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US expert sketches nightmare nuclear terrorist attack on major city
AFP ^ | Wed, Sep 22, 2004

Posted on 09/22/2004 10:06:51 AM PDT by Area Freeper

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To: Shryke
In a densely populated urban area? Very likely. Look at the map of New York City in At the Abyss by Thomas Reed. He uses a really low-yield bomb. The "sure to die" and "almost sure to die" isorads are pretty big.
121 posted on 09/22/2004 4:35:24 PM PDT by Poohbah (If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.)
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To: ExpatCanuck
That may have been made clear, privately, to the appropriate parties,

I hope so. There are MANY things going on behind the scenes, I hope the consequences have been made very clear......

122 posted on 09/22/2004 4:42:48 PM PDT by ALASKA (For every victim of terrorism, we should take out ten family members of the responsible terrorist.)
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To: VxH

One little difference.

Hurricanes don't leave radioactive fallout trails, and our scientifically illiterate public will likely go moonbat on us. . .


123 posted on 09/22/2004 5:12:06 PM PDT by Salgak (don't mind me: the orbital mind control lasers are making me write this. . .)
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To: Uncle Vlad

That's evem WORSE. . .


124 posted on 09/22/2004 5:12:52 PM PDT by Salgak (don't mind me: the orbital mind control lasers are making me write this. . .)
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To: backtothestreets
I'd also ask that they stop detailing how to accomplish such attacks. It's more than stupid and irresponsible journalism. It's downright dangerous.

One way of preparing for an attack is to try to anticipate what the enemy could do to us. If we think about our vulnerabilities and discuss them, people in a position to do something about it could be prepared.

125 posted on 09/22/2004 5:20:32 PM PDT by Dan Evans
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To: Poohbah
Radiation would bag a LOT of people before they could get out of the danger space. This wouldn't be a airburst by a modern clean weapon; you'd generate a s**tload of radioactive crap and spread it downwind.

In a city, the fallout would settle on the roof of multistory buildings. People would only need to move down a few stories to be safe -- protected by several inches of concrete and steel. Even at Chernobyl, where firefighters were exposed to intense radiation, only about 31 out of 130 of them died.

Radiation hazards are usually hyped upward by assuming longterm health hazards and extrapolated by the unproven linear no-threshold theory.

126 posted on 09/22/2004 5:53:09 PM PDT by Dan Evans
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To: quant5
The combined death rate and psychological effects would certainly throw our country into a major economic depression.

If history is any guide, wholesale slaughter of civilians will cause the opposite effect. In World War II bombers destroyed civilian populations by the hundreds of thousands. It did not weaken their will to go on. In fact, it galvanized them. They focused their energy on the war effort.

Bombing helped defeat the axis powers only because it destoyed the material means of production.

127 posted on 09/22/2004 6:04:17 PM PDT by Dan Evans
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To: VxH
>>The bomb itself won't. The panic afterwards, the fights for food, water and shelter, the rioting might. . . Ok Chicken Little, how many megatons was Ivan equivalent to? We'll deal with it.

Oh no you won't. If the mad moos detonate a nuke, no matter how small in say NYC, and then announce to the Washington Post, the LA Times, Atlanta Journal, all the TV networks that if their list of demands aren't met (impossible demands, such as Bush shot by a firing squad, all troops out of the middle east in 24 hours, Israeli government arrested and shot) then the next American city will be destroyed.

Immagine the panic and lawlessness as every big city that thinks that it is a target has it's population flee for the hills. It would take months for order to be somewhat restored. Maybe a decade before we got back to where we were.

In the mean time the world economy would come to a halt. All US resources would be used to keep the US together and the mad moos would have pretty much free reign for a while until we got ourselves back together.

The fabric of civilization is thin and fragile and it doesn't take much to rend it.

128 posted on 09/22/2004 6:39:59 PM PDT by metalurgist (Death to the democrats!)
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To: metalurgist

[Immagine the panic]

That is the desired result of terrorism, isn't it?

No sale.

The "mad moos", as you call them, rely upon western moral restraint for their survival.

If a nuclear weapon was detonated in an American city, I think you could safely assume that the protection afforded by moral restraint would be dramatically reduced.

Savage is as Savage does.


129 posted on 09/22/2004 7:14:15 PM PDT by VxH (Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there - Isa 28)
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To: VxH
mad moos", as you call them, rely upon western moral restraint for their survival.

You are thinking like a Christian. These idiots want to die for allah and take as many of us infidels with them as they can.

130 posted on 09/22/2004 7:44:21 PM PDT by metalurgist (Death to the democrats!)
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To: metalurgist
[In the mean time the world economy would come to a halt.]
 
I'm sure the Euros will happily rush in to fill the vacuum.
 
[All US resources would be used to keep the US together]
 
This will make isolationists happy.   Many Americans would prefer to sever parasitic foreign relationships.  Buh bye national debt....
 
Yes, things will change - but for those who have the will and who have not allowed themselves to be super-sized into immobile cash-cows, life will go on.    We are a nation of survivors and builders.  We'll deal with it. 
 
[the mad moos would have pretty much free reign for a while until we got ourselves back together.]

 
Ivan and the Chi-coms might disagree - and I doubt they'll be nearly as accommodating as we have been.
 
Go ahead, take the United States off the chess board.  
 
Who do the mad-moos think it is that's standing between them and annihilation by Ivan and the Chi-coms?
 
Moral restraint was never ol' Khan's strong suit.

131 posted on 09/22/2004 7:55:11 PM PDT by VxH (Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there - Isa 28)
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To: metalurgist

[These idiots want to die for allah and take as many of us infidels with them as they can.]

The giant is still not yet awake.

Rage is not a gift a wise enemy would endow us with.

They wouldn't like us when we're angry.


132 posted on 09/22/2004 8:02:12 PM PDT by VxH (Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there - Isa 28)
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To: Dan Evans
"One way of preparing for an attack is to try to anticipate what the enemy could do to us. If we think about our vulnerabilities and discuss them, people in a position to do something about it could be prepared."

I agree with you 100%.  My concern is how to discuss our vulnerabilities.  There are vulnerabilities I am aware of that I have made the government privy to.  I would never involve the media unless I saw the government purposely ignoring the problem.  For some reason the media unsettles me.  I feel they are much more concerned with "making news" than our well being.

133 posted on 09/22/2004 9:06:11 PM PDT by backtothestreets
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To: Poohbah
I agree with your assessment. I have a fallout macro that gives the following results. Assume the fallout is tear shaped and moving from west to east. Without immediate evacuation to shelter, outside the fallout zone (North or South) or at least 10 miles down wind, we could expect fatalities of 50-100% in the effected zone (outside exposure).

Fallout Deposition Pattern Table

R1 (rads@1hr) 3000   1000   300   100     30     10      3      1
length (mi.) 2.7      5.1     12.7  25.1    45.1   67.6  84.6 112.7
Width (mi.) 0.1      0.2     0.6    1.5      2.8    4.7    7.0   10.0
Grnd zero width (miles) 0.1      0.2     0.6    1.0      1.4    1.7    2.3    3.9
contam. area est. (sq.mi) 0          1        6      32      103    263   483   930


*Assuming a ground burst with 50% blast yield or 5KLT equivalent.

134 posted on 09/22/2004 9:41:29 PM PDT by PA Engineer (Liberalism is a Hate Crime-Liberate America from the occupation media!)
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To: kimosabe31
Holgate might have also mentioned the "lack of acceptance" within our own government and institutions that have been importing chicoms and middle easterners for decades as exchange scientists and workers at our national labs and universities in the spirit of "globalism" and "new world orderism".

As our government continues to allow in hundreds of thousands of these people into our country, not to mention the millions that are just walking or driving in illegally.

135 posted on 09/22/2004 9:48:17 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf (I failed anger management class, they decided to give me a passing grade anyway)
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To: PA Engineer
Your figures map well with the map in At the Abyss. (It's a damn good book, BTW. Reed was a close associate of Reagan's for over 15 years.) The "half the people die" isocline for a 5KT blast centered on the World Trade Center site extended about 3/4ths of the way along Central Park. The "weaker people die" line extended to 125th Street; the entire island of Manhattan was covered in the "acute radiation sickness line."

BTW, Wall Street was inside the 100% death line. This did not include fire and blast.

If the bad guys had used a nuke, there is no way you'd be able to evacuate Manhattan in time to save those people...and southern Manhattan's daytime population is in the millions.

136 posted on 09/23/2004 5:18:56 AM PDT by Poohbah (If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.)
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To: Dan Evans
In a city, the fallout would settle on the roof of multistory buildings. People would only need to move down a few stories to be safe -- protected by several inches of concrete and steel.

The fallout also settles in the streets--and that means nobody leaves those buildings for almost a week. Also remember that the localized EMP will clobber the local power grid--no refrigeration. The ground shock fractures the water pipes--no firefighting capability, plus no drinking water. Most of the buildings in the lethal area will not have window glass, so external air will circulate into the buildings.

Blow the thing off at lunchtime, and you've got a million-plus people out in the open for the crud to land on.

137 posted on 09/23/2004 5:26:09 AM PDT by Poohbah (If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.)
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To: Poohbah
The fallout also settles in the streets--and that means nobody leaves those buildings for almost a week.

People would be able to travel in the streets to be evacuated. You can survive heavy radiation doses for a short time. I remember talking to a friend who photographed inside a nuclear reactor after an accident in the fifties. He said the film was so badly fogged by radiation that they had to go back in and re-shoot it.

A ground burst would not cause nearly the fire damage that an air burst would because the most of the city would be shadowed by the nearest buildings.

Lack of water, electricity and refrigeration are pretty much standard inconveniences that we deal with during disasters.

138 posted on 09/23/2004 8:10:48 AM PDT by Dan Evans
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To: Dan Evans
People would be able to travel in the streets to be evacuated. You can survive heavy radiation doses for a short time.

Getting that many people out of the death zone is not a matter of a "short time."

We may need to rethink a LOT of policies--such as the desire to stuff as many people as humanly possible into close quarters and call the result "urban planning."

A ground burst would not cause nearly the fire damage that an air burst would because the most of the city would be shadowed by the nearest buildings.

But the fires that DO start will not get put out, and will continue dumping secondary activation products downwind, complicating evacuation efforts (and, incidentally, dumping those products in now windowless buildings that you're using as fallout shelters.

The evacuation process itself would kick up an immense amount of radioactive crap for everyone to breathe in.

139 posted on 09/23/2004 8:40:19 AM PDT by Poohbah (If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.)
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To: backtothestreets
There are vulnerabilities I am aware of that I have made the government privy to. I would never involve the media unless I saw the government purposely ignoring the problem.

I think it's a big mistake to rely on government to protect us against terrorism. When the 9/11 terrorists were taking pilot training, one of the flight instructors notified the FBI and the FBI pretty much did nothing. I think there have been terrorist attacks on this country during the Clinton adminsitration that have been ignored and hushed up.

We should think more about empowering citizens rather than allowing government to take away hour rights in the name of security. The only 9/11 attack that was thwarted was stopped by citizens armed with cell phones and their bare hands.

The natural instinct of any government is to encourage people to act like sheep. They want you to:

-- not resist because you don't know what you are doing and someone might get hurt.

-- keep quiet, don't start rumors because people might panic.

-- obey anyone with a gun who says he is from the government.

-- give up anything that can be used as a weapon.

-- don't discriminate against anyone because of their looks or the language they speak. Trust everyone.

Airlines have been told that they cannot interview more than two Arab-looking passengers at a time for security concerns because that amounts to racial profiling.

No, I don't want to silence the media. We need to know what is going on. I'm not afraid of citizens panicking, I'm afraid of the government panicking.

If the government gives us our rights back -- the right to bear arms and the right to discriminate, then we will be much more secure.

140 posted on 09/23/2004 9:02:20 AM PDT by Dan Evans
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