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As I was praying from 03:xx . . .

I was wondering as I prayed if Christmas was the NEXT most vulnerable day.

I felt--no--that the day after would be more vulnerable.

I don't know if that's accurate or not. But it would fit in terms of masses of people being in malls etc.

I also feel that that suit-case fission nukes is a very real probability. Am quite concerned for NYC, DC and LA regarding nukes.

Am watching Fox news now on all such . . . and I'm thinking . . . I hope they have another studio ready to go in a place other than NYC or DC.

Where did that thought come from--simple logic?

Certainly the planes, cargo planes etc. . . . also a real probability.

I also believe they are trying their best to rush into WWIII.

I do believe the prophetic voices which indicate we're going to have a relatively brief period of peace. I suspect that will come after the next big AlQaeda strike and our retaliation. I sort of think there will be an intermission of some months to few years duration before WWIII gets going more fully.

In any case, the times are a changin.'

Prayer is essential--for The President, his family; our country; our families; ourselves.

A related question . . . WHAT REALLY . . .

is the MOST PROBABLE response to say a nuke in NYC and/or some devastation in DC?

SYRIA: What would we realistically probably do with SYRIA?

IRAN: What would we realistically, probably do with IRAN?

BIN-LADEN et al in Iran and Pakistan--what would we do?

SAUDI ARABIA: Ditto?

It also feels more in my bones this morning that a lot of these puzzle/chess pieces moving, shifting . . . a LOT of it is more puppet masters stuff. But that God is moving things and has the puppet masters vulnerable to HIS will whether they have a clue about that or not.

Anyway--I mostly want to encourage more prayer. It felt like a very sobering time in my prayers this morning--more than average. Now, I get up and Fox news seems to be in a similar mode.

BE ALERT. GOD KNOWS WE NEED MORE LERTS AT THIS TIME!

And a lot less Shrillery et al idiocy and traitors, traitorousness.

I hope people are especially watchful at ports and docks as well as airports and places with masses of people.

Poohbah--I trust your sparcity of noticed posts is just evidence of Christmas busy-ness. What's your assessment of the current situation?

The hypothetical "suitcase nukes" are low-yield devices. Unless you are within a few miles of the device, it is unlikely that the direct blast would involve you.

I have studied the patterns of destruction from Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The cities burned after the initial explosion because of the prevalence of wood frame construction in the residential areas. Also the local geography impacted things (channeling the blast waves up the valleys while leaving some areas untouched).

Most immediate effects outside of ground zero were flash burns and radiation illnesses after several days. The range from ground zero alters the radiation exposure to both the immediate weapon and the fallout.

Fallout patterns seem more difficult to track, though the Japanese gov't does seem to be following that information.

Our alliance with the Japanese is critical if such devices are used. The extensive medical data collection process used on the survivors can assist US physicians in predicting the outcome for hundreds of thousands.

Regarding targets of opportunity, if you approach the issue by attempting to look for worst-case scenarios, you'll drive yourself nuts. Our society is open and less secure by design. So, I strongly discourage that type of analysis by civilians. Those involved in the security sector should be doing their job and finding ways to "beef up" the defensibility of critical installations.

The Rose Bowl and Rose Parade are unlikely to be the direct targets. While it is a site that can generate high casualty counts, this year's Rose Bowl pits USC vs. Michigan. Michigan is located near the largest concentration of Muslims in the nation (Detroit/Dearborn).

I would assume, just based upon the demographics, that Michigan fans will be out in LA in force and that their fan base includes many muslims.

Nevertheless, I briefly scanned a map of Los Angeles with a mapping program and attempted to plot the scope of impact of a low-yield nuclear weapon in a given area.

The strongest strategic play appears to be a hit at the Port of LA near the point where Alaskan crude oil is offloaded from the tankers. This would at once damage import/export by the US and decrease oil production in the nation. One side impact would be damage to the Chinese economy because major goods from China are offloaded at the port. So, the ramification of an attack at the Port of LA is damage to both the US and Asian economies, which would result in a unified front against AQ in asia.

The next location that I assessed was the impact of a low-yield device near Figueroa and 1st Street (conjecturing that such an attack would be designed to damage LA's core commercial district). If the device were loaded on a truck and then detonated in the core of the city, the blast would create a tremendous fallout plume and incinerate basically 1/2 mile to 2 miles of buildings (depending upon yield of the device and the ability of modern construction to stand up to such a direct assault).

My assessment is that the worst case scenario for our economy is a direct attack on the civic center area that incinerates and destroys the center of any city.

At this point in the thought process, I decided that our governmental strategy and economic planners should be thinking differently. Prior urban planners designed our cities to have core areas that concentrate commerce or business into zones. AQ's attack power is multiplied when resources are concentrated into core areas.

It is wiser for our nation to NOT build tall structures which concentrate resources into one site. It is wiser to build urban transportation systems that are higher in speed and efficiency while permitting interlacing urban centers that can spread commerce across a larger area.

For instance, some of you tonight have been discussing what our response should be to the hypothetical attack. I think a wiser course of action is for us to ask what we do now given that the security situation for our nation is different.

If commerce in America rearranges itself to distribute commerce to suburban or rural areas with high-speed transportation links to the core of the cities, it would permit the nation to have stronger economic resiliency.

The political impact of such a Presidential directive would be that rural and suburban congressional districts would see preferential development of their economy versus urban core areas. This would mean that suburban life would change for America. Sociologically, the primarily urban cores will end up with outflow of people to the suburban areas (which are primarily white).

High-velocity transportation systems can either be freeway systems with higher speeds (70 to 80 mph so that you can drive 30 miles in less than 30 minutes) or rail systems (spoke and hub patterns likely but real estate is expensive).

Such road systems themselves then become targets of opportunity to the enemy, but architects, engineers, and scientists should work to develop techniques which permit rapid repair.

anyways, i'm up way to early today... and need to grab some breakfast.

Suitcase nukes are extensively overhyped.

They are what is known as "sub-critical" or "fractional-crit" weapons. This means that they use less than a full critical mass of fissionable material. It is possible to detonate a fractional-crit weapon; it is, however, rather difficult.

These weapons require a lot of neutrons. This requires an extremely generous neutron source (a small nuclear accelerator that uses tritium and deuterium) and "boosting" (essentially, injecting tritium and deuterium into the weapon pit immediately before the explosives detonate).

Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years. It decays to Helium-3, which is a very efficient neutron absorber. Any Helium-3 in the pit will tend to "poison" the chain reaction. We've had more than a few nuclear tests generate "fizzle yields" (no nuclear yield) due to very small amounts of Helium-3.

A fractional-crit device will require about 10 grams of tritium, and that tritium must be replaced frequently.

Tritium costs about $50,000 a gram, or about $1,550,000 a troy ounce. Gold is only $400 a troy ounce. One suitcase nuke will require $500,000 worth of tritium.

Price acts as its own rationing mechanism: when something costs that much, accounting on it is extremely tight. Accounting on tritium goes down to below the milligram level. (One milligram of tritium costs $50.)

Absent a large an expensive infrastructure to service the weapon, a suitcase nuke becomes unusable in a matter of weeks.