If Someone Hating the USA Got a Nuke, Would They Use It?

Great Debates
1

Let’s say one of the countries that REALLY hates us (someone in the middle east for example, since a majority of our dilemmas are coming from there) gets a nuclear missle. Do you think they’d launch it at the US?

I’d have to say no. My reasoning is this. Right now the battles have been relatively on a skirmish level. 9/11 was definitely the worst thing to happen to the US in a while, but it really doesn’t compare with the power of a nuclear weapon. It seems to me, being the minor tactician that I am, that one nuclear weapon would only get us pissed and then all bets would be off. Even if you managed to launch it at Washinton DC, killing millions of people and wiping out a good side of our government, someone in the chain of command would take over, start an investigation, determine the origin of the attack, and launch in retaliation.

While someone may be able to get ahold of a nuclear weapon and do significant damage to our populace, our government and our economy, we had 10500 nukes in 2000, and the US could pretty much wipe out anyone we wanted if it were so inclined. And do you really want 250 million Americans REALLY REALLY pissed off at you?

Me, if I were a bad guy, I’d find a nasty super virus and use that in the hopes of laying waste to a larger population and spreading it across the country

And what if it’s a fringe group with no real discernable affiliation with any backing from any country? Does the US investigate, find the backer and launch at them?

I’ve just been thinking about it for a few days and I’m of the mind that a single nuclear weapon would not, no matter where you dropped it, cause enough damage to the US to stop an eventual and brutal retaliation, therefor making it a foolish endeavor. But wtf do I know, I’m not a terrorist and if the country were to get nuked, I’d go back to Vermont and hide in a cow field because, honestly, who gives a fuck enough about Vermont to drop a nuke on it?

Cite for number of nukes in 2000:
hem.passagen.se/kvnedr/English/arsenaler.html

2

You’re assuming that a “nuke” would be dropped. How about just packaged and shipped here? Of course it has to get through customs, the coast guard and the alphabet soup of other security agencies before it could be used. 1 nuke may not be much but if say 12 nukes targeting the top 12 population centers in the US would certainly cripple us in the short term but long term someone would reap their reward.

Your supervirus scenario could have counter productive results. Since people traverse the globe quite rapidly the virus would not be contained to one region or country. A terrorist could actually wind up killing more of his ethnic population with a bio-weapon intended for another state by the shear fact of how such a weapon works.

Assuming this, which nation would be best prepared for and survive an attack of this nature? Certainly not any who have not planned or taken measures for countering such an occurance. I’m assuming the US has planned for this as have some of the more medically advanced nations around the world.

3

If you subscribe to the fact that OBL didn’t publicly acknowledge his deeds and there was no intent to conquer then you are left with the conclusion that the event was intended to disable and destroy without direct redress.

If a weapon does not have a return address (like a missile would) then you have a method of anonymous mass destruction.

A nuke would fit this scenario.

4

Only if they really believe they could do it without anyone knowing they did it.

5

It is very difficult to deliver a nuclear weapon to the United States, and next to impossible to launch one.

The only non-NATO counties with ICBMs are Russia and China. And despite North Korea’s claims, there’s no country with a cruise missile that can accurate hit a US based target. That leaves smuggling a bomb in. Now that we are putting geiger counters at all of our customs offices, I don’t see this as being too likely either. (Though I’ve often wondered, if someone were to take a private yacht or something out, and rendezvoused with a ship carrying a nuclear weapon, then simply went back to the small dock that they left from, would anyone notice? Does the Coast Guard pay attention to that kind of thing?)

Anyways, I feel pretty safe in saying that the United States is fairly safe from nuclear attack. Israel, however, is not. The reason that we aren’t allowing weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East is not because we are worried about them being used on us, but because we don’t want to turn around to see a mushroom cloud rising over Tel Aviv.

6

Well since its so hard to launch a missile on the US… why do some people want to throw more money on Star Wars ?

As for detection… I think a minute or two after launch the US would be able to point out general area where the launch came from. How these terrorists would get an ICBM is another matter of course. 12+ minutes later a US city would be hit. Retaliation of course would be direct and precise… no hiding ICBM launches.

Now smuggling… that is easy. I’ve read an article about US port security. It’s a joke. Hasn’t changed much since 9/11. Then how do you stop a nuke ? If it blows up on a harbour its still massive damage. You have to get information before that cargoship even docks. Information comes from allies and intelligence services and leaks. Invading Iraq didn’t help much there did it ?

7

Don’t see that happening. Countries cannot hide from the inevitable retaliation - be it nuclear, conventional or whatever - it would be absolutely counterproductive.

That’s a scarier scenario. The good news is that so far, the costs involved in developing a nuclear weapon are such that it takes a nation to do it. And nations do not, as a rule, hand over strategic assets to fringe groups, even if they are otherwise backing them. Actually, if they are backing fringe groups, they need their nuke at home to discourage retaliation.

I’ll admit that I do not share Max Walrus’s optimism regarding the difficulty of getting a nuclear weapon into the US. I do not think it would be all that hard - and if you have the resources to get the nuke in the first place, you’re per definition running a well-funded operation.

8

No nation would launch a nuke openly.

However, a nation could think they might get away with giving a nuke to terrorists, although this is also unlikely for many reasons. One is simply that you don’t give terrorist groups that hate you nuclear weapons just because you think they’ll hate the US more. THere is not one nation that can safely give a nuke to Al Qaeda and reasonably expect that it won’t be turned on them. With the fall of the Taliban, there are no governments that bin Laden actively supports, so if say, Pakistan gave him a nuke he might be tempted to just save some time and detonate it in Islamanad rather than schlep it all the way to the US and deal with all the risks involved with getting it here.

More likely would be North Korea or Iran giving it to groups aligned with them, such as a communist group or a Shiite group like Hezbollah, which according to Bob Graham actually has more reach than Al Qaeda and is far more dangerous.

Hezbollah, unlike Al Qaeda has been surprisingly sober however. They’ve refrained from doing things that would really inflame the American street. It would be a stretch to imagine them taking an Iranian nuke and using it.

As for North Korea and the Communist guerilla groups associated with them, that’s actually the #1 possibility, I think. MAny of these groups are plum crazy just like their sponsor. I know it seems passe’ in the 21st century to talk about the danger of Communists, but I can see FARC or the NPA getting a hold of a nuke and doing something monumentally stupid. But even that possibility seems slim.

9

How about this:

1)A nuke capable nation makes a small device.
2)Equips it with tamper proof electronics, a GPS, and a code.
3)Gives it to “reliable” terrorist organization. (oxymoron?)
4)Instructs them to place it in such and such target city, and phone back asking for code.
5)The owners verify position of nuke through GPS, and submit code, valid for a 30 second timeframe.

Voilá

Possible problem:
Terrorists take nuke to some other place and try to harvest the uranium/plutonium.
In this case, the tamperproof electronics should make the device blow up in a conventional explotion.

Disclaimer: american government agencies, this post is a thought experiment whose sole objective is finding ways to better safeguard the world from possible terrorist threats.
:slight_smile:

10

Three words which prove just how porous our borders really are:

“War on Drugs”

11

I think a nation not affiliated with a terrorist group or mid-east would be more inclined. All they would have to do would be to get a nuke that the material does not trace back to them and make it look like a terrorist did it.

They could even feign outrage and drag a few homegrown terrorists and put them on trial for the world to see. If they do a half ass job of leading the culprits to terrorists or an axis of evil nation, then they can just sit back and watch the fireworks.

China, for example, could do such a thing if they felt that tehy would benefit from a US that is hurt, wartorn, and having a reputation that is way more polarized than it is today.

12

North Korea today almost certainly can fairly accurately deliver a small nuke to the U.S. west coast: from coastal Alaska to (roughly) the West coast N. of San Fran. Within this decade, they almost certainly will have a greater range and be able to carry bigger warheads.

Re the OP would they? Not if they are rational. If they are not – maybe if there is a U.S. strike at thier Nuke capability, maybe if starving they think they are going to fall, maybe if Kim Il Jung wakes up with a zit and/or realizes he only has a few years left … well, I for one wouldn’t bet my life that they are rational:

***North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said last week that the United States is “becoming more reckless in its military moves” while seeking peace and dialogue.

The agency stated that U.S. development of nuclear weapons is “aimed at making a pre-emptive nuclear attack” on North Korea and “launching an armed invasion.” ***

Everything in the OP is right – no sane country better even think about it. But is the above quote and many, many like it bluster? or is it some weirdo/crazy-ism gone wild? I am not totaly sure either way.

FWIW a bit of a highjack: recall that Al Queda already sent street thug Padilla here to explode a dirty bomb & we caught him. Imagine a well trained nuclear engineer, maybe traveling as a diplomat, from al queda helped & protected by a faction of the Iranian Revolutionary gaurd …
http://www.time.com/time/pow/article/0,8599,262269,00.html

13

Very true. The simplest kind of invisibility is the one in which the watchful eye is persuaded that it has no intrest in seeing anything.

14

So, factual question:

If a nuke went off today in some city in the United States and no one claimed responsibility, would there be any way of tracing it back to its source? Is there any physical evidence left behind after a nuclear blast that would help?

15

The types of trace elements in the fallout might help, if it was based on a military nuclear device.

But if it was a “do-it-yourselfer”, I doubt it.

16

That article didn’t address accuracy at all. From everything that I’ve heard, North Korea has the range to reach the US, but no way to accurately hit a target at that distance. Maybe within a decade, sure, but think about how much politics can change in a decade. It was only 15 years ago that the Soviet Union was in tact. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the United States will have already invaded North Korea by then. They are enemy #1 right now.

I think that my optimism about customs comes from a special I saw on PBS or something that showed them X-Raying everything, and any packages that looked like they were even a little suspicious were unpacked and examined thoroughly. I do know that the amount of geiger counters being issued are increasing significantly.

Now, I had never considered the idea of a bomb exploding in port. That truly does scare me, but at least the capitol is safe in that regard. New York on the other hand…

So if a terrorist group got a hold of a nuclear weapon, does anyone think that they would choose to run the risk of failing on an attack on the US rather than simply hit an Israeli target?

17

It’s not quite as bad as you’re painting here:

But that’s okay, the Washington Times is owned by the Rev. Moon, and IIRC has a strong anti-North Korean bias… :wink:

18

So factual answer: Just like 9/11 when we had the faces of all 19 men who were on those planes…
If a nuke were smuggled in and detonated it is an almost sure bet that someone in the government would say, "Oh shit, the intel was right! it was so and so in (insert middle eastern country here]…
Then after this, we’d ignore any state or nation that said the terrorists responsible were not in their country and go willy nilly cart blanch with some super bombing all over the place…My guess, Northern Africa, and various locales in the mid-east…

19

Terrorists detonate a nuke in a US city. Naturally, this sends the US into frenzy-of-revenge mode; BUT (and here’s the kicker), the terrorists then announce that they have three similar weapons planted in other US cities. (!) They threaten to respond to any counter-strike against a Muslim nation by detonating these weapons. Maybe they’re bluffing, maybe not.

And then there’s a list of demands (the nature of which you can imagine).

That scenario would really put the US in a bind, and (I’ll bet) is the one that keeps contingency planners up at night.

20

Cameroon. That’d make the Nigerian’s sell us their oil at rock-bottom prices.