I have been carrying around this idea for a long time-it is based upon a story developed long ago, in the old “Terry and the Pirates” comic strip.
Basically, a country hostile to the US decides to attack us. Since they don’t have submarines, ICBMs, long range bombers, they decide on a low tech approach.
They ship bombs (in pieces) into the USA, disguised as machine parts. The bombs are assembled in safe houses, and shipped by truck to target cities (where they are stored in warehouses). The bombs are connected to the telephone system, and by dialing the correct numbers, they can be armed and detonated.
The hostile power then sends an ultimatum to the USA-either do as we ask, or your cities will be destroyed.
I think this is waht a country like North Korea or Iran might actuslly try-would it work?
Short answer—No
Case in point, the number of ships stopped at sea with a cargo of tile.
The coloring and glaze of tile can be ever so slightly radioactive, and the sensors pick right up on it. Anything more enriched to a level of something that could go bang would be like a searchlight at new moon.
You know that granite countertop that you had to have in the kitchen? Guess what is the hottest thing in the house? (Thorium)
I have a bad feeling about this, the first answer is from the Vorlon and as you know (or should) their answers are never very straight forward.
Tom Clancy was once asked if it would be possible to smuggle nukes into the US. He famously answered, “All they’d have to do is put them into big crates marked COCAINE.”
Would a lead-lined container be enough to block the radiation sensors?
Even if you can get your nukes in you’ll be limited to groundbursts only (I think the optimal detonation height is something like 20,000 feet to maximise destruction), so you’ll need a bunch more to level a big city. The huge amount of fallout will be dirty as hell though.
Homeland Security looks for big chunks of lead in shipping containers for that reason.
Plus, if a country like Iran or N. Korea developed nukes, each bomb would probably represent a non-trival chunk of that countries nuclear arsenal and cost a good chunk of their GDP. Its pretty unlikely they’re going to release them to wander off through the mail system and hope the US doesn’t find and seize them.
For a counterpoint, read this Wired story about a hideously radioactive shipping container in Italy. Money quote:
In my mostly uninformed opinion, the scanning is probably good enough to detect one of Ralph’s hypothetical multiple shipments though, and my guess is that such a shipment would be viewed as an act of war. This would be bad for the smuggling country.
I wonder, and I’m sure it isn’t publicly available, how good detection of daughter particle decay is? If it’s something you could mount in an aircraft, fly over D.C. and look for particular gamma ray spikes at a specific energy?
How is that different from all the years of the cold war? If they blow up our cities, either with trucks or fancy missles, we blow up theirs. There is even a catchy title for that…
Alternatively, they can keep the bombs secret. And that accomplishes what? It just messes with all the other secret powers that have planted nucs in all the cities.
So no. it wouldn’t work.
There are some positives to the idea though. It supports a lucrative industry trying to develop detectors to find all these secret bombs.
As for shielding, Los Alamos has a great idea. High intensity cold neutron sources that scan each ship before it arrives in port. It isn’t very popular with the ship’s crew as we all know what happens to highly enriched uranium when it is exposed to lots of neutrons. The developers say it wouldn’t start a reaction-hmm easy for them to say, but it would produce a burst of radiation easily detectable even through any amount of shielding. Another thing that isn’t very popular with the ship’s crews…
A nation which has created nuclear weapons can always find the means to deliver them.
Aren’t most nuclear bombs detonated at higher altitudes to maximize the area the explosion/fallout covers? That would be difficult with this bomb, although it might make a good weapon of terror.
This reminds me of one of the most WTF? things I ever heard on TV. It was on 60 minutes or 20/20 decades ago regarding nuclear bombs and terrorist/rouge nations.
An “expert” they interviewed observed that “if properly placed, a nuclear bomb could (gasp) topple the Word Trade Center”.
Really? I did not know that.
A ground level burst is gonna be plenty bad enough in a big city. Trust me.
Crazy question here, but what if they don’t ship it into a port?
The US has thousands of miles of coastline. Many of these are beaches. I’ve often wondered how easy it would be to simply drive a small boat up on a beach at night and unload something. Surely there isn’t 24/7 patrol along every single inch of coastline in the US?
And what if, just what if, they wait for a tropical storm or hurricane to make landfall and follow it in? Many with a submarine so it won’t really be battered by the winds?
Frederick Forsyth’s book The Fourth Protocol is prenised on just this notion.
Things have tightened up since 9/11, but before that, if you read, for instance, Dave Barry’s accounts of boating around Miami, ior Paul Theroux’s books, it’s amazing how lax boat security was.
My idea is to build your well-shielded bomb into the body of a ship itself – have it in an extra-thick deck in a space that’s not obviously there, rather thsn giving the port authorities a dor they can ask “what’s in there?” about. Or have a deceptive hidden room with no access, so it’s not clear that there’s a room in there.
Then sail it into port.
Of course, I have no idea how much shielding is necessary to defeat detectors, or how thorough port inspectors are (If you hidden decks or hidden rooms had lots of cargo piled on and around them, would the hidden rooms be detected?), so this idea might not work.
Don’t worry about it. Just build it into your ship and put a load of ceramic tile in the cargo hold. Low level radiation detected? No problem. Could I interest you in a great deal on some new tile for your kitchen while you’re here?
Drug smugglers have been doing that for decades. Plenty of places along the Gulf Coast where small boats can slip in undetected. From there, a few hours by truck could have the weapon in a major city…
What keeps this from happening? Lack of ability to refine materials and build the bombs, and lack of ambition to get on the US’s bad side.
North Korea can use threats and concessions to gain food and money for decades as long as they stay in their room, do what you propose and thats gone and Pyongang will be conquered within a few days.
Lets look at another material where it is easy to produce and there is high incentive to smuggle it into the USA, namely heroin or cocaine. Despite the coastguard, customs, and all their tech gee gaws thousands of tons of the stuff makes it through. Enough said.
Go down to the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico. Lots of privately-owned pleasure boats out in those waters. Just launch out of some port like Galveston or Tampa or Savannah. Go out cruising for the day and come back into port that night. No paperwork because you never “traveled” anywhere. So nobody knows you met up with another ship out in the ocean and they loaded a large package on to your ship.
Not only that but in a lot of Caribbean nations yachters have unbelievablely lax customs and immigration rules, come via plane and its just like customs and immigration in any other country with questions etc. Come by yacht and oh hey the customs and immigration guy isn’t here now, but he’ll be here tomorrow to stamp your passport for as much time as you’d like in the meantime just roam around.
:smack:Because of course people rich enough to own a yacht couldn’t be criminals or smugglers or intending some nefarious, nooooo!