The Terror Ahead A nuclear attack? Be very afraid.

Wall Street Journal ^ | Oct. 21, 2003 | GABRIEL SCHOENFELD

[Beck_isright]

I wonder what the reaction will be when Brazil and Venezuela have the bomb and sign an alliance with the commies in Cuba.

[what's up]

Just Posted - Today's News: Iran to Suspend Uranium Enrichment

[RightWingMama]

Bump for later

[RinaseaofDs]

Iraq was a secular regime. SH was nuts, and so were his sons, but you could count on them to do what was in their interests.

Iran is different. Iran is fundamentalist. They have stated publicly that 5 minutes after acquiring the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon on targets in Israel, they will. They couldn't have been more forthright about their intentions.

Russia is obviously not all that worked up about it. They happily continue to aid in developing their reactor projects in Iran. I can't see how this helps Russia, but hey, it's cash flow I guess.

The worst part of this is that Iran's public statements leave Israel only one option: at one time or another very soon Israel has to separate Iran from its nuclear capabilities. Any country in Israel's position would come to the same conclusion. Europe's problem with this is that they have large Muslim populations.

So what do you do? Condemn Israel for actions you are likely going to have to decide to take yourself? Scream about how Israel should have gone through the UN? How successful has the UN been to this point with Iran? Back Israel publicly?

Europe has no good options.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

missed it.

[FierceDraka]

Bump for later read

[MissAmericanPie]

Ah ha, the fly in the ointment. Did Clinton sell the nuclear plant to N. Korea?

[johnny7]

Did Clinton sell the nuclear plant to N. Korea?

No. Carter gave it to them. Clinton just got it running.

[MissAmericanPie]

I knew I smelled demoncrats.

[Yo-Yo]

You'll get some local contamination and maybe limited downwind fallout if a large-scale meltdown occurs, but not the explosive energy release (non-nuclear) of a Chornobil event.

You don't think that a couple of 2000 lb bunker busters in the containment vessel is an explosive event?

[Cannoneer No. 4]

I was an M60A1 tank platoon leader in the Federal army. I serve a 12-Pdr Napoleon of the Georgia Light Artillery nowadays.

[Blueflag]

Thanks --

It does make sense now.

Always learnin' at FR.

[dennisw]

btttttttttttttt

[chimera]

You don't think that a couple of 2000 lb bunker busters in the containment vessel is an explosive event?

No. Not in the way you are thinking. Externally-driven explosive events do not results in widespread contamination of the type you typically associate with these kinds of releases.

I've posted on the physics of release events before on these threads. I don't want to rehash all of that. Suffice it to say that you only get widespread dispersal of materials, like in the Chornobil accident or nuclear explosions (i.e., "fallout") if you have significant release of internally stored energy from the reacting materials. An external explosive event will spread stuff around locally, but in some ways it's like trying to push a rope. Unless you have large scale vaporization and dispersal of the materials via release of internally stored energy, there will not be the kind of widespread, downwind "fallout" most people instinctively visualize. You'll take out the reactor and cause local contamination (depending on the power history of the irradiated materials, if any), but devastating billions of square miles and ending life in the known Universe, as the media often portrays for these kinds of things, is nonsense.

[CatoRenasci]

Good on you for both!

[Valin]

Bump and bookmark
Welcome to the XXIst century...please fasten your seatbelt.

[SevenDaysInMay]

Trust the research, a few kilos of even Cesium 137 air bust from any home-made mortar or RPG is enough to spread terror and a flood of American refugees to be interviewed by Perky Katie.

Area deniability will cost us for generations or centuries many square miles = billion$ of prime real estate, or D.C., Manhatten, San Fran, etc, etc, etc. even if we don't waste billions more trying to decontaminate, with endless co$t overrun$.

We don't need to have our own Hiroshimas, but that would be replayed on All Jazz Era for generations. Dirty bombs would not likely motivate our boomers' launches, but actual nukes would.

Try to think like smart terrorists, because our mortal enemies' leaders, private enterprise proxies and their government sponsors are smart.

They will attack us to cost us more hundreds of billion$/year. They will probe each of our defenses. Anthrax? SARS may have been an accidental leak from a red Chinese bio-weapons lab, IMO.

Crippling our econpomy is their goal, with our dead amusing them to celebration, but not for the camera. They learned from our reaction viewing their WTC dances in the streets.

We are on the front lines as we hold hands with our wives and children. Qaeda wants us as off balance as Israelis struggling with their daily lives. If this war gets really hot as we did in 1942, Texas awel will be the spoken language of the New Christianity from the Suez Canal across the Arabian penninsula and Iran to India, after natural half-life decontamination of centuries.

We will face simultaneous attacks no matter the payload as that is a demonstrated dust monkey trick. If bio, we won't even know that we have been hit, until we are staggered. Prepare for it.

I expect an islamist version of the Nazis' "Night of the Long Knives". That is when assassins in the night to kill a large number of our political, business, and brain trust leadership before our morning papers even hit the porches. We will face simultaneous attacks no matter the payload as that is a demonstrated dust monkey trick.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Tuesday, October 21, 2003 A game of chess on the DMZ

In the first major redeployment of American troops in South Korea since the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War, the U.S. plans to roll up 19 camps scattered in and along the Korean demilitarized zone and relocate them to a pair of large bases south of Seoul. The Pentagon says the restructuring will allow it to reduce its 37,000-strong force; a State Department official who has seen the plan says the force reduction could total more than 10,000.