The only part of this that is right is the trillions of dollars part.
Rescuers were all over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in hours, not days. And these terrorists would be unbelieveably lucky to engineer a 12-18 kT explosion - 0.5-1.0 kT is much more like it.
Why wouldn't we do better than the war-scarred Japanese?
Of course we would.
Fear and panic would do far more damage than any nuke the Islamo-facists could whip up. What we would see is skyrocketing gas prices, quickly followed by everything associated with gasoline, i.e., food, clothing, raw materials, etc.
The Japanese had been at War for years, were prepared to die defending their homeland, and were making daily sacrifices, running their trucks on pine-root fuels.
Our media and "Leaders" tell us that the WOT is a bumper sticker, give aid and comfort to the Enemy, and publish their propaganda. The People are managed by bread and circuses, and are vitally interested in reality TV, and online porn and gaming.
That said, however, I am encouraged by liberals I know who had an epiphany on 9-11, and joined us at the Range on 9-12. I do not consider it hopeless.
We just need to "Awaken the sleeping giant", and this will be accomplished by such an attack.
What follows will make the "Enemy alien" Japanese "resorts" look like a Brownies' picnic, whether the Goverment is involved or not.
When the opium dream of socialism, drumming circles, and kumbaya Sings collapses, people revert quickly. Had I not seen it with these "hopeless" people I know, I would not be so encouraged. One had to take her website down, because she transformed it into such a vicious anti-muslim site she was getting daily death threats and hacks. This made her really mad. She remains mad. She will kill if she has to.
“And these terrorists would be unbelieveably lucky to engineer a 12-18 kT explosion - 0.5-1.0 kT is much more like it.”
That’s presuming they don’t get their hands on one of the dozens of missing weapons mentioned in the articles.
A small Soviet fusion weapon is in the 1 MT range.
My nightmare scenario doesn’t involve carrying things over the border on foot. It involves a cargo ship pulling into a busy port, with a Navy base (say, San Diego)...and suddenly the cargo ship is replaced by a 1+ MT fireball.
That would be a bad day.
“Why wouldn’t we do better than the war-scarred Japanese?
Of course we would.”
I’d like to believe that, and maybe Americans would rise to the occasion, but in the past two generations (roughly since implementation of LBJ’s ‘Great Society’) we have birthed a government-dependent society.
On the other hand, I really wouldn’t have to worry about it much, I live right outside of DC.
I lost a house in hurricane Andrew. There was no civil authority, of any type, in my neighborhood for 6 weeks. I lived in a gated community and were able to keep out looters out only by standing guard with rifles and shotguns. There was no food, no water and we didn’t get elecricity back for almost a YEAR.
Now granted a small nuke will not be as anywhere near as destructive as Andrew. But detonated in a dense population area that will be of little solace to those affected. If 5-7 cities are hit simultaneously you will see martial law and lawlessness far beyond your very optimistic imagination.