I think this statement from this article might be a little misleading. The anthrax attacks have been mostly unsuccessful at creating any casualties, but does that mean that this is the worst they’ve got left? I’ll quote:
Could this be true? Have they really played their best cards? I wonder if they’ve shot their load. Is the worst behind us? More huge destruction likely? Regardless, is it wise to imply that it isn’t?
DaLovin’ Dj
Well, assuming that the anthrax attack is courtesy of the terrorists (and I have my doubts), then the fact that one which ended up in Nairobi was postmarked September 8 would imply that this was a concurrent plan with the WTC attacks, not a follow-up.
I fully expect them to attack us again, in a way we haven’t even conceived of or prepared for - whatever that may be.
Maybe this is old or inaccurate news (hearsay), but I thought the Taliban expressed threats involving more airlines and tall buildings.
Perhaps if women are used as suicide bombs or in some other similar role, that might be a surprise since it appears that women don’t have much of a role except covering themselves. FWIW
Well somebody had something bad in store in Philadelphia
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/19/philadelphia.explosives/index.html
The suspected letters in Kenya tested negative for anthrax, but now there is a letter a NY Times reporter in Brazil received that has tested positive for anthrax
http://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/conditions/10/19/anthrax/
I would say at this present time, a terrorist will have to be both very determined and very lucky to pull off something as big as 9/11, but it still sucks if even one more person dies as a result of a terrorist attack, unless it happens that it was the terrorist.
I’m not that optimistic that we will be living in total peace and harmony for the rest of our lives, but perhaps it won’t be as bad as we imagine.
I suspected that the US and perhaps Europe would both get hit by a wave a car bombings, but that hasn’t happened. If OBL had a big underground network, I would have expected attacks at a preset time like within a month of Sep 11 or a week after starting attacks in Afganistan, etc.
I think OBL’s minion shot their wad first time around and don’t have much of anything left.
terrorisms damage is terror hence terrorism right? with the anthorax scare they have caused a helluva lot of terror , thats if it was terrorists also they still (if it was them) have A and C (of the ABC) Atomic and Chemical attacks which can cause major damage , say they put some crap chemical in the water or something ,
Considering how vulnerable we are, I think they have very few people in the country willing to do the dirty work.
We lost a major artery in NJ this past summer, and all it took was a major fire on an overpass. If they pulled off 4 or 5 of those minor attacks, they could paralyze the entire state.
I was very afraid for the first 2 weeks while I waited for the other shoe to drop. I’m still wary, but I think the worst has passed for the foreseeable future.
::knocking on wood::
Perhaps the fact that they’re toying with our minds?
They might not be planning on ANYTHING, just bluffing, to keep us scared shitless…or they’re waiting until we REALLY relax?
Personally, I think that, for the time being, yes, the terrorists are unable to cause further major damage.
I think that, had they been able to, they would have already. Put it this way- had Sept. 11 not occurred, this whole Anthrax thing would be page 3 stuff. We’ve had worse flu outbreaks.
But because it happened so soon after Sept. 11, there are some places in near-panic and people who have nothing to fear are now avoiding shopping, staying away from large events and afraid of their mail.
Add in something simple- relatively speaking- like contaminating a small city’s reservoir, and panic would explode. People would be thinking A) We’re still ‘under attack’ and B) there are still terrorists out loose in our midst. Such a thing would severely undercut the fragile state of hysteria we now have, and things would get geometrically worse.
However, such a thing hasn’t happened- and I hope it doesn’t, definitely- so there’s one of two possibilities:
A) The remaining terrorists- if any- are holing up since they know every man, woman and child in the US is looking at middle eastern folk with a magnifying glass, plus they haven’t been able to receive either orders or funding from their controllers (who are almost certainly currently hiding in a cave hoping the next laser-guided 2,000-pounder doesn’t sel the exits) and thus are all but neutralized for the time being.
Or B) There aren’t any terrorists left, considering the ones that died in the crashes and those that have been arrested or detained since then.
So for the time being, I doubt we have anything more to worry about, save for locating bin-Laden and turning him over to the Saudis for a ritual beheading.
Are we talking only bin Laden and his followers here? Even if we are, it would make no logical sense whatsoever for them to play all their cards at this point in time.
Right now it’s early days and we have no idea whatsoever what the final alliances will be in this campaign - I suspect we’ll find out once Ramadam starts. Make no mistake, continuing the campaign (and from a military viewpoint there is no option but to continue it) during Ramadan is going to upset even the most moderate Moslems. It’s the time when countries like Pakistan, Malaysia, and the Phillipines may erupt with anti-Western feeling. It may very well also be the time when Suddam decides to go pro-active.
I know that many of us desperately want to believe that the worst of this has already passed. I don’t believe for a minutes that it has, and I don’t think our governments do either (actually, I’m damn sure my government doesn’t, they’ve increased our commitment dramatically by a backdoor method).
I’m not sure that there’ll be further dramatic attacks in the US, more likely just a relentless campaign to maintain the fear, but I’d be pretty damn sure that there’ll be some pretty spectacular terrorist actions in allied nations before this campaign is ended. These people are long-term, patient, planners. We shouldn’t underestimate them just because we hold the superior firepower.
Guys, guys, guys.
We haven’t seen real terrorism yet. The WTC/Pentagon attack was only a dress rehearsal.
In the World Trade Center attacks, two large skyscrapers and a couple of neighboring buildings were destroyed, and about 5-10 thousand people lost their lives. This is nothing compared to the spectre of nuclear terrorism. If that had been a nuke instead of a couple of airliners, it wouldn’t have been just the World Trade Center that got taken out. It would have been the World Trade Center, and the Empire State Building, and all of the buildings in between. All of Manhattan would have been levelled, and Ground Zero would be a smoking radioactive crater several blocks across. The death toll would be in the millions.
A nuke powerful enough to flatten Manhattan (hey, that rhymes!) could be smuggled in aboard a steamer trunk. A less powerful nuke, capable of demolishing maybe one square mile, could be smuggled aboard a suitcase. … And, last I heard, some “suitcase nukes” from the former Soviet Union have not been accounted for…
… Except that Nuclear weapons are not as easy as lighting a fuze and running away.
Nor do that have an infinite shelf life. Among other things, modern weapons use Tritium to boost their yeild. It has a half-life of 12.5 years, meaning that in twelve years, half the Tritium will become H3 (sorry, I don’t know how to superscript) via normal decay.
The H3, or “Helium three”, actually retards the reaction by absorbing neutrons.
The Uranium and Plutonium masses also decay and lose effectiveness.
The supposedly “stolen suitcase nukes” haven’t been confirmed yet- form what I’ve heard anyway- and even if one is missing, nukes are never stored with their triggering/arming devices (except when they’re about to be used) and to reengineer a weapon to function without that mechanism is no small task. A well-equipped lab at MIT would be hard-pressed to do so.
It’s not a nonexistent worry, of course (and unfortunately) but if the terrorists are using very limited-effectiveness weapons such as Anthrax in letters, I doubt we need to worry about nukes.
a H-bomb fusion bomb would be hard to make but an A-bomb would be quite easy to make i guess , and still has major damage done , it might not knock down the concrete buildings but the dust sucked up in the blast would make fall out really bad (if it was used near ground level), and it would be a massive psychological blow
So if you get a backpack Nuke and the Tritium is gone and the thing won’t work, all you have to do is take out the fissile material, crush it into powder, then fly over Manhattan and dump it out the back. You’ll kill thousands or even hundreds of thousands, and the cleanup cost would be enormous. You’d have to evacuate the entire island.
oh no , you remove th tritium , and you still get the a bomb energy since H-bombs are powered by that
The only problem with the terrorists using a nuke of any kind (or even spreading radioactive material over an area) is that it immediately removes any restraint the US might be inclined to have against retaliating in kind. Remember during the Persian Gulf War Bush Sr. told Saddam that if he used biological weapons we’d nuke him. While I don’t think that we’d glaze over all of Afghanistan, I do think we’d probably drop a tactical nuke over where we figured the largest concentration of Taliban folks were.
Also, the movement of nuclear material is supposedly relatively easy to track, according to a buddy of mine who’s dad works for Y-12 building nuclear detection devices. So, if what he’s told me is true (which, of course, it might not be), we’d know that the bad guys were heading towards the US with a nuke and could take 'em out before they got here
I also don’t think that fighting during Ramadan is going to upset sensible Muslims. After all, we didn’t charge the Nazi leaders with “Engaging in Warfare During a Religious Holiday.” No doubt they won’t be happy about it, but will realize that its a necessary evil. IMHO, the only people who’ll be complaining are the same ones who’re now saying that US deserved the 9/11 attacks.
I’ve had to fly into Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpar and Perth over the past few weeks. Airport security is tight, at least at those places (I got frisked at KL Airport!). People are wary now. I can’t see any more planes in buildings, at least in the short term.
As for nukes…well, John Travolta might be able to buy half a dozen at discount in Minsk in the movie Swordfish, but just how easy is it to get one, bring it into the US, arm it and detonate it? As it hasn’t happened so far, I assume that its difficult. Enlightenment on that would be appreciated.
geepee wrote:
Yes, a hydrogen bomb does in fact require the use of an atomic (fission) bomb as its detonator.
However, this fission bomb is very small. Its yield is substantially less than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s so small, in fact, that it’s referred to as the “nuclear trigger” device. I’d estimate such a nuclear trigger would have a yield of maybe one kiloton, tops.
Well spoken, reprise. I fully agree with you about not pausing for Ramadan. Now if you could just get this message through to Dave Stewart. He seems to have this luverly notion that the very worst is over. However much I wish that was true, any rational mind boggles when attempting to imagine what these psychos will come up with next. Think horrible and multiply by a couple of orders of magnitude. My rage is such that I’m currently a hair’s breadth away from advocating nuclear retaliation if we are able to identify a foreign government as being responsible for the anthrax bioterrorism.
One kiloton = 2,000,000 (that’s two million) pounds of TNT. To quote Bugs Bunny;
"That ain’t hay!"
No, he couldn’t, there aren’t any there.