If a terrorist were to use a nuclear weapon in a city, i would like to think that cooler heads would prevail, rather than nuking a country and glassing its citizens (most of which would have been entirely innocent and ignorant of the crime).

Conventional weapons are already deadly enough today.

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The most important mental attribute anyone can have is the ability to recognize when one's own comprehension of a topic is insufficient. Without that, one's knowledge simply becomes tautological: it is "impossible" for there to exist wisdom one does not already possess. - JayUtah

There is no light in space. - Moon Man

Wouldn't count on it. A conventional attack against the US on a scale that would be considered minor compared to a nuclear strike resulted in the destruction of two countries and turned the world on its head.

Nuclear? Take 9/11 and multiply it by googolplex and you might get close to the chaos that would reign.

Its not the retaliation that would be the worst thing. Its the insane restrictions of personal freedom that are put in place in the aftermath out of debilitating fear of a repeat. One on that scale and the US could become a police state fearing for its survival.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

Well put, but from 9/11 we had terrorists (mostly from Saudi Arabia) and attacked Afghanistan & Iraq.

Lets pose a hypothetical situation;

Said terrorist explodes a nuclear weapon - how would we identify who that was?

If we did, and it turns out to be say Egyptian or Somalian - how could that justify nuking either of those countries?

Lets say it was financed by Al-Queda - do we nuke Afghanistan/Iraq - why?

Its a real fear - luckily, its most unlikely to happen - nuclear weapons are extremely difficult to build and require such resources that the so-called 'Axis of Evil' states would place them under strict security.

They also value their lives as much as we do, and i don't think their stupid enough to supply them.

On the other hand, is there a possibilty of the U.S.A becoming a Christian Theocracy in future? Those Fundamentalists are just as scary, and for Nuclear Armageddon read : Rapture

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The most important mental attribute anyone can have is the ability to recognize when one's own comprehension of a topic is insufficient. Without that, one's knowledge simply becomes tautological: it is "impossible" for there to exist wisdom one does not already possess. - JayUtah

There is no light in space. - Moon Man

Perhaps. But man-portable nukes that once were part of the USSR's arsenal have gone missing since the end of the Cold War.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/News/Lebedbomb.html

So where are they? Who has them?

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Angel of the Abyss
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"I am Ripper...Tearer...Slasher...Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Darkness, the Talons in the Night. Mine is Strength...and Lust...and Power! I AM BEOWULF!"

They were never really the size or weight of a "suitcase". They were more like the size of a large "steamer trunk", and much heavier.

* * *

The real danger faced by Middle Eastern countries is not military; it's that either the rest of us will replace oil with other energy sources or it will run out.

Those "suitcase" nukes were also terribly finicky. They were not "just set it and forget it" weapons. They needed almost constant fiddling by highly trained techs to work!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

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Lebed's claim had been debunked long ago. He was running for President of Russia, and accusing Yeltsin of inexcusable laxness was part of his grandstanding.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Why did we go after them this time? Because terrorists may be freelance lunatics, but they need someplace sympatico to their causes to build forces. Sudan got the hint and booted them, the Taliban in Afghanistan allowed them to work openly, so they were attacked as a result.

These organizations don't operate in a vaccuum with any level of success.

Hamas, Hizbollah and the rest of the more enduring organizations enjoy patronage of a regional power to maintain their operations, or they'd be as ineffectual as groups like the Falun Gong, which are truly underground and largely powerless.

Difficult and impossible aren't synonymous. It can be done, however difficult it may be.

Call me crazy, but I don't think the guys who were in the cockpit on 9/11 had much value on their lives. The masterminds maybe self important nutjobs who think themselves touched by deities, but the guys at ground zero are usually pretty hardened fanatics ready to throw their lives away in the name of said deity.

I doubt it, oh, its certainly possible for the Biblethumpers to hold sway for a while, they're just coming off about a decade of it since Gingrich took on Clinton with his "Contract With America", but the underlying truth of American political power is that it lies not in the polemics, but in the swing voters who act as the pendulum moving policy from one extreme to the next.

Its the old saying, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool everyone all the time."

People will fall for a smooth line of crap, but they eventually get tired of getting steamrolled when the polemics delude themselves into thinking they've got it all figured out.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

politics and religion people.

Well, here in the South, we have another old saying: Save all your Confederate money boys, because the South will rise again!

I grew up in northern Arkansas in the 50s. There were people there whose fathers had fought in the civil war who actually believed that and were holding Confederate money for just such an occasion.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

In my opinion there is no honor in dropping death dealing stuff on civilian cities. In fact, murdering civillians in war should not be concidered acceptable att all, for any reason. Any war is temporary, any strategic importance is temporary, death is not.

The whole world war 2 was a terrible disaster of a war if you ask me. Just because the forces involved in WW2 felt justified in doing it this way, doesn't change the fact that it was a terrible atrocity. There may have been no other way to fight with the technology and world state at the time, but doesn't mean that it should be seen as a source of pride and honour.

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Game over, you lose, we hope you enjoyed playing the exciting game of Thermodynamics...

As opposed to letting the Nazis have all of Europe and Imperial Japan having all of Asia?

One problem you seem to have is that you dont think civilians have anything to do with a war. I think that is incorrect, especially with today's technology. A factory filled with civvies making combat gear is generally a viable target now.

Yes they are, and very precise. Someone foisting a nuke on American soil would rapidly find themselves and their movement's ability to wage any sort of either warfare or influence on any respectable remainder of the world completely dead.

Don't believe me?

Go ahead - make my day.

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Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

"Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." - Heinlein

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My point was that nuclear weapons are difficult to produce, and require a state to fund the project to completion, said state is very unlikely (i never said impossible) to then gift these weapons to terrorist groups.

9/11 isn't comparable in this respect, they didn't use any bombs - the plane was the bomb.

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The most important mental attribute anyone can have is the ability to recognize when one's own comprehension of a topic is insufficient. Without that, one's knowledge simply becomes tautological: it is "impossible" for there to exist wisdom one does not already possess. - JayUtah

There is no light in space. - Moon Man

True; the reason being...they had polonium 210 'triggers' which have a half life of only 138 days, meaning the 'triggers' had to be replaced every 6 months or so. (I think the polonium had to be combined with berrylium first to get the neccesary neutron initiation).

So a loose "Samsonite" Nuke wouldn't 'last long' unless a source of polonium was available.

I suspect that the recent 'contamination' death of Litvinenko in Britain had something to do with smuggling Polonium to use as a trigger .....You can bet the al Quada types are looking for 'em.

G^2

No, it isn't, but not for the reason you state. You put forward the notion that nuclear-armed Axis of Evil state leaders value their lives as much as anyone. The 9/11 perps were common terrorists whose personal motivations and desire for survival can't reasonably be compared with those of, say, Kim Jong-il.

Okay, i put that badly.

My point is that extremist groups, such as terrorists, are small. They do not possess the abilities to create themselves a nuclear weapon.

Governments do, but the prmary reason for them to create one these days is to use as a deterrent. They are complicated to assemble, are expensive to maintain and that makes them valuable. No government would risk giving one to a terrorist group. The consequences are too dire.

Despotism is not unstable, the leader relies on loyalty from the generals, and the generals require the loyalty of the troops. Its is undesirable, since there are better forms of government, but much better than Anarchy. Anarchic states could not build a bomb.

We can look to our history for many examples of nuclear confrontation, the despots were no eager to be the first than democratic nations. The U.S.A along with the allies were correct to use the nuclear bombs on Japan. Once developed the bomb was going to be used. Its to humanities credit that we recognised the devastating effects of the bomb and no state has used it since - there are checks and balances in place.

For that reason, i think the possibility of a nuclear war breaking out is unlikely.

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The most important mental attribute anyone can have is the ability to recognize when one's own comprehension of a topic is insufficient. Without that, one's knowledge simply becomes tautological: it is "impossible" for there to exist wisdom one does not already possess. - JayUtah

There is no light in space. - Moon Man