A nuclear bomb question.

[David M. Payne]

On a thread in PD I've brought up the question of whether a crude nuke could be made by terrorists. Think WWII A-bomb not what we have today, or some variation of that kind of older bomb design. Could they then make "The Mother of All Nuclear Bombs" by using a crude nuke or a small stolen or purchased nuke, like a 155MM cannon shell nuke, to set off a bigger explosion? If they took say a few hundred or thousand pounds of lower grade fissionable material and packed it around the nuke they had would that work? Kind of like they do now in Iraq with the bombings where they use plastic explosives to set off other ordinance. I look at all the shipping containers we see being unloaded off the ships now without any inspection and think it wouldn’t have been that hard to sneak in that kind of material before 9/11. And these guys are good planers so they had time to already place the material they need to do this prior to 9/11.

I know it isn't likely, but still I wonder what the effect would be in this scenario. I remember in a class I took 25 or so years ago we found out that if you could get most of the parts made the real problem was assembly, and you could even get that done if you had people willing to work in the dangerous environment and do the work. Religious terrorists certainly have people willing to give their lives to achieve their goals. I hate to think of all the ship containers that came into this country that have never been inspected prior to 9/11. I know that radioactive material is easy to spot when you have the right equipment and are looking for it, but were they looking for it prior to 9/11?

David

[paradigm9]

i think most of the small nukes are implosion devices...so the fusion core's fast neutrons will cause the fission of the outside material?

i imagine there's some threshold of how much fissionable material can be made to "fizz". keeping that much material sub-critical but also having the reaction go fast enough to induce fission through it all would be incredibly tough. that's why the big bombs are all fission-fusion-fission devices. you dont need so much to obtain a high yield. i dont think terrorists would have the machinery neccesary to make that complicated of a device. the xray mirrors are super hard to make accurately.

sounds like you're idea would be the mother of all dirty bombs. nuclear weapons arent all that easy to make. the major problem is getting the nuclear material...and keeping the material shielded well enough so that it doesnt eat all the electronics around it. and the huge problem of timing...there has to be a shitload of neutrons present in the pile at just the right time or you get crappy yield or no yield at all.


ive always thought the mother of all terrorist weapons is the salted bomb. the thought of what it would do is quite horrifying. place a layer of cobalt around the fusion core...the fast neutrons covert the cobalt to cobalt-60, one very very nasty isotope. then you have 10 years or so of radiation enhanced fallout. ive read a few books where people have called this the stupidest idea mankind has had yet. it would create a nice dead zone...and if it was done in the atmosphere people have said it would be the doomsday device. i doubt that, but it would still suck.

[Hyndis]

A simple dirty bomb would probably give the best bang for the buck, so to speak. Its just radioactive material and conventional explosives, and while there's no nuclear reaction, the radioactive material is spread out and contaminates large regions.

It probably wouldn't cause all that much damage, aside from the initial conventional explosion, but the mass hysteria it would create would be incredible.

As most people have very little understanding of radiation, people would probably be fleeing that region of the state, and though most common radioactives aren't too harmful (they can be cleaned up, unless you have some particularly nasty stuff, which is harder to get), it would utterly destroy the economy of the place. Even if its low level radioactive material which is the most easy to come by, the panic it would cause would do all of the damage, not the radiation of the conventional blast.

Imagine something going off in the middle of New York City. The damage itself would be very little, but the panic caused would lead to many deaths as people try to flee. And, quite a few people would probably refuse to enter the city again, despite a low danger from the low level radioactives.

With a conventional explosion, most of the radioactive material wouldn't actually go that far. It would stick on whatever surfaces are close to the explosion, but we're not talking about a very huge area here. And, these surfaces could also be cleaned. Get a bunch of people with hazmat suits, and then pick up and dispose of all of the dirt, dust, and debris in the area. Then wash off nearby buildings, and the danger should mostly be negated. Physical danger, that is. People would still be very reluctant to go back afterwards, and that would utterly destroy the economy of the area for quite some time.

[David M. Payne]

I just saw this on yahoo a few minuets ago.

al-Qaida No. 2: We Have Briefcase Nukes.

AP SYDNEY, Australia - Osama bin Laden's terror network claims to have bought ready-made nuclear weapons on the black market in central Asia, the biographer of al-Qaida's No. 2 leader was quoted as telling an Australian television station.

In an interview scheduled to be televised on Monday, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir said Ayman al-Zawahri claimed that "smart briefcase bombs" were available on the black market.
It was not clear when the interview between Mir and al-Zawahri took place.
U.S. intelligence agencies have long believed that al-Qaida attempted to acquire a nuclear device on the black market, but say there is no evidence it was successful.
In the interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. television, parts of which were released Sunday, Mir recalled telling al-Zawahri it was difficult to believe that al-Qaida had nuclear weapons when the terror network didn't have the equipment to maintain or use them.
"Dr Ayman al-Zawahri laughed and he said `Mr. Mir, if you have $30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of ... smart briefcase bombs are available,'" Mir said in the interview.
"They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase bombs," Mir quoted al-Zawahri as saying.
Al-Qaida has never hidden its interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
The U.S. federal indictment of bin Laden charges that as far back as 1992 he "and others known and unknown, made efforts to obtain the components of nuclear weapons."
Bin Laden, in a November 2001 interview with a Pakistani journalist, boasted having hidden such components "as a deterrent." And in 1998, a Russian nuclear weapons design expert was investigated for allegedly working with bin Laden's Taliban allies.
It was revealed last month that Pakistan's top nuclear scientist had sold sensitive equipment and nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, fueling fears the information could have also fallen into the hands of terrorists…

David

[Hyndis]

And to ease your fears, a tiny 15kt nuke, like the one that did Hiroshima, would probably cause almost a million deaths if it happened in downtown Manhattan. That shockwave and tall, square buildings just don't mix... :eek:

[Loren Pechtel]

Originally posted by David M. Payne
On a thread in PD I've brought up the question of whether a crude nuke could be made by terrorists. Think WWII A-bomb not what we have today, or some variation of that kind of older bomb design. Could they then make "The Mother of All Nuclear Bombs" by using a crude nuke or a small stolen or purchased nuke, like a 155MM cannon shell nuke, to set off a bigger explosion? If they took say a few hundred or thousand pounds of lower grade fissionable material and packed it around the nuke they had would that work? Kind of like they do now in Iraq with the bombings where they use plastic explosives to set off other ordinance. I look at all the shipping containers we see being unloaded off the ships now without any inspection and think it wouldn’t have been that hard to sneak in that kind of material before 9/11. And these guys are good planers so they had time to already place the material they need to do this prior to 9/11.


You're describing a two-stage fission device. There's a limit to how much boosting you can get this way, though--eventually you run out of neutrons.

[Hyndis]

Originally posted by Loren Pechtel
You're describing a two-stage fission device. There's a limit to how much boosting you can get this way, though--eventually you run out of neutrons.

While there's a limit to the size of the bomb you can build, its a really, really huge limit.

After 25 megatons, you're just showing off. With a 50% death rate out to an 11 mile radius, that will pretty much do any city on the planet. A circle with a 22 mile diameter, and half of eveything in there is dead ought to do the job, and then of course the destruction continues out from there.

Moderate damage out to a 30 mile radius, and we're talking massive devastation here.

However, luckily its very hard to build such a massively powerful device.

[nukular]

Some time back the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (if memory serves me correctly) had a article on a project run by the US Army in the 50's. Basically they hired two Ph.D. physicsists with no weapons training and had them design an atomic weapon using only the publicly available reports and articles. The result was within six months they had the designs for a "low yield" weapon.

I guess this was somewhat of a shocker to the military and while it seems more likely that terrorists would employ a dirty bomb (which doesn't go critical), the fact that a grouping of Ph.D. physicists under Al-qaeda could design a weapon similar to "Fat Man" is a frightening thought.

[Loren Pechtel]

Originally posted by nukular
Some time back the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (if memory serves me correctly) had a article on a project run by the US Army in the 50's. Basically they hired two Ph.D. physicsists with no weapons training and had them design an atomic weapon using only the publicly available reports and articles. The result was within six months they had the designs for a "low yield" weapon.

I guess this was somewhat of a shocker to the military and while it seems more likely that terrorists would employ a dirty bomb (which doesn't go critical), the fact that a grouping of Ph.D. physicists under Al-qaeda could design a weapon similar to "Fat Man" is a frightening thought.

Early 60's and it took 3 years.

[Jet Black]

Hey, don't forget Radioactive Boy:

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/n1782_v297/21281407/print.jhtml

[David M. Payne]

I thought I'd post this here too, as it related to this thread.

Originally posted by David M. Payne
But they could use them as triggers for much bigger bombs. And they could have already smuggled in the components needed for the construction of an old fashioned WWII WMD. Perhaps even the "Mother of all Big, Crude Dirty Nukes." And one also has to consider that to make a "Fat Man" or "Little Boy" like those used on Japan, you don't need the latest technology, all you need is 1940's technology. How hard is that to get? And either one of these bombs would fit into a fair sized delivery truck, a ship board container or for sure in a Ship hold. One could put a really big MOA nukes, or even a really big conventional bomb on a fairly modest freighter and send it into one of our harbors. Just think of how big a fuel/oil bomb you could build in the hold of one of those ships. Or they could hijack a LP gas freighter and blow it up in a harbor. The big ones have the power of small nukes if they go off.

I wonder what the threshold of death/damage is for considering an attack to be an attack with a WMD? Does a few thousands or tens of thousands and a few city blocks qualify? Or does it have to be millions and a city destroyed?

As for al Qaeda not being dangerous in the long run, well that’s the problem with religious cults. After all, all three of the Abrahamic religions were cults at one time themselves. You just never know what will spark enough people's interest in a cult that it turns into a major player in the God/religion biz. How can you trust people who believe in fairy tales to make what we might consider rational decisions based on the belief that a Bronze Age God is in charge of everything, and telling them what to do, but he only talks to them in their minds? WMD and authoritarian religion is a very bad mix, I hope we never see it come to pass.
David

Also I just saw a news report that the port of New Jersey has just now installed detectors to screen every container that comes in the port for radioactive materials. Nothing like closing the barn door after the Trojan horse has had a chance to get in.