US expert sketches nightmare nuclear terrorist attack on major city

AFP ^ | Wed, Sep 22, 2004

[Dan Evans]

Unless these guys build a shield for the core, which would make it quite large, you are going to basically have a bomb that will kill its handlers in short order

Most fissionable material is not dangerously radioactive. The exception is U-233.

[Dan Evans]

Also, assuming a ground burst, the fallout and contamination would be impossible to clean up, and Manhattan, (or where ever) would have to be abandoned, think Chernobyl, only 1000 times worse.

Chernobyl released a lot more radioactive contamination than any nuclear weapon. The Chernobyl plant is still operating and people still work there.

[RadioAstronomer]

True, but you seem to be overlooking the fact that the energy from the blast itself, especially in a groundburst, converts a *huge* amount of surrounding material (dirt, stone, steel, etc.) into radiactive isotopes. The great majority of fallout comes not from the original core of the bomb itself, but from the secondary conversions. This is why groundbursts are much "dirtier", fallout-wise, than airbursts. They also stir up more of the irradiated material and send it up into the atmosphere, to fall... somewhere.

Don't forget your decay ratios (seven-ten rule). After about two weeks, most of the "hot" stuff would be at an acceptable range.

[Dan Evans]

Why would losing 1% of our population destroy the U.S? A lot of countries have lost a lot more than that and survived.

[Shryke]

Right! So, would you say a 10 kt fission bomb would kill millions in Manhattan, or 10s of thousands? Best guess.

[Dan Evans]

Correction: Chernobyl was shut down four years ago. After the explosion in 1986, the three remaining reactors continued in operation for 14 years.

[No Surrender Monkey]

It's not a numbers thing. NYC is the financial center of the planet and a huge percentage of our major corporations are headquartered there.

[jslade]

bttt

[Hank Rearden]

So, would Bush then issue a press release indicating "regret" that a "religion of peace" could support such things?

Or would he finally start leveling mosques-full of Moo terrorists, without worrying about bad PR?

[Uncle Vlad]

Here's another scenario that no one seems to mention: a nuclear bomb goes off in an American city or in several American cities. Do you think this would not be an optimum time for North Korean and Iran to launch one after the first wave of attacks?

[meatloaf]

I'd limit it to Medina and Mecca. It's really going to suck for a lot of Muslims when the pilgrimages are out of the question.

[Dan Evans]

Either way, a nuclear blast of any size would cause the relocation of millions.

Not if it happened in the business district. If the fallout affected homes, then people would be relocated until the radiation fell to a safe level.

But in any case we have enough empty apartments and homes in this country to house at least ten million people.

[backtothestreets]

"A ten kiloton weapon?"

The size of a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists would matter less than where and how it was deployed.  Had I no education in such matters I'd probably scoff the alarm this proliferation expert is sounding.  Up until five or six years ago I'd have scoffed the suggestion airliners could bring down modern skyscrapers too.

[fiftymegaton]

Think if the WTC was still intact and a Hiroshima sized nuclear device was detonated in the middle of the complex ALL of the people in those buildings would have been dead(at the height of the work day 50,000+ in the north and south towers alone). I could easily see the total death toll from a 10-15KT blast in one of the more popular downtown Manhattan sites to be well over 100,000 in the initial blast and more than double that over the next week or two. IMO

[Dan Evans]

My view exactly, in my idea of a real attack this is what they would use as it can be delivered with a lot of noticeably instead of a loud noise and a quick reaction this can be dispersed by so many means which would go undetected until people began to fall over.

Yes, that might be a greater danger than a dirty bomb, but it still would be difficult to kill a lot of people. If the dose is too high people would smell the ozone from the gamma rays. And anyone who loitered in the area would get sick immediately. The area would have to be selected carefully. Placing it on a vehicle might make it more difficult to track down.

[Shryke]

I'd agree you might get into the 100's of thousands dead. But not millions. Not with 10kt weapon.

[fiftymegaton]

People gather in NYC for big events and marches. MILLIONS of them pack together for marches and parades. I wouldn't say it's impossible. In any event we wouldn't be able to count the dead anyway.

[paleocon patriarch]

Good post.

I think tracking nuclear material is possible and we have technologies that make it very difficult to move those materials.

What concerns me is that "device" which the North Koreans exploded last week which left a 2.5 mile mushroom cloud and no nuclear signiture!

I read the tin foil sites because in the pre-911 Rumsfeld's Rules, there was one that said "Hire Paranoids - They have a high rate of failure, but the uncover almost all conspiracies" . They are calling that device a Plasma bomb - a new level of destruction and portablilty. Perhaps it was something akin to the Red Mercury device that the Soviets produced.

[Shryke]

It's just theorizing anyway. I didn't like the alarmist approach of the author. Now, if the terrorists detonated a fusion bomb....well, that's just indescribable.

[Publius6961]

One could trigger a nuclear event just by pushing two sub critical masses together...then boom

Ummm no.
That statement is in the same category as "irradiated food will kill ya".

Let's let the DU types spread disinformation, shall we? For obvious reasons, no further discussion is appropriate.