[The Loan Arranger]

There are supposedly about 100 "suitcase nukes" (small nuclear weapons in a large container--just barely able to be carried by someone) missing from the former Soviet stockpile. I would tend to think that al Queda must have some of them by now, why else would Osama bin Laden go asking for religious "permission" to use nuclear weapons from a Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia? Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington DC or NYC would be the most likely targets, IMHO.

[meatloaf]

I'd say New York and Washington would be on the top of the list.

[Southack]

"There are supposedly about 100 "suitcase nukes" (small nuclear weapons in a large container--just barely able to be carried by someone) missing from the former Soviet stockpile."

No, there aren't.

The smaller the nuke, the shorter the shelf life.

The less shielding that you have, the sooner that your electronics and conventional explosives deteriorate from the radiation. Suitcase nukes by their very nature are small.

The less fissionable material that you have, the faster you generally need your atomic trigger isotopes to emit neutrons. The faster you emit neutrons, the shorter your half-life. The shorter your half-life, the less time that you have before the nuke simply fizzles instead of booms.

This is simple physics. Moreover, heavy metals like uranium and plutonium are among the most brittle materials known to man, and the slightest bit of humidity turns them into uranium oxide or plutonium oxide (i.e. worthless rust).

So a "suitcase nuke" from 1991 (i.e. the end of the Soviet Union) is likely little more than a rusted, shattered, fragmented collection of wiring and explosives today.

[church16]

Luckily, with nukes, there is a shelf life on the explosives and the isotope. Don't think we've made either one yet on the soviet "snoopy".

[endthematrix]

RE: I would tend to think that al Queda must have some of them by now.

I would tend to think if they had them they'd have already used them.

[antidisestablishment]

Teh suitcase nukes are not an issue. The smallest nukes are portable, but they require extensive maintenance and materials. Tritium is used for triggering and it has a 12 year half life. Even if terrorists were able to get ahold of a "suitcase" nuke, it wouldn't work.

The dirty bomb scenario is more plausible. It is also possible that a crude little boy could be assembled given relatively few resources. While the yield from such a "crude" device would be inefficient, it would produce a disproportionately dirty fallout.