assuming we should use nukes in some circumstances I would say that bio can qualify just fine.

[TheWraith]

1. Deploying biological weapons is notoriously dangerous to all involved.

Frankly, nuclear weaponry is in many ways much safer and more predictable than a bio-weapon, since it can be targeted, contained, and prevented from premature release. All of those things are haphazard when it comes to bio-weapons.

[Lerkfish]

3. Strontium 90 can be contained? really?

well, sure, after 90 years or so its only half as dangerous.

[Dr Morbius]

7. Technically, it's every bit as dangerous. There's just half as much of it.

[cliffordu]

8. rofl.

Well played, sir, well played.

[Lerkfish]

11. precisely correct

[TheWraith]

9. A nuclear blast affects a very limited area.

Even assuming a fission bomb at groundburst, which would maximize fallout, the affected area is limited and predictable.

A bio-weapon, on the other hand, can travel in completely unpredictable ways, affecting a vastly larger area than a nuclear weapon.

[Lerkfish]

12. we'll have to disagree on that. STRONGLY DISAGREE

you're ignoring fallout -- you're just talking blast area.

fallout, from irradiated debris that rises thousands of feet in the air, can travel wherever it wishes, depending on wind patterns.
As we know from Chernobyl, that can be a large area indeed.

and the disadvantage of nuclear fallout is nearly permanent. It renders an area unlivable for the long foreseeable future. Bioweapons only last a short amount of time and may only affect one generation.
Keep in mind that anthrax has always been with us (as an example) and yet the human race has survived.

I think you're looking through the telescope from the wrong end.

If you want to know how "safe" and "predictable" the aftereffects of a nuclear weapon strike are, I suggest you read up on Hiroshima and keep in mind that bomb is like a firecracker compared to current weaponry.


and, I just want to add that I find it horrifying that anyone would call a nuclear weapon "predictable" and "controlled"... spreading disinformation like that is dangerous, IMHO.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

56. Radioactive materials have been with us since the planet formed...

...(as an example) and yet the human race has survived.

A lot of comments in this post seem to be arguing that nuclear weapons are dangerous, which nobody disputes.

The point of friction is that some people who have an excellent understanding of nuclear weaponry and radiation are saying that biological agents have the potential to be as bad or worse.

Since you haven't taken in the real potential and implications of engineered organisms you (and others) are reading that as trivializing nuclear weapons.

Some things about bio pathogens... there have almost certainly been thousands of extinction-level germs in our planet's history. Such germs are failures, however, because once they have killed everything susceptible they then starve away.

The sturdiest germs, evolutionarily, are nuisance germs... parasites that do not kill the host. And evolution favors less lethal germs because a super-lethal new germ tears its way through the *local* host population... burns itself out.

We are full of germs that help us, which is an excellent evolutionary strategy. (That's why antibiotics can cause diarhea... they kill useful digestive germs along with the targeted pathogens.)

But we are nearing a point, scientifically, where we could engineer germs that would have a difficult time evolving on their own.

And, unlike nuclear weapons, there are no well understood limits on how bad a germ can get. That doesn't trivialize nukes. But we know to a thousand decimal places how radioactive materials behave. They are horrible, but we can say how horrible.

Nobody can say what engineered viruses could or could not do.

They are legitimately frightening and (unlike chemical weapons) capable of replication and even subsequent mutation. (Though on average subsequent mutations would decrease lethality there are no guarantees.)

Nobody is going to be writing speculative stories about some gamma radiation that escapes a lab and becomes super-gamma radiation because that's silly. But it is not absurd to speculate about viruses that way.

So if a nation seeks a deterrent posture it seems that deterring bio ought to be a high priority. That's all.

[TheWraith]

65. I'm not ignoring fallout at all.

It's not disinformation to point out that the effects of a nuclear detonation are scientifically predictable, and you can know almost exactly how much damage it's going to cause. That's simple fact. There's a lot less room for random chance than with any kind of biological weapon, or to a lesser extent chemical weapons. Someone could calculate the blast radius of a nuke, map it against a target, and determine the rough number of casualties. The blast radius is specific, the fallout follows known wind patterns, and it breaks down and dies out after a given amount of time. A virus or bacteria is not predictable at all, and there's no "off button." It doesn't stop once deployed. You don't know if a bioweapon is going to kill a hundred people, or a million. Or a billion.

Also, Chernobyl is a bad comparison to a nuclear warhead, since the reactor had vastly more radiologic material inside it than a bomb would. In comparison, Hiroshima is an operational city today, and has a population of almost 1.2 million people.

[NJmaverick]

2. The problem with the type of biological warfare you are thinking of

is that it tends to indiscriminate. In other words odds are very good the attack would eventually reach the people that launched it.

As for smallpox, it's a difficult agent to spread as those that would be infectious would also look and be very sick.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. If we seek to deter only the most rational acts our task would be easy

Our long-time nuclear mutually assured destruction doctrine was nothing if not indiscriminate. If nuclear winter models proved accurate we would have been looking at a global situation quite similar to a particularly destructive pandemic striking friend and foe alike.

(Could China develop agents that kill 35% of infected caucasians and africans but only 5% of infected east asians? Not right now but it isn't a cetegorical impossibility. And we were willing to go toe-to-toe with the USSR with worse numbers than that.)

Regarding smallpox, if we released smallpox into the average nation in a way calculated to maximize effect there would be little hope of containing it, no matter how overtly ill people were. Think of the effect in Iran--like most muslim nations a good bit more urbanized then the US. Or Somalia. Or North Korea, a nation with almost no public health infrastructure whatsoever.

I am not suggesting that we would do that, but noting that if we did the world would be no less horrified than if dropped a few megatons.

In all but a few first-world nations we could achieve literal decimation with a handy old virus. As to what we have in Fort Detrick... well, I hope we have something on hand a lot worse than smallpox.

(I say that because the only way to keep ahead of biologicals is to have an aggressive program of development of terrible pathogens in order to see what is doable. So, trusting soul that I am, I assume we are doing just that. If we can come up with something really bad then we know that somebody else will come up with the same thing eventually. And we ought to know about it.)

I understand that these stances are diplomatic in nature and that in practice we will always nuke whoever we feel like nuking on a given day. And if our new stance is diplomatically useful then that's fine.

But given the arc of bio-technology the lethality of bio agents will expand a lot more in the next generation than the lethality of chemical or nuclear/physic-based weaponry. I believe we (humans) are likely to develop species-threatening pathogens before we develop, say, anti-matter weaponry.

Of course, given the cut-backs on our space program we are missing out on the ultimate cost-effective mutual-assured-destruction vehicle which would be to push some large asteroids into the sun. The resultant activity would blow off our entire ozone layer without a backward glance.

[mr715]

15. Huh?

"Of course, given the cut-backs on our space program we are missing out on the ultimate cost-effective mutual-assured-destruction vehicle which would be to push some large asteroids into the sun. The resultant activity would blow off our entire ozone layer without a backward glance."

[Mz Pip]

20. I think any large

asteroid would burn up long before it even "hit" the sun.

[mr715]

21. Well, and it wouldn't collide with the sun's "surface"

It would vaporize quickly and disperse.

If the Earth fell into the sun, I doubt Venus would feel a breeze.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

24. ...

[mr715]

27. What is your basis for saying that?

Likewise with no malice.

Here is a link to a PBS site with an interview with a NASA scientist.

Q: What would happen if an Apophis-like asteroid hit the sun instead of the Earth? What could be the outcome, and how would it affect our planet? Thank you.
Edwin, Los Angeles, California

A: Small comets currently hit the sun rather frequently without any apparent effect. Our sun could swallow Apophis with no trouble at all, and there would be no affect to Earth.


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3313/01-ask.html



Also Ceres is the largest asteroid by mass (94 x 10^19 kg), it is way lower than the sun (1.9 x 10^30 kg). In addition, the sun would hit Ceres with a massive tidal force that'd break it apart. Comets and junk hit the sun, and we don't feel it. Solar flares are not caused by matter hitting the sun, but by electromagnetic pulses in the core propagating out.



Why do you think asteroids hitting the sun would be a problem for Earth?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

55. It was a comment in jest

I was being playful with it. But the concept has been used by "hard" science-fiction writers (of the actual physicists turned sf writer type) and was probably derived from some 1980s paper or another that, judging from the certainty in the comment you link, probably superseded since.

If someone had a MAD doctrine via moving asteroids it would be more efficient to lob them at Earth--cut out the middle man.

Your link is interesting and appreciated and if the concept is invalid then I accept that.

My objection was to the tone of the set of comments, not yours in particular.

An asteroid would not burn up before hitting the sun. The solar surface isn't very hot and were an asteroid melted on the way in it would retain the same mass and kinetic energy. Even if it were broken down into marble-sized droplets it would have the same effect... there is nothing on the sun to shatter with a rigid object ad water poured into water makes ripples as well as ice cubes do.

And kinetic energy is an important part of the concept... presumably the would be accelerated, not merely "dropped. I was objecting to some degree to the idea that since the sun is huge and couldn't be damaged by such collisions that it follows automatically that such collisions would be trivial. They would be trivial to the sun.

Disruptions in the solar surface (if they were possible) would not create normal flares but would release a lot of energy quickly (while not increasing the suns output over time)... like blowing the surface layer of ash off an ember. And we operate within such a narrow range of solar output that we could not stand much of a short temporary increase.

Comets (clumped frozen gas) are no very massive compared to asteroids (stone and metal) and I still suspect that Ceres would inconvenience Earth if accelerated sufficiently. And I will stick to my general sense that if Venus--being almost infinitely more massive than a comet--were dropped into the sun, as one comment mentioned, it would most certainly wreck life on Earth's surface.

But it was a light-hearted comment about a speculative concept so I was being annoyed at being challenged on it in the context of the OP.

Then I realized I was being silly to be annoyed and deleted the comment.

[mr715]

57. Thank you for a well stated post.

Your point about the mass of asteroids versus comets is valid. I just don't know about the comparative masses and speeds of asteroids and comets.

Jupiter has no solid surface either and it got battered by a nasty comet in the 90's. Shoemaker-Levy 9. First Jupiter's gravity pulled the comet apart and then the pieces fell to his surface resulting in huge explosions. But Jupiter is cold up near the cloud tops.

I believe that the acceleration aspect is interesting, but I just think the sun is so huge that it wouldn't make much of a different. The sun's mass in 99.84% of the solar system. All the dust, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, ducklings in the solar system only make up 0.16%! I mean what is the likelihood that a huge asteroid hits just the right part of the sun to eject enough ions to slam into the Earth's upper atmosphere in just the right way?

We can discuss this further if you want.

Incidentally, I think orbital weapons are or were considered by governments as well as writers (like you said) in the 80s and 90s. They'd deliver a nuclear equivalent payload (and I imagine it'd have no real upper limit) without the radiation. Probably set off some nasty, nasty earthquakes too. I think they are called seismic weapons.

Anyway, I really appreciate this discussion. Love any opportunity to talk science.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

58. re: what is the likelihood

At random, very low, but we are talking about an intentional act so the aiming and timing would be pretty simple. (A lot simpler than the engine required to do the job.)

The relative size of the sun shouldn't enter into it because the objective (based on me thinking here, not based on what anyone knowledgeable has said) is not to affect the sun, just disrupt the photosphere a little. Given the surprising rotational speed of the sun any hot-spot on the elliptic would probably get us a few times before dying down.

I doubt anything particularly large has plunged into the sun for millions of years since everything other than comets has been pretty well swept up so there's no handy precedent.

In any event, I was surprised by your comments and have learned something. It was not an idea I had ever spent much time thinking about. It is a stock sf way for aliens to sterilize a system and seemed plausible to me.

[jbnow]

54. Wait... you think Obama has ruled that out? He didn'y. He said

To that end, the United States is now prepared to strengthen its long-standing 'negative security assurance' by declaring that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations. This revised assurance is intended to underscore the security benefits of adhering to and fully complying with the NPT and persuade non-nuclear weapons states party to the Treaty to work with the United States and other interested parties to adopt effective measures to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.

"In making this strengthened assurance, the United States affirms that any state eligible for the assurance that uses chemical or biological weapons against the United States or its allies and partners would face the prospect of a devastating conventional military response - and that any individuals responsible for the attack, whether national leaders or military commanders, would be held fully accountable.

"Given the catastrophic potential of biological weapons and the rapid pace of bio-technology development, the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat and US capacities to counter that threat."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms-side.html

Of course I'm not sure any country would be happy to be demolished through conventional bombs in retaliation either nuclear attack is really not off the table.

[grantcart]

4. it is the begining of the process of narrowing the scope and depth of

our nuclear arsenal and strategy.

Our other weaponary has improved to the point that we would not even use a nuclear device in the event of a nuclear war when we could surgically take out the individuals and command structure responsible.

This narrowing process is done in part to build multilateral agreement with China and Russia to take action against NK and Iran in pressuring them to conform to IAEA and non proliferation.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

6. I recognize that. (but you are over-estimating conventional weapons)

I am not suggesting that these moves are diplomatically useless, just that relegating bio to a lower level is probably scientifically unfounded.

As for out ability to accomplish things with conventional weapons... not even close.

You are smart so I am sure you understand why we and the USSR had enough nukes to destroy the world eleventy-seven times over, but for other casual readers:

The cold-world mega-stockpiling of nukes was not overkill assuming one wanted to retain a first strike capacity or even moderate the effects of an escalating exchange. Few of those surplus land-based nukes were targeted at cities or military bases. They were aimed directly at other nukes. Nuclear weapons are great a mile-high bursts over a city but it didn't take much excavation and concrete to protect a silo. (Our real MAD deterrence was submarine based... not very accurate missiles at that time but able to target cities just fine.)

In today's world we can drop a bomb down a chimney, as Herr Doktor Rumsfeld was always proud to point out, and we can probably disable a 1988 era silo with a conventional weapon provided:

1) we know exactly where the silo is
2) an exchange was not preceded by EMP weaponry, cyber attacks and attacks on satellites
3) our adversary is not building ten silo covers for every real silo
4) our adversary is using 1988-era silos with no recognition of increases in accuracy since then

For instance, we can not take out the Iranian nuclear program with conventional weapons. We could inconvenience it. And North Korea is so dug in that that problem would be even worse.

What Leonard Cohen called "the beauty of our weapons" is limited. They are as accurate as the intelligence behind them. (And their supporting technologies, which are vulnerable.)

Consider MOAB, the largest air-delivered conventional bomb ever built. It wouldn't take down a mountain-side. It would barely dent a mountainside.

The nuke is not going anywhere anytime soon, IMO.

But we can step back from the (valid but dangerous) one silo/one nuke logic of the cold war.

And if some charge in stated posture has a positive diplomatic effect that's cool.

[PolNewf]

10. The purpose is to give a nuclear get out of jail free card for those without a nuclear deterrent

Follow the NPT and you are safe from nuclear attack, don't follow the NPT (hello Iran and North Korea) and you are not safe. It is both a carrot and a stick.

[backscatter712]

22. Good point.

Assurance of being safe from nuclear attack in exchange for signing on and adhering to the NPT is indeed a good inducement to cooperate and obey within international law.

Also, the general idea should be to keep the response from being too insanely disproportional to the attack.

Nuclear weapons are inherently extremely destructive and extremely messy, and really, the truth is that in most cases, they're unnecessary. We're more than capable of unleashing plenty of death and destruction using conventional military means - sufficient to retaliate even in the face of a chemical or biological attack.

[Rage Inc.]

13. Yeah, you're right!

Let's nuke EVERYBODY! Britain, Canada, Belgium, for no reason whatsover!

Dang, I'm gettin' erect!

[mr715]

16. No one is nuking anyone.

So in lieu of nuclear strikes, the USA should release particularly virulent strains of anthrax, bubonic plague, smallpox, and high-latency ebolaviruses into market squares, after (of course) closing their borders through diplomatic means?

Shall we introduce ricin into their food supply?

Or perhaps we should go "low fear, low risk" and just blanket their hospitals and schools in vesicants like alkyl mustard or phosgene?


No one is advocating the USA ever use these weapons, but I question whether the assertion that nuclear weapons are the most destructive agents is valid.

A nuclear weapon can destroy a city, a well made and poorly managed biological attack could be very much worse.

[ibegurpard]

14. really? who do we nuke?

If, say, Al Quaeda manages to release some kind of mass biological weapon in a major American city?

[mr715]

17. We do not.

But suppose that North Korea has developed some nasty ebolavirus and has used it on the USA. Why is that different than a nuclear attack on a major US city if deaths number in the hundreds of thousands?


The effectiveness of a (thermonuclear) nuclear weapon is directly proportional to the (derivative of the) payload. There is a very real upward limit to the efficiency of nuclear weapons. Biological weapons do not have such constraints. They could very easily produce more deaths with less effort. They are much less reliable, much harder to manage, and frankly can cause very much more pain.

When the USA can fight back ricin, ebola, and weaponized anthrax, I'll buy that bioweapons do not rise to the risk of nuclear, buuuuuut... We cannot even handle a case of piggy flu without going apeshit.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

26. Very well stated.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

25. There is no law against actually reading something before responding.

Try it some time. It's fun.

[rug]

18. Radiation will outlast any biological organism, good or bad.

[mr715]

19. And bacteria

will outlast humans.

Bubonic plague killed a third of Europe, and some virulent strains of STIs have (or are) wiping out ENTIRE populations. I don't care if 90% of the USA is covered in fallout if the remaining 500 people in the world are dying of liver failure because of ricin.

They are easily comparable.

One kills you with a sledgehammer, the other kills you with a dagger.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

23. Not true

The bacteria in termite guts that break down cellulose existed before termites, and 'before termites' is a long time.

[rug]

29. Bacteria is a species not an organism.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

32. What do you think an organism is?

I believe the poster you replied to is referring to a specific species of bacteria and yes, those bacteria would be organisms. If you want to be specific though, "bacteria" isn't a species, it is a domain (according to most popular taxonomic systems)

[rug]

33. An individual.

I believe the termite bacteria referred to are a species, nor a domain.

But to return to the original point, a nuclear weapon, used once, creates long-lasting damage that pales in comparison to the use of a biologic agent over the same period. Evolution and all that.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

35. So your reasoning is that when you say "This will outlast all organisms"

and the other poster says "No, this species will persist", the second poster is wrong because he referred to multiple organisms of the same species? Really?

Please explain what you mean by "evolution and all that".

[rug]

39. What mutations would you expect to find in termite bacteria in

the time it takes for the radiation from a nuclear attack to abate?

The damage from the nuclear weapon is known. Is it known how the bacteria or any other biologic agent will evolve over all those generations?

[mr715]

40. I can wipe out a plate of E. coli with some mercury...

and see colonies popping up in a few days.


There is a reason why microbiologists wipe down surfaces with ethanol after UV sanitization in class 3 facilities. The mutation rate for E. coli is 1 mutation per 100 divisions, and E. coli divides 3 times per hour. Since only one mutation can be fuel for evolution, I think these numbers can suggest that bacteria are very capable of adapting quite quickly. Viruses work faster still. Retroviruses even faster.

And yes. Bacteria will evolution over all those generations. They have for eons.

The damage from bacteria is also known. And much less predictable, and much more likely to spread. And hence, equally (if not more) dangerous.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

36. Also here you say a nuclear weapon creates damage that pales in comparison to a biological weapon

Is that a typo?

[mr715]

37. You are incorrect.

The half life of polonium-210 is about 5 days.

A psychrophilic bacterium was found that is over 250 million years. Members of the genus Bacillus and Clostridium (from which anthrax, botulism, gas gangrene, and other nasty biowarfare agents are derived) can form endospores where they can persist for decades or hundreds of years.

Biology can cause as much long lasting damage.

[rug]

41. The half-life of Uranium 235 is 703,800,000 years.

Polonium is the trigger. Uranium is the bullet.

[mr715]

42. Polonium is the product.

Uranium decay produces very little energy.

Uranium fission produces loads of radiation but fission does not proceed after the detonation of a nuclear bomb because it requires a critical mass.

After a thermonuclear explosion, highly radioactive elements are formed, and they decay quickly. Uranium is only one 10,000th as radioactive as polonium and some other chemicals are worse.

For comparison, the significantly more radioactive plutonium has a CHEMICAL toxicity very millions of times greater than its radiological toxicity.



The longer the half-life, the lower the energy.

[rug]

43. It's a good thing plutonium isn't used in nuclear weapons.

[mr715]

46. Look up the "Fat Man" bomb that destroyed Nagasaki Japan.

Here is a clip.

"Fat Man" was an implosion-type device using plutonium-239. A subcritical sphere of plutonium was placed in the center of a hollow sphere of high explosive. Thirty-two pairs of detonators located on the surface of the high explosive were fired simultaneously to produce a powerful inward pressure on the core, squeezing it and increasing its density, resulting in a supercritical condition and a nuclear initiation.

from wikipedia.org

[rug]

48. Are you pulling my leg? This is what I got from Google.

[mr715]

49. Clearly infected with Clostridium!

Look up the bombing of Nagasaki or Fat Man on wikipedia. Plutonium is easier to use in nuclear bombs because it is compressible.

[mr715]

47. Are you confusing Po and Pu?

I don't know the relative radioactive decay rates or paths for polonium or plutonium but they are not the same.

Polonium is not fissile. It cannot be used in nuclear weapons or reactors, but it is formed from decay routes and nuclear bombs. It has an extremely high radiologic toxicity but a short half life.

Plutonium is fissile. It is used in nuclear bombs but is rarely used in medicine because of its extremely high chemical toxicity (similar to mercury, lead, or arsenic)

[mr715]

45. Here is an article.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=nuclear.htm&url=http://www.clavius.org/envradintro.html



And no, the trigger/bullet thing is also wrong.


In an atomic bomb uranium mill is allowed to reach critical mass, when each electron from each fission hits another uranium nuclear.

OR plutonium (which is compressible) is compacted by an explosion and its density reaches critical levels.

In these cases the fuel is the trigger and the fuel is the bullet.



Your statement more closely applies in the case of thermonuclear weapons but even so, they will not employ polonium because they are so radioactive and are too large to produce meaningful amounts of energy by fusion. Thermonuclear bombs use the energy of an atomic bomb (Trigger = Uranium or Plutonium) to fuse tritium and deuterium (Bullet, maybe?) and release energy. The energy produced is then allowed to fuel subsequent fusions (2+2 = 4, 4+4 = 8, 4+2 = 6, and so on). This produces some nasty but short lived isotopes.


Uranium is actually used as a radiation SHIELD because it is so dense and emits mostly big, heavy, slow alpha particles which cannot get through a piece of paper much less your skin.

[mr715]

34. And not all radiation

has the same half-life.

Cobalt will rip your DNA apart and polonium will destroy your bone marrow. I can eat out of bowls laced with uranium.

Anthrax can last quite a while and its difficult to detox (am I mistaken?). I believe spores can be 200 years old, and I don't know if Chernobyl will be as deadly dangerous in 200 years. More lethal radioactive chemicals typically have shorter half-life due to a more rapid decay.


An organism is a creature made out of cells capable of reproduction. One working definition I think. Something capable of evolution and made out of cells?

[quaker bill]

28. Hiroshima

Google it up, check the stills and the video, then tell me how this can ever be "right". We, as a nation, have a vast number of sufficiently lethal alternatives.

[mr715]

38. It was a horrible decision

But I think it was correct. The United States (especially in the 1940s) was a nation first and so, to protect its own citizens and soldiers from bloodshed.

[proteus_lives]

51. It can be right.

It was the right decision to use them rather than invade the Japanese Home Islands.

But will it ever be the right choice again? I doubt it.

[BootinUp]

30. I don't see why I should get worked up

over this technical question. We will all be fucked either way. lol.

[Scarsdale Vibe]

31. WH says they can change policy in case of catastrophic biological attack.

White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms.html

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

60. But the point of a stance is deterrence

The question isn't whether we could exact revenge. In the right circumstances these policy papers wouldn't mean anything either way.

So to say we can change the policy if bio becomes more practically devastating is odd... the idea of all of this is to shape the incentives for other nations to pursue different types of weaponry.

Thought experiment:

If the NYT leads tomorrow with a story that Iran is canceling its nuclear program and diverting those resources into bio-weapon research would that make us feel safer or less safe?

As to the particulars of the policy, it's all diplomatic stuff that will never tie any president's hands in practice in the face of a real attack so the OP is more conceptual, not so much a criticism of the actual intentions of the move but rather a comment about the sense of the policy in hypothetical effect.

If the WH thinks this does some good then that's fine, but these diplomatic moves are not really about what we would really do in a real scenario.

If a state actor unleashes a devastating bio-attack on the US we will do what we will do based on the specifics.

[Ozymanithrax]

44. A biological attack can kill a lot of people, but it targets only humans...

A nuclear bomb kills the people, causes massive infrastructure damage, leaves fallout that can poison the land for generations, leads to fall out clouds that can kill people in nations that are friendly or neutral.

Yes, a massive biological attack is horrific, but a nuclear strike will continue to kill long after the people who fought the war are dust.

If we want a big boom, there is always MOAB (Mother of all Bombs) with 18,700 pounds of explosives. We are capable of leveling entires cities with conventional weapons. A nuclear counterstrike to a biological attack isn't necessary. We can kill all the people we want conventionally.

[mr715]

50. Biological agents are unpredictable.

You can adjust the radioactive yield of a nuclear weapon. The more radioactive, the shorter it will contaminate the land. That is not to say it isn't devastating, but biological weapons are just as dangerous. A nuclear bomb may kill 1-4 million people, but a biological one would have a larger range. It may kill 10, or all people on the planet.

Viruses are usually specific to a host (humans only), but bacteria and fungi can be generalists and can destroy crops, become integrated into environments and cause ecocide.

[Ozymanithrax]

52. Tell that to the people in Iraq who ae suffering from depleated Uranium...

There are conventional weapons that can be used to kill as many people as we want. We do not need nuclear weapons to level cities.

The best course is not to use any of them. But if someone else uses them against us, we should be equally irresponsible.

[mr715]

53. Our conventional weapons use depleted uranium shells.

They are dense and their toxicity arises from their chemical hazards, not their radiological hazards. It would be little different if we could use lead or arsenic shells.


And I think the same can be said of people suffering from AIDS in Africa. Both weapons are horrible and as such there is no need for hierarchy here. I think we kind of agree in principle there and this is a distinction without a difference.

[Ozymanithrax]

59. Only those designed for armor penetration. However, they are not nuclear bombs...

Why use a nuclear bomb when it is possible to cause the same level of damage and death with conventional weapons? The only possible reason is to show that the U.S. will revenge themselves on all other nations and do something that will curse them down many generations.

Nuclear weapon retaliation for biological attack is unnecessary.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

62. Actually, we do need nuclear weapons to level cities

I am not saying we should level cities, but conventional weapons are just not very powerful.

The largest conventional explosion ever was a 1985 United States conventional explosion utilizing 4,800 short tons of ANFOANFOANFO to simulate a 4 kt nuclear explosion. And that was a deal where we trucked explosives into a secure local site, not something delivered by air.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/TNT_equivalent

Hiroshima, a very small nuclear explosion delivered by a WWII era airplane, was 15kt.

[Phx_Dem]

61. It's not a "like" response. Biological weapons and the kind of nukes that the U.S. has

are completely different. Bio weapons kill people, but they do not completely devastate an entire country/region for many decades or even longer.

As for a nuclear reponse to a dirty bomb. Since the U.S. does not use "dirty bombs" (which are considered to be terrorists weapons), we would (presumably) be retaliating with a massive nuclear warhead that is thousands of times more powerful that the comparatively "puny" bomb that devastated Hiroshima. What happened to Hiroshima would be a fraction of the damage caused by the kinds of nukes we have today. And that is not even close to being an appropriate or likeminded response.

Responding to a dirty bomb attack with a nuclear warhead would be like shooting someone with an Uzi because they threw a rock at your window.

Nuclear warheads should be used ONLY to respond to an attack by a nuclear warhead.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

63. No

"Bio weapons kill people, but they do not completely devastate an entire country/region for many decades or even longer."

One could ask the American Indian about the effects of novel viruses on cultures and populations.

If AIDS were developed in a laboratory as a weapon (it was not but it is an example of a novel virus of the sort that could be developed as a weapon) and had been released in Africa for some political purpose it would come as some surprise to people there that is was unable to "devastate an entire country/region for many decades or even longer."

What killed the most WWI soldiers in 1918? The pandemic flu. Not conventional weaponry and not chemical gas weaponry.

Those were naturally occurring things (except for a few smallpox blankets) but they could have been attacks just as easily if people had the capability to create and weaponize smallpox, AIDS and the Spanish flu in a lab.

So we KNOW the baseline potential without even getting really clever about it, and when it comes to weapons people are nothing if not clever.

You are simply not appreciating what viruses are capable of.

[Phx_Dem]

64. Well then, I guess the American Indians are within their rights to nuke us.

:crazy:

Regardless of the effects of bio weapons, you don't nuke an entire county because of something rogue terrorists did. Nuclear warheads destroy enormous amounts of land, millions of people, animal life, marine life, water and everything living thing for tens of decades, minimally.

We have plenty of other massive and very destructive weapons at our disposal with which we could fight against bio or chemical attacks, without resorting to enormous nuclear warheads, which could likely start a World War.

[Warren Stupidity]

66. "What is informing this is thinking of a biological attack as something less extreme"?

Perhaps it is the fact that there have been no biological attacks of any particular consequence?

But the context is missing here: Obama has retreated from the NNPT-busting stance of the Bush Misadministration that it would reserve the right to use nukes anywhere anytime for any reason, including first strike use, whenever it felt the desire to do so, all while complaining that Iran was violating the same NNPT.

You cannot ask other nations to not nuke up while reserving for yourself the right to nuke them. You have to take nukes off the table, reserve them only for retaliation against other nuclear armed nations, or there is no NNPT.

That and of course the difference between a real, tangible, field proven weapon of real mass destruction, and one that is only speculatively possible.