People would be virtually frothing at the chance to "kill a towelhead for the lost." There would certainly be bloodlust. I predict that muslims would arouse a wrath greater than the world has ever seen, and it would be from Americans directed at anything that even whiffs of islam. And I would be among them.
Pick the city that you would prefer they hit, if one was definitely going to be destroyed.
I'll start.
Washington, D.C.
It would serve those bastards right, for all the crap they've sent downhill from there for decades and decades, that we the People have had to live with -- not to mention all that they have failed to do to keep us save from such threats.
With any luck, the entire families and legacies of the Chuck Schumers and Dianne Feinsteins and Ted Kennedys would be there at the time of the attack, so we would finally be rid of them.
Mind you, this is only an "IF I had to choose" thing. But if you have to suffer a disaster, you might as well make the best of it.
Who knows, maybe if D.C. was destroyed, we'd have a chance at re-making this country into what it was originally supposed to be.
-blackmind
P.S. I predict the responses to be "D.C." in a landslide.
Wow, just wow. Please consider seeing a licensed psychiatrist.
Those of us who have actually worked with Strategic Weapons know that the technical upkeep of such weapons is far beyond the means of a rogue group, no matter what the funding.
The problem with 'suitcase nukes' is that the nuclear material in the warhead degrades over time (that's what the radiation is, the nuclear material gradually breaking down). What this means is that a nuke warhead will eventually go bad by just sitting there, to the point where it won't make the big mushroom cloud, it will 'fizzle'. The smaller the warhead, the faster it degrades.
All nuke warheads need regular inspection checks and maintenance, and depending on the physical size of the warhead, the fissile material is removed from the weapon for reprocessing on a regular basis. The bigger the warhead, the longer it will stay good, but approx 10 years is the upper limit for the big warheads. A small tactical 'suitcase nuke' has a lifetime of approx 2-3 years before the fissile material has degraded so badly that it won't initiate properly. Also, the purity of the fissile material is a big factor in the lifespan of the warhead. The higher the purity, the longer it will be good for.
So, does anyone want to guess that a group like AQ not only has 1 or more small nukes, AND people with the right level of training to maintain them AND access to nuclear reprocessing facitities to keep the warhead material viable for more than a couple of years?
It is true that such small form factor nukes existed at one point or another, either as extreme demolition charges, large bombs, or artillery shells, but were not ever practical. At best, should one of these devices be in the hands of those who wish harm to us, and is successfully imported and fired, the result would be little more than a dirty bomb with a blast of about two hand grenades due to the failure of all the components to work as designed after decades of neglect. The firing charges would blast the core material into pieces, like in the movie The Peace Maker. Another thing to think of is the projected yield of such device should it function properly. We tend to think of any nuclear blast as a catastrophic city leveling holocaust, when these devices are much smaller and designed with a small yield in mind (how else would they fire one from an artillery shell and expect to survive?).
The word 'suitcase nuke' is deceptive as well. The whole package would be much larger that a suitcase, and would probably weigh upwards of 400+ pounds to contain all needed functions + core of very dense nuclear material.
Assuming the fissile material is up to date and/or functional, would-be nuclear terrorists run into another problem: Small weapons are almost certainly 'boosted' to increase their yield, which is only on the order of 1 kiloton to begin with. Boosting is done with tritium which has a half-life of 12.5 years. Also, it's likely that initiator (nuclear sparkplug) uses a material that has a half-life of 138 days. Neither material is available easily.
If the initiator material has decayed you'll get no nuclear reaction at all; just a dirty bomb. If the tritium has decayed you'll get a greatly reduced yield which was only 1 kT at best.
We are far more likely to have a Sea-Box full of HE detonate in a port than have any sort of nuke detonate successfully in the US. A 'dirty bomb' is a definate possibility as there are radioactive dumps all over the US that are unguarded and, for the most part, forgotten. A LNG tanker set to BLEVE makes a mess as well, and is also more likely than a nuke. There are plenty of potential WMDs in many locations throughout the US, and you probably drive right past one every day.
If they had any form of nuclear weapon within our borders, they would have used it already.
