# What could North Korea actually do to mainland US? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 28, 2017, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-north-korea-actually-do-to-mainland-us/794925 "2017-08-28T11:09:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2017, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-north-korea-actually-do-to-mainland-us/794925/61 "2017-08-31T19:37:19Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Would the weight vs the size of a package identify a candidate for search? Sorta. An actual modern warhead is a pretty dense box of metal. But how much different is that density from an engine block or an electric transformer or whatever? Not too much. Sizes range from ~18" in diameter to ~36" & lengths from 3 to 6 feet. So bigger than a typical home microwave oven, smaller than a typical home refrigerator. With weights from ~200 to ~700 lbs. It’s a good bet that homebrew terrorist or early NK efforts will be bigger and probably less dense. But still not enormous. I imagine that if you had a shipping container whose manifest said it was holding only some comfy pillows but weighing it showed the contents weighed 50,000 lbs somebody might notice the discrepancy. I don’t know if that sort of checking is standard. But given how small / light modern warheads are vs. 40 foot shipping containers that can hold 50K+ lbs of stuff, you can always pack enough feathers and/or lead in there to get whatever density you want. Or, more usefully, make the manifest describe innocent contents whose density matches whatever you really put in there. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2017, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-north-korea-actually-do-to-mainland-us/794925/62 "2017-08-31T19:54:32Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Or, more usefully, make the manifest describe innocent contents whose density matches whatever you really put in there. Contents: Plutonium. This is _not_ a nuclear weapon. (Rest of critical mass shipped separately.) ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2017, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-north-korea-actually-do-to-mainland-us/794925/63 "2017-09-01T15:55:21Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > No, but experience elsewhere has shown that it takes massive resources and time to learn. You can’t learn just by navel contemplation. You need opportunity to make many many mistakes, and that needs both time and resource that NK almost certainly doesn’t possess. Resources may squeak by, and North Korea has all the time in the world. Nobody’s going to try to overthrow their regime. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-north-korea-actually-do-to-mainland-us/794925/64 "2017-09-01T18:24:26Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > ETA: mostly ninja’d by **SamuelA** ’s latest. > > From the newspapers over the years, I’ve gleaned that some US sea ports and some of the main overland entry points for containers do have some sort of scanning facilities. Which looks at some containers, not all, for some stuff of interest. Which stuff apparently includes what they hope are signatures for smuggled bombs. I remember reading that it was more likely that the terrorists would smuggle in components and assemble only once already in the country. Of course, a port itself might be near or next to a major urban center so setting it off after docking but before unloading might cause sufficient devastation for terroristic purposes\*. \*Thats the 20th Watchlist I have just been added to.😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-north-korea-actually-do-to-mainland-us/794925.md?page=3)