Surprise Nuclear Strike? Here's How We'll Figure Out Who Did It (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Many experts believe that a nuclear attack on U.S. soil is more likely than ever; a bomb set off in a city street is seen as the most likely scenario. The conceivable need to unmask a perpetrator, and mount an effective response, is propelling the emerging area of post-detonation forensics. Scientists are devising new sensors, manufacturing artificial fallout to hone analytical techniques, and studying how the glass formed in the furnace of an atomic blast would vary depending on the nature of the bomb and the city where it detonated. Discreet Oculus, a sensor array that would collect data during a nuclear attack on a U.S. city, was tested in the first exercise of its kind last summer.

Comments

The probability of a surprise nuclear attack is...

[jd]

...zero. There is absolutely no possibility of such an attack, on US soil or anywhere else.

A dirty bomb? Those have bugger all effectiveness, except against the emotions of the weak. The amount of radioactive material required to build a dirty bomb that actually did something would exceed the amount needed to build a real bomb. It would be utterly stupid.

By far the most effective weapon is the human imagination. Tell enough people that a dirty bomb, or a biological weapon, has been released, in some location where there is strong mistrust of any kind of official source, and you wouldn't even need a bomb or to go there. The viral nature of the message, the paranoia of the citizens and the psychology of mass hysteria will guarantee that symptoms will be felt. If those people believe firmly enough that they will die, then - as is well known from studies in shamanism - those people will will themselves to die. There needn't be a single thing wrong with any of them, aside from their own credulity.

The US is reasonably well guarded. Certainly, it's enough to stop any serious physical weapon from getting through. A psychological bomb, where the "explosive" is the insanity demonstrated on a daily basis, that you can't stop, you can't trace and you can't respond. There is only one way to stop a psychological bomb and that's to have a rational, sane, well-educated nation. And nobody wants one of those.