Posted on 03/03/2002 10:51:07 AM PST by antidemocommie
"Counterterrorism experts and government officials interviewed by TIME say that for all the relative calm since Sept. 11, Americas luck will probably run out again, sooner or later." "It's going to be worse, and a lot of people are going to die," warns one U.S. counterterrorism official. "I don't think there's a damn thing we're going to be able to do about it."
Read on:...That made the DRAGONFIRE report alarming. So did this: detonated in lower Manhattan, a 10-kiloton bomb would kill some 100,000 civilians and irradiate 700,000 more, flattening everything in a half-mile diameter.
The following is more information that you can use to protect yourself, and your family. Also, in your opinion, is the administration correct? Are we likely to see a ten kiloton device set off inside the country? Please keep in mind that this kind of nuke is very small, and easily carried by one or two persons, today.
These following two pages came from:
1. Click
2. Click
------------------------------------------------------------
Blast Zones
. . . . . . . . [5] [4] [5] . . . . . . . . . . [3] _ [3] . . . [2] . . . _._ . . .~ ~. . . . [4] . .[2]. [1] .[2]. . [4] . . . . . . . ~-.-~ . . . [2] . . . [3] - [3] . . . . . . ~ ~ . ~ [5] . [4] . [5] . . . . . .
10 KILOTONS | 1 MEGATON | 20 MEGATONS | |
---|---|---|---|
Zone | Airburst - 1,980 ft | Airburst - 8,000 ft | Airburst - 17,500 ft |
1 | 0.5 miles | 2.5 miles | 8.75 miles |
2 | 1 mile | 3.75 miles | 14 miles |
3 | 1.75 miles | 6.5 miles | 27 miles |
4 | 2.5 miles | 7.75 miles | 31 miles |
5 | 3 miles | 10 miles | 35 miles |
---------------
Hiroshima
As many know, atomic bombs have been used only twice in warfare. The first and foremost blast site of the atomic bomb is Hiroshima. A Uranium bomb (which weighed in at over 4 & 1/2 tons) nicknamed "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima August 6th, 1945. The Aioi Bridge, one of 81 bridges connecting the seven-branched delta of the Ota River, was the aiming point of the bomb. Ground Zero was set at 1,980 feet. At 0815 hours, the bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay. It missed by only 800 feet. At 0816 hours, in the flash of an instant, 66,000 people were killed and 69,000 people were injured by a 20 kiloton atomic explosion.
The point of total vaporization from the blast measured one half of a mile in diameter. Total destruction ranged at one mile in diameter. Severe blast damage carried as far as two miles in diameter. At two and a half miles, everything flammable in the area burned. The remaining area of the blast zone was riddled with serious blazes that stretched out to the final edge at a little over three miles in diameter.
On August 9th 1945, Nagasaki fell to the same treatment as Hiroshima. Only this time, a Plutonium bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" was dropped on the city. Even though the "Fat Man" missed by over a mile and a half, it still leveled nearly half the city. Nagasaki's population dropped in one split-second from 422,000 to 383,000. 39,000 were killed, over 25,000 were injured. That blast was less than 10 kilotons as well. Estimates from physicists who have studied each atomic explosion state that the bombs that were used had utilized only 1/10th of 1 percent of their respective explosive capabilities.
My bet has been on the west coast since they seem to have gotten over the "terror" and have pretty much discounted any problem. The terrorists want people to be terrorized, California has pretty much "moved on".
IMHO, I believe terrorists will next strike the heartland, so that no one, even those in "flyover" country, can feel safe.
Makes great headlines though....
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 20 Kilotons
Nope. "Little Boy" was about 14 Kilotons.
The bomb dropped on Nagasaki was less than 10 Kilotons
"Fat Man" was the same size as the New Mexico blast, which was about 20 Kilotons.
The real question, however, is what happens next? While I have been (and AM!!) a strong supporter of President Bush, the terrorist leaders are still functioning. The terrorist orgnaizations are still operating. And the societies that spawned them are making more just like them.
If we get nuked, what do we do? Other than the perfunctory statements of sorrow and anguish, that is? The sad thing is, I suspect that the puppetmasters (Iran, Iraq, Syria, and perhaps China) are largely safe from the retaliation they deserve. And we go flailing about endlessly after an elusive proxy for the real bad guys.
I have to disagree with you on this one. California is ripe for such an attack. With an open border, and most of us out here so caught up in being kinder and gentler. . . well, you figure it out.
Count on it being either NYC or Washington. Both offer good population density, excellent assured "mainstream" media coverage worldwide. NYC area is heavily-Jewish; half of all U.S. Jews live in NYC metro area. Washington - despite "shadow government" in Fuhrerbunkers - offers likely destruction of federal government functionality.
Right now, snailmail crawls in Washington area due to USPS irradiation of all snailmail there after anthrax mess. That's as in crawls even when all facilities and personnel are intact. Now imagine what snailmail would be like after loss of 50% of USPS facilities in a major metro center and loss of 50% of USPS personnel there. The Left never got it when ridiculing Reagan about change-of-address cards for nuclear-war survivors; in reality, "continuity of (federal) government" just won't happen after even just Washington is nuked - as the mid-level cadres of the bureaucracy and their facilities won't be there for the guys in the Fuhrerbunkers to command.
I think they have had this bomb here for some time. I think we know this, and that is why we have not done a complete sweep of Islamic immigrants...it would press them to go ahead and set it off before they are caught.
I said back in September that I felt we would take a nuclear hit, and I still believe it. To me the likely place would be Chicago, St. Louis, or Houston. Maybe New Orleans. They like the idea that they can strike anywhere.
I think these numbers are misleading. How are they gonna get this thing to 2000ft? If these are detonated at ground level, the direct impact is severely limited compared to an airblast.
So they're going to have to fly it in a kamikaze general aviation airplane, and a 10kTon "suitcase" nuke is bound to be larger than pocket-size...more like back-of-a-pickup size. I think it's going to be really a lot harder to pull this off than hijacking a plane and flying it into a building....
...if it was easier for AlQaeda to do than the 9/11 hijackings, then why not do the nuke-case first???
Dirty Nuke is much more likely, and like the Anthrax scare, much more scary than actually destructive.
Perhaps, but I doubt they will waste such a high-cost resource where the damage done is minimized by a relatively low density target. We're still pretty darn safe away from the coast.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.