# Bin Laden claims to have Nukes **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 10, 2001, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624 "2001-11-10T13:42:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Patricinus\_Scriblerus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f07891/32.png) [@Patricinus\_Scriblerus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patricinus_Scriblerus)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/21 "2001-11-11T00:36:49Z")
\*\* > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tsunamisurfer \* > > However, at this point in your scenario, the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, thus allowing a U.S. “boomer” parked somewhere in the Indian Ocean to fire several nuclear missiles at key Afghani cities. In less than 15 minutes, Osama, most of the Taliban leadership and, um, untold numbers of innocent Afghanis are vaporized. Yes, Al Qaeda’s agents may detonate more bombs in response, but Osama’s personal quest for regional leadership would be finished. \*\* Yes we all know that that the USA has Boomers parked in the Indian Ocean right now but isn’t the political cost of usting Nuke far too high (I am speaking both domestically and foreign reaction here) ---
**Author:** ![labdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/5fc32e/32.png) [@labdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/labdude)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/22 "2001-11-11T03:00:07Z")
I think we all know nukes are not necessary to cause big problems. What if a bunch of suicidal terrorists hijacked plain old gasoline tanker trucks and crashed them into large buildings across the USA. This would seem much easier than obtaining nukes. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/23 "2001-11-11T03:19:46Z")
I don’t understand what launching nukes at Afghanistan would accomplish. Launching a retaliatory strikes against Afghan cities makes about as much sense as launching a retaliatory strike against Riyadh. Bin Laden isn’t there. He’s deep in a cave somewhere. A retaliatory nuclear response will NOT kill him, unless we get lucky and drop one right on top of him. But if we knew where he was with that accuracy, we could get him today with conventional forces. The missiles on the U.S. Boomer subs have warheads in the 100kt range, if I recall correctly. That gives them an area of total destruction of maybe a mile or two against unhardened targets. You could probably drop one within a mile of his cave and not get him. And there are MANY caves. The way I see it, the U.S. is almost completely powerless to launch an effective retaliatory strike against a nuclear attack by Bin Laden. The administration is even admitting now that they may not be able to find him at all. He could wind up at large for years. ---
**Author:** ![Toaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@Toaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toaster)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/24 "2001-11-11T03:25:45Z")
What about the Olympics? It seems Osama wants to hurt America, but I still worry (mostly because I live in SLC). I mean, if he had them, wouldn’t it be pretty suicidal but make-a-point-y for him to explode the Olympics? And on that, it doesn’t seem these “suitcase bombs” have much of a range of damage sans the radioactive material being carried around by wind. I don’t know much about nuclear weaponry (and I tried reading some of the links here, but I’ve got some flu and feel too sick to understand them) to know what range would be “insta-death” type stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/25 "2001-11-11T04:11:11Z")
Please click [here](http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1648000/1648572.stm). A mistake in translation is not the same as a nuclear explosion. ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/26 "2001-11-11T04:29:31Z")
**tsunamisurfer** I can’t say one way or the other about who has nuclear weapons beyond the governments that officially say they do. I think this article in the NY Times > **[A NATION CHALLENGED: CHEMICAL WEAPONS; Al Qaeda Sites Point to Tests Of...](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/world/a-nation-challenged-chemical-weapons-al-qaeda-sites-point-to-tests-of-chemicals.html)** > > US identifies sites in Afghanistan that it suspects were involved in Osama bin Laden's efforts to acquire and produce chemical and biological weapons, but none have been bombed since military campaign began; Al Qaeda is believed to have already... (sorry, you have to register first) states that Al-Qaeda has been working on chemical weapons, but they still haven’t figured out how to use them effectively. Didn’t Saddam Hussein threaten to use nuclear weapons during the Persian Gulf War? He made a lot of claims and so far, he still doesn’t seem to have any nukes. As for the patents for making a nuclear weapon being available at any Patent Depository Library, I’m a bit skeptical. I don’t think the Manhattan Project scientists ran over to the PTO and said, “Hey, look at this, we’ll make some money off of this!” It’s not like you’re going to go and sell an atomic bomb are you? At least I pray no one has. ---
**Author:** ![tsunamisurfer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@tsunamisurfer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tsunamisurfer)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/27 "2001-11-11T04:31:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \* > **I don’t understand what launching nukes at Afghanistan would accomplish. Launching a retaliatory strikes against Afghan cities makes about as much sense as launching a retaliatory strike against Riyadh. Bin Laden isn’t there. He’s deep in a cave somewhere. A retaliatory nuclear response will NOT kill him, unless we get lucky and drop one right on top of him. But if we knew where he was with that accuracy, we could get him today with conventional forces.** Of course, I wasn’t advocating a nuclear response, nor did I depict one targeted an Afghan cities. That said, if Manhattan were indeed incinerated–and you should think through the political, economic and geopolitical ramifications of such an attack–the call for a nuclear counterresponse would be overwhelming. Against a firestorm of national outrage and terror, any president who reduced the US to that of a nuclear sponge would be impeached within short order. If the warheads on a boomers’s missiles do indeed have 100 kt throwweights–approximately 6 times that of the Hiroshima bomb–I would expect the kill zone to be larger than you suggest. BTW, aren’t the missiles MIRVed? ---
**Author:** ![Patricinus\_Scriblerus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f07891/32.png) [@Patricinus\_Scriblerus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patricinus_Scriblerus)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/28 "2001-11-11T14:52:12Z")
All the information you need to build a crude nuke can be found on the web. [http://physics.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.accutek.com%2F~moistner%2Fnuclear1.htm](http://physics.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.accutek.com%2F%7Emoistner%2Fnuclear1.htm) Just do a Google search with “build a nuke” and you will get 280 hits. It’s just that easy. You do need a certain amount of technical expertise but with all the information available I would think that you could 'MacGuyver" something together out of that old toaster oven and spare blender parts that you have knocking around the house. I wonder if the FBI is reading this thread… hmmm people interested in building Nukes? ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/29 "2001-11-11T15:42:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Patricinus Scriblerus \* > **You do need a certain amount of technical expertise but with all the information available I would think that you could 'MacGuyver" something together out of that old toaster oven and spare blender parts that you have knocking around the house.** I think it’s been pretty well established that it’s not hard to build a fission bomb. Relatively speaking, that is-I don’t know about the ‘old toaster oven and spare blender parts’ thing. I don’t think that al-Queda could have built a working nuke, though, because I don’t see how they could have gotten the fissionable material for it. That’s the trick, you see-you need weapons-grade uranium (which is _extremely_ hard to make and requires highly specialized equipment) or plutonium. Plutonium doesn’t occur in nature at all; you can find it in nuclear waste from uranium reactors, which is one reason that every gram of those waste products are tracked and heavily secured. I’ve never heard of any substantial quantity having gone missing from anywhere … Now, they could have purchased a working bomb from somebody, I suppose. But given that, as has been stated, Sadaam Hussein hasn’t had any luck with that, I highly doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![urban1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/d07c76/32.png) [@urban1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/urban1)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2001, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/30 "2001-11-11T17:38:03Z")
A Google search for ‘missing plutonium’ turns up 10,800 references, including [this one](http://www.hanfordnews.com/1996/feb9.html), although I certainly don’t attest to the accuracy to any of the hits. Bob ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2001, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/31 "2001-11-12T00:53:13Z")
> [@](#): > > And on that, it doesn’t seem these “suitcase bombs” have much of a range of damage sans the radioactive material being carried around by wind. I don’t know much about nuclear weaponry (and I tried reading some of the links here, but I’ve got some flu and feel too sick to understand them) to know what range would be “insta-death” type stuff. **Toaster** , as has been pointed out elsewhere, its not the size of the weapon that counts, but how you use it. Were terrorists to detonate a suitcase nuke in the right location (say a dam), it’d do far more damage than setting it off in a major city. Additionally, taking out a dam with a suitcase nuke would make it harder (initially) for people to realize that terrorists **had** used a nuke, thus buying time for the terrorists to do whatever else it is they wanted to do. Still, I think the odds of Bin Laden being able to do it are pretty slim. Nukes take all the “fun” out of war. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2001, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/32 "2001-11-12T02:15:41Z")
**sam Stone** wrote: > [@](#): > > And I don’t know why all of you are saying that he can’t have them, because he would have used them already if he did. I see no reason to believe that whatsoever. I would find it FAR more likely that he would keep his ‘big guns’ in reserve and use them as a last resort. There is also the possibility that the terrorists have attempted to detonate one of the old “suitcase nukes” but that the mechanism failed, for the reasons noted by **Zenster**. Heck, for all we know, that could have been the “unspecified attack” for which Uncle Sam was putting us on alert a couple of weeks ago. Failure of the mechanism would explain why the expected attack didn’t materialize. Speculation of course, but it is one possibility. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2001, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/33 "2001-11-12T11:22:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \* > The nightmare scenario is that we get an ultimatum from Bin Laden soon, saying “I have nuclear weapons positioned in several of your cities. Withdraw your forces from Afghanistan, remove your forces from Saudi Arabia, and stop supporting Israel. You have 48 hours to begin withdrawal, or I will detonate a bomb.” Naw - that’s not his style. What OBL would do is FIRST detonate the bomb, THEN issue an ultimatum. This guy doesn’t threaten, he just goes out and kills. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2001, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/34 "2001-11-12T14:11:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Broomstick \* > \*\* that’s not his style. What OBL would do is FIRST detonate the bomb, THEN issue an ultimatum. This guy doesn’t threaten, he just goes out and kills. \*\* I don’t think that is quite right. In the past, before the embassy bombings in Africa, the Cole, and before 9-11, ObL **had** issued warnings. However, they were very vague and not specific. He would just say things like “something may happen”. This is part of the reason that I don’t think Al-Qaeda has any nukes. It has not been part of their “M.O.” to be clear on their intentions. My WAG is that one month of bombing and the loss of territory in the last few days has them more uptight than usual. A desperate ploy by desperate people. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2001, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624/35 "2001-11-12T15:09:09Z")
Well, we got bigger nukes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bin-laden-claims-to-have-nukes/92624.md?page=1)