I dunno....the article makes sweeping assessments and wild guesses.
First, getting your hands on a “good, used nuke” is not difficult, it is impossible. Nuclear handling is very regimented and controlled, everywhere. Nukes are routinely dismantled into sub assemblies when not deployed, to prevent them from being misused. If the safeties are tripped, it would never detonate with nuclear yield. Anti-handling devices also keep the device from detonating with nuclear yield. So that is out.
Second, getting the material is only part of the fun. Usually, the material is not in the correct configuration to begin building your bomb. Think small pellets for U235. It must be forged and machined using special techniques. That act alone would fatally expose the people and heavily contaminate the surrounding environment before it could be completed.
Building one is pretty hard, as the North Koreans found out. Theirs failed utterly.
It would take a state to sponsor such an undertaking. One with experience in such devices, the willingness to share it, and the proper disregard for human life in order for an attack of this type to occur, much less succeed.
The US would figure out the culprits in short order. Whether the President would take the appropriate action is the only question. All must know that the price of nuking the US is too high to contemplate.
That price must be complete annihilation.
This is just about the same story that was posted on September 12th or 13th, 2001. I have no doubt these guys are trying to get their hands on nukes, but I am pretty sure if they had one, we would have found out about it by now.
Interesting and scary, but I am not losing sleep over this. Yet.
Yes, but here we are dismantling a portion of our nuclear arsenal. Not sure if it will affect our ability to react to anything that might happen to our country in the future, but I hope we are able to retaliate.
“One with experience in such devices, the willingness to share it, and the proper disregard for human life in order for an attack of this type to occur, much less succeed.”
Try Pakistan who has done all of this except the actualy detonation itself.
“The US would figure out the culprits in short order. Whether the President would take the appropriate action is the only question. All must know that the price of nuking the US is too high to contemplate.
That price must be complete annihilation.”
So where do we nuke, the tribal regions of Pakistan? Great we kill some goat-herding tea drinkers with AK’s. Their whole country is expendable at least to the fanatics who are very quickly gaining control...