Oooookay… :rolleyes:
Guys like this make me wonder about the whole drugs business. I have never wanted to do drugs, but heck he sure sounds like his funny pills had too many colors. I wonder why would people pop pills that are the wrong color… maybe he is colorblind?
It’s the blue pill he needs to take. Everything will be fine, then.
So, he’s mad the CIA used a minature thermonuclear device to take out a conventional weapon? Or is he mad at the collateral damage?
is that a minature thermonuclear device in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?
Just exactly how small can a fission or fusion device be made? How much fuel is need to actually make a kaboom? Isn’t the suitcase nuke as small as it gets and wouldn’t that have been a much bigger explosion than what did happen in Bali?
Yeah; even a “fizzle” (only part of the fissionable material goes supercritical before it blows apart) would be a lot bigger than that.
Of course, this creep is counting on the fact that the Teeming Millions in his part of the world know squat about science and are predisposed to swallow nutty conspiracy theories to redirect blame for Islamo-Fundamentalist terrorism onto anybody and anybody other than Islamic Fundamentalists (preferably Americans and/or Jooos).
You know, I’ve done drugs. Lots of drugs, and let me just say that I’ve never had such a bizarre theory about anything in my life. Contrast this with a buddy of mine, who’s never done drugs, who believes in all kinds of conspiracy theories, and this cleric, who thinks the CIA (who can’t even kill a tinpot dictator 90 miles off the coast of Florida, but can somehow manage to pull off a successful operation half a world a way) and hasn’t done drugs in ages, if at all, and I think the answer is clear: Do drugs and you won’t believe in conspiracy theories. Don’t do drugs and you’ll come up with the most whacked out conspiracy theories of all.
As far as I know, unless you postulate a hypothetical bomb made with something exotic; IIRC californium has a critical mass about bullet sized. Heinlen once talked about using it for nuclear bullets, in fact.
Problem is, anything like that ( even if it’s really possible; it’s never been done, so no one knows ) would require a massive R & D program, and billions upon billions of dollars to nucleosynthesize one of the world’s most expensive substances . . . to do what a plain old high explosive bomb can do, in this case. In other words, he’s nuts.
Humor me for a minute, understanding that I wouldn’t know how to make a nuke if you gave me all the ingredients. Now, isn’t the bulk of the smallest possible bomb just shielding to spare the handlers? If you had a crew of deliverers who didn’t mind dying, would you need all that shielding? Couldn’t they deliver a lightly shielded bomb, knowing that they would die whether it worked or not? How small could the bomb be then?
I’m not trying to lend any credibility to Mr. Bashir. This is a tangent.
U235 (HEU) isn’t very radioactive. It has a half-life of 700 million years.
Pu239 is much more active. It has a half-life of 24,000 years.
I believe both elements are primarily alpha emitters, which means that the bomb mechanism and casing would be more than adequate for shielding.
Plutonium 238 - about 10kgs to achieve bare sphere criticality - you can trigger supercriticality with less if you get the implosion right, but even so…
The W46 155mm shell (155mm diameter, ~700mm long, and ~60kg) is a pretty small nuclear bomb, and has a 72ton yield. Possibly the smallest practical nuclear device you could make (although a claim for a 105mm shell was made).
The W54 was a cylinder 40cm x 60cm (68 kilos) and had a dial-a-yield ranging from 10 tons to 1 kiloton. Very low yield (surprisingly so) but not exactly small. You might get away with a 10 ton yield passing as a conventional bomb, if it wasn’t for the fact that it would be extremely dirty - all the unfissioned plutonium would be scattered with the blast - alpha emitters are lethal once they are in someones lungs. I expect that the weight is lots of lead dampers to manage the yield.
source: wikipedia
Both of these are inefficient nuclear devices, requiring more than optimal critical mass due to shape/detonation characteristics and reduced yields. The additional mass is not shielding for the operators but tamping for the neutron flux to achieve criticality in less than optimal conditions and damping the yield for the purposes of tactical deployment.
Simon
Why would you use a really small nuclear bomb to blow up a nightclub? Even if you’re the CIA? Wouldn’t an ordinary bomb pretty much do the trick? Especially if you’re trying to carry out a false flag operation and blame it on Jihadis? Wouldn’t you therefore just use the sort of bomb that Jihadis would use?
Ah! But that’s what THEY want you to think!