20 to 40 Tactical Nukes Already in The US?

www.WSBA910.com morning drive interview ^ | 6/30/04 | Me: 7.62 x 51mm

[RobFromGa]

Identified Tactical Nuts in this country:
#1 Michael Moore
#2 Al Gore
#3 Howard Dean

I can't think of 20-40...

[jpsb]

Hmmm, you are over my pay grade here with the Tritium, so just a simple question. Is the shelf life of a 5 megaton H-bomb longer then the shelf life of a little suitcase nuke.
thanks.

[7.62 x 51mm]

IIRC, that was in the planning stages before OBL got the suitcase nukes in '97, according to the author of this book.

[7.62 x 51mm]

Ever see "Little Shop of Horrors"?

Do you really want one of those thingies in your garden? Not me, and I've got 20 acres here!

[Poohbah]

Neither.

Both require tritium to work; both will not work if the tritium is contaminated with helium (which happens to be the decay product of tritium).

[jpsb]

hmmm, I am going to have to do a little research, guess my knowledge on this subject is out of date. I did not know that tritium was a required element for a nuke. I thought that compressing u235 or platonium with a chemical reaction would do it without anything else being present.

[Poohbah]

You need a neutron source--something that will generate a spurt of neutrons in the pit. Simply compressing the nuclear material and hoping there's a decay event won't cut it--the core is going to come back apart to a sub-critical configuration a very few microseconds, so you'd better have the chain reaction going by then. The first nukes used a polonium-beryllium sphere to generate the neutrons; these devices had a life span of less than two weeks. Modern weapons use a deuterium-tritium external neutron source (it's basically a small, unlicensed nuclear accelerator) to generate the neutrons. However, tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years, and the decay product has a voracious appetite for neutrons.

[jpsb]

"The first nukes used a polonium-beryllium sphere to generate the neutrons; these devices had a life span of less than two weeks. "

really, I didn't know that, well that explains why we dropped the second bomb so quickly, I had wondered about that.

I did my research, and it seems the h3 is used to flood the reaction with neutrons and enhance it. I did not realize that enhancement was necessary, thought compression was enough, hmmmm, thanks for the lesson.

[beyond the sea]

Then again, if suitcase nukes were ever discovered in the US, we'd never hear about it.

Very true. This whole thing seems real to me.

I've always wondered why God gave man the mind and the ability to create such destructive weapons. Hmmmm.

[beyond the sea]

I am looking for a low flowering shrub that can take radioactive fallout. Any suggestions?

Get pachysandra...... it can take anything. ;)

I have a small nursery of my own. Pachysandra is a sub-shrub, a groundcover. I'm somewhat near a big city, so I do worry about this scenario a little bit. The premise of the book is incredibly awful.

[backhoe]

FYI, FWIW:

Tiny Nukes-- the backpack threat

[beyond the sea]

If they had the nukes, they would've used them in lieu of the airplanes. Good googly moogly, how many times do I have to point this out?

If Steve Guttenberg could ever become a public figure, anything is possible. ;)

[beyond the sea]

IMHO eventually such an attack is inevitable.--

Agree.

[Walkingfeather]

sure they may have the suit case nukes but I got a question for ya?

You think the russian mafia guys are going to let these guys walk around with workable nukes? What you want to bet they took out the triggers and shook them down for 10 mill a pop.

Here is the question... if you have a suit case nuke .... where you going to test it that would not light up every Nuke satalite and geo reader on the planet?

[Poodlebrain]

One of the major reasons the U.S. never signed the comprehensive test ban treaty was that the scientists weren't certain of the effects of aging on the weapons in the nuclear stockpile. The planners wanted certainty that they would get sufficient yield for the targeting accuracy of the delivery systems. And computer modeling was not accurate enough to replace underground testing. The effects of deterioration were known, but not quantified since they were design specific. Given this and the dates involved with the "sales" of the purported devices, it is not unreasonable to question the reliability of the devices.

There is no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. All nuclear weapons are strategic as any use results in escalation (the possible guilty parties are extremely few in number). Accordingly, there is no way for the former Soviet Union, the only plausible source, to have lost accountability for 20 to 40 nuclear devices without drastic measures taken to recover the devices and punish those responsible. The effort to do so would be impossible to hide from intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Where are all the books, even works of fiction, that trace such an effort?

Assume you are the former Soviet officer with control over the devices and a Muslim approaches you to purchase the devices. Would you think the first target(s) of the purchaser would be in the United States, Israel or one of the former Soviet Republics with active fighting between Muslims and government forces? Wouldn't you worry about your own backyard first, and wouldn't that give you some pause. Wouldn't you be more likely to look for a state purchaser which would be able to pay a higher price and shouldn't be too difficult to find?

[7.62 x 51mm]

"...where you going to test it..."

NYC, DC, LA etc.

If the test work; great. If it doesn't; who'll know?

[7.62 x 51mm]

It's hard to say what members of the entire plant kingdom would be tolerant to fallout. But looking at Mt St Helens, less than a year after that horrific event, the plants had already started to re-populate the ground.

Plants, lower animals and insects are nothing, if not resilient. Mankind is the fragile part of the equation.

[wku man]

"If they actually had nukes in the fall of 2001, why didn't they use them?"

Because maybe they have this thing called patience? Maybe they're waiting to get their pieces into place to deliver a massive, not just crippling, but fatal blow to our economy? Maybe they don't want to just make a statement this time, but they're working on a plan to outright defeat us?

Really, Poohbah, just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it can't.

I'm not an atomic engineer like you, and I've learned over the years I'm not the most optimistic guy on the block. But in matters of national security, it may be a good idea not to just slough off potential threats like this as merely a means to sell a book.

But then again, maybe your rose colored glasses will shield your eyes from the initial flash of a detonation.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[7.62 x 51mm]

Most of the US Senate and a large portion of the US House would easily qualify as such, IMO.

[wku man]

"The survivors would go back to work, and life would go on."

I think that's a little unrealistic, bro. Remember what the 9-11 attacks did to our economy. As relatively little damage they caused, and the relatively small number of deaths they inflicted, our economy was still knocked on it's hiney for a while afterward.

10-20 major cities rocked by nukes? Investors would panic, to put it mildly, and the markets will plummet. Those cities would be effectively be shut down, and anyone who survived the blasts would have to be evacuated. Go back to work? What work? Anyone who worked in those cities would pretty much be out of a job, and anyone whose business depended in any way on good or services from those nuked cities would be severely affected, to say the least. The ripples that are normally felt in the markets and in the economy would turn into a tsunami.

The pep talks from the pols calling on us to "not change our lives...if we change one thing, the terrorists will have won" won't work this time. The call for us to "be patriotic...go shopping, and buy a share of stock" won't work. The fear caused by the 9-11 attacks would seem comparatively like a simple panic attack. The economy would collapse, a state of national emergency would be declared, and life would forever change. Right now it's just a nightmare, and I sincerely hope and pray it stays that way.

Now, I know I'm a paranoid, delusional, right-wing, fringe, nutcase lunatic. But is it not feasible that the above scenario could come to pass if the alleged 20 or so suitcase nukes were detonated? Regardless if this guy is just trying to hawk books or not, I think is in our interests to take such a potential threat a bit more seriously. I sincerely hope our government is.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!