Anybody think that a terrorist will be able to pull it off in the States? I like to placate myself with thoughts of “if it was going to happen, it surely would’ve happened by now”, but every day I look out of my window at the Washington Monument and come to the realization that every day that passes with no nuke probably just increases the odds that one is coming fairly soon, and here I sit at ground zero.
Then I thought about the volatile situation in the mideast, and felt that surely if some holy war driven nut was going to detonate a nuke somewhere on this planet, that is where the action would be.
Another thought is Kashmir, currently (read: last time I checked) being arm-wrestled over by India & Pakistan. Both are nuclear powered children, and may be driven to act against their neighbor in a holy war, or Jihad, where no punches are pulled and even the children’s lives in one’s own country are thought of as little more than a worthy sacrifice to the Jihad.
I doubt it will happen. The terrorists are trying to do 2 things - get attention and draw support. Any terrorist group to set off a nuclear bomb in any country is going to be hunted down by all the other countries in the world who don’t want it happening in their backyard. It’s one thing to cause fear, but when you go to far, the fear becomes provocation for attack.
It likely won’t ever happen. Besides, the materials needed are hard to get, and the skill to implement them into a working device is harder to come by I would hazzard a guess at.
Of course, they could steal a device, but a Nuke is a bit hard to hide, so they likely wouldn’t be able to go too far without being spotted or found out…
Of course, if a nuke DID manage to go off in your general area, I doubt you’de have time to even realize what is happening before you’re reduced to nothing more than a faint shadow on the ground.
Of course, you could always move to Canada. Sure, someone could nuke us easily, but what the hell would be the point? WHat does Canada have that anyone might want? Trees? Water? Snow? Sheesh.
Hey! That could be our new immigration Motto:
“Come to Canada: The world knows it’s pointless to nuke us.”
IMO, a terrorist nuking of NYC or Washington DC isn’t out of the question. Yes, it would draw the ire of most countries, but that didn’t prevent the bombing of the World Trade Center. I’m sure the terrorists would be lauded by a few extremist folks, and as long as they wound the U.S., becoming pariahs to the United Nations probably isn’t of concern to them. I could easily see Bin Laden (sp?) shopping for a suitcase nuke as we speak. It is, after all, a jihad and not a popularity contest. To Bin Laden and his ilk, increased popularity among the Middle Eastern masses (and doing good in the eyes of his god) is probably more important than international support.
“Materials are hard to get? Implementing them is even harder?” When the U.S.S.R. broke up, plenty of nukes were sitting in primarily Islamic republics. Accounting for Soviet nukes and nuclear materiel hasn’t been all that stringent.
As for national use of nukes, I agree, Opus, that it’ll probably be in the India/Pakistan theatre.
But there’s a HUGE difference between a regular bomb and a nuclear bomb. Any group that would detonate a nuclear bomb in a populated area would scare the shit out of everyone to the point that that group would have to do some serious hiding to stay safe from the other people (and retalliation from the bombed country and its allies) who don’t want to see it happen again. There would be enormous pressure from the US on the country this group is hiding in to help us find them - or else.
Sure, some of those groups may love to drop on nuke at the front door of the United Nations, but they have to realize the wrath that would bring down on them would be unbearable.
A nuclear terrorist attack on US soil is highly unlikely, but here are a few military scenarions where nukes could be used:
PAKISTAN V INDIA: 6o Minutes did a piece a few weeks back that was pretty scary. The govenrment of Pakistan could be taken over by fundamentalists who could possibly use nukes on India or any Other nation that stands in its way.
ISRAEL nukes Egypt or Syria. PAKISTAN, IRAN and IRAQ nuke ISRAEL unless Israel gets to them first. Or the Arab countries nuke Israel: If the Palestinian situation turns into a war, Israel could use the threat of nukes to prevent other Arab countries from getting involved. Imagine a nuclear standoff betwenn Pakistan and Israel.
FORMER SOVIET UNION: The former USSR is a nuclear power under the control of the Russian Mafia. I can’t even begin to list the nightmare scenarios, especailly since it has been proven that the Russian Mob is dealing nuclear materials to other nations.
IRAN v IRAQ: Imagine if these two enemies went nuclear.
CHINA nukes UNITED STATES. UNITED STATES FRIES CHINA: has said that it will use nuclear weapons on the United Sattes if we side with Taiwan in a war.:eek:
NORTH KOREA nukes UNITED STATES. UNITED STATES nukes NORTH KOREA. CHINA nukes U.S.
PDK is developing nuclear weapons that could be used if there is a war between North and South.
I think the Israelis would be the next to use them. (yes, I know they deny having them, but then OJ denied… anyway). They are in a pretty bad situation, and if a war in that area was to actually happen there are groups w/in Israel that would not be entirely <ahem> adverse to using the ‘tools at hand’.
Depends hugely on the bomb and on the target. A sufficiently powerful “conventional” bomb under the World Trade Center could kill plenty of people. (Anybody have figures on how many people work in the building? Tens of thousands?) Collapsing the TWC would likely have not much less effect than would a sloppily placed homebrew-nuke groundburst in some other parts of a major city.
The term, conventional bomb, is pretty broad, and the distinction between nuke and conventional weapon is not always so clear. One type of c.b., the fuel-air bomb, can produce concussive yields very similar to tactical nukes. Would we be less outraged if we lost thirty city blocks to a fuel-air bomb than if the thirty blocks were flattened by a little nuke? Very debatable.
You’re characterizing their behavior based on Western mores. “Unbearable” isn’t the same for every culture. Most Westerners consider suicide bombing an act of mad desperation, but in some cultures such an act is considered a guaranteed ticket to heaven.
If Osama Bin Lauden got his paws on a tactical nuke, do you really think he’d hesitate? I think he’d deliver the weapon into NYC without a moment’s thought for the citizenry of Libya, Syria or Iran. He’d probably figure any deaths due to Western retaliation would simply get a free ride to heaven. Some beliefs make the unbearable a lot more bearable.
If you’re talking about terrorist acts, I’d be more worried about biological weapons.
As for Israel/Islamic countries, I’d think it’s unlikely. If the Arabic countries get frisky, Israel will attack, as it has always done historically. It’s simply not worth it as a leader of an Islamic nation to do more than make angry speeches.
This isn’t the case in Pakistan/India though. Prior goverments have done an excellent job of raising religious fevor to gain poltical support, and have been assassinated for their efforts. The gaverment is a bit shaky with such a history of assassinations. I could see a religious coup followed with a nuclear holy war.
I can’t imagine any scenario where Isreal would use nukes in a first-strike. They know damn well if they did that, the US wouldn’t support them. Unless, of course, Saddam or some other nut launched first. I can see the Paki-India scene, but I think Pakistan knows there are too many people in India to win. In addition, it seems to me that India has more world allies. Korea doesn’t dare use them, especailly against the US. They wouldn’t last a week. China is the country I always worried about, but with the Chinese waking up to their own possibilities as a people, I can’t imagine the commies being in charge in another 20 years. Just my 2 cents.
In response to the OP, I’d love to reassure you, but the thought of terrorist nukes has occurred to me as well. Particularly with the increased feasibility of so-called backpack nukes, or nukes that can fit into the trunk of a car.
Assuming a terrorist group gets its hands on a couple of trunk-sized nukes, what’s to prevent them from blowing up a U.S. city, and then issuing a list of demands to be met, lest they take out another city?
I wonder how the US would respond to such a threat? I wonder if we would accede to a suspension of our civil liberties to combat such terrorism? I wonder what would happen to our government, and our nation, if DC got nuked?
Would we think about amending the Constitution to make searches and seizures easier? Would government be physically de-centralized (by use of the internet) to reduce the risk of a single bomb taking out the federal government with one blast?
How would we respond? Seems to me that we ought to consider these issues, the better to be prepared for the possibility (even if it is a remote one).
It has long been my hope that, what with all of the pentagon’s “blank check” top secret projects, there surely must be something in the works to detect/prevent fissionable material from coming into the U.S. through normal channels. The ICBM threat is also scary, but presently I believe that China is the only country with the platform to carry nukes this far (ok, the former USSR has the platform, but those nukes are no longer humming on a hot idle). I don’t think we’d lend military support to Tiawan, but if we did just can’t believe China would be stupid enough to plunge the planet into nuclear winter because of it.
<QUOTE>
Of course, you could always move to Canada. Sure, someone could nuke us easily, but what the hell would be the point? WHat does Canada have that anyone might want? Trees? Water? Snow? Sheesh.
Hey! That could be our new immigration Motto:
“Come to Canada: The world knows it’s pointless to nuke us.”
</QUOTE>
Actually, it would make a lot of sense to nuke a target in Canada instead of the U.S. Would get all the attention without actually giving the U.S. gov’t the immediate reason/excuse to hit something back, and hard to whip up the U.S. public about a bunch of French speaking, hocky playing eskimos anyhow.
While the consequences of carrying out a terrorist nuclear attack on the U.S. would be very severe, the payoff could be very large. If somone nuked D.C. during a State of the Union address, they could pretty much decapitate the U.S. federal government. Generally I think both the President and Vice President, the Cabinet, both Houses of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Supreme Court justices attend those things. (Actually, I think several of the Supremes didn’t bother to go to the last one.) I think it’s true that usually one Cabinet Secretary sits it out for that very reason, and I’m sure there are all sorts of contingency plans filed under a mountain somewhere for such a thing, but the chaos would still be huge. “Congratulations, Mr. (or Madame) Secretary of Veterans Affairs! You’re now President of the United States! You, Senator Foghorn (who is home in bed with the flu), Congressman Buncombe (whose daughter was starring in the class play tonight), and a couple of grumpy old Supreme Court justices now constitute the Government of the United States. What are your orders?” One thing about a smuggled bomb is that an extremist group wouldn’t necessarily have to claim responsibility in any traceable way (as opposed to a missile attack by a “rogue state”–I mean, a “state of concern”–which would be tracked and the perpetrator thereof turned into the world’s largest parking lot). One could even imagine a group of domestic American extremists mounting such an attack in order to stage a coup; this would be especially effective if they released some anonymous claim of responsibility, giving enough details of the attack that everyone would be sure it had really been sent by the true perpetrators, but doing so in the name of some other group, preferably a group the true perpetrators don’t like to begin with.
I agree with wastelands about Israel using nukes for a first strike: they know that U.S. aid would promptly dry up, as well as any regional political leverage they still might have. With hostile Arab neighbors around (plus Iran and Pakistan,) they’d need all the help they could get, and they know damn well that Europe tends to look somewhat more objectively at Middle Eastern atrocities than the United States does.
I don’t think nuclear terrorism is likely. If it were to happen, I have no doubt it would occur in the United States before it would in any other country, but even that doesn’t seem too likely.
The most likely nuclear flashpoint? Pakistan versus India. I think it would be Pakistan that would use the bomb on India first, though I’m sure the Indians would have no qualms about retaliating.
