So basically unless it was manufactured within the last 15 years it would require alot of maintenance and would produce a highly radioactive enviroment and need a secure containment facility to conduct the maintenance in, right ?

Otherwise you would have this really bright hot spot of radioactivity that we could home in on and discover traces of the weapon.

So the biggest threat that any of these "missing" nukes could present would be a "dirt bomb" and maybe have an explosive magnitude of 5-10 tons (guessing if the high energy component was decayed)

Originally posted by nathraq

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
LOL! You weren't in Heilbronn when that little incident occured, allegedly due inproper grounding?

I was stationed several clicks away when that happened. Man, did the Germans have an absolute cow over that.

About a week later, some CS got out of the chamber and floated into a neighborhood. Build magazine made it sound like it was a chemical attack! LOL!

No, I was at Fischbach Army Depot. The Germans thought we had poison gas there. They used to protest all the time.

I almost forgot about being ground! We had those little wrist straps, with velcro, and a wire leading with an alligator clip.

Talk about memories!

I don't know how old you are or when you were last with it, but you do know the 59th Ord. Brigade cased colors several years ago, huh?

I know FAD. Down the road from Perm.

If a nuclear weapon loses its tritium then it will not detonate with full nuclear yield as designed.

However, they are still very dangerous in another sense: if somebody could acquire a few of them, they could remove the valuable fissile material and re-manufacture it into a lower-tech but still effective fissile weapon which doesn't use tritium. It would be larger than the suitcase nuke and require some technical sophistication, but the actual production of the fissile material is always the most expensive and difficult step for making nuclear weapons.

Originally posted by mbkennel

If a nuclear weapon loses its tritium then it will not detonate with full nuclear yield as designed.

However, they are still very dangerous in another sense: if somebody could acquire a few of them, they could remove the valuable fissile material and re-manufacture it into a lower-tech but still effective fissile weapon which doesn't use tritium. It would be larger than the suitcase nuke and require some technical sophistication, but the actual production of the fissile material is always the most expensive and difficult step for making nuclear weapons.

True. But tritium is also a radiation enhancer.

Ever hear of dry land drowning?

Tritium, when inhaled, causes the lungs to fill with fluid.

Tritium is the main 'component' of the Carter era program, The Neutron Bomb, which basically left property unscathed, while causing maximum casualties on soldiers and civilians.

That is the primary purpose of tritium. A nuke doesn't need one to detonate.

Hmm. The medical literature on tritium says that deleterious health effects from single acute episodes of tritium exposure are unknown. Tritium is a low-energy beta emitter. Not very dangeous at all. With a biologocal half-life of 12 days in the human body, it takes long-term exposure to tremendous amounts of tritium to produce health effects.

As to the portability of suitcase bombs, I know soldiers who were posted in Germany during the Cold War whose job it was to jump (from helicopters) into the Fulda Gap with SADMs on their backs in order to shut down Ivan's incursions. Not a very survivable job, eh? But these guys were and are scary brave. Considering that they trained with 90-pound rucksacks to prepare for their missions, the SADMs were lightweight payloads. On the other hand, I have not the slightest idea how they intended to deliver MADMs, which were significantly heavier. Indeed, while these nuclear soldiers talk freely about SADMs and Honest Johns and Lances, they clam up and sometimes even deny the existence of MADMs. One of those things that make you say "hmmm."

suitcase bombs hmm any 1 read chris ryans kremlin device (i know hes a coward and all but any how)
that shows u what can happen when 1 is in the wrong hands
these weapons are exstremly dangerous imagine a terrorist working on his/her own armed with one of these,no warning ,no reaction time,no chance
but i suppose our intel services could probably catch them.i hope