Posted on 09/04/2005 3:05:03 AM PDT by ovrtaxt
According to the earlier linked stories, OBL figured that one out and has bypassed that threat level and gone directly to attempting to manufacture military-yield weapons in the 10-15kt range, roughly equivalent to the Hiroshima bomb (hence the project name). The reference to Hiroshima is propagandistic and intended to reflect the onus back on the U.S. Government, for having used those weapons during World War II.
Practical effects of a 10-kt weapon, if detonated at some optimum height above ground (say, atop a big building): basically nonsurvivable within about 1.2 miles, massive destruction and relatively low survivability (~25% survive at least into the postattack period) out to about 2 miles. Blast wave velocities over 250 mph instantaneous close to Ground Zero.
At 2 miles, most buildings remain standing and occupants not located next to windows will probably survive if they leave the area immediately and don't get caught in firestorms and aren't irradiated heavily by fallout. Persons near windows will be burned and then cut by flying glass; blast wave velocity will be approximately 70mph.
Over four miles, minimal effects on persons indoors except for fallout. Light damage to buildings and vehicles. And pandemonium, civil disorder, loss of services, etc.
There will be other effects, such as immobilization of vehicles with computerized ignitions by EMP and destruction of computer equipment by same. I've no idea about ranges and severity of EMP effects.
Search the Net for "weapons effects" and some combination of keywords.
They're big enough to take out a stadium.
And a dirty bomb, depending on the radioactive substance, could make a downtown area of a city uninhabitable for years.
Small explosions, big impact. Just sayin'...
Have you lookad at the border issue lately?
It's totally out of control. Yes, the FBI has open files on lots of Islamic people living among us, but can they prevent something like this? We have an army of ACLU lawyers who prevent any real cleanup from being done before the fact. And, the bureaucrats in intel still exist in an atmosphere of competition and internal turf wars.
If we weren't so internally weakened by the leftist infiltration of the last 50 years, I would agree with you more readily.
Oh, yeah.
Last I heard, he'd rounded up a task force of goatherds and they were going to build a Trident submarine with 240 independently-targetable warheads.
Now we're really screwed!
I think it's called the NSA
Al Qaeda is no friend of Beijing. China has her own probels with Muslims in Xinjiang Province, and elsewhere along the Silk Road, all the way to Xian.
Khan had the know-how, if he wanted the funding for a Muslim bomb I doubt he'd go to North Korea. I'm thinking the $$$ trail leads far closer to the home of Al Qaeda itself, without the need for intrigue and conspiracies. Saudi Arabia, the real hub of the axis.
Bump for later read.
Thanks for the ping!
Correct, but a pro football game on a Sunday night might get 9/11 publicity. Particularly if there are simultaneous disasters in 7 cities.
Two points, unrelated and perhaps not germane. First, I hear--posted on FR, I think--that we have several or many heroes in the military and CIA whom we will never hear of. They have died in this country and off our Eastern Coast, barely making it in time to stop detonations.
Second, right now, I am so depressed with the N.O. thing--right, it was local and state debacles, but it was also federal debacle, except for the Coast Guard--that I have no confidence in any government agency except the military. Fair warning: I have not had confidence in any government agency except the military in a long, long time.
The key here is that Bin Laden wouldn't just attack one city, it would be a huge multi-faceted attack. We have seen this time and time again and this would be no differant. 7 cities at once with even small yield nukes would send the US into a spiral of chaos that would make Katrina look like a picnic.
True, but he'd only get to do that once before U.S. defenses were fully galvanized and mobilized, so I think he probably decided that the next step had to go up to the level of violence necessary to give him his shot at a U.S. capitulation, or at least to score a clear strategic defeat of the United States. Defeating the United States would, in what I suspect is his thinking, reverse the tide of European and Christian defeat of Islamic expansion that began to run after the battles of Lepanto and Vienna 500 years ago.
After Osama's prospective victory over the U.S., his successors could begin to think again about expanding the world of Islam to swallow Europe, and he could realistically challenge the House of Saud for the protectorship of the shrine cities of Mecca and Medina -- and lay the foundations for eventually driving the Jewish state into the sea and recovering control of Jerusalem.
Which is, from Osama's POV, quod erat demonstrandum. His way = right, and our principles = wrong.
Cheer up, we'll kill the SOB eventually. Nothing stinks worse in the nostrils of Islam than a dead false prophet.
FBI: "When we want your opinion, we'll ask for it"
The Chechens left a Cesium137 cannister buried in a park, and then tipped off the media that it was there. This was done to demonstrate their capability, to get Moscow's attention that they were serious.
This author: In 1995, the Chechens under Com. Shamail Basayev planted a radiological bomb in Izmailovsky Park near Moscow . The bomb was made of cesium-137, and, if detonated, would have killed thousands of Russians. This incident represented the first case of a nuke to be deployed as a weapon of terror.
I found no evidence that there was a detonation mechanism. (There may have been, but my quick fact check didn't find one.) What I found was that it was just a component from a medical machine of some kind- cancer therapy perhaps?
So, yes, you too can be a researcher!! < /game show announcer> We all can, and in fact there are some really good ones on FR- much better than me. We ping each other from time to time to stuff like this.
So, for the most part, I think this is pretty believable. You can also trace the quotes from Kerry, Bush, Cheney, Goss, and many others who are aware of the possibility of this happening. Those are real quotes.
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