Posted on 10/23/2001 12:01:43 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
In fact he is meaning USING nukes is his own right, a statement meant to prepare the world for his own wrath - a sort of nuke usage appology. THat could imply that he has nukes already and are making them ready.
Just as the war on drugs was a failure, the smugglers have used the same drug routes and readily bribe-able "reliable" custom officers to pass nukes. We certainly are seeing the tip of the iceberg in this story.
If the gung ho US forces go near Usama and are able to capture him, then that means he has no nukes. However, if he has nukes, he probably kept them for himself or kept some behind the lines as a mean of hostage taking of Americans. So the nearer we get to Bin Laden, the more likely US forces in Afghanistan will get nuked or some Western asset or country will get nuked.
As for using nuclear artillery shells or missile warheads, you'd need to remove a LOT of fusing elements (for example, there is a mechanical device in an artillery shell that keeps it from arming until it has revolved a certain number of times. You CAN remove or disable components like this and still rig the bomb to detonate, but it isn't a really good idea--a less than perfectly skilled Induhvidual might wing up closing the fusing circuits completely with the thing still on his workbench. Do not pass go, do not collect 72 virgins.
The most likely route for using a nuke on us is, therefore, the "Suitcase from Allah." That however, has its own risks. First, covertly moving the bomb into place takes TIME--and time is your enemy with a suitcase nuke, because various critical components have pretty short half-lives, and tolerance for some of the daughter products is pretty low in a "fractional crit" device. Second, I can see Karachi, Pakistan vaporizing because Air Jihad lost Mohammed Omar's luggage :o)
Mike
What are more accurate descriptions of "pretty short" and "pretty low"?
Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years, and decays into Helium-3. Helium-3 has a voracious appetite for neutrons; a very small amount of 3He2 will "poison" a chain reaction by absorbing neutrons faster than they are generated, and in a "fractional crit" device, said helium poisoning will completely prevent a nuclear yield. (A bunch of tests in the 1950s failed to generate ANY nuclear yield because of this issue.)
Yeah, I'd read the same thing.
Question- why do many posts seem to assume an implosion weapon- I seem to remember a story about an American man-portable demo munition that was a gun-type; looked like half a pony keg with a piece of pipe sticking out the top.
any idea about the shelf life of a non-boosted (i.e. no tritium) wep?
Some thoughts:
• If OBL had nukes he would have used them by now.
• They seem to be on a low budget judging by the methods that they've employed.
• But if they nuke a city or crop-dust a city with Anthrax, the American public will make it impossible for the President not to nuke something. My first choice would be Medina, followed by Mecca. But I think we'd target Baghdad.
• I think that Hussein is spoiling for a fight and that he's behind these anthrax attacks. But I think that Hussein is torn. He desperately wants to attack america, yet he knows that a frontal attack will result in his anihilation. So he will ratchet up the attacks and bluster as high as possible, without prompting a military response. But I also think he has a death wish. And once he gets to the "breaking point," he won't be able to restrain himself from pushing through it.
The "gun-type" SADM still used a pretty hefty D-T neutron source, and it still had a nasty tendency to fizzle. An implosion-based weapon would be a great deal more reliable.
Tritium is a required element in "fractional crit" devices for generating a VERY high neutron flux. (Tritium "boosting" involves injected tritium into the pit as it reaches maximum compression. It's used in both fission and fusion weapons to maximize fission yield.)Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years, and decays into Helium-3. Helium-3 has a voracious appetite for neutrons; a very small amount of 3He2 will "poison" a chain reaction by absorbing neutrons faster than they are generated, and in a "fractional crit" device, said helium poisoning will completely prevent a nuclear yield. (A bunch of tests in the 1950s failed to generate ANY nuclear yield because of this issue.)
Unless they've got a supply of tritium, or, unless there really is something to those stories about "red mercury".
BTW, I did a crude websearch, and look at one of the things that turned up:
As for tritium: folks I've talked to said it only takes a few weeks for a fractional-crit device to degrade into uselessness. Figure that by the time Osama gets the thing, it's already been at least a week without maintenance, maybe longer. That gives him two weeks (or less!) to get the thing into place--and that's just not a lot of time for a terrorist group to do their thing--9/11 took YEARS to plan. And, assuming he successfully gets an op set up on the fly in two weeks, in the end, Jihad Air loses his suitcase, and Karachi International Airport disappears in a blinding white flash. Oopsie.
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