Friday, December 8, 2006

Correction

I Stand Corrected

In my first posting in stated that a suitcase nuke would yield up to 2 kilotons of power and that it would be about ½ the power of the bombs we dropped on Japan. I received that information from what I thought were very good sources. I was challenged in a chat room yesterday and inspired to do a bit more research. After searching for hours, I learned there is a lot of variability in thought on the size and power of a suitcase nuclear weapon.

What I concluded was that a suitcase nuke, likely due to its weight, would only pack a punch of up to 1 kiloton and would certainly not be ½ the power of the WWII nukes we dropped on Japan. Those yielded around 13-15 kilotons.

According to Armageddononline.org these would still yield a very powerful blast. They (and others) claim that the bomb that destroyed the Alfred R. Murrah building in Oklahoma City was a 0.002 kiloton bomb. A 1 kiloton bomb would inflict dreadful damage and kill thousands more than were killed on 9/11.

The power and destruction of a suitcase nuke is certainly a major concern. We must not let this happen in our cities. I implore every American to take notice and become informed; the media are not helping us…we must help our selves.

I visited defendamerica.mil website in my search for information. I didn’t find what I was looking for but I clicked on a link – a wealth of information about terrorists groups. In my naivety I expected to find about 15 or 20 groups. There are 43 pages of world-wide terror group names; most pages hold 20 names…only one person, from one group has to be successful to harm us.


United we must stand…

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

J.

Good article. very difficult to get accurate scientific data. I found the folowing site (2 posts)to be useful.

http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2006/12/jason_releases_summary_of_long.php#more

http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/nuclear_weapons/

These articles are not slam dunk proof of what will happen when an old Plutonium Nuke is set off. It may fissle or partially explode. A reduced yield is for sure. Probably more valuable remanufactured as dirty bomb material.

Jack Wheeler a foreign policy expert who guests on CPR stated that Iran already has 16 small nukes the bought off the black market. These are Russian "unaccounted for" artillary and suitcase nukes. All are of questional reliability.

Worth noting is there are 1000 Russian nuclear scientists helping Iran. Their knowlege is far more valuable than an iffy arsenal of small nukes.

Iran won't use this sorry collection on Israel, they will wait till they produce enough new plutonium and weaponize it with the help of the Russians.

Keep up the good work, we share common interests. You are welcome to take anything from my site and use as your own. I only care about provoking thought.

Liberty or Death