Wouldn't it be easier to just buy one?

John Lee




At 10:14 AM 3/11/03 -0400, Dave Swanson wrote:
>A lot of people also seem to believe that the major nuclear threat comes in
>the form of a fission bomb. I gotta say that while it might be a relatively
>simple matter of slapping some components together to build the actual bomb
>device, getting the weapons-grade fissionable material that actually makes
>the bomb do it's big boom is far more difficult.
>
>This stuff doesn't grow on trees. It doesn't hide out in a mineral deposit
>somewhere. It has to be manufactured and processed in a highly sophisticated
>laboratory.(There are probably only a dozen of them in the world and maybe
>half of them are outside of the USA. You also need to have access to some
>form of Nuclear Fission reactor. It's not a matter of walkin into the hills
>with a RAD detector and picking up a hunk of uranium that happens to be
>lying in a dry riverbed. Yeah it's probably that simple to get all the
>uranium you could ever want, but what are you gonna do with it once you've
>got your pretty "it feels warm in my hand" rocks?
>
>Who said "pack it into the bomb", Whoever it was, turn in your books and see
>the admissions department for a refund. Ok, Once you got your uranium chunks
>you need to refine it into a pure form. Is there anyone who is familiar with
>smelting processes  to purify metals? Usually involves heating the metal up
>to a liquid form and then skimming the gunk that floats to the top off. What
>gets left behind is usually a lot purer. Another way is to use chemical
>baths and electrical currents to purify metals. So your probably thinking
>that's how you'd purify your hunks of uranium, right? Wrong, Transuranic
>materials like Uranium, don't take to kindly to being heated up, bathed in
>chemicals, or jolted with electricity. Also usually not a good idea to hit
>it with anything heavy either. It has a tendency to get all glowy and tingly
>and your RAD detectors, they tend to make loud noises. They don't blow up,
>they just spit out lots and lots of radiation.
>
>So how do we go about refining this stuff? Well, first we need to build a
>fission pile.(yeah, that has definitely got to be easier to say than to do,
>much like a lot of things in life) Then by carefully controlling the fission
>process we can transform our lumps of impure uranium into lumps of pure
>uranium. Through the magic of science we can even change the uranium into
>other fancy new transuranic materials like Plutonium, which makes for bigger
>"booms" So now were getting somewhere, well not really, because see this
>whole process cost billions of dollars to develop and required the help of a
>whole bunch of guys in white coats and whole alphabets of letters behind
>there names. These guys, much like the fissionable material we need for our
>bomb, don't grow on trees. Getting these guys into a room to build us the
>gear we need is gonna take some work. And keeping it a secret, yeah, right.
>
>So our bomb is looking like it might be a bit more work than we were
>thinking it would be. And for what? We have a bomb, we blow it up in some
>quiet corner of suburbia and piss of the local gun-totting mob. Yeah, we
>could do that. But really now, what's the point? It seems like an awful lot
>of work just to get about a hundred of the things dropped on your own head
>in return. Besides, with a fission bomb, there ain't much left. Just a big
>glass hole in the ground.
>
>Think about that for a second. Just a hole in the ground. Remember now, this
>is a psychological weapon as much as a physical one. So with that in mind,
>lets get a little cold-hearted for a second. Imagine your watching CNN.
>Which image chills your blood more?
>
>A smoking hole in the ground, with no bodies, well maybe a few along the
>periphery of the blast area. Maybe a few shots of people climbing over
>ruined buildings looking for survivors, again mostly along the periphery of
>the blast. You might have lots of shots of burn victims but that's about it.
>Within hours of the blast, rescue personnel are moving into the areas and
>days later come the cleanup crews, and a year later the whole thing is a
>nice little park with a tasteful memorial at the heart.
>
>Or...
>
>No burning buildings, no smoking wreckage, but tonnes of bodies lying in the
>streets. Some not quite dead yet. The sound of a distant wail causes the
>camera to swing wildly and focus on some poor woman that rocks a dead loved
>one in her arms. The moans, and please for help. The dead are in twisted
>contorted positions as their last breaths must have been excruciating. Those
>clinging to life look as though they have been attacked with a blow torch.
>Open sours and blisters cover their bodies. They hack and wheeze as if
>trying to cough up their own internal organs. Then, suddenly the camera man
>coughs, staggers towards a wall, sets his camera down on, and sits down
>before it. He struggles for breath as his face comes into view and we
>realize that he to is a victim. And he is also dying. There will be no
>rescue for these people. Ground Zero can not be sanitized. And will remain a
>deathtrap to any living thing for years to come. Even years later when
>cleanup crews can finally clear the area and cover it over, there will be no
>park, no memorial on it's site. Just a fence warning people away from the
>area where the first "Dirty Bomb" was detonated.
>
>Yeah, I'll take "Images that will keep you up at night" for a thousand,
>Alex.
>
>So what is a "Dirty Bomb"? Well, it's really kinda simple, frighteningly
>simple. You take a bunch of uranium, grind it up into really small
>particulate. Pack a couple pounds of it into regular plain Jane bomb with a
>couple kilo's of plastique and boom. Detonate the bomb which scatters your
>uranium all over the place irradiating everything it touches. With some
>lightly refined transuranic material you could irradiate an area for
>decades. The only difficult part of building one of these bombs is balancing
>the amount of explosive in the bomb so that you create enough explosive
>force to distribute your radioactive material without incinerating it.
>Actually, that is quite a technical hurdle, which is probably why your
>average disgruntled teenager hasn't built one and carted it off to school.
>But This really is a frightening weapon. I mean it's about as effective as a
>poison gas bomb, but has all the long lasting properties that make
>radioactive half-lives so much fun. And it's cheap to make. What more could
>you want in a weapon of mass destruction?
>
>Now, for the record, I'm not a terrorist, I'm not in the business of making
>weapons of mass destruction. I don't condone the use of such weapons, nor do
>I condone terrorism. I simply have a general understanding of physics and a
>pretty good idea of what keeps me up at night. Seeing a major metropolitan
>area disappear into a terrorist created mushroom cloud isn't really one of
>them. Seeing a major metropolitan area turned into a ghost town by a dirty
>bomb definitely falls into that category.
>
>Dave
>
>
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Wayne R. Boyer" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 7:38 PM
>Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] OT- Weapons
>
>
>> In a message dated 3/10/03 2:33:54 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>> [log in to unmask] writes:
>>
>>
>> > Everyone seems to believe that u need the rocket delivery system for
>nuclear
>> > devices. What about a box in the cargo hold of a freighter in the New
>York
>> > City harbour or Boston harbour, or Baltimore or San Franscio or any
>other
>> > harbour.
>> > Maybe just let them truck it to Chicago, Dallas or Denver.
>> >
>>
>> A very good point.  That's what Osama would do if he got his hands on a
>> nuclear device.  Now what are his chances of getting such a device as more
>> and more Muslims come to hate the USA?  What are his chances of getting
>> funding for his efforts as more and more Muslims see the USA as the 'Great
>> Satan" attacking and killing Iraqis?
>>
>> Wayne
>>
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