U.S. Prepares to Get Nuked 606
There's an important story in the NYT about new efforts from the U.S. national laboratories to retain and improve their ability to identify nuclear fallout. In a nutshell, any fissionable materials turned into a nuclear weapon will be composed of a specific ratio of various radionuclides, which form a sort of signature, which can be used to identify the source of the fissionable material. The problem is, naturally, that you're probably doing this after the detonation.
At least (Score:5, Funny)
On behalf of NYC... (Score:2)
Re:At least (Score:5, Funny)
Re:At least (Score:5, Funny)
Re:At least (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose it must be considered a progress for you to laugh about it, but I lived though those times and I'm still scared.
You should be more scared... (Score:5, Insightful)
Today's youth takes this fore granted. I saw a comment on here a few days back along the lines of "Well, let's throw a few nukes at one spot on Mars and see what happens." Today's youth read about Fat Boy and think "Wow, that's a cool bomb." But they should really be thinking "Wow, we did that? Could that happen to us?"
I'm frightened to see what happens when my generation doubles in age, and qualifies for positions of power over these kinds of weapons. They do not know better and unless something horrific happens, I doubt they will within the next 25 years.
The same thing goes for those countries just now joining the nuclear family. Some of these countries are lead by people who do know better and think that's all the more reason to use them.
May you live in interesting times? We're well beyond that now.
Re:You should be more scared... (Score:5, Insightful)
They do not know better and unless something horrific happens, I doubt they will within the next 25 years
On the other hand, they might be able to take unbiased decision regarding nuclear power. When you and I think of nukes, we remember the fear and that might keep us from viable nuclear solutions (it's not just bombs, you know) to a number of today's problems.
Today's youth takes this fore granted. I saw a comment on here a few days back along the lines of "Well, let's throw a few nukes at one spot on Mars and see what happens."
Every generation has jackasses. Ours has it, our parent's has (had?) it. And they usually are the ones that speak louder and without thinking. Not having a reference to the original post, however, I cannot comment further without knowing the context.
Re:You should be more scared... (Score:4, Interesting)
My jaw just about hit my keyboard. I nearly asked him if he knew what the real consequences of even a limited nuclear exchange would be; obviously, of course, he didn't.
But, then, I went to high school during the 80s, got to see The Day After and Threads and Testament on television. Most younger people I know now have never thought about these issues.
Re:You should be more scared... (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that back in the USSR vs. America days, the West had an obsession with nuclear annihilation, despite the improbability of such an exchange between the big powers.
But as it stands now, several [fas.org] countries [fas.org] who either have or are attempting to obtain nuclear weapons just might be crazy enough to use them. How safe are we with Kim Jong Il [bbc.co.uk] and some shady supreme religious leaders in command of nuclear missiles?
So why aren't we
Re:You should be more scared... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You should be more scared... (Score:3, Insightful)
I suggest that you read up a bit on European history, we know a lot about centuries of invading eachother, hating eachother, and wanting eachother dead, and in some parts of Europe (Kosovo for example) they still didn't figure out that all that gets them is destruction and death.
Defending against atack? definitely. Hate those whom ata
Re:At least (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I got to a stage where I could stop worrying about it, and maybe laugh and make jokes about nuclear annihilation. This is because I finally realised there was absolutely NOTHING I can do about it, and therefore it's a bit pointless worrying about it - all I can do is hope it won't happen. In a bizarre Dr. Strangelove way, I learned to stop worrying "and love the bomb" (well, maybe not love the bomb, but I didn't spend half my day worrying about it).
reasosn to do this (Score:4, Informative)
The can also make some basic determinations as to the level of tech used to make the materials. They can also use it as evidence in any sort of tracking of the materials back to it's source.
It is a useful dataset, overall.
Obligatory.... (Score:3, Funny)
Flash (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Flash (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Flash (Score:2, Funny)
Theres other clues too (Score:5, Informative)
My dad was a nuclear chemist back in the day, he talks about going outside the lab, scaping settled dust off the hoods of cars in the parking lot and doing analysis, with exotic isotopes showing up whenever the soviets were doing atmospheric bomb tests.
That was back then, doing casual analysis. A nice comprehensive database of worldwide nuclear fissile material and a network of sensors around the world would yield alot of information - not that we wouldn't know it if a bomb went off anywhere around the world.
Also theres that network of infrasound detectors, which also picks up earthquakes, meteors, and other large scale events. (link below)
Low sounds detect meteor blast (BBC) [bbc.co.uk]
What is there to "exterminate"? (Score:4, Insightful)
For such an "expert" in strategic geopolitics you as many Americans fail to grasp that terrorism is a tactic, not a constituency. The harder you fight it the stronger it becomes. Ask Israel.
Israel has been fighting with its arms tied (Score:3, Interesting)
The US has been pleading with Israel for restraint from day one. We are still hypocritically encouraging them to be calm, promising them that an American response will be more effective than a Zionist one. Ariel Sharon -
parent post wrong on many points (Score:3, Interesting)
================
i have many questions for you.
Israel has yet to open a can of you-know-what on the terrorists.
can of worms? i assume you mean using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against terrorist
Hah! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hah! (Score:4, Funny)
Here are a few free pointers:
Seek out a mall. It will contain canned foods and hardware for fighting off the zombie horde.
Trust your fellow man to go insane under pressure. He/She will attempt to flee a safe location, endangering those that hide within.. or he or she may force you to stay in an a deathtrap.
Re:Hah! (Score:2, Funny)
OB quote. (Score:5, Funny)
Nuked not (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think any terrorist group has the expertise, materials or facilities to build a nuclear device, much less deliver it, unless Pakistan helps.
Re:Nuked not (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuked not (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, you are saying US will commit mass murder in revenge?
You say this as if simply repeating the notion will convince us all of how implausible or horrible it is. I am sure the original poster realized what he/she was saying, and I'm sure we all know what a horrible thought it is. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen, or that it wouldn't be supported by a lot of people in this country.
Nukes are not something just anybody can put together. A comparatively small number of countries can do it (relative to the total number of countries in the world), let alone individuals or small groups of people, however well financed they are. The best any of these groups can probably do is pay another country enough money to lend them materials and expertise. This is what we're really afraid of - that or that a nuke gets stolen from an unwitting country.
If it turns out a state had provided material or know-how to terrorists for building a nuclear bomb that was subsequently used in the US, and that's proven beyond a reasonable doubt, I and every other sane person in this country would rightly expect a massive military response. Now, I'm not saying a nuclear response, but in the days of the Cold War that was the generally accepted outcome - one country nukes another and in turn gets nuked back. Everybody knew it would happen; it wasn't questioned. That mutually assured destruction kept anybody from pulling the trigger - or so the thought went. Would we have used the a-bomb in Japan if we thought we'd get a-bombed back? I doubt it.
The same would hold now. The fact that another country thinks we could identify them and would respond in kind would hopefully be some form of deterrent. And if we didn't respond in kind, they should consider themselves lucky they're dealing with a country more merciful than most. In any case, if a city were wiped out along with the millions of people inhabiting it, and another country were identified as the real culprit behind it, well, I don't think there would be much crying over any military response we would choose to wield.
Re:Nuked not (Score:3, Interesting)
If the UN inspectors had found actual weapons that would have been a good reason to not invade...
Re:Nuked not (Score:3, Interesting)
It is time for the US to lead the world to eventual nuclear disarmament. Who else will? Meanwhile, US is the only country (I believe) which has not renounced the first use yet. Instead of commiting to disarmament, the current administration is busy spending on the order of .5 bil for "bunker-busting" nukes development...
Status of "No First Use" -- Just India and China (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nuked not (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuked not (Score:3, Insightful)
No country would nuke the US because the harm they can do would very limited, especially compared to the response that is expected.
Re:Nuked not (Score:5, Insightful)
I would count passenger airplanes and container ships, among many other forms of commerical transport, as intercontinental nuclear delivery systems. Remember, no one thought that al Queda had cruise missile capability before 9/11.
Airplanes as Cruise Missiles (Score:4, Insightful)
Not strictly true. The basic idea of crashing airplaines into American skyscrapers had been around for at least twenty years -- Dean Ing used this premise in his 1979 novel Soft Targets. [google.com]
-kgj
Bullsh*t (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called a shipping container. After that, call your favorite UPS, FedX, hell even the USPS will deliver a decent sized package.
Duh.
Even if the lowly customs officer scans the box and detects radiation upon receipt what does he do? What kind of damage would a 10KT warhead do at the dockside in Los Angeles?
Re:Bullsh*t (Score:3, Funny)
fedex won't ship to iraq.
UPS will, but won't insure anything near the value of a pocket nuke.
usps won't send anything over 12 oz
Re:Bullsh*t (Score:3, Interesting)
Problem is, out here in the real world, folks, even otherwise semi-stable dictators have been loath to let the weapons get out of the direct control off their security forces. Essentially this is for two reasons a) they think the weapon could be used against them and b) if the w
Re:Nuked not (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Never happen... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right... in global thermo nuclear war (like, HELLO, with China), you do not annihilate anything. In this scenario, you are in NORAD or you are dead.
So, perhaps you should say:
My president would annihilate them, or, the powers that be would destroy the world because of this or something that actually resembles reality, instead of the stuff you see in fox news.
Re:Nuked not (Score:2)
-my nuclear prof
Good Point (Score:3, Informative)
This is what "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" has to say int the January issue:
"Putting aside the controversy surrounding security at U.S. nuclear power plants, a would-be dirty bomber faces a Herculean task. A spent fuel rod weighs about 28 kilograms, with 36 rods weighing more than a metric ton. Heavy shielding and remote controls are required in their handling, because each rod exposes anyone standing nearby (within a meter) to a lethal dose within seconds.
There you go:
http://www.thebulletin. [thebulletin.org]
Re:Good Point (Score:4, Insightful)
Dirty bombers don't need a real power plant rod, they just need something that registers on a geiger counter as dangerous, i.e. several time the "safe" exposure limits that are usually quite low. The idea for terrorists is to spread terror amongst the people, and get press time.
If Fox News starts spreading the word that something with the word "radioactive" in it just exploded in NYC or Washington, you may not see deaths by exposure, but I think you'll see a general panic and stampede big enough to kill, or at least severely disrupt the economy.
Re:Good Point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good Point (Score:3, Informative)
If the attackers did indeed intend to bring down Aznar's government, they succeeded. Then again, the 9/11 hijackers wanted (among other things) for America to withdraw its forces from Saudi Arabia. When Bush did just that
Re:Nuked not (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the "nuclear" threat, it is certainly possible, but these threats are mostly propaganda to keep you afraid and paranoid so you don't notice when PATRIOT III is passed through Congress.
Read Chomsk [amazon.com]
Re:Nuked not (Score:3, Insightful)
The explosives of the dirty bomb would cause the tiny fragments of radioactive materials to be inbedded in all surronding structures. Thier is no effective method of removing all that material without the removal of all structures.
So while the buildings could be structurally safe, they would have to be removed because of the radiation damage, unless you could
Re:Nuked not (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, this is exactly what many people are afraid will happen. It's been obvious for a long time that some members of the Pakistani intelligence services are more or less operating on their own, and it's even worse now that their chief scientist has been caught passing technology out.
You're also forgetting the Russian nuclear stockpiles, although I
Re:Nuked not (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think so. A dirty bomb could be anything. It's better compared to conventionally exploding rad waste to make it disperse than to a nuclear explosion.
There are basically only a few types of nukes and by looking at the composition of fission products (iodine, cesium and a whole lot more) as well as transuranics (uranium, plutonium and heavier isotopes) it's likely that they can work back to the materials used.
Add to that that you can bet they know all about other countries' bomb designs and specs, or at least quite a lot, then yes it's not a stretch that one can trace where it (originally) came from. Think former soviet states, or even the US itself. It's assumed there is a black market and weapon trade seems to be booming, one wonders why...
The bright side is that a nuke might be not worth it in terms of scale and complexity for a terrorist group although it would depend on who's on who's payroll. It's my sad opinion that if the puppet masters want it to happen, it will.
If interested on my site at www.ricin.com/nuke is some (older) stuff about nuclear proliferation and safeguards. I was laughed at in 1996 by the same kind of people who are now on the fearmongering warwhipping police-us-more-please trip. Specifically the idea of a dirty bomb was considered ludricous. How times change.
Can't we just... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Can't we just... (Score:2)
No You Fool (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No You Fool (Score:3, Funny)
"...eco-friendly nukes!" - FreeCiv's quote
Re:No You Fool (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Can't we just... (Score:2)
Re:Can't we just... (Score:2)
Your logic: "It is not my purpose to avenge the United States for 9-11. But, we have not been avenged for 9-11" is quite compelling.
Re:Can't we just... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe Hirohito should have thought about his people when we asked for their surrender several times before nuking them. Hell let's be more retroactive and say they should have thought about their people before launching a sneak attack on an American military base without a declaration of war.
Don't blame us for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Blame the idiots that started the war to begin with so they could conquer Asia.
"xyz deserved to be nuked" (Score:5, Insightful)
Was the attack really sneak, and intended to be so? Did the US also draw Japan into war using pressure around oil and rubber resources, as well as deception?
Did attacking a military base require revenge in the form of destroying cities? (Your suggestion is that it did.)
Given that Hirohito was actually offered a realistic opportunity to surrender, would it have been possible for him given internal politics? If not, did the US military know that?
Was it necessary to detonate over a city? Why not out past Tokyo harbour, in full view? Consider it a warning shot, factor in cultural elements.
Given that one is convinced that nuking a city was necessary, was it necessary to nuke a second city?
Was there intent and significant motivation to conduct these detonations as experiments?
I suggest that your research not focus on reportage coming out of the fog of war or patriotism, but on declassified documents and their analyses by scholars.
Good luck. (One might then apply the results of above questions to the people of Bikini, the Aleuts, the Navaho, etc., including those the French, English, and Russians experimented on, just for a bigger picture.)
Re:"xyz deserved to be nuked" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"xyz deserved to be nuked" (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, gaining full control of the spoils of war had nothing to do with it...
Re:"xyz deserved to be nuked" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"xyz deserved to be nuked" (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I am not "swallowing the left-wing crap you are fed" (you flaming donut) -- I am truly skeptical of history written by victors, as well as that written by the victors' critics who do not have the full story due to secrecy, so I am not "implying conclusions." Skepticism is the fundament of an open mind. I believe we can't really answer these questions since the picture is larger and far more complex (and in some cases, more privately interpersonal) than we can grasp with the available materials.
My line of questioning is admittedly somewhat leading, since I think it's more important to provoke discussion on the ethics of the situation in terms of what were current standards and in terms of what is now acceptable, than it is to argue about things we don't have enough information about. My real point: I'm tired of patriotic jingoism spouted through the standard but impoverished versions of history, which are then used to obscure current ethical problems, like who should be nuked, or have nukes.
I agree with those who point out that firebombing was commonplace; Dresden was as much a catastrophe to those on the ground as Nagasaki. And, I think that Nanking (yes I'm familiar with this horror) was worse than either, on par with Kampuchea. I even accept the assertion (hinted at in this thread but not stated) that the bombings shook Nippon into a more beneficial cultural framework.
The victors did horrific things too. They may or may not have been morally justified then, I reserve judgement. However, these kinds of mass destructions aren't morally justifiable now, regardless of the behaviour of the 'other side.'
Some posters propose that the strategic movement of Soviet troops precipitated some pretty drastic moves on the Pacific theatre chess board, culminating in the Bombs. This makes lots of sense given what info we have, though I doubt the Soviets fully understood the janus-nature of bushido on-and-off the home islands, so might have taken much longer to subjugate Nippon than predicted.
Don't assume that the history you get about top-secret war projects (like how they start and end) is anything like disclosure; none of the posters point out that the US was an imperial power in imperial Nippon's back yard, and that confrontation was inevitable.
The general populace of the USA haven't owned up to their own atrocities, or do a bad job justifying them, yet love to yell about others'; so any arguments about Japanese atrocities with respect to american atrocities are disingenuous. War is hell. What does that have to do with honour? Well, lots, in theory.
Most 'Americans' naturalize and universalize their own cultural responses to international political situations, with great consistency, and get very huffy when others question them, especially the contradictions. This is astonishingly consistent in an ethnically diverse land founded on slavery and cheap imported labour, but there it is. Something endemic to 'imperial' centres, I think. Kudos to those who don't go with the flow.
I think that the combination of the world's largest stockpiles of WMD's, biological/chem weapons, and high-tech mercenary military, with the kind of foaming-at-the-mouth nationalism (that is actually quite muted on
Partner=Goggle (Score:2, Informative)
They did this in Sum of All Fears - Clancy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They did this in Sum of All Fears - Clancy (Score:3, Interesting)
God help Japan if that's the case ;) Hell in Clancy's Jack Ryan world (is it just me or wasn't he a much better writer before he got all political and stuff? The last two books of his that I read were nothing but right-wing spewage) we'll eventually go to war with every nation in the World except R
Re:They did this in Sum of All Fears - Clancy (Score:2)
Google link to article (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
And....? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems to me this would just become a tool for blaming whomever our other intel is telling us is at fault - right or wrong, as we've seen recently.
Re:And....? (Score:2)
Imagine that after St. Louis is transformed into a smoking crater, the FBI director appears on national television and says, "We tried to find out who did this, but it's really, really hard. So we gave up."
is this really new? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever read Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" (no seeing the movie does not count). They used a similar method (I admit the science of it was over my head) to figure out that the fissionable material in the bomb that was detonated in Denver actually came from the US. They were also able to learn other interesting stuff about the bomb -- granted this is a work of fiction but if the science is more or less accurate (any nuclear physicists here who care to comment?) then I don't see any reason to assume we can't do this in the real world. I do know for a fact that you can learn an amazing amount of information about the type of bomb, material used, etc etc when a conventional bomb goes off. No reason to assume nukes are any different.
With the nuclear threat that we are currently facing I don't see why this should surprise anyone. Let's all pray like hell we never need to use any of these procedures.
Re:is this really new? (Score:5, Interesting)
Shortly after WWII, the United States decided that it should monitor dust particulates in the upper atmosphere to test for the possibility of an above-ground test by Soviets. The program itself was highly contoversial; Oppenheimer (falsely) thought the radioactive material would go into the atmosphere in a gaseous phase, and diffuse away so rapidly that it would never be detected. This turned out to be incorrect because a significant amount of radioactive material enters into solid particulates, which can float in long-lived clouds hanging in the upper atmosphere for weeks or months. Cold War generations knew this phenomenon as a terrifying, bone-chilling household word : fallout.
Still others in the military (noteable General Groves) smugly thought that it would take the Soviets decades to catch up, and hence there was no rush in setting up a detection system.
Much to everyone's shock and surprise, a scant few weeks after the program was initiated, positive results came back from the chemical analysis of the upper-atmosphere dust gathered on one mission. Hans Bethe and other experts were called in to interpret the findings. Not only could they determine the yield of the blast, but they could also infer the date (and hence, approximately, from prevelant winds, the location) of the blast, and even the composition and design of the device.
The implications were clear. Someone had filched the US design from the Manhattan Project, and the Soviets had the information. The seeds of the Cold War and McCarthyism were sown.
The most amazing twist to this story is that if the US had delayed its fallout survaillance program by just a few months, the Cold War would have been delayed by years -- until the Soviets tested their next device. That is not to say that there would never have been a Cold War. But the US would have lived on in its smug complacency for years longer, and McCarthyism as we know it today wouldn't have occurred as it did at that time. History might have turned out quite differently indeed...
If you find this story fascinating, you would get a kick out of reading "Dark Sun," which contains this en To answer the poster's question, clearly none of this is new. The point of the article is that much of the vigilance and expertise was allowed to dissipate after the Cold War ended. Now, post-9/11, the incentives for due dilligence are back...
OK - Spend it! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually done with PREVENTION in mind. Given an existing legitamite threat, this is well-spent money. This isn't just anti-terror, as nations like North Korea are perfectly capable of this level of threat, and wouldn't be without an excuse to excercise it (Bush's infamous "axis of evil" comment?).
I've not been a fan of how much or even how we've been spending to fight terror (see http://www.costofwar.com [costofwar.com] for what else we could have bought), but I would consider with what information and resources American enemies have that I'm not opposed to spending my tax dollars on such a program.
Yes, obviously we'd have to be nuked for this to pay off directly for us. However, in the case of such an incident, it'd be tremendous if we didn't run around like chickens with their heads detached. There were some lessons learned in 9/11 that are worth recalling.
Re:OK - Spend it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Prevention? Against groups for whom "getting caught" is a negative, sure. But last I heard, the groups we're most worried about don't care whether they are identified. And as for getting caught -- the 9/11 hijackers didn't care about getting caught, 'cause their final reward would come with the act itself.
As important as this research is, it shouldn't be confused with any sort of "prevention".
Re:OK - Spend it! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, after 9/11 it took remarkably little time for us to finger al Qaeda. We even coughed up actual proof, and quite a lot of it, before beginning the war in Afghanistan. It's instructive to compare the wide support we had internationally for the Afghanistan effort with the fiasco of a "coalition" we had when we invaded Iraq.
Deterent Value (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire THEORY behind Bush's War on Terror is to hold governments accountable, and therefore not be willing to support terrorism.
North Korea is less likely to give Islamists nuclear material if we could track it to them and respond by nuking the shit out of them.
It gives deterance back, will therefore hopefully never be used.
We nev
So to recap the day... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So to recap the day... (Score:5, Funny)
Tivo
Civilization on Mars
AOL
Apple
America
It's a shame about Apple.
Old program revived? (Score:2)
Obligatory misreading of title (Score:5, Funny)
Which, of course, would have been a dupe of this article [slashdot.org], right?
(And just when I'd gotten my karma back, too!)
better than postparing (Score:3, Insightful)
Thinking through the unthinkable has always been our primary defense: first by preventing it, then by readiness for the aftermath, which minimizes the aftermath, inhibiting the event by reducing its damage. While others might not learn anything of how they might best prepare merely by applying what they see us do, they might at least learn to help prevent getting nuked by planning for it, without accepting it.
Hey jokers : this is london or NYC (Score:5, Informative)
This is NYC or London or your hometown if things screw up. Whatever you need to do to get involved so this DOESN'T happen, I suggest you consider doing. When it's acceptable to laugh at 9/11 corpses (3% of death toll at hiroshima) in polite company, I'll laugh with you about nukes.
----
From a survivor of Hiroshima:
nday, August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima. A few seconds after 8:15 A.M., a flash of light, brighter than a thousand suns, shredded the space over the city's center. A gigantic sphere of fire, a prodigious blast, a formidable pillar of smoke and debris rose into the sky: an entire city annihilated as it was going to work, almost vaporized at the blast's point zero, irradiated to death, crushed and swept away. Its thousands of wooden houses were splintered and soon ablaze, its few stone and brick buildings smashed, its ancient temples destroyed, its schools and barracks incinerated just as classes and drills were beginning, its crowded streetcars upended, their passengers buried under the wreckage of streets and alleys crowded with people going about their daily business. A city of 300,000 inhabitants--more, if its large military population was counted, for Hiroshima was headquarters for the southern Japan command. In a flash, much of its population, especially in the center, was reduced to a mash of burned and bleeding bodies, crawling, writhing on the ground in their death agonies, expiring under the ruins of their houses or, soon, roasted in the fire that was spreading throughout the city--or fleeing, half-mad, with the sudden torrent of nightmare-haunted humanity staggering toward the hills, bodies naked and blackened, flayed alive, with charcoal faces and blind eyes.
Is there any way to describe the horror and the pity of that hell? Let a victim tell of it. Among the thousand accounts was this one by a Hiroshima housewife, Mrs. Futaba Kitayama, then aged thirty-three, who was struck down 1900 yards--just over a mile--from the point of impact. We should bear in mind that the horrors she described could be multiplied a hundredfold in the future.
t was in Hiroshima, that morning of August 6. I had joined a team of women who, like me, worked as volunteers in cutting firepaths against incendiary raids by demolishing whole rows of houses. My husband, because of a raid alert the previous night, had stayed at the Chunichi (Central Japan Journal), where he worked.
"Our group had passed the Tsurumi bridge, Indianfile, when there was an alert; an enemy plane appeared all alone, very high over our heads. Its silver wings shone brightly in the sun. A woman exclaimed, 'Oh, look--a parachute!' I turned toward where she was pointing, and just at that moment a shattering blast filled the whole sky.
"Was it the flash that came first, or the sound of the explosion, tearing up my insides? I don't remember. I was thrown to the ground, pinned to the earth, and immediately the world began to collapse around me, on my head, my shoulders. I couldn't see anything. It was completely dark. I thought my last hour had come. I thought of my three children, who had been evacuated to the country to be safe from the raids. I couldn't move; debris kept falling, beams and tiles piled up on top of me.
"Finally I did manage to crawl free. There was a terrible smell in the air. Thinking the bomb that hit us might have been a yellow phosphorus incendiary like those that had fallen on so many other cities, I rubbed my nose and mouth hard with a tenugui (a kind of towel) I had at my waist. To my horror, I found that the skin of my face had come off in the towel. Oh! The skin on my hands, on my arms, came off too. From elbow to fingertips, all the skin on my right arm had come loose and was hanging grotesquely. The skin of my
Burning to death from a phosphorous bomb.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just Remember! (Score:3, Funny)
What is it with the word "GET"? (Score:5, Funny)
It's NOT about Hi-Tech (Score:3, Insightful)
Last Word on Nuclear Missle Threats (Score:3, Interesting)
Foreign Missile Developmentsand the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015 [cia.gov]
APS Study Group on Boost-Phase Intercept Systems for National Missile Defense [aps.org]
We can never build a foolproof system. The technical hurdles involved are immense and expensive, while the countermeasures are relatively simple and inexpensive.
How much money will it take to convince you that you're safe?
Why don't we buy North Korea if we're willing to spend billions of dollars a year on safety? Im sure the people in North Korea wouldn't mind not starving.
A Tell tale sign of nuclear fallout (Score:3, Funny)
I doubt wether this thing will work...
I'll tell you this... (Score:3, Funny)
Nothing changes...well, not much at least. (Score:3, Insightful)
Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
- How ya doing, Mohammed Al-Shafeer ? Ready to do the sacrifice in the name of Allah ?
- Nah, I don't think I'll carry that nuke with me. They'd be able to trace me after it exploded. I prefer to be just a plain old-fashioned bomb-man with vanilla explosives. This way they won't trace me.
Hysteria - Nukes are just big bombs (Score:4, Insightful)
What am I talking about? Ask a "suvivor" of a Vietnam-era napalming how their injuries feel. If they're still around - just because you survive the original splash doesn't mean you're going to live long, or well. Or, ask a survivor of stepping on a land mine how it feels to stump around on those splintered bones. Or, ask a vet with a good chunk of their brain blown away how they feel - if, of course, their hearing centers still function, and if they can communicate back.
Beginning to get my point? Being injured is horrible. Losing people is horrible. Neither is the exclusive domain of nukes.
There's more, though.
By now, some of you will be muttering darkly about the sheer numbers of deaths and injuries. That's not unique to nukes, either. Check your history. 1943 Hamburg firestorm: 40,000 killed. February 1945, Berlin: 25,000 killed. February 1945: Dresden: 30,000 killed. Total number killed by US bombings (in Germany) is generally accepted to be 800,000 to a million people, depending on your cites. I can absolutely promise you that not one of those people - or the people they left behind - give a rat's buttocks if fission was involved or not. Dead is dead. Burned is burned. Crippled is crippled.
Now we get to the fallout-fearing ranters. Well, this one's actually pretty simple to dispose of. So far (for the US testing only) we know of 911 nuclear weapons tests in Nevada, 106 in the Pacific, and 10 more in various other US locations (Alaska, New Mexico, Mississippi and Colorado.) These vary from airbursts to underground and varied in yield from fractions of a KT to 15 megatons. You'll notice that we're still here, Nevada in particular is doing pretty well, there are still edible fish and lots of other pretty healthy flora and fauna in the Pacific and generally speaking (considering 911 events) there is very little of interest going on related to all that activity. Of course, I've not mentioned the Soviet and Chinese and French and anyone else who has taken the liberty to pop off a nuclear device. Which I probably should do a little, because some of those were a lot larger than the US ones: The Soviets in particular hold the record as far as I know for the biggest bang, and they lit of about 715 weapons, not counting little guys, but counting "fizzles." And again, the world is still here, and people mostly think about Nagasaki and Hiroshima when they think about the effects of nuclear weapons.
Turns out, that's the right way to think, because nuclear weapons going off in populated centers are the really "annoying" thing. Lots and lots of dead and injured people at once, huge cleanup job, big risk of disease, injury to industrial and social infrastructure.
Think back. When those planes flew into the WTC, we lost 3,000 people, and a few buildings, and a few businesses got hammered. Now if you sit back and count people, and buildings, and businesses, you gain the perspective that this was in fact a tiny, tiny, tiny pinprick, albeit on a nerve - the NYC business district. But the social and business infrastructure damage was HUGE. President Bush mobilized, and used, the military, in several venues over a long period of time. The US economy took a shock which I maintain it has not recovered from to this day - though that's very much an IMHO - and the news, and the public, could talk of little else. Imagine the US public reaction to a firestorm (non-nuclear) that killed 25,000 people. It seems to me that we'd "melt down", socially and economically. A nuke would do the same.
That, /.'ers, is the real problem. America is one hell of a lot softer than its size, bellicose ranting, economic "might" and world police presence makes people think it is. I think if a nuke went off, the problem wouldn't be the direct effects. The problem would be the breakdown of everything else.
The thing that irritat
Re:Hysteria - Nukes are just big bombs (Score:3, Interesting)
The bigger threat by far is that the oil will run out. I still don't see a lot being done to prepare to live in a world where oil is scarce - most of us depend on food that couldn't be grown unless we have plentiful oil. The signs that the oil is diminishing are plain to see - oil companies now call themselves energy companies instead of oil companies, one major oil company has had to make not one but two announcements that
2 eyed fish... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:2 eyed fish... (Score:2)
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Re:Not to worry (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, that statement, regardless of the flamebait moderations, has too much truth in it. It offends many people.
Our current foreign policy isn't working out very well. We need to do something about it no matter who's running the show next January. Bush, Kerry, whatever. Something's got to give.
Let's try something that more often embraces the world instead of making others wonder where our baseball bat will strike next
Re:Not to be petty or anything... (Score:2)
Re:A good invention makes this invention unnecesar (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad idea - it's part of their armageddon scenario. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad idea. The destruction of Mecca by the Infidels is part of their armageddon scenario. Which continues, by the way, with the second coming of Jesus (whom they refer to as the prophet Issa, a particluarly holy man, whom they believe went bodily to heaven and will be back shortly before the end).
Playing into that scenario would essentially require the bulk of the Islamic world (most of which consider terrorism to be heresy) to go on a holy war against the bombers and their allies.
Given that (if I recall correctly) there's over a Billion of 'em last count, and they DO beileve that dying in a war to defend the faith is a ticket to paradise, this would be very very bad.
By the way, It's not "their" God. It's "our" God. Assuming you and I are both Christian and/or Jewish. (Of course that might be problematic, given your statment about the non-existence and/or death of God.)
"Allah" is just Arabic for "God" - specifically the Arabic pronounciation of the word that Hebrew pronounces "Yahweh", which became "Jehova" in English translations. It's the word that is used by Arabic-speaking Muslums, Jews, and Christians alike when referring to God.
You know, if you really believe there IS no God, or that God is dead, then you're playing into another part of the scenario. Their version of armageddon is the war between the UNfaithful and the "people of the book" - members of EVERY divinely-inspired religion, along with everybody who converts to any of 'em along the way (with Jesus back to give the last word on it all).
Drop that bomb and you're exactly what they've been waiting for.
Nip it in the bud.
You're about 1,500 years too late.
But maybe we can nip YOUR idea in the bud. Before you set off WW III in the form of the sixth Crusade.
Re:isn't this already the case? (Score:3, Informative)
For example, the last paragraph about the kinetic energy of neutrons and whether you want fast or slow neutrons for a bomb or reactor is complete bullshit. A given nucleus has an optimum range of energy for neutron absorption, whether that nucleus is in a bomb or a reactor.
Further, breeding and/or refining nuclear fuel is not an exact process -- you're going to get quanties of other elements and