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U.S. Prepares to Get Nuked
There's an important story in the NYT about new efforts from the U.S. national laboratories to retain and improve their ability to identify nuclear fallout. In a nutshell, any fissionable materials turned into a nuclear weapon will be composed of a specific ratio of various radionuclides, which form a sort of signature, which can be used to identify the source of the fissionable material. The problem is, naturally, that you're probably doing this after the detonation.
The internet will survive it... right?
First strike!
Like the blinding flash, shockwave and mushroom cloud wouldn't give you a clue
Doesn't worry me...I'm Ready
Someone set us up the bomb!
I think the US is more preparing for radioactive fallouts from "dirty" bombs, i.e. sacks full of radioactive crap with a conventional explosive in then to spread the crap.
I don't think any terrorist group has the expertise, materials or facilities to build a nuclear device, much less deliver it, unless Pakistan helps.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
nuke them first?
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/national/19NUKE. html?ex=1080277200&en=e0e70d58d50239e4&ei=5062&par tner=GOOGLE
I hope the fact that Clancy wrote a novel about airlines used as bombs before 9/11 doesn't mean that there is an entire US Gov division researching his books and making policy decisions based on things in them. Oh wait, I guess this could be better than SOME of the reality we live in.
Here
as per ready.gov's instructions... i got my 25 miles of ductape... fuck those nukes!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Would being able to tell the country of origin for the fuel really mean anything? I mean, every nuclear power on the planet so far has let some bit of its nuclear program become 'lost'.
Seems to me this would just become a tool for blaming whomever our other intel is telling us is at fault - right or wrong, as we've seen recently.
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
Ever read Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" (no seeing the movie does not count). They used a similar method (I admit the science of it was over my head) to figure out that the fissionable material in the bomb that was detonated in Denver actually came from the US. They were also able to learn other interesting stuff about the bomb -- granted this is a work of fiction but if the science is more or less accurate (any nuclear physicists here who care to comment?) then I don't see any reason to assume we can't do this in the real world. I do know for a fact that you can learn an amazing amount of information about the type of bomb, material used, etc etc when a conventional bomb goes off. No reason to assume nukes are any different.
With the nuclear threat that we are currently facing I don't see why this should surprise anyone. Let's all pray like hell we never need to use any of these procedures.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
A couple items caught my attention.
This is actually done with PREVENTION in mind. Given an existing legitamite threat, this is well-spent money. This isn't just anti-terror, as nations like North Korea are perfectly capable of this level of threat, and wouldn't be without an excuse to excercise it (Bush's infamous "axis of evil" comment?).
I've not been a fan of how much or even how we've been spending to fight terror (see http://www.costofwar.com for what else we could have bought), but I would consider with what information and resources American enemies have that I'm not opposed to spending my tax dollars on such a program.
Yes, obviously we'd have to be nuked for this to pay off directly for us. However, in the case of such an incident, it'd be tremendous if we didn't run around like chickens with their heads detached. There were some lessons learned in 9/11 that are worth recalling.
You know you're living in a radioactive area if these are hopping around!
They have the Internet on computers now?
I suppose I'm the only one who read the title as "U.S. Prepares to Get Naked".
Which, of course, would have been a dupe of this article, right?
(And just when I'd gotten my karma back, too!)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Of course the US has been preparing to get nuked since before nukes. And before "atomics" before that, like the WWII atomic bombs on Japan). As the first to test, then (the only) to strike with fission weapons, we've been practicing defense since the early 1940s. And we're in one of the handful of countries that has steadily practiced defense. We are, in fact, the most nuked people on Earth, by our own hand in tests and industrial pollution.
Thinking through the unthinkable has always been our primary defense: first by preventing it, then by readiness for the aftermath, which minimizes the aftermath, inhibiting the event by reducing its damage. While others might not learn anything of how they might best prepare merely by applying what they see us do, they might at least learn to help prevent getting nuked by planning for it, without accepting it.
--
make install -not war
This is what "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" has to say int the January issue:
"Putting aside the controversy surrounding security at U.S. nuclear power plants, a would-be dirty bomber faces a Herculean task. A spent fuel rod weighs about 28 kilograms, with 36 rods weighing more than a metric ton. Heavy shielding and remote controls are required in their handling, because each rod exposes anyone standing nearby (within a meter) to a lethal dose within seconds.
There you go:
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/jf04/jf04k
This is more related to the Padilla case but never mind, to achieve the same impact one would have to deal with similar issues I guess.
I have a delivery system that can reach from almost anywhere in the world to almost anywhere else.
It's called a shipping container. After that, call your favorite UPS, FedX, hell even the USPS will deliver a decent sized package.
Duh.
Even if the lowly customs officer scans the box and detects radiation upon receipt what does he do? What kind of damage would a 10KT warhead do at the dockside in Los Angeles?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
For those of you cracking jokes, I enclose just one of mnay testimonies after what happens when someone (read the good ol' US of A) drops a (*tiny* by today's standards), 12.5kT atom bomb on a city.
This is NYC or London or your hometown if things screw up. Whatever you need to do to get involved so this DOESN'T happen, I suggest you consider doing. When it's acceptable to laugh at 9/11 corpses (3% of death toll at hiroshima) in polite company, I'll laugh with you about nukes.
----
From a survivor of Hiroshima:
nday, August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima. A few seconds after 8:15 A.M., a flash of light, brighter than a thousand suns, shredded the space over the city's center. A gigantic sphere of fire, a prodigious blast, a formidable pillar of smoke and debris rose into the sky: an entire city annihilated as it was going to work, almost vaporized at the blast's point zero, irradiated to death, crushed and swept away. Its thousands of wooden houses were splintered and soon ablaze, its few stone and brick buildings smashed, its ancient temples destroyed, its schools and barracks incinerated just as classes and drills were beginning, its crowded streetcars upended, their passengers buried under the wreckage of streets and alleys crowded with people going about their daily business. A city of 300,000 inhabitants--more, if its large military population was counted, for Hiroshima was headquarters for the southern Japan command. In a flash, much of its population, especially in the center, was reduced to a mash of burned and bleeding bodies, crawling, writhing on the ground in their death agonies, expiring under the ruins of their houses or, soon, roasted in the fire that was spreading throughout the city--or fleeing, half-mad, with the sudden torrent of nightmare-haunted humanity staggering toward the hills, bodies naked and blackened, flayed alive, with charcoal faces and blind eyes.
Is there any way to describe the horror and the pity of that hell? Let a victim tell of it. Among the thousand accounts was this one by a Hiroshima housewife, Mrs. Futaba Kitayama, then aged thirty-three, who was struck down 1900 yards--just over a mile--from the point of impact. We should bear in mind that the horrors she described could be multiplied a hundredfold in the future.
t was in Hiroshima, that morning of August 6. I had joined a team of women who, like me, worked as volunteers in cutting firepaths against incendiary raids by demolishing whole rows of houses. My husband, because of a raid alert the previous night, had stayed at the Chunichi (Central Japan Journal), where he worked.
"Our group had passed the Tsurumi bridge, Indianfile, when there was an alert; an enemy plane appeared all alone, very high over our heads. Its silver wings shone brightly in the sun. A woman exclaimed, 'Oh, look--a parachute!' I turned toward where she was pointing, and just at that moment a shattering blast filled the whole sky.
"Was it the flash that came first, or the sound of the explosion, tearing up my insides? I don't remember. I was thrown to the ground, pinned to the earth, and immediately the world began to collapse around me, on my head, my shoulders. I couldn't see anything. It was completely dark. I thought my last hour had come. I thought of my three children, who had been evacuated to the country to be safe from the raids. I couldn't move; debris kept falling, beams and tiles piled up on top of me.
"Finally I did manage to crawl free. There was a terrible smell in the air. Thinking the bomb that hit us might have been a yellow phosphorus incendiary like those that had fallen on so many other cities, I rubbed my nose and mouth hard with a tenugui (a kind of towel) I had at my waist. To my horror, I found that the skin of my face had come off in the towel. Oh! The skin on my hands, on my arms, came off too. From elbow to fingertips, all the skin on my right arm had come loose and was hanging grotesquely. The skin of my
Like you haven't been paying any attention to this Dirty Bomb stuff.
Let me give you an example: What looks like a car bomb goes off on Wall Street. It turns out Al Qeada operatives have scraped together (from 10,000 smoke detectors or wherever) a bunch of radioactive material and included it in with their Tim McVeigh-style fertilizer and fuel oil bomb. Physical damage may be minor, but hundreds of people get exposed to the nuclear toxins and the grounds will take a major effort to clear.
Granted, one move like that and treaties with Pakistan or not, the US will be hell bent to exterminate Al Qeada.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Duck And Cover!
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
The word "get" is so over and badly used in American English. It grates after a while. "The US prepares to be nuked"
Umm problem is that ICBMs aren't a big threat to the US. The problem is some guy packing a oversize suitcase bomb that some country supplied him with. ICMBs its easy to track who launched it, we have Norad. We could even possibly shoot them out of the sky.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Drop a nuke on Mecca first ... And make it clear their God is dead or never existed like everyone else's.
Bad idea. The destruction of Mecca by the Infidels is part of their armageddon scenario. Which continues, by the way, with the second coming of Jesus (whom they refer to as the prophet Issa, a particluarly holy man, whom they believe went bodily to heaven and will be back shortly before the end).
Playing into that scenario would essentially require the bulk of the Islamic world (most of which consider terrorism to be heresy) to go on a holy war against the bombers and their allies.
Given that (if I recall correctly) there's over a Billion of 'em last count, and they DO beileve that dying in a war to defend the faith is a ticket to paradise, this would be very very bad.
By the way, It's not "their" God. It's "our" God. Assuming you and I are both Christian and/or Jewish. (Of course that might be problematic, given your statment about the non-existence and/or death of God.)
"Allah" is just Arabic for "God" - specifically the Arabic pronounciation of the word that Hebrew pronounces "Yahweh", which became "Jehova" in English translations. It's the word that is used by Arabic-speaking Muslums, Jews, and Christians alike when referring to God.
You know, if you really believe there IS no God, or that God is dead, then you're playing into another part of the scenario. Their version of armageddon is the war between the UNfaithful and the "people of the book" - members of EVERY divinely-inspired religion, along with everybody who converts to any of 'em along the way (with Jesus back to give the last word on it all).
Drop that bomb and you're exactly what they've been waiting for.
Nip it in the bud.
You're about 1,500 years too late.
But maybe we can nip YOUR idea in the bud. Before you set off WW III in the form of the sixth Crusade.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You obviously grew up in the cold war. You know what it's like to have a vast array of global-killer weapons pointed in your general direction.
Today's youth takes this fore granted. I saw a comment on here a few days back along the lines of "Well, let's throw a few nukes at one spot on Mars and see what happens." Today's youth read about Fat Boy and think "Wow, that's a cool bomb." But they should really be thinking "Wow, we did that? Could that happen to us?"
I'm frightened to see what happens when my generation doubles in age, and qualifies for positions of power over these kinds of weapons. They do not know better and unless something horrific happens, I doubt they will within the next 25 years.
The same thing goes for those countries just now joining the nuclear family. Some of these countries are lead by people who do know better and think that's all the more reason to use them.
May you live in interesting times? We're well beyond that now.
Nuking someone makes 8 squares of pollution and makes everyone else in the world hate you. And we don't have enough settlers right now to clean up all that pollution.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You can be as technologically advanced as you like. But the key to not getting nuked is to be friends with others. Or at least leave them alone, so they'll leave you alone.
Foreign Missile Developmentsand the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015
APS Study Group on Boost-Phase Intercept Systems for National Missile Defense
We can never build a foolproof system. The technical hurdles involved are immense and expensive, while the countermeasures are relatively simple and inexpensive.
How much money will it take to convince you that you're safe?
Why don't we buy North Korea if we're willing to spend billions of dollars a year on safety? Im sure the people in North Korea wouldn't mind not starving.
You said: " I don't know if they can id specific weapons, but can't they already identify the reactor of origin for the nuclear materials used?"
The nuclides currently of interest in making a nuclear weapon are U-233, U-235 and Pu-239. U-233 can be made from neutron absorption of Th-232 (and subsequent double B- decay), U-235 occurs about 0.7% as natural U, and Pu-239 can be made by neutron absorption of 238 (and susequent double B- decay). The reason these nuclides are of interest is that if one of them absorbs a neutron, due to the quirks of physics, it now has enough energy for the nucleus to break apart without requiring any kinetic energy from the neutron. This is not true for most other common radionuclides.
So, if the bomb used U-233, it came from a thorium breeder reactor, U-235 came from some type of seperation plant (which requires advanced materials--tends to indicate a fully industrialized country), and Pu-239 would come from a uranium breeder reactor. Since U-233 and Pu-239 would be chemically seperated from the rest of their respective reactors' fuel, you aren't really going to get any good design information about their breeder reactors that created the U-233 or Pu-239. A U-235 bomb is the only one that you can really tell based on environmental impurities or irregularities in the U-234, U-235, and U-238 concentrations where the U was mined.
So how can you tell if the bomb was created with U-233, U-235, or Pu-239? Well, there is a statistical distribution of fission products created during fission of any fisionable nuclide. This distribution will vary from nuclide to nuclide. Each of these radionuclides will have a half-life (and branching ratios) as it decays to various radionuclides. If you know when the bomb detonated, you should be able to determine its type by the radionuclides left over at the point of detonation, right? Not exactly, for 2 reasons. First, some radionuclides are gaseous (once cooled to ambient temperature) prior to a decay and solid afterwards or vice versa, so environmental factors have to be taken into account (or just measuring radionuclides that will be solid at all points in their decay chains). Second, and most important, a nuclear bomb has lots of neutrons flying around. Depending upon the size of the bomb, the tamper, they type (atomic bomb, thermonuclear bomb, etc.), --basically the design--the concentration of neutrons in time for the bomb will vary. Whats important about this is not that all the fissionable material will be used up--thats the point of the bomb--but that the fission fragments will also be exposed to a neutron flux and transmuted.
What does this mean? Based on the fallout you can determine what the fissionable material is and the design of the bomb within your mathematical models.
Finally one point that I think needs pointing out: U-233, U-235, and Pu-239 are selected because they require no kinetic energy of a neutron hitting them to cause fission. Thats useful for a nuclear reactor where you want to control the fission rate, but in a nuclear bomb you have to use neutrons that are travelling very very fast; therefore, there will be a significant kinetic energy imparted upon an absorbing nucleus that one of these fast neutrons hits. Meaning: other nuclides (other than U-233, U-235, and Pu-239) could potentially be used in an advanced (but probably very large) nuclear bomb.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
By identifying the ratio of isotopes, they can determine the probable lab of origin (if it is one of the main labs and not someone's garage.)
The can also make some basic determinations as to the level of tech used to make the materials. They can also use it as evidence in any sort of tracking of the materials back to it's source.
It is a useful dataset, overall.
If you see a white flash, kiss the guy next to you. Doesn't matter who he/she is. Because you won't get to see them again.
:/
I doubt wether this thing will work...
People discover the meaning of life between getting piss drunk and the following hangover.
If North Korea wants to hit us, they can smuggle a suitcase bomb. The problem with terrorism is the lack of nuclear deterance, they aren't afraid that we'll hit them back.
The entire THEORY behind Bush's War on Terror is to hold governments accountable, and therefore not be willing to support terrorism.
North Korea is less likely to give Islamists nuclear material if we could track it to them and respond by nuking the shit out of them.
It gives deterance back, will therefore hopefully never be used.
We never launched our Cold War nukes, but if you think that they didn't make us safer... well then we disagree on 50 years of global history.
Alex
I predict a 100% fallout in my pants if a bomb goes off.
I love americans... "We would annihilate them" ....
Right... in global thermo nuclear war (like, HELLO, with China), you do not annihilate anything. In this scenario, you are in NORAD or you are dead.
So, perhaps you should say:
My president would annihilate them, or, the powers that be would destroy the world because of this or something that actually resembles reality, instead of the stuff you see in fox news.
NO SIG
Warning, before someone moderates the parent as "informative", be aware that the above is a semi-clever troll.
For example, the last paragraph about the kinetic energy of neutrons and whether you want fast or slow neutrons for a bomb or reactor is complete bullshit. A given nucleus has an optimum range of energy for neutron absorption, whether that nucleus is in a bomb or a reactor.
Further, breeding and/or refining nuclear fuel is not an exact process -- you're going to get quanties of other elements and isotopes according to the amount of fission, neutron capture and impurities in the original material -- the analysis will look at things like strontium, gadolinium, other fission byproducts and their isotopic ratios.
And yes, they really can determine which reactor the material came from. (Although determining *what part* of the reactor it came from, as suggested in a Tom Clancy book, is a stretch).
Plutonium is a normal byproduct of uranium reactor operation, particularly of the unenriched uranium heavy water moderated reactors of the CANDU style, it doesn't have to particularly be from a special breeder reactor. The latter is simply more efficient. Analysis of the residue will clear distinguish them.
-- Alastair
Questions for you to research (you wouldn't believe my conclusions anyway, nor should you):
Was the attack really sneak, and intended to be so? Did the US also draw Japan into war using pressure around oil and rubber resources, as well as deception?
Did attacking a military base require revenge in the form of destroying cities? (Your suggestion is that it did.)
Given that Hirohito was actually offered a realistic opportunity to surrender, would it have been possible for him given internal politics? If not, did the US military know that?
Was it necessary to detonate over a city? Why not out past Tokyo harbour, in full view? Consider it a warning shot, factor in cultural elements.
Given that one is convinced that nuking a city was necessary, was it necessary to nuke a second city?
Was there intent and significant motivation to conduct these detonations as experiments?
I suggest that your research not focus on reportage coming out of the fog of war or patriotism, but on declassified documents and their analyses by scholars.
Good luck. (One might then apply the results of above questions to the people of Bikini, the Aleuts, the Navaho, etc., including those the French, English, and Russians experimented on, just for a bigger picture.)
Damn those pesky terrorists
My dad was a nuclear chemist back in the day, he talks about going outside the lab, scaping settled dust off the hoods of cars in the parking lot and doing analysis, with exotic isotopes showing up whenever the soviets were doing atmospheric bomb tests.
That was back then, doing casual analysis. A nice comprehensive database of worldwide nuclear fissile material and a network of sensors around the world would yield alot of information - not that we wouldn't know it if a bomb went off anywhere around the world.
Also theres that network of infrasound detectors, which also picks up earthquakes, meteors, and other large scale events. (link below)
Low sounds detect meteor blast (BBC)
Science: The original open source.
Remember, no one thought that al Queda had cruise missile capability before 9/11.
Not strictly true. The basic idea of crashing airplaines into American skyscrapers had been around for at least twenty years -- Dean Ing used this premise in his 1979 novel Soft Targets.
-kgj
-kgj
Keep up your current foreign policy and you won't have long to wait.
Unfortunately, that statement, regardless of the flamebait moderations, has too much truth in it. It offends many people.
Our current foreign policy isn't working out very well. We need to do something about it no matter who's running the show next January. Bush, Kerry, whatever. Something's got to give.
Let's try something that more often embraces the world instead of making others wonder where our baseball bat will strike next.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
This article (South Asia Tribune) explains some of the motivation for 9/11, and possible future attacks. According to the article, the US has:
_ 02/opin ion_pervezhoodbhoy.htm
- Oppressed Palestinians by giving US$5bn per year to Sharon / Israel
- Failed to rebuild Afghanistan after helping to destroy it twice
- Spoken the language of Bin Laden (good vs evil, force as the method of choice)
- Supported dictatorial regimes in Phillipines, Indonesia and Algeria, all countries with significant Muslim populations, while singling out Iraq
- Acted with trumphalism
- Lacked respect for international law
- Bombed civilians such as the Afghanistan wedding party.
The writer of the article believes the above does NOT justify 9/11, although he says he knows some people that do. Here is the link:
Were We Too Hijacked On 9/11?
http://www.satribune.com/archives/sep09_15
For such an "expert" in strategic geopolitics you as many Americans fail to grasp that terrorism is a tactic, not a constituency. The harder you fight it the stronger it becomes. Ask Israel.
Is just as horrific as what you described. War sucks, and it's been going on a lot longer than anyone has written down. The first books were about ways to effectively kill each other. Not much has changed since you gutted your enemy with a sword - a real innovation over the club and spear techniques. That is just as violent and gory - perhaps moreso. War is part of our very being. I find it interesting we debate so heavily what happened to the nethanderals.. heh. I can make an educated guess or two, and they all involve me making a better club and having a full tummy.
Nukes put it all out there - the only thing that has changed is there are more of us now, that we're all fooling ourselves about human nature - it's easy to be a pacifist when you have lots of food on the table without really knowing what makes our cities run (oil). So what if it was a war about oil.. oil runs the whole show my friend.
I caught the tail end of growing up in the cold war, and you mark my words: Nuclear weapons are going to be used again. They will be used to devastating effect, and the genie is indeed out of the bottle. If the western world does not demonstrate it has the willpower to use them, then someone else will - it is a dangerous game if nuclear weapons become a "paper tiger".
The sad fact is we are all headed to a very dramatic showdown over oil. People pretend there's an unlimited supply, but there's not. And we will do ANYTHING as a nation to insure the ready availablity of oil to fuel the economy.
Use nuclear power to find a way to get off the need for oil. If you care, don't rally government to stop wars and weapons development - I would perfer my side to be armed to the teeth with the beast weaponry known to man. "Green" technologies can NEVER come even close to replacing the energy quality of oil. Without that energy quality, "our" world just doesn't work.
Rally around a tax to fund nuclear physicists and other people who might figure a way to get energy out of the quantum vaccuum - but do something, and do it soon. Fooling ourselves helps nobody, and there's good reasons why the sun doesn't power your SUV - and none of them have to do with grand oil company conspiracies.
..don't panic
The game now is as it always was: deterrence. The point of being able to back-trace nuclear material, whether it be fallout from a nuclear weapon or residue from a radiological (or "dirty") bomb, is to be able to determine who was behind the attack. Yes, terrorism is hard to fight on a battlefield, but it's not exactly a radical thought that if we find a country to have been complicit in any way with such an attack, we'll force them to face us on our own terms. We've bulldozed through two countries so far because of 9/11, and whether you agree with the reasons for doing that or not, there's no way we'd hesitate to do it again if a nuclear weapon of any form was detonated here. Our best bet at preventing this kind of attack is demonstrating that we can figure out who to destroy after the fact.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Officials also hope that if terrorists know a bomb can be traced, they will be less likely to try to use one
- How ya doing, Mohammed Al-Shafeer ? Ready to do the sacrifice in the name of Allah ?
- Nah, I don't think I'll carry that nuke with me. They'd be able to trace me after it exploded. I prefer to be just a plain old-fashioned bomb-man with vanilla explosives. This way they won't trace me.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
What am I talking about? Ask a "suvivor" of a Vietnam-era napalming how their injuries feel. If they're still around - just because you survive the original splash doesn't mean you're going to live long, or well. Or, ask a survivor of stepping on a land mine how it feels to stump around on those splintered bones. Or, ask a vet with a good chunk of their brain blown away how they feel - if, of course, their hearing centers still function, and if they can communicate back.
Beginning to get my point? Being injured is horrible. Losing people is horrible. Neither is the exclusive domain of nukes.
There's more, though.
By now, some of you will be muttering darkly about the sheer numbers of deaths and injuries. That's not unique to nukes, either. Check your history. 1943 Hamburg firestorm: 40,000 killed. February 1945, Berlin: 25,000 killed. February 1945: Dresden: 30,000 killed. Total number killed by US bombings (in Germany) is generally accepted to be 800,000 to a million people, depending on your cites. I can absolutely promise you that not one of those people - or the people they left behind - give a rat's buttocks if fission was involved or not. Dead is dead. Burned is burned. Crippled is crippled.
Now we get to the fallout-fearing ranters. Well, this one's actually pretty simple to dispose of. So far (for the US testing only) we know of 911 nuclear weapons tests in Nevada, 106 in the Pacific, and 10 more in various other US locations (Alaska, New Mexico, Mississippi and Colorado.) These vary from airbursts to underground and varied in yield from fractions of a KT to 15 megatons. You'll notice that we're still here, Nevada in particular is doing pretty well, there are still edible fish and lots of other pretty healthy flora and fauna in the Pacific and generally speaking (considering 911 events) there is very little of interest going on related to all that activity. Of course, I've not mentioned the Soviet and Chinese and French and anyone else who has taken the liberty to pop off a nuclear device. Which I probably should do a little, because some of those were a lot larger than the US ones: The Soviets in particular hold the record as far as I know for the biggest bang, and they lit of about 715 weapons, not counting little guys, but counting "fizzles." And again, the world is still here, and people mostly think about Nagasaki and Hiroshima when they think about the effects of nuclear weapons.
Turns out, that's the right way to think, because nuclear weapons going off in populated centers are the really "annoying" thing. Lots and lots of dead and injured people at once, huge cleanup job, big risk of disease, injury to industrial and social infrastructure.
Think back. When those planes flew into the WTC, we lost 3,000 people, and a few buildings, and a few businesses got hammered. Now if you sit back and count people, and buildings, and businesses, you gain the perspective that this was in fact a tiny, tiny, tiny pinprick, albeit on a nerve - the NYC business district. But the social and business infrastructure damage was HUGE. President Bush mobilized, and used, the military, in several venues over a long period of time. The US economy took a shock which I maintain it has not recovered from to this day - though that's very much an IMHO - and the news, and the public, could talk of little else. Imagine the US public reaction to a firestorm (non-nuclear) that killed 25,000 people. It seems to me that we'd "melt down", socially and economically. A nuke would do the same.
That, /.'ers, is the real problem. America is one hell of a lot softer than its size, bellicose ranting, economic "might" and world police presence makes people think it is. I think if a nuke went off, the problem wouldn't be the direct effects. The problem would be the breakdown of everything else.
The thing that irritat
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Actually, Russia abandoned its No First Use (NFU) doctrine after the end of the Cold War. It no longer renounces the first use of nuclear weapons. As you pointed out, the US has never renounced first use. I know Pakistan and Israel have not. Britain recently stated it might reply to a non-nuclear WMD attack with nuclear weapons, and NATO (including Britain and France) reserves the option as well. Only two states still have NFU. China has always had an unconditional NFU doctrine. India has been under internal pressure to abandon its own NFU pledge.
A comprehensive summary of existing policies is available at this site.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Israel has yet to open a can of you-know-what on the terrorists. Military estimations said that Israel alone could've taken out Saddam, as well as all neighboring countries who support him. You don't think Israel has nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver all of them on a moments notice?
The US has been pleading with Israel for restraint from day one. We are still hypocritically encouraging them to be calm, promising them that an American response will be more effective than a Zionist one. Ariel Sharon -- the Churchill of Israel -- is preaching restraint, because he knows what is in store for the terrorists at the hands of the Americans. This is the same Ariel Sharon that single-handedly defeated Egypt! He knows Israel is in a far stronger position now, and his enemies are much weaker.
You do not understand the essence of terrorism. You think people flock to terrorists when they see their friends who engage in terrorist acts get mercilessly shredded to black bits of burning flesh by missiles. On the contrary, they run and hide when they hear the soldiers coming down the road. No promise of virgins in the afterlife is worth waking up to a helicopter at your balcony, or facing a squad of American soldiers sending their regards from President Bush. Remember why Saddam said he surrendered peacefully: "Would you want to fight these guys?" Why do you think Libya is coming clean all of a sudden? I am sure it has nothing to do with President Bush's Texas charm or cowboy hat.
Moscow cringed when President Reagan swore he would build up the arsenal and use it if necessary. Hitler squirmed when Churchill announced his resolve to fight at all costs and never surrender. Osama bin Laden is hiding in shame, worrying every day if some soldiers in desert camouflage are going to find him that day, and bring him out to answer for his crimes.
If being slaughtered by the Americans and Israelis is so helpful to terrorists, why aren't they out in the open, encouraging us to launch an all-out frontal assault on their HQ? After all, if we wipe them all out in one grand armaggedon style battle, won't their numbers swell with energetic youths who want to die fighting as well?
They fear retaliation. Their numbers are dropping, and those who are in want out. Look at what is happening in Baghdad and Tikrit. One by one, Saddam's supporters are either dying or promising to lay down their arms. One by one, they see their comrades get shot to pieces or tracked down mercilessly and hunted like rabbits. Soon, there will be no more of Saddam or Osama's supporters in Iraq. If there are, they will be hiding again, no longer setting off car bombs or laying ambushes for supply trucks carrying medicine and school supplies. And when they go back to hiding and stop blowing our children up, then we will have won the war on terror.
The best strategy in war is to avoid war is possible, but when that strategy fails, the next best thing is to win overwhelmingly. Bury the brave ones. Take out their captains and generals. Leave only the cowards who refused to fight. Send them back to repopulate their country, and raise a generation of cowards who won't dare oppose you again. And make certain that the country becomes your ally so that they don't plot against you again.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
disclaimer: i appologise to anyone, except jgardn, who will read this rant. it's a rebuke to the parent post, and by definition "garbage in, a lot of messy cleaning out". if you are halfways informed about politics and history, you probably do not need to read it. flag this as flamebait, if you will.
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i have many questions for you.
Israel has yet to open a can of you-know-what on the terrorists.
can of worms? i assume you mean using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against terrorist. please explain how. who would you target? terrorist are individuals hiding among the population. would you use WMD (emphasis on MASS) against them? wouldn't that be genocide?
Military estimations said that Israel alone could've taken out Saddam, as well as all neighboring countries who support him.
this thread was about terrorist, but you changed the topic to Saddam. was Saddam a convicted terrorist? or was he a national dictator, previously a CIA asset (assasin) ? which neighboring countries were supporting Saddam? Iran? no. S.Arabia? no. Turkey? no. Jordan? no. kuwait? no. egypt? no. Syria? probably yes, they made business deals with him. but you said COUNTRIES, and one hit does not make a plural.
You don't think Israel has nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver all of them on a moments notice?
what is your sabre-rattling good for? why would Israel want to use it's 200 warheads to turn 100 million Arabs, Turks or Persians into black glass craters? is that a solution to terrorism? is killing some potential 5.000 terrorist (my estimate) worth the 'colateral damage'? maybe you think that all those people do not deserve to live any longer?
The US has been pleading with Israel for restraint from day one. We are still hypocritically encouraging them to be calm, promising them that an American response will be more effective than a Zionist one.
you make something up. restraint from striking against whom? you are very cryptic. I know, that the US has been pleading Israel not to strike back at Iraq in case of SCUD attacks. Saddam would like to ignite a holy war against Jews, which would press other Muslim countries to support him. clearly not a positive outcome. OTOH, if you mean Palestinian terrorist, the US has NEVER promised Israel that it would strike against them. now that would be a stupid strategy.
Ariel Sharon -- the Churchill of Israel -- is preaching restraint, because he knows what is in store for the terrorists at the hands of the Americans.
Ariel Sharon has provoked the current intifada, after that he won the elections as the 'general-iron-fist' candidate. again, the US will not strike at Palestinian terrorist in Set Bank or Gaza. never. this would be symbolic for a judeo-christian crusade in the Holy Land against Muslims. You seem to be unaware of the global implications of such a situation.
This is the same Ariel Sharon that single-handedly defeated Egypt! He knows Israel is in a far stronger position now, and his enemies are much weaker.
Egypt was not a terrorist enemy to Israel. it was a nationalistic country. the reasons were also very different. military means are not effective against urban-based terrorist. you can send an army into Afghanistan, but you can not send them inside a city like Kair or Islamabad.
You do not understand the essence of terrorism. You think people flock to terrorists when they see their friends who engage in terrorist acts get mercilessly shredded to black bits of burning flesh by missiles.
no, you do not understand terrorism at all. there are different reasons why people become terrorist. there are also different types of terrorism.
1) revenge (like for losing your entire family to an rocket attack)(Palestine, Chechnia)
2) ideology (indoctrination, cultural hostility) (AL-Kaida, Rote Armee Front)
3) assymetric warfare (if your nation has no army, bombs are the only means of
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