Opinion Piece: An American Hiroshima

[RoadClosed]

(more off topic) That was a great movie about an Aircraft carrier from today going back in time and they have the option to stop Pearl Harbor from happening. Imagine a 90s Enterprise class fleet versus a 1930/40s Japanese carrier? I might have the names mixed up. This one is about a geek kid designing a bomb out of a soccer ball. The real theory exists and has been tested. It's an implosion device and you could probably google "soccer ball principle".

[AngelicKnight]

(One last off-topic post, as the mental image is just too good to not share. )

First thing I thought of with that was the image of a mushroom cloud rising and someone yelling "GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!"

[The Grunt]

(he lied, there is one more)

Heh, maybe I should try that next game You don't need to live to win a soccer game

[cacosapo]

Ok, you can explode a nuclear reactor. But a nuclear reactor is a HUGE device, so inst good as a choice for terrorist.
To make a bomb, you need a kind of Uranium that is uncommon. And the device that detonates it need some tecnology.
If is that so easy, Brasil would have its own A-bomb, that currently it doesnt (thanks GOD).
So you need:
- raw material - Uranium (cant remember number)
- special tecnology to make the bomb SMALL - you cant just drop a nuclear reactor from a plane or carry on a truck.
And countries that have those tecnology are those ive mencioned before.
That tecnology is used ONLY on nukes... so end the tecnology production will stop bomb production.
destroy bomb will end the threat. simple isnt it?
its like bio-war. Stop research (big researcher- Uncle Sam) will stop bio-threat too.
When someone develop a way to kill millions, someone WILL use this way. Maybe against the developer....

[AngelicKnight]

That brings up a great point -- Why in the world are our nuke reactors not more heavily guarded? I think we have one here in Arkansas, and I'm not too terribly keen about that...

[CXGJarrod]

If you think about it, the people who die in the nuke blast are the lucky ones. Instant death. The rest of us will die slowly from radiation poisoning. What fun.

Another thing to think about for those of you that are paranoid. Not sure about the safety features of a nuclear reactor, but why not just blow up a nuclear reactor? Radation is everywhere killing millions eventually, power is out (causing more panic), and you might just get some good fireworks from it. I am within 50 miles of a nuclear reactor and I think about someone flying a plane into it or causing a meltdown. Scary stuff.

[RoadClosed]

Uranium get's manipulated (doped) to determine it's critical mass. You don't have to blow up a reactor, you get some uranium, manipulate it then pretend it's exhausted uranium then "dispose" of it. You mention Brazil, they may not care to work on it because that is not a desire but Pakistan did, so did India and Korea and Libya and on and on. We know what happens when reactors get blown up (Chernobyl). I am not saying all reactors have weapons grade material, but they have the ability to make it at the facility becase they have uranium.

How does one enrich uranium or plutonium? It's not difficult enough becasue the US is chasing it down all the time. First many countries stock pile the stuff. Germany, France, US, Britain, on and on and on and on. 2nd it is only "kind of" hard and once was a secret lifted from the west as we helped countries develop nuclear power facilites. Finally, these particles come from the earth, even soil can have particles or Uranium in it. Large pockets only occur in specific areas that we have found, some in countries with very lax controls on who, how and when it is mined. Africa for instance.

Plutonium 238 is artificially produced by bombarding a uranium isotope. 1 kg of Plutonium is about the same as 19,000 TON of explosives (depending on the text book). That's a punch!!! and 1 or 2 kg doesn't weigh very much much; we humans move larger objects around like toys. Place them at predetermined distances apart and you can sneak in the equivilent of a 10 megeton bomb and not be as easily detected. I should stop since I am giving out ideas.

Oh, one more thing, getting rid of all the weapons grade materials cannot be done.
Someone will always have access to it, because nuclear power will be needed even more in the future AND the half-life for Plutonium is 20,000 years! I could go into about 7 more ways to make weapons grade **** from low grade reactor fuel but I am stopping now but I focus on Plutonium because it doesn require a centrifuge etc and seems most likely to be abused since it can be made from low grade stuff. Peace all.

[Cybr1d]

My 2 cents:

Anything can happen. Hell I have a higher chance of getting shot in the street rather than being blown up by a nuclear bomb. If we start to get scared, and afraid that it "might" happen, then the terrorists have already won. I would seriously put the media into the Axis of Evil category. They often blow things out of porportions and do more harm than good. By all means i'm not saying to let our guard down, but do not live in fear that it might happen. Again, there's a million other things that will most likely kill you before you get blown up.

[AngelicKnight]

Heh heh, the media is a weapon of mass destruction! Or mass idiocy...definately one of the two...

[DBCooper]

Originally posted here by AngelicKnight
(Briefly off topic)

Wasn't that the movie about the Navy ship in which the men ended up welded into the steel because of an Einstein time travel/teleportation mishap or something (and based on a "true" story!)? That's what I've heard, been wanting to see it. The real event is a REALLY interesting story.

You're thinking of The Philadelphia Experiment, with the USS Elderidge. Weather or not it happend is still up for debate. But there is some very interesting evidence. Including the possiblity that Einstein's unified field theory was actually completed. Many think it was not. If indeed it was, it would change our entire field of physics, time, and space.