al-Qaida No. 2: We Have Briefcase Nukes

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[Don Joe]

And probably sold them on the "red mercury" as well.

While there is no shortage of bogus RM, Sam Cohen, the "father of the neutron bomb" believes that RM itself is real.

[Don Joe]

You realize of course that for these to be useful to the islamics they only have to work at elevations below 100 ft and at temperatures which can be easily maintained in a step van with a heater and an air conditioner.

They do not need mil spec bombs to take out major pieces of NY, Washington, DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Miami, Houston, Baltimore, etc. While we are at it, throw in London, Sydney, Rome, etc.

Bingo. What we've got in this thread are brain surgeons laughing at the idea of mud-men scooping out craniums with chisels, and, having their victims come out of it alive.

The mud-men, of course, ignorant of the "realities of brain surgery", continue trapanning their victims.

The "atomic mud-men" of the Middle East don't need a Class 100 clean room and so on to make something go boom.

Sure, it won't go boom with anything even approaching the efficiency of a modern "first world" device, but it will go boom, at least on par with our mid-1940s levels of efficiency and lethality. A crude gun-bomb will ruin your day just as effectively as a modern device. It won't ruin as many other people's days, but for those within range, it'll be a really rotten day.

[Don Joe]

Buckeroo was one of the best flicks ever!

Yup. It's a pity they never made the sequel.

[GOPJ]

Con-artists the world over are ready to part these fools from their money - may the fakes nukes bankrupt AQ. And may the real nukes stay out of the hands of Islamic madmen.

[Don Joe]

See Post #95. Lets cut out some urban legends...

And lots of solid information, such as Are Suitcase Bombs Possible? and Fission Weapon Designs serve well to debunk reams of feel-good whistlling-past-the-graveyard happytalk.

All is not well, and recognition of this reality is not restricted to "chicken little"/"the sky is falling!" types.

You seem deeply vested in the idea that it is impossible for crude nuclear weapons to be constructed and sucessfully deployed.

I don't know why. I do find it disconcerting, however, and I hope that people don't accept your say-so as gospel. There is plenty of solid information available that puts the lie to the "don't worry, be happy" comfortspeak.

For those who still persist in the belief that it's only the uninformed and ignorant who would even consider the possiblity of nuclear-armed terrorists, I leave you with this excerpt from Christopher Hitchens' too-quickly forgotten article, "The night of the weak knees":

The night of the weak knees

Christopher Hitchens
Wednesday December 5, 2001
The Guardian

Four weekends ago, I really did receive two Friday-night telephone calls from well-positioned Washingtonians. "Leave now," they told me. "There's a tactical nuke on the loose, and it's headed for DC." One of these callers was in a position to know, and the other was in a position where he was actually paid to know. Calls were being placed to an immediate circle of friends to which, in theory, I was flattered to belong. Those who were calling were also leaving - while not informing the rest of the citizens. Why, then, did I resolve to stay? It wasn't just British pluck, strong as that naturally is. I thought, first, that it was unlikely that al-Qaida, if it had the bomb, would have conducted a petty dress rehearsal with United Airlines. I thought, second, that the detonation of a "use it or lose it" freelance nuke could not be predicted for any given weekend. And I thought, third, that I would feel a colossal cretin if I fled and then came slithering back on Monday morning (especially if the nuclear holocaust was timed for Monday's rush hour after all). In the end, I did take the family on a pre-arranged trip to Gettysburg, leaving late and returning early.

Officially, nobody now remembers this night of the weak knees. It rated a brief and embarrassed mention in Hugh Sidey's Time column, and that was it. But I shall not forget how some of those in supposed authority decided that the end had come, and made it a point to keep it to themselves and their immediate friends, perhaps to stop the crowding of the roads. That's how it will be on the day of Armageddon, and that's why the citizen should always plan to outlive the state, rather than the other way round.

[Don Joe]

Purchase a large enough lot and do it by selection of matched components

That won't get you components that stay within the fine tolerance over time, under different temperatures and pressures, etc.

Moot, for a terrorist's crude fission bomb. We're not discussing 21st century (or even late 20th century) "first world" milspec-quality munitions. We're talking the equivalent of a "Hey, Abduallah, hold mah beer" bomb. Crude, low-efficiency, but very simple, and troublingly reliable. The archaic "gun-type" device needs neither high-tech design, nor high-precision engineering. It doesn't even need a booster. And it goes *boom* when expected.

[Don Joe]

The photo is of a pipe bomb in a suitcase. The bomb, as displayed consists of what appears to be standard 1" galvanized plumbing pipe. A nuke would not employ such material.

That photo is a picture of a mockup of a middle-east type fragmentation bomb, not a "suitcase nuke".

The photo in #142 is the mockup of a USA-type "suitcase nuke", built (the mockup) for a Congressman by the CIA.

[Spruce]

Nuts!

[Don Joe]

That's simply untrue. ... That sort of fantastic oversimplification is little more than an old wives' tale. ... etc., etc., etc.

More happytalk.

Please read the materials I linked, rather than persist in argument by assertion. Your assertions have been debunked, and not by laymen either.

PS:

You said, "And the speed of your shot is going to constantly be changing as the radiation deteriorates your convention explosives and electronics."

At this point, I think people should be able to realize that you're talking through your hat -- at least, they would, if they've read the materials I've linked in prior posts.

There are no "electronics" necessary in a gun-type device, nor is there any "convention[sic] explosives" either. At least, not once the button is pushed. The conventionAL explosives served their purpose once they converted to a high-pressure gas, pushing the "bullet" down the pipe.

Either you just don't understand the utter simplicity of these devices, or you're on some kind of a personal mission to shout down anyone who pokes holes in the happytalk.

[Don Joe]

One last annoyance to debunk:

Consider that the entire might of NAZI Germany couldn't get one of these instantaneous self-sustaining chain reactions in 8 years of trying. In more than half a century, fewer than a dozen *nations* have managed to get past the technical hurdles for these beasts.

Please stop trying to draw a link between the difficulty of producing a critical mass weapons grade HEU (or more realistically, a bit over one critical mass), with the simplicity of shaping it into a "bullet" and putting it into an old field artillery piece.

If you'd bother to read the materials I've linked, you would learn that one consideration with HEU bombs is safety, because they can self-detonate if subjected to harsh handling, without needing any explosives whatsoever.

A near-critical mass of HEU is very easy to set off. So easy that a "levitated" pit can cause a fission explosion if a support breaks, and the pit drops and lands on the interior of the HEU sphere, causing a local area of criticality.

No, it won't deliver the rated efficiency, but, it will produce a gen-yew-whain fission explosion. It will not "fizzle", because there won't be any conventional explosives going off to distribute its bad stuff (although parts that do not reach criticality may very well be distributed via the actual nuclear explosion that occurs).

The Nazis et al (why your curious CAPS of their name?) did indeed have problems. Their problems, though, did not involve any difficulty in setting off a gun device. Their problems revolved around obtaining the fuel necessary to put into the gun.

That has been the main obstacle throughout the history of nuclear weapons. No tinhorn banana republic could come up with the HEU on their own.

And now, as then, it's still near-impossible for them to obtain it.

The difference is that now, thanks to the collapse of the USSR, there is a large amount of HEU sitting around, and, it's in many cases "guarded" by people who earn less a month than the typical illegal alien makes here per day.

If you honestly do not believe that the US gov't is scared silly by the idea of terrorists getting their hands on HEU, and, the fact that they can easily make it go boom, then you're living in a dream world.

If you do NOT honestly believe it, then I'd like to know why you persist in publishing the misleading stuff you keep posting.

[Don Joe]

All of the Soviet nukes of which I'm familiar had their atomic triggers stored in entirely different buildings.

Do you now claim familiarity with KGB "suitcase" munitions?

[Blue Scourge]

If they have them than look for a big move around our election.

[Don Joe]

Con-artists the world over are ready to part these fools from their money - may the fakes nukes bankrupt AQ. And may the real nukes stay out of the hands of Islamic madmen.

Yes, that would be an ideal combination of best-case outcomes, but... knowing that no terrorist has any nuclear weapon is a classical example of "proving a negative."

In other words, we will never know. We may find out if they do (i.e., if we capture it, or, if they detonate it), but it is impossible for us to know that they do not have any such weapons.

[Southack]

"A near-critical mass of HEU is very easy to set off. So easy that a "levitated" pit can cause a fission explosion if a support breaks, and the pit drops and lands on the interior of the HEU sphere, causing a local area of criticality. No, it won't deliver the rated efficiency, but, it will produce a gen-yew-whain fission explosion. It will not "fizzle"

No, it will almost certainly fizzle (which is to say, spout out lethal amounts of radiation and heat, but no BOOM). Even if you had "ideal" conditions where your "bullet" fell into your core, the odds are that it will be falling at the wrong speed. Too slow and the edge of your "bullet" will start a premature chain reaction in your core as it approaches the edges of the entrance to said core that will essentially flame out the whole process by the time that your "bullet" fully enters. Too fast and your "bullet" will shatter your core or perhaps even pass right through before the chain reaction starts going properly.

The precisely correct speed to get an atomic *explosion* is important, nay, critical, and determined by the rate of radioactive decay of the involved isotopes. This is further complicated by the use or not of an atomic trigger isotope and/or a booster element, and doubly so for smaller atomic devices.

Other important factors are whether or not such an atomic device has been properly shielded from vibrations that *WILL* shatter the hyper-fragile fissionable heavy metals involved...thus ruining the precisely required shapes, ditto for humidity introducing rust and other impurities into the mix.

Here is a picture of your "simple" gun-type design. Carefully note its size and weight. This is NOT something that could be made from simply hacksawing off part of an old rusty cannon barrel and then be stuffed into a backpack.

Name: Little Boy Type: Uranium gun-type fission Weight: 9,700lb (4400 kg) Length: 10 ft, 6 in (3.2m) Diameter: 29 in (0.737m) Explosive Yield: 15,000 tons of TNT

[Southack]

"If you honestly do not believe that the US gov't is scared silly by the idea of terrorists getting their hands on HEU, and, the fact that they can easily make it go boom, then you're living in a dream world."

I've never said that it wasn't possible. What I have said is that old ex-Soviet nukes, sans regular clean lab maintenance, are now rusted, corroded, fragmented piles of atomic waste useful for little else besides a dirty bomb. That's doubly true for the smaller, more complicated devices. With nukes, the smaller they are, the more complicated it is to get them that way and then keep them working.

[Don Joe]

Wow, you just blow right by everything I posted, disregarding the real experts I referenced in my links, and continue spouting your baseless propaganda, calling on us to bow to your self-proclaimed authority.

Amazing. That's quite the logical fallacy you present us with!

I've always wanted to meet a "seminar poster". Can I have your signature?

[Stultis]

I don't get it. What maintenance is needed?

I'm no expert, but from what I'm given to understand lots of maintenance is required, both frequent (along the lines of every few years) and of a highly technical nature (on the order of that required to build the bomb in the first place).

First, precisely because this is a super miniaturized bomb, it's not going to have a critical mass of fissile material. It therefore has to be "doped" with elements like Tritium that feed the reaction with neutrons. The suitable elements are all short lived and very difficult to obtain (more difficult even than plutonium) because they are produced in very small quantities and tightly controlled.

Secondly the radiation from the bomb deteriorates both metal and electrical components over time. The bomb must, in large measure, be "rebuilt" every x years. (I get the impression "x" is on the order of 5 to 10 years.) Again, the necessary components (e.g. super high-speed switches -- necceessary to ensure the precise timing of the conventional explosions that initiate the nuclear reaction) are not mass market items and are tightly controlled.

Basically, you have to be a major nation state with an advanced nuclear industry and an established expertise in nuclear weapons technology to maintain these things.

[GOPJ]

Powerful in it's simplicity:

We're talking the equivalent of a "Hey, Abduallah, hold mah beer" bomb. Crude, low-efficiency, but very simple, and troublingly reliable. The archaic "gun-type" device needs neither high-tech design, nor high-precision engineering. It doesn't even need a booster. And it goes *boom* when expected.

[Unicorn]

Stick em where the sun don't shine.

[Southack]

Please review the final paragraph of post #174, with picture.