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On their website, they say AQ is going to "blow up" 7-10 American cities.

Setting off ten, or a hundred, 1-2kT nukes would do nothing of the sort. It would cause 60 days of disruption, and (hopefully) seriously piss us off, but that's about it.

Even 7-10 real nukes (like, 100kT and up), which AQ does not have and cannot get, would not "destroy America".

It would put a serious hurt on Pakistan, though.

Setting off ten, or a hundred, 1-2kT nukes would do nothing of the sort. It would cause 60 days of disruption, and (hopefully) seriously piss us off, but that's about it.

Plus over the last 30 years we've had a migration of business to the suburbs. In the Philadelphia, for example, there are far more office buildings along the Route 202 corridor to the north of the city, than there are left in Philadelphia's center. The middle class is mostly in the dispersed suburbs as well.

"Suitcase Nuke" is an interesting term. I was briefed once about 25 years ago on our suitcase nuke. It would fit into a suitcase but weighed about 95 pounds and was the state of the art at the time. It took a giant effort to produce and as I recall would yield about 30KT on max yield but could be dialed down to about 10KT. Now understanding that the infrastructure required to develop and support such a device was mind boggling I do not believe the Fascists have the capability of developing such a weapon. It is possible that the Paki's have helped but doubtful since we would know within and hour where the core material came from. It is much more likely that the scumbags have gotten their hands on a few Soviet warheads mostly of missile variety. Bad news is that if they do manage to get one to light off it could be a very large event. If it is nuclear then they could do some serious damage. If it is a thermonuclear device then in all likely hood it will be a dud due to lack of maintenance.. Bad news is a dud will leave all of the radioactivity in a very dirty state and concentrated in a small area. A Cessna 182 could easily carry such a device.

It is irritating that Americans, in my experience, are uninterested or concerned about nuclear weapons. The strange and foolish people we live amongst.

Using my old Fletcher circular slide rule,

One kiloton:

Optimum air burst, 3 psi overpressure at 1,000 yards.
Ground burst, 3 psi overpressure at 670 yards.
Initial radiation 100 REM at 1,200 yards.

No thermal skin burn that means anything farther than 1,500 yards to exposed skin.

These numbers are for a person in line of sight of the fireball. Ten inches of masonry reduces initial radiation to 100 REM at 340 yards.

Manhattan remains the most attractive target for nuclear weapons in the United States with an average population, it is said, of 67,000 people per square mile. (I suspect this is the 24 hours per day population.) Using the 67,000 persons per square mile number on gets, in a 600 yard radius circle, just less than twenty thousand people. This is less than the number of people born in the United States in two hours or the number of people in the USA dying of heart disease in seven weeks.