What would be the ramifications of a nuclear attack by terrorists on the U.S.

Great Debates
1

What would be the ramifications of a nuclear attack by terrorists on
the United States?

Let us suppose the unthinkable occurs and a nuclear bomb is detonated
in a major U.S. City, there are one million dead and one million injuries.

What would be our response?

In the days of the cold war you would know if a missile was launched from
Russia or you could track their bombers on radar, with terrorists how could we
prove who was responsible?

Such an attack and it’s aftermath would be unprecedented in our history, in
that one event we would loose more people than in all our wars combined and
a million casualties would overrun every major medical facility in the country.

What would/should we do if this happens? Several options are open none of
them pleasant

Because of the extreme nature of this attack I believe the United States would
have no option but to respond with a massive nuclear retaliation on those countries
that support terrorism. Even if the precise nature of the attackers remain unknown,
an example must be made to convince regimes that support terror will face
complete annihilation if weapons of mass destruction are used. I am not saying
we should ever use nuclear weapons first but what else could justify their use than
two million casualties. In this attack our civilization itself would literally be at risk.

I don’t know what else would be effective, is a nuclear response in kind just revenge
or absolutely necessary in the face of such massive destruction to prevent it happening again?

2

I am not the kind to try to stifle a debate on an old issue, nor am I accusing you of being in err for not using the search engine. It is just that all of your remarks/questions were almost the exact same debate, verbatim, I recall not too long ago. And instead of reiterating my answer by typing it all out again (I am lazy), I’ll just link you to it. :slight_smile:

Nuclear or Biological attack on a major US city: How do we react?

3

Sorry, must have missed that one. Thanks for the link.

4

Aw, but I already typed a response. Here it is anyway.

First of all, let’s make sure the playing field has been properly defined. I see no reason at all that any weapon likely to be used by the presumed terrorists could be much more powerful than the bombs used at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, so worst-case deaths would likely be in the 70-150,000 range, not a million. If the attack were with a crude ‘dirty’ bomb that does not invole a full-scale fission reaction, the casualties, while still serious, would be far less.

The point is not that such an event would be any less of a crime; simply that the death toll and environmental damage from a massive retaliatory strike on so-called ‘terrorist countries’, not just within but outside the borders of the targeted countries, would be wildly out proportion to the initial act.

In direct answer to the OP, what should be done is to take several months and spend lots of money to determine the most likely perpetrators of the act, then attack them with precision-guided conventional weapons whereever they may be. If during the investigation, any particular government was found to have materially assisted the perpetrators (as is likely), reparations should be demanded, on pain of all-out war, again with conventional weapons, against that country’s military, with the objective of toppling that country’s government.

What, IMO, would be likely to happen, especially under the current administration, would be again to take a reasonable period to identify the perpetrators, then attack them and the seats of any governments found to have materially assisted them with a mix of precision-targeted and low-yield (no more than two or three) nuclear weapons. Note that I don’t endorse this, it’s just what I think might be done.

All of the above would apply only if the governments presumed to support the terrorists were not nuclear powers themselves. If they were, the chance of the US using a relatively large number of nukes on that country in a pre-emptive strike would be high.

I would like to think that even in extremis, enough sane heads would prevail to not launch a massive nuclear attack on a non-nuclear power. Ok, so maybe I’m naive.

5

You’d probably have Bush giving a speech something akin to “We want (Names of suspected terrorist supporting nations) 's full cooperation NOW in the apprehending these terrorists withen (X amount of time) or we start firing off nukes at (aforementioned nations).”

A stronger version of the “You are with us or againest us” speech he made after 9/11.

6

In the 80’s, I was told (by Maj., USMC (line)) that the public rules of engagement were that any “major” chemical or biological attack on US civilians on US soil by a foreign power would be met with strategic nuclear response.
In event of a Hiroshima-type event, I would support that. Then again, I thought that, if we were certain that Afghanistan was responsible for 9/11, the proper response would have been to toast Khandahar and Kabul.
If we had, maybe we wouldn’t now feel obliged to attack Iraq?

OTOH, some idiot getting his hands on an ag plane does not rise to such a level.

7

The socio-political, economic, etc., ramifications would be enormous. Since the OP did not get into specifics, any opinions are really pure speculation.

Speculating …

If the target is New York (say, Wall Street), the economic powerhouse of the world, expect an worldwide economic collapse. Make it Washington, DC (the US Capitol while Congress is in session) and expect a headless monster to respond at the least, no leadership to direct the country, etc.

Hit Chicago and the SDMB is gone forever. :slight_smile:

My point is, if/when it happens, every aspect of your life will be changed forever.

8

I don’t believe the U.S. would just indiscriminately bomb a country on a suspicion. Nor would it bomb cities full of citizens just to retaliate. And there’s a good reason - one nuclear detonation may be a horror, but that’s a lot better than 400 more. The U.S. can’t go around firing off nukes without provocation.

What the U.S. would do would be to essentially take the gloves off and continue doing what it’s doing now. Terrorists would be followed into any country. Terrorist camps discovered anywhere would be targeted and bombed, with or without the permission of the host country. Regimes that sponsor terror would be told immediately that if they didn’t cough up their known terrorists and shut down all funding and harbor, a state of war would exist between that country and the U.S., with the ramifications of that to be spelled out when it suits the interests of the United States.

At home, support for strong military action would be immense, and the military’s budget would go up another 150 billion a year. Funding for intelligence and anti-missile defenses would be doubled.

And we’d all get a lot less sleep.

9

My great worry is that in the end the US starts “God sorting” country after country that may have had anything to do with the attack.

10

I would be worried about a general break down of society.

If say NYC was nuked. How many people would stay in Chicago, LA, London, or Paris? I would think that a massive flee from the cities as people wonder if the terrorists have more bombs. Then, in America, as tax revenues from cities stop or at least drastically drop off then what happens?

11

It seems to me that this thread basically answers the question as to why we need to get rid of Saddam, ASAP. If you prevent the OP’s premise, you don’t have to worry about the answer to it.

12

Shortly after 9/11, the former British Defense Secretary Michael Portillo wrote a newspaper article describing his reaction in which he reminisced about taking part in an exercise involving the response to an unprecidented terrorist attack on the UK. Somewhat to his civilian surprise, the MoD’s informal threshold number of deaths for a “nuke 'em” recommendation to their political masters was 10,000. This was deaths by any means. (His point being that there’d been a period where, albeit now as a mere MP watching the television news, he’d had to contemplate this as the likely recommendation from the US military to Bush.) Whether the politicians would agree is necessarily another matter.

13

I don’t think that means we absolutely WILL respond with nukes…just that the US reserves the right to do so. It would largely depend on who the US thought was to blame and its chances for a conventional retaliation. Were it Afghanistan we pegged as the host/sponsor we’d probably do what we did after 9/11. Were it North Korea with nukes of its own and 10,000 artillery pieces ranged on Seoul, South Korea, we’d probably nuke 'em.

Remember, the US is supposed to be the good guy. Nuking a few hundred thousand people whose only fault is to live in a crappy country with nutjobs for rulers doesn’t gain anyone anything.

14

Actually, I wouldn’t support use of nukes as retaliation.

The purpose of nuclear arms is to deter attack. The purpose of a second strike is to prevent a third strike.

Unless we has some reason to believe that another nuclear attack was likely, and that use of our nuclear arsenal was likely to prevent or minimize it, there would be no point in nuking, say, Iraq or Afghanistan.

Certainly life would be short and difficult for whatever terrorist bases we could locate, and any governments giving them aid or comfort. But just because the last time Achmed el-Bomber was sighted was on the border of Pakistan is no reason to nuke the Pakis.

We might make some clear, urgent requests that whoever is in charge of Pakistan at the moment either hand over those we would like to interview in connection with the incident, or at least stand to the side and smile while we went a-hunting for whoever we might find in the area, but unless some government struck us first, and had the chance to do it again, nukes would be counter-productive. Better to preserve the moral high ground, and not react badly.

Best chance for an all-out exchange is if we thought it was North Korea behind it all, and that we had to act fast to prevent a nuclear strike on Seoul or something. Then all bets are off, and Pyongyang has a high probability of becoming radio-active glass before too long.

Regards,
Shodan

15

Shoot, Whack-a-Mole beat me to it.

Great minds think alike.

Regards,
Shodan

16

I’m inclined to agree.

Nuking Kandahar might have felt good, but would have accomplished very little. True, it would have cleaned out more than a few Taliban leaders, but it would also have been viewed by moderate Islamic types as a truly psychotic move… even more so than our actual invasion of Afghanistan, considering that a lot of the Islamic world still (a) believes we had no proof that Al-Qaida was behind 9/11, and/or (b) thinks Israel did it to piss us off at the Arab/Islamic world.

If we HAD to do something about Afghanistan, then we should have gone in with conventional ground troops, made what friends we could, shot the bad guys we could find, and otherwise set the situation straight in a verifiable fashion, instead of nuking blindly.

Whoops, that seems to be what we did, now, wasn’t it?

I’m not too worried about nuclear terrorists. Sneaking into the country with anything more powerful than a low-yield tactical nuke would be a hell of a trick, especially now. They could really do some damage, but it would be closer to Oklahoma City or 9/11 than to Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Not that this would be great… but certainly preferable to the alternative.

On the other hand, if North Korea decides to start merrily selling ballistic missile technology and “Make Your Own Nuke Kits (Hey Kids, Plutonium Included!)”… well… that’s another ball of poop entirely…

17

Well, the UK is thinking along these lines right now:

Source: http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30225

See also http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L2921381

The details may be different than your proposed scenario but the fact remains the Brits are already thinking along the same lines.

18

Domestically it would mean martial law. I can see such things as suspension of elections and most civil services at least for a time. It would mean that we would immediately be in a state of world war. Expect food, gas, supply rationing. And expect a huuuuge reduction in the amount of civil liberties. It would be a difficult time to be in the ACLU defending wiretap laws after something like that.

In any country, it would cause major societal shifts. In the US, being somewhat apart from the rest of the world and relatively unscathed in since the Civil War, most of the populace would have no reference frame to deal with it and we would likely overrespond. Imagine 10000% inflation, imagine trucking a wheelbarrow of dollars down to the 7-11 to buy a loaf of bread. Imagine ID checks at the nearly every conceivable checkpoint including on highways going into major cities. Imagine the Army taking over large sections of the country for a prolonged period. Imagine curfews and nearly complete suspension of freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Imagine return of conscription, imagine detention camps in every city and huge holding pens for anyone even remotely suspicious.

Our foreign response would be to involve us in a nearly unwinnable war with no exit strategy and no concept of limits. Coupled with the domestic situation, it would totally rip the American Way of Life[sup]TM[/sup] to shreds. But I (and I betcha most other Americans) wouldn’t see any other strategy. Any person who so much as sympathized with the attackers, let alone cheered them in the streets and passed out candies, could potentially find himself on the business end of a Tomahawk or a service revolver of someone in the US Special Forces.

It wouldn’t be fun.

19

No reason to be so optimistic. I doubt it would all be fun and games.

20

If, God forbid, something like this were to happen and, as I believe is likely, no one claims responsibility for it, how would we ever figure out who was responsible? Wouldn’t all forensic evidence be destroyed?