Let’s say I’m fabulously wealthy and I decide to become an evil overlord and to do this, I must have nuclear weapons. I’m not going to waste my time trying to buy nuclear material on the black-market, I’m going to do it all from scratch. What kind of investment am I looking at?
Based on this handy-dandy pie chart, it looks like you could get away with about $2.5 trillion for a program. This assumes that you need not account for the following costs:
[list]
[li]Deploying the bomb (figuring you just want to build one; this would also depend on your chosen method of deployment). Saves ~$3.2 trillion over U.S. costs.[/li][li]Dismantling the bomb. Saves about $31 billion.[/li][li]Victims of the bomb. As an Evil Overlord, you shouldn’t concern yourself at all with your victims. Saves $2.1 billion.[/li]Congressional oversight. You answer to no one. Saves only $0.9 billion.
Son of a … I did not press “submit reply” at any time there!
To continue:
You could also probably shave off another $366 billion if you’re not too concerned about the waste management part.
The total cost of the U.S.'s program as given in the chart was over a 56 year period. The initial costs would largely be building the bomb (~$408 billion, but this would likely go down as you wouldn’t necessarily need all the up fron R&D costs), and maybe targetting and controlling, for another $832 billion. So, if you want it quick and dirty, you could probably get away with spending only about $1.3 trillion total.
You might actually be able to get away even cheaper, actually. The Manhattan Project “only” cost about $20 billion in 1996 dollars. So, if you wanted to start completely from scratch, and essentially duplicate the project, you could get yourself two shiny new H-bombs for $20 billion.
What about the kid from the movie “The Manhattan Project”? He built it from scratch and it seems like the most expensive thing he bought was the plastic explosives from his friend in the back of his truck. Oh, and I guess you would have to steal the plutonium with a remote control truck, too. My brother does cancer research and works with radioactive material. Give me a call, we could make a deal.
-M
Nah, your brother doesn’t work with the right kind of materials. I’m not interested in building a “dirty” bomb (i.e. one made up of highly radioactive materials), I’m interested in building a city-leveling kind of device. Nothing says, “Fear me!” like vaporizing a city in the blink of an eye, ya know?
Are you willing to kidnap top scientists and force them to work for you? You could probably reduce a great deal of overhead not having to do the initial research yourself.
Stop and think about that for a moment. You’re going to be using slave labor to build a nuclear weapon? Not a smart thing. After all, they will be handling explosives.
Nit: The first 2 nuclear weapons weren’t H-bombs (fusion devices).
For absolute scratch?
You have LOTS of digging to do to mine enough uranium. My guess is that will be the priciest thing.
Do you also insist on a whole new design? I’m sure you could find one in a library somewhere.
If you had the nuclear material and a design in hand, you could build one for a low, low price! I’ll bet no more than a couple of million.
As an Evil Overlord, you have to watch your bottom line! Can you imagine how expensive it is to buy TV time to threaten the whole world? Many people don’t realize that media buys are the most expensive part of any political campaign. I think you could buy the Presidency MUCH cheaper than building a nuke from scratch. Then you’ll have all the tools an Evil Overlord needs.
Look what we’re doing to Iraq. There’s no reason you couldn’t do the same to New York or LA!
The Hiroshima bomb was pretty low tech. The concept wasn’t ever tested prior to its first use, because of the certainty of those involved that it was foolproof. The cost of duplicating that design, excluding the cost of the U[sub]235[/sub] and the B29, would be pretty low. Of the order of $100k-$500k.
You wouldn’t need top scientists to replicate the device, just a few people to advise on the propellant and the strength of the steel to be used. Plus a machinist, a welder and and a technician to build the thing.
The difficult part would be getting the U[sub]235[/sub] in the first place.
If you aren’t going to buy from the black market, what are you going to do?
You can’t dig the ore up just anywhere, and the places where it can be dug up are pretty well known (and owned by people who’d probably object).
Maybe the cheapest way would be to buy out either a uranium mine, or a nuclear electric utility.
Then you would need to divert and process either the ore or the fuel rods (depending upon what you bought), while avoiding the scrutiny of the bodies that have interests in overseeing the use of such materials.
If you were willing to forgo the existing and readily available design for a U[sub]235[/sub] device, there’s another way. Obtain depleted uranium (U[sub]238[/sub]), and try to convert it to Pu[sub]239[/sub], or Th[sub]232[/sub] and convert it to U[sub]233[/sub] using a neutron gun. Just don’t try to do it in your backyard.
Excuse an unknowledgeable wretch, but if you have enough uranium or plutonium to form critical mass, don’t you just need a garden-variety bomb to push the two pieces together? Sounds simple enough.
Of course, you’ll probably die from radiation sickness, but at least you’ll have the bomb.
It’s a little bit more complicated than that Priceguy, but not much.
You need to push them together quickly, and contain them for long enough for a decent reaction to occur.
The Hiroshima bomb used a naval gun barrel capped at the end.
One piece of U[sub]235[/sub] was formed into a cylindrical “bullet” which was fired into a hollow cylinder of U[sub]235[/sub] at the other end of the gun barrel.
What about Trinity? The first atomic bomb was test detonated over the desert in New Mexico in July, 1945. From what I’ve read there was a great deal of uncertainty among the Manhattan Project scientists about exactly what would happen. Some were concerned that the explosion might ignite the atmosphere and destroy all life on earth. Fun stuff like that.
According to that link the site is open to visitors, though you probably wouldn’t want to live there.
The other one of the first two bombs, the Pu[sub]239[/sub] bomb used on Nagasaki, had a completely different design. That was the one that was tested.
Your scientists would not really have to be top people either. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ran an article about three postdocs who designed an atomic bomb from scratch (at the request of the US Govt).
Or order direct from www.villainsupply.com.
Anyone else somewhat alarmed by how many “doomsday devices” are “sold out” at Short’s link there.
Guess I can stop putting my money inot a 401(k) since we are all going to be killed by a XLAIXU GLOBAL DISINTEGRATOR KEY or something of the sort.
Actually I’d wager that a trillion dollar figure for a nuclear weapon is a little high. Heres some research findings from a term paper I’m in the process of writing.
For example South Africa’s abandoned Nuclear Weapon Attempt. The entire project, including enriching the Uranium cost $200 million, “The nuclear deterrent programme was considered to be a far more cost-effective alternative to the development of, for example, a fighter aircraft capability.” Waldo Stumpf, head of the South Africa Nuclear Energy Corporation.
-Stern, Jessica, The ultimate terrorists, Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 59
Now 200 million seems a little low, but if a group could steal HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium), or get it at a discount on the black market, its not that difficult to create a simple Gun-Type nuclear device assuming you have individuals with technical expertise.
The positive side of this fact is that Aum Shinrikyo the group responsible for the Sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway also were interested in nuclear weapons and had around 1.2 billion dollars at their disposal. (On second though, the cash might not have been that high, but it was considerable). I’m not aware how seriously into nuclear weapons they looked, but they couldn’t do it. Thats not to say no one else could assuming they have lots of money, expertise and determination to cause mass casualties.
Another relevant question: Do you care if anyone knows you’re building it (before detonation, that is)? One would assume that you do care, but I’m not sure just how strong your army of mindless zombie goons is. Because now that everyone knows what to look for, it’s awfully hard to run a secret nuclear weapons program, and there are a lot of powerful folks out there (like, for instance, nations which already have nukes) who might try to stop you prematurely.
The theoretical aspects are trivial. It could be done as a physics/Engineering grad project.
The main costs would be hardware.