Cheaper than an ICBM.
Posted on 11/10/2007 1:01:10 PM PST by zencat
Members of Congress have warned about the dangers of suitcase nuclear weapons. Hollywood has made television shows and movies about them. Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency has alerted Americans to a threat — information the White House includes on its Web site. But government experts and intelligence officials say such a threat gets vastly more attention than it deserves. These officials said a true suitcase nuke would be highly complex to produce, require significant upkeep and cost a small fortune.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Frightening. I hope we don’t see this anytime soon in our country.
Really, I had no idea this kind of thing was out there. I know we probably wouldn’t use them freely,however, the Islamo nuts probably would without remorse.
“Suitcase Nukes Said Unlikely To Exist”
Maybe, maybe not.
But sounds more like an excuse to not secure the borders and ports
of entry of the USA.
You’d think the guvmint guys would be smart enough to even be fearful
if someone set off a suitcase of C-4 near their offices.
Or in their neighborhood.
But I suppose that sort of worry is diminshed for “civil servants”
that live in gated communities.
Because the yield was typically far below one kt, from 22t- 75t, there was no danger from a blast wave from targets a mile away or so.
You'd want to be a little further away from anything with a yield beyond one or two kt though.
Here's an interesting site. No doubt there are many more not on this list.
Cheaper than an ICBM.
Or underwater, being dragged along behind a ship approaching NY harbor.
The hydrogen bomb that goes inside a merv warhead is slightly smaller than a basketball.
The trouble with that kind of delivery system, is that it will just makes a big crater in the ground. It’s better to explode a nuke a mile above the target (depending on the size of the nuke) for maximum damage over a wider area.
Or imagine the damage a hijacked gasoline tanker truck could do if the gas (plus a match) was dumped into a crowded tunnel at rush hour. Or down the air shaft of a crowded subway station.
May have threatened the guy with a car ride.
Although, this is the second largest nuke (15MT) bomb ever built. I like the "Jetson" type styling. Someone had a fashion sense.
No, for max long-term damage, it's best to set it off on the top floor of a building, surrounded by piles of cobalt, and make the surrounding area radioactive for decades
This is the funniest thread ever.......:o)
Stay safe !
Just like the chances of Sept 11 happening will next to nil?
How could it be second?
The Russians have 20Mt warheads, the US had 25 Mt warheads, the Mk-41. Of course the Tzar Bomba was the largest, scaled back from potentially 100 Mt to ~ 57 Mt.
In other words,it’s the Holy Grail for Muslims.
Clearly, it depends on the size of the suitcase, doesn’t it? I mean, a “suitcase” that is the size of a steamer trunk wouldn’t qualify; but one as large as Rosie O’Donnell would certainly meet the parameters of a 50-megaton boomer.
Fifty feet altitude if the terrain is flat is the most damaging according to extensive testing.
Turning the downtown areas of a few American cities into big, radioactive craters would have quite an effect on our economy and our national outlook.
For air detonations, small private planes piloted by suicidal jihadis would suffice.
Low tech nuclear delivery systems might not be ideal, but they are more than good enough to produce the sort of devastation that causes widespread terror, and thus to force the long-term evacuation of urban areas.
All the jihadis need are the nukes, everything else is easy.
"The M-388 round used a version of the W54 warhead, a very small sub-kiloton fission device. The Mk-54 weighed about 51 lb (23 kg), with a selectable yield of 10 or 20 tons (very close to the minimum practical size and yield for a fission warhead) up to 0.5 kiloton. The complete round weighed 76 lb (34.5 kg). It was 31 in. (78.7 cm) long with a diameter of 11 in. (28 cm) at its widest point; a subcaliber piston at the back of the shell was actually inserted into the launcher's barrel for firing. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29
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