My local paper, the Daily Breeze, which I love because high school sports dominate the Saturday sports page, runs a front-page article on what a 10kt nuke in Long Beach harbor would do … my nightmare scenario.
It’s a long, great article, and you ought to go read it.
Titled “Considering the Effects of a Catastrophic Terrorist Attack” the report warns that in the weeks and months after an attack, costs would exceed $1 trillion in medical care, insurance claims, workers’ compensation, evacuation and construction.
“The $50 billion to $100 billion for (the 9-11 terrorist attacks) put this figure into perspective,” the report states. “In general, consequences would far outstrip the resources available to cope with them.”
I’ll beg you to go read it, because it gives a sense of the stakes involved.
And when you’re done, ask yourself this…absent a calling card from the scientists at Natanz…who do we respond to when it happens?
And yes, the Times covered it as well – in the California section.
Kind of puts the possible torture of a terro suspect (re:the pakistani who spilled the beans) in perspective. Note that the loss of human lives was included.
I’ve seen Long Beach. I’ve lived in Long Beach. I think if you want Americans to get irate it should be another city. Santa Barbara, maybe, that would be a shame, but Long Beach? A Long Beach bomb would probably take out San Pedro and that has to be seen as a net plus.
The LA newscasts would lead with it but treat it mostly as a traffic issue, and cut away if there was a freeway chase.
AL,
C’mon, where’s this 10KT nuke supposed to come from, smuggled on board a ship from NK or Iraq?
Maybe the Paki’s decided OBL is the way to go.
Why not posit a 50KT nuke in Balitimore or NYC?
Long Beach is much more likely to go to Hell in a handbasket thanks to Mother Nature and her earthquakes than any fictional nuke!
BTW, as the article states:
“The report does not anticipate a terrorist attack. Indeed, Wermuth said it could be used to as a guide to the impact of natural disasters, such as a large earthquake.”
To which, from ever watchful Donk Jane Harman
“responding to the report, Rep. Jane Harman, D-El Segundo, called for improved port security.
“Port security has been a gaping hole in American security for years, and the Bush administration has largely ignored the problem,” she said in a statement. “We must extend our borders, and work with our allies overseas to ensure that dangerous materials and people never reach our shores. Time is of the essence. We cannot afford to wait until a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb detonates on American soil before we take port security seriously.”
Harman, who has long called for more stringent port security, said the RAND study shows the need to do more.
“The report also demonstrates the need to ensure that terrorists do not get their hands on nuclear materials. Our intelligence has greatly improved, but good intelligence is not always enough. The Bush administration has done a poor job of helping to secure nuclear sites in former Soviet republics, and in supporting policies that block the sale of fissile material.”
She’s an idiot!!!
Mike Daley
A big earthquake near that port could have really epic consequences. Its land transportation routes are very vulnerable to earth movements.
I read think tank documentation all the time. Have for years and one thing I have come to understand that they produce a product almost equal to how much you pay them.
This was a low cost, bad product to start with and wound up being something a high school senior class could have come up with using open source products.
A better story line would have been a biochemical or what ever smuggled in over the Mexican border and fed into the water supply of a large city in Texas or California.
Which would be an easy no sweat operation.
The results would not be as photo worthy but would result in just as many dead and sick. But no photo ops of destroyed buildings and burned bodies.
But that it what is more apt to happen, to really happen and is not something a think tank study would do because it’s just not as visual.
Are there nukes that have been stolen from the old Soviet Union? I don’t know, but I do know that nukes require maintenance and that they do have a shelf life, if you expect them to work. The russians have never been much for maintenance and I doubt that many Islamic radicals know how to refurbish an old soviet bomb.
Now Iran, may get one of their own in a year or so, and they may get one mated to a soviet design or chinese design ballistic missile which may work, seeing as how the russians are supplying them with parts, plans and teck support.
But until, if and when one lands, explodes in Israel or the U.S. or some other country I give a rats a$$ about, I’m just not going to worry about it.
I’m more worried about what I drink. So I drink bottled RO water, vodka, V8 juice and beer.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
AL:
You’re right, this would be a B.F.D. The problem is, that such a coordinated attack would virtually instantly get labelled as an _al Queda_ style attack& the media would run with it, the Prez would get behind it – and it would conveniently fit the facts: a shadowy bunch of goddam _terrorists_ dun it. Yep.
And we’d blow up what? The UN – as you say – would pass a pitiful paen decrying the inhumanity of it all. And one about 27 seconds later would pass authorizing the detoxification of the UN building as a _top, top, top priority_. And that would be that. They might offer to break out their reserve supply of spanky powder-puff blue condoms, for Relief. I didn’t say that, did i?
Anyway…
The real “killer” example is much less sophisticated, and simultaneously thwarts the U.S.’s inclination to pull out the safety’s on our arsenal of nuclear firecrackers. That would be, the simultaneous nuking of a half dozen Middle Eastern oil terminals, and a half dozen crucially important international ports – Singapore, Rotterdam, Puerto Caballao (Venezuela), Freeport (Bahamas), Apapa (Nigeria), Shanghai, Qingdao… to name a few.
The terrorists would succeed in shutting down for a LONG period the export of most oil on the planet. They would avoid hitting any ‘direct allies’ of the US, thus thwarting the sovern-help-for-friends gambit. Being far-flung, intelligence would be a challenge, and each of the countries in question would see in clear bold print the lettering on the wall: ship to America, and you’re economies will be targeted.
That would have an economic backlash that would be just awful. Who exactly would we then attack? Covert placement and activation would obfuscate the probability of finding the ‘smoldering cigar’ that lit the fuzes. Oil would jump to hundreds (if not a thousand) dollars a bbl, and Old Europe would just be stymied.
_________
The other fact is that it is even easier to make a ‘layer cake’ thermonuclear bomb than it is to make just a regular fission device. Slabs of depleted uranium separated by lithium triteride (easy, compared to uranium enrichment) Accomplish the amplification through X-Ray shock compression and U238 fast-neutron induced fission. Since you don’t have to lob one of these container bombs, but just float it into harbor, it could be quite heavy. In fact, the additional weight of lead and a blanket of borided water (to absorb neutrons & telltale gamma) also would look particularly out of place in the shipping waybill. “Iron scrap and pig”
We’re not talking single digit kiloton yields, but sub-megaton.
And that would be an entirely differnt kind of mess – especially if distributed around the world. How long before oil would get flowing again? Its not as if you can just “reopen a port” that has been lofted atomically into the stratosphere!
Martial Law? Oh sure – of course. But again, it would be playing into the Left’s hands: WE weren’t attacked, but it is _our dependence_ on all this foreign stuff that makes us vulnerable. Europe didn’t get hit (ok, take Rotterdam off my list). Maybe the Islamofvcks really are an extremely oppressed people just ‘acting out’ some primal Rule-the-World fantasy. Let’s give em a state! Let’s let ’em run over Israel. Let’s give them the Nobel Irony Prize for Beslan!
But really … how does one realistically deal with a _sophisticated enemy_ that realizes the geopolitical potential of a NON-US attack? The whole world would just spin out of control in the years that follow. And of course every last living conspiracy theorist would say that America itself used covert bombs to scuttle world peace (for a thousand stupid reasons), and would do so again – what more proof do you need than America didn’t bomb herself?
Etc.
Compared with the Schadenfreude of Old Europe, the UN, the world-of-nations looking on as San Diego, Long Beach, Port Angeles, New York and Boston harbors, Shreveport, Tampa and a few others go up in smoke…
In Nairobi, my friend saw a bunch of young men in formation behind a pristine Volkswagon Beetle pushing mightily, as an apparent Chief “drove” the quiet, engineless vehicle. It doesn’t matter if you have all the toys if you can’t power them.
And that is what I’m betting: that the terrorists are getting smart enough to understand that theirs is a true proxy war, with more lasting power in being indirect than bloodying themselves against our direct brick wall and armory.
_GoatGuy_