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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