You are overestimating the power of a suitcase nuke. They are very small (for nukes). They will knock down everything in about a 3 block radius, with a rapidly diminishing effect the further out you go.
That is still enough to really trash the downtown core of just about any city, but not nearly enough to destroy the entire city. Nor would 20 nukes (or 35) be nearly enough to knock out the U.S. as a whole.
Twenty small nukes is not really a lot. If that is "all" you have, you would need to be creative in how you used them.
Small nukes like this are most useful for blowing up high value point targets. Examples include dams (think down stream flooding, loss of power generation, washed out bridges, etc.), nuclear power plants (think LOTS of fallout), and killing key groups of people (think Congress, the Pentagon, the White House, etc.).
For instance:
A small group of them could take out the financial district of NYC.
Taking out the right dam(s) on the Mississippi/Missouri rivers would cut the country in half, and make New Orleans into a lake.
Taking out the right dam(s) on the Columbia River would flood Portland, and cut off Washington state. (The U.S. would then be cut into 3 parts...).
The St. Lawrence Seaway could be rendered un-navigable, thus cutting off shipping from the Great Lakes.
If the goal is to show "moral superiority" at the same time, take out Las Vegas and/or Hollywood.
The enemy leaders are smart people. Each of the above possibilities has been mentioned as a possible Al Qaida target in previous news reports.
In addition to doing enormous economic damage, the above attacks would sow panic among the people. However, I think the U.S. would survive an attack like this. Islam might not survive the retaliation, however.
Again recognizing that the enemy leaders are smart people, and have thought all this through, what could possibly hit us so hard that our ability to retaliate is crushed?
Hmmm... Anthrax and/or smallpox are the weapons of choice if your purpose is to kill LOTS of people.
yea, I've always wondered if the 'tiny' post 9-11 anthrax 'outbreak' was a 'test run' for a later terrorist strike....
Wound 1, you've removed several. Kill 1, you've removed 1.
Have been roughly aware of those facts.
I meant that they would, at some point likely p*ss on the 4 corners of our turf much as a dog marks it's territory to signal the scope of their power and their intent to conquer the whole of the land.
Certainly I expect whatever nukes to hit high priority targets and massive bio and chem terror spread as far and wide as they can manage to get it done as a supplement to the nukes.
I do think that NYC and DC will get hit with at least a few nukes. I don't think the talk of post poning the election is idle talk. They wouldn't risk that talk without sobering intel, imho.
Thanks for your meaty post.