U.S Atomic Explosion

A couple of years ago I read somewhere that terrorists were planning to destroy completely the US, that they already had many atomic bombs ready insided the United Stated and were going to detonate them and then everything would be destroyed.
They claim they put the bombs before 9/11 and back then it was easy to do so.

Would something like that be possible and what are chances of that happening? Or you guys think it is just bogus?

With the use of a Russian breifcase bomb i would say yes very possible indeed.

Would the Russian's supply them ? Well did the American's supply the Afghan fighter's when they were fighting the Russian's ?

Regard's
Lee

Well, while I think the scenario is unlikely to be true, it sure sounds like an explanation of how our "heightened" security was circumvented, that the American people would actually believe.

yeah, but if this event happens it will leave no time to figure out whats going on.

The suitcase bomb has a certain shelf life and needs a lot of 'upkeep'.

But the most important thing is the trigger, they are said to use a polonium-beryllium trigger. Polonium has a half life of something like 138 days, so after 138 days half of it (in this case) would be lead, so polonium is only produced in quantity required right before the bomb is intended to be used. Leave it too long and all you really have is a very expensive 'dirty bomb'.

But saying that polonium emits alpha wave radiation which will only travel a very limited distance, hence unless you are specifically looking for it you could very easily miss it.

If they do that, I will come back from death, possess whoever authorized it and lead their life to failure. and eventual suicide, so they get trapped in the afterlife with nothing and noone hahahha..killers are so lame.

I think it's fairly safe to say that if any terrorist organization had a nuclear device in even 1 American city, they would have detonated it already. You have to think that for every passing day they kept it around, the chances of the plot being exposed and/or the weapon being found would grow exponentially. Also, this sounds very much like the plot to the television show Jericho.

reply to post by Zenagain


Why ?

Ever heard the saying just ask why ?

Regard's
Lee

[edit on 8-9-2007 by h3akalee]

One could make a nuclear bomb with out beryllium/Polonium, it just wouldn't be nearly as powerful. That part acts as a neutron source. But the point still holds true and this stuff is not as simple as conventional bombs and due to the nature of them which is that they involve elements decaying into other elements, they need a lot of upkeep.

I think a dirty bomb is a lot more likely scenario myself.

Originally posted by h3akalee
reply to post by Zenagain

 

Why ?

Ever heard the saying just ask why ?


Regard's
Lee

[edit on 8-9-2007 by h3akalee]

Why what? What are you blathering about?


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[edit on 8-9-2007 by elevatedone]

First, the "there already here" statement is crap be spread by whoever finds it most profitable. Propaganda is just that, something to scare you OR something to build up your confidence.

The mysterious Russian suitcase bombs. The are at most a micro nuke that can take out buildings and dams. Whole cities, no, that's why they built missiles with much larger yields. At the height of the cold war, Russia never had more than a couple hundred of these block busters.

Today, they would be obsolete and utterly useless without high maintenance. This is why Russia so willingly gave them up in treaties. This is a great James Bond plot but lack realistic meaning in many areas and true life.

reply to post by snoopy


That's not entirely true. The polonium is part of the initiator, although I'm not entirely certain that is what that particular weapon used.

With no initiator, you're sort of at the mercy of catching a stray neutron at the right time, which isn't likely. So you're likely to get a fizzle yield or no yield at all if you don't have one.

However, there's lots of ways to do it that don't involve polonium. That is a nice compact way of doing it, though. The problem is, it's tough to make polonium and it has no shelf life. You can substitute other strong alpha emitters for the polonium but it's tough to find a better one. The usual thing to do is use a more technical initiator, such as a zipper or neutron tube.

If you have fairly clean plutonium, you can sort of do the thing without any initiator but it's a bit of a crap shoot what your yield will be. That's assuming you want to do it the low-tech way.

reply to post by hinky


The one I've seen depicted is probably

reply to post by Soulshock


For one thing, if they did set off bombs all over the US the fallout would affect everyone on the planet. It would disrupt all of the worlds economys and the global effects would be catastrophic for the terrorists and their home countries, sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face...

reply to post by antar


But you have to recall, several of the "nuclear club" were banging away with the above-ground nuclear tests regularly in the 60's, and the last one was in 1980. Some of them were pretty dang big too. And while they spread tiny amounts of fallout globally, that is usually a pretty local phenomenon in terms of real effect.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
reply to post by snoopy

 

That's not entirely true. The polonium is part of the initiator, although I'm not entirely certain that is what that particular weapon used.

With no initiator, you're sort of at the mercy of catching a stray neutron at the right time, which isn't likely. So you're likely to get a fizzle yield or no yield at all if you don't have one.

However, there's lots of ways to do it that don't involve polonium. That is a nice compact way of doing it, though. The problem is, it's tough to make polonium and it has no shelf life. You can substitute other strong alpha emitters for the polonium but it's tough to find a better one. The usual thing to do is use a more technical initiator, such as a zipper or neutron tube.

If you have fairly clean plutonium, you can sort of do the thing without any initiator but it's a bit of a crap shoot what your yield will be. That's assuming you want to do it the low-tech way.

The first nuclear bomb did not use beryllium/polunium.

The purpose of the initiator is to provide a source of neutrons. It's not required for a nuclear reaction/explosion, but the yield without it will be reduced drastically. The neutrons are already present in the Plutonium. and when compressed they will collide with each other and radiate more neutrons. But the berylium/polonium provides an abundant source of Neutrons which means that the number of collisions will increase greatly and thus produce a much greater yield.

And of course I assume we're just talking about fission bombs because of the discussion of the beryllium/Polonium. Fusion bombs (thermonuclear) are a different animal and require a fission reaction to create a fusion reaction.


But my only point is that one could make a basic uranium bomb. It just wouldn't be nearly as powerful, but it would be powerful enough to serve the purpose of terrorism. Just 1% efficiency would be devastating even if tiny compared to a current thermonuclear bomb.

reply to post by Soulshock


I would like to offer a perspective from the mystical side although I understand you are asking about pragmatic feasibility of such events occurring. I offer this information on prophecies without the intention of converting anyone or diverting this thread from practical considerations of responding to the OP.

Generally, Roman Catholic seers -- admittedly on the fringe but not involved in self-promotion -- have said that Atlanta will be struck be either three or two nuclear devices resulting in the destruction of the airport, the CDC, and the communications infrastructure throwing CNN off the air. Also, named repeatedly are Chicago and Dallas. Some speak of a seeing a demonic trinity over the USA with the corners of the triangle being Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas.

There is also a Catholic prophecy that all of the West Coast major ports except for San Diego will be destroyed by nuclear devices driven in from Mexico. I always thought this prophecy was insane, but now that Mexican trucks can drive freely across your southern border I can see elements of this prophecy as much more likely. The prophecy was made by a Franciscan hermit in the early 1990's. (There are many Catholic prophecies about San Diego being occupied by Chinese forces... the earliest such prophecy I was able to dig up was from 1968).

Keep in mind that the Roman Catholic Church institution hates these sort of prophecies and prophets. It goes under the rubric of "private revelation" meaning that it is up to each person to discern until the Church rules it acceptable revelation or not. (I'm just giving a thumbnail sketch on the RC process for these things).

There is an LDS (Mormon) prophecy about the City of Salt Lake City being hit by a biological and chemical attack and the bodies of the dead lying in the streets unburied. I've traced this prophecy back to Sarah Menet, a well-respected Mormon seer who refuses the title of prophet or prophetess.

I have found that a wide variety of prophecies (from within a very varying Christian range of denominations) involves the destruction of Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Omaha.

One can dig back to the 1920s for prophecies about Kansas City vanishing in a ball of fire or a ball of burning light. The destructino of Kansas City by nuclear attack is found again and again in North American prophecies and has found its way into apocalyptic fiction -- both in print and on film.

Back to practicalities: some of it depends on who the enemy really is and what are the motivations. None of the USA's traditional enemies want the USA destroyed when the world economic system is immeshed with the US dollar. The elimination of the USD standard would likely come before the destruction of the US dollar and the destruction of the USA's major cities or infrastructure. The Russians are still very well prepared to take their people underground for a nuclear winter of winters, but they may view a weakened USA as a better property to invade and control especially their former colony of Alaska which most modern Russians regard as rightfully theirs.

reply to post by antar


It really wouldn't be necessary to use the largest of nuclear devices to take out US cities and infrastructure. Everything from micro-nukes to suitcase bombs to other small devices could be used with great success and without exposing the Northern Hemisphere of the world to as much radiation as was the result of above ground testing, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Chernobyl (Wormwood) in the Ukraine.

I should also add that I don't think there are terrorists in the US with nukes. I actually don't think there are terrorists anywhere with them. I think they definitely want them though.

Originally posted by snoopy
The first nuclear bomb did not use beryllium/polunium.

Oh, sure it did. Fat Man used a fairly stock urchin design.

And since Fat Man was what was toggled off at Trinity, yes, the first nuclear bomb used a BePo urchin initiator.

Gun type bombs like Little Boy don't strictly need one, but in fact that one used an initiator as well, only it was an ABNER - you only use urchin in spherical compression weapons.

The purpose of the initiator is to provide a source of neutrons.

That part's right.

It's not required for a nuclear reaction/explosion, but the yield without it will be reduced drastically. The neutrons are already present in the Plutonium. and when compressed they will collide with each other and radiate more neutrons. But the berylium/polonium provides an abundant source of Neutrons which means that the number of collisions will increase greatly and thus produce a much greater yield.

But this part's not. Ok. Lots of matter 'has neutrons in it', that's not the issue. edit: also the "collide with each other and radiate more neutrons" part is just incorrect.

You're sort of conflating the boost system and the initiator here, and you can't do that. They are similar but have different intent.

The supercritical assembly serves one purpose - it's a neutron amplifier with positive feedback and a significant gain. The purpose of the initiator is to provide the initial input at just the right time.

Gun type weapons don't need initiation at all, because the segments will fuse when they hit. An initiator is useful but not a requisite - eventually the supercritical mass will emit a spontaneous neutron and start the ball rolling. Clean U235 will do that about every 60th of a second.

Plutonium has the other problem - Pu240 contamination will cause it to emit lots and lots of spontaneous neutrons. That's actually a problem. You can't build a gun-type bomb out of plutonium because of the spontaneous emission - it won't assemble quickly enough that way to prevent a fizzle yield. The mass has a high probability of emitting a spontaneous neutron and initiating itself while the neutron gain is not much over 1.0, and you will get a dud as the mass scatters itself and not much more.

That's why you generally only use spherical compression systems with plutonium, it goes from sub-critical to super-critical very quickly (there's several tricks to that) as it's compressed, so the window of time where you'd get a fizzle yield during compression due to a spontaneous emission is smaller.

Now, though, you've got the other side of the coin. With spherical compression, if you DON'T get a spontaneous emission within a very narrow moment of time, you will reach maximum compression and the pit will begin to disassemble due to Rayleigh and Munroe instabilities and rebound expansion. In other words, it tries to squirt out like water from your hands.

That window's pretty narrow too. You can't count on the emission of a spontaneous neutron during that time. You HAVE to initiate a spherical compression device for that reason. It doesn't have anything to do with the yield per se. Well, whether you get one or not, I guess.

The initiator may not and in most cases does not emit more than 2 or 3 neutrons into the supercritical mass during the time it's active. That's all you need to set it off.

Now, the other concept you're mixing in is the boost system of later designs. In that case, you can inject tritium into the pit just before/during the start of compression. When the initiator fires, the mass will begin to react and the tritium will start to fuse. The T-T reaction takes more energy than it releases, but what it releases is LOTS of neutrons. It may be a negative contributor in total energy, but it is a way to get a sackload of neutrons into the pit while it's still supercritical. So, yes, your concept is a correct one but you're attributing it to the wrong bits in the weapon. The neutron output of the boost system is many orders of magnitude higher in terms of neutrons per second than the initiator's.

Design has gone all the way around though, and the new "no maintenance" weapon that Sandia won the contract for does not use a traditional tritium boost system.

But my only point is that one could make a basic uranium bomb. It just wouldn't be nearly as powerful, but it would be powerful enough to serve the purpose of terrorism. Just 1% efficiency would be devastating even if tiny compared to a current thermonuclear bomb.

Not with a spherical compression weapon, even when it's Uranium. The A.Q. Khan designs are all spherical compression uranium. They will disassemble far too quickly to rely on a spontaneous emission. Of all the designs, that one would need the initiation most. You could build a gun type weapon, though, which would not need an initiator.

There are other bomb topologies which we don't use for various reasons, but if you don't mind a low yield for your fissiles, you could use either plutonium or uranium. We only designed one weapon that used 'an alternate topology' in the past. It doesn't meet several of the safety requirements. But if I had to make one using a machine shop, it's probably what I'd do.

[edit on 8-9-2007 by Tom Bedlam]