Could a terrorist group really get hold of and deploy a nuke?

I'm not talking about a matchbox full of Strontium 90 for a dirty bomb – I'm talking about a viable fission bomb.

Is it just the stuff of conspiracy forums and Hollywood movies? Or is there a real risk that one of our cities could be razed by an X kiloton nuke detonated by a fundamental terror group?

No.

Given that they don't seem able to get together half a dozen well drilled blokes with rifles, body armour and frag grenades, which would be enough to cause chaos in any UK city, I doubt it.

I was more worried about George Bush having access to them!

I'm building one. The next #### who steals my wheel trims is going to get it.

Been watching "24" on sky recently?!

They wouldn't have to 'deploy' one conventionally, they'd just have to steal a warhead and give everyone in the western world a serious brown trouser moment.

They don't even have to destabilise a region such as Pakistan over months either. They're pretty good at running heists and they don't care if anything goes wrong or anyone gets hurt, becuase they're willing to die and believe their god is on their side.

Been watching "24" on sky recently?!

Nope. I'm just a morbid c**t 😆

The risk (and this is where Dan Gardner goes badly wrong) is not particularly that a bunch of nutters in caves will create a nuclear bomb from scratch. It is rather that the military infrastructure of a country will develop nuclear weapons for its own purposes, but that radicalised people will have access to those weapons and will be willing and able to hand them over in a useable state to people who are mental enough to want to raze a Western city in peace-time.

Pakistan is the most obvious problem country here. It developed a nuclear weapon in secret, using stolen centrifuge designs. Once they had a nuclear bomb it took years for them to work out that there needed to be safeguards to preven it being used accidentally. Pakistan's military and intelligence structures are not under enormously effective government control and certainly contain dangerously radical elements.

Libya, with its history of head-banging terrorist sponsorship would also have been ghastly.

Iran's programme is probably of strategic concern only in the middle east as long as it remains entirely controlled but again the worry is proliferation to people who are willing to use already-developed weapons outside a context of strategic deterrence.

I know little about the failure to secure the Soviet arsenal post-break-up but again, useable weaponry appears to be unaccounted for there.

I don't buy the argument that the fact that it hasn't happened already means there's no risk necessarily. It would be a huge step, clearly. But (and this point is made very lucidly by Philip Bobbitt) if it happened, the world would quite simply never be the same again. Very low risk, arguably, but massive, almost unthinkable consequences.

i presume that if you've got the cash, then you can have the bomb of your choice. but. as the average Russian nuclear sub is currently for sale, on the black market for around 30 million us dollars complete with ageing reactor. then factor in the cost of making said bomb without being detected. i think your average towel wearing goat herder with a grudge on western society might find this a jihad to far.

on the other hand a well financed, well organised politicly motivated saudi royal family member ???????????

i think your average towel wearing goat herder with a grudge on western society might find this a jihad to far.

😆

Short answer: No

Medium answer: Probably not

Long answer: Switzerland, and most of the western world in fact, does perfectly well without a nuclear deterant. Unfortunatley those countries don't run a arround in other countires populated by religious fundamentalists generaly pissing the population off, and as a result don't live in constant fear of those countries attacking them.

It's perfectly possible. Just not overly probable. Any engineer worth his salt and with some financial backing could create a crude one, it's just getting hold of the materials required that's tough I suppose, and transporting it across borders.

state sponsored terrorism exists and some of the states implicated are nuclear powers

therefore the answer is yes

nuclear retalliation however is very unlikely IMHO

Depends what you class a terrorist as. But no, the most common terrorist groups out there could not get anywhere near a viable nuclear device.

A so called dirty bomb however….

easy:
1) US govt
2) UK govt
3) Israeli govt

need I go on ?

I can't imagine lack of need stopping you 🙂

Chomsky on terrorism

If they did all that would need to happen to stop them would be,

Volcanic ash cloud, grounds all the planes,

Rail strike,

Crash on a major motorway,

Fuel price goes up,

a bank holiday,

or

The One Show and breakfast television being cancelled

Everything stops for the above,

no idea where I heard this, and it's almost certainly an 'urban legend' or somesuch, but…

I seem to recall reading/hearing somewhere that a nuclear device can only be detonated under certain very specific environmental conditions (eg. atmospheric/solar/astrological or somesuch)? That is, you can't just let one off whenever you wanted to?

Anyone else have this bit of misinformation (?) floating around in their memory?

Switzerland, and most of the western world in fact, does perfectly well without a nuclear deterant.

Switzerland don't need any deterrent as when it comes to a fight their job is to hold the coats of the participants. This keeps them safe and allows them to empty the wallets they find in the coats.

Yep, must be a full moon.

atmospheric/solar/astrological

when the moon
is in the 2nd house
and Jupiter aligned with Mars…

[edit] and I think the next line is:

'then peas will rule the planet'

presumably after deploying their nuclear deterrent ?

I seem to recall reading/hearing somewhere that a nuclear device can only be detonated under certain very specific environmental conditions (eg. atmospheric/solar/astrological etc)? That is, you can't just let one off whenever you wanted to?

Sounds like a load of guff to me – from what I can remember of physics, once the detonator mechanism has gone off, it's a chain reaction.

On the other hand, you can be pretty sure that every time someone has let off an atom bomb, they've been examining every variable that could affect the power of the weapon so as to get as much impact for their very considerable investment.

1) US govt
2) UK govt
3) Israeli govt

Boringly predictable. 🙂

Only one of these governments has used a nuclear weapon, and that in the context of a massive industrial war. Since that singular occurence, none of them has used nuclear weapons and none of them has threatened to use nuclear weapons in response to anything other than a massive military threat. The last threatened use was probably by Israel during the 1991 Gulf war, and that was at its most frightening somewhat ambiguous, and issued in response to a declaration of intention to use poison gas against civilian targets. No such attack ultimately materialised and no nuclear strike was needed. Their nuclear arsenal fits into a doctrine of strategic deterrence.

What makes the discussion of the use of world-changing strategic weapons on civilian targets by non-state actors outside of apparent states of traditional warfare interesting is its complete departure from that frame of reference. We all know that states can manufacture such weapons, can potentially use them, and also that we can deal adequately with a world in which that is the case.

Didn't some kid in ammerica build a really small nuke by melting down the sources in several hundred smoke allarms and asking lots of different nuclear engineers/physicists how to do lots of little bits?

Didn't some kid in ammerica build a really small nuke by melting down the sources in several hundred smoke allarms and asking lots of different nuclear engineers/physicists how to do lots of little bits?

I was going to give a reply to this using what I can remember from A-levels, but I realised I'd probably be breaking one of those laws that lets the police bang up you without charge.

Didn't some kid in ammerica build a really small nuke

I shall consider thinking about possibly starting to believe this only when you can supply me with a dubious internet link to substantiate your claim. 😀

Project – you forgot to mention 1/2 inch of snow. that really does stop everything!

Didn't some kid in ammerica build a really small nuke by melting down the sources in several hundred smoke allarms and asking lots of different nuclear engineers/physicists how to do lots of little bits?

No, he produced a nuclear stockpile that wasn't going to do anything but kill people by radiation poisoning and required a major cleanup operation, but it wasn't even close to a bomb. To get it to become critical you need two hemispherical ~0.5kg IIRC lumps of it [with it being exactly the right type of material and purity] and it needs to be rammed together by high explosives in a pressure vessel. There are plans available online and full descriptions of old ones, if you want to look at that sort of thing. It's getting hold of ~1kg of material and the high explosive without being caught that's tough.

Suitcase sized nukes are "available" but I don't think you should loose sleep other them, I'd actually worry more about a Radiological (dirty) bomb as I think you may be able to make on from isotopes used in Xray machines (I can't find a source from this so I could easy be mistaken)

"Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM)"

Maybe this is where the US got confused?

To get it to become critical you need two hemispherical ~0.5kg IIRC lumps of it

Yes, and as CK mentions 'it' in this case (which is the old Hiroshima style bomb) is Uranium 235 which is a very small constituent of plain old Uranium. So you have to find Uranium ore deposits, extract it, then react it with I think Fluorine (actually not easy) to make it a gas then use a centrifuge to separate out the U235. Then you just have to turn it back into Uranium and you're away. Making the two halves of metal and blasting them together is apparently the easy part.

Apparently the UK's first bomb was transported across country after it was made in two Morris 1000s, one half in each car. Except one car broke down, so they had to put both halves in the boot of the same car. I think the idea was that it would probably be ok.. some nervous passengers that day 🙂

Those of us who grew up in the 60s were raised with the idea that atomic annihilation was a distinct possibility. (Take a look at government bunkers of the time for how seriously this was taken).

When Kennedy was assassinated I felt safer.

criminal groups are already trying to acquire and sell uranium to anyone who will buy it:

Roll up roll up dirty bomb ingredients get yours here at cheaper than stolen prices[/url]

If you' re a terrorist why would you bother when airplanes clearly make pretty useful bombs… Load of hassle for no extra gain.

Pakistan's military and intelligence structures are not under enormously effective government control and certainly contain dangerously radical elements.

Hmmm, not sure they pose so much of a threat to the "western powers" though, the ISA and elements of the military are certainly radical, but they're trying to stoke up a war with India, hence the un-rest in Kashmir and bombing Bombay, and not London or New York. Certainly part of the Pakistan Govt. is obviously going along with this view, it is after all the job of the ISA…

Load of hassle for no extra gain.

It depends on the level of ambition I suppose.

Banging an airliners into something was a very spectacular piece of political theatre. It changed the way we thought about the risks that global terrorism posed to our society, and it was absolutely inspirational for a lot of people elsewhere.

But if you're in a mindset that raises its game to do that after the Cole and the East African embassies then it's possible to imagine you'd be thoroughly interested in doing something much, much bigger.

Also, while 9/11 was enormously alarming and shook the US government up badly, it didn't really wreck the relationship between the people and their government. Its impact on the government's authority was not very great and government was seen to be able to bounce back very effectively. Hurrican Katrina was actually more damaging to the credibility of the US government, as it couldn't or wouldn't respond effectively to the loss of a major city.

The impact of (say) attacking Manhattan with a strategic nuclear weapon would be vastly greater. It would be a comprehensive demonstration that government simply could not protect people against total disaster. Government would be substantially unable to respond effectively – it could save itself from being destroyed but it simply wouldn't be able to do anything. The whole population of the Atlantic seaboard would be utterly terrified. You'd have mass movements of people, huge numbers of dead and a major collapse in the economy. Such an act would probably, in a very real sense, destroy America.

This may be histrionic, I don't know. And it's quitelikely that the number of people with that level of ambition is vanishingly small, and the number of people with ambition and anything like the means even smaller. But there are bound to be people who'd bother.

not sure they pose so much of a threat to the "western powers" though

Quite agreed it's not a given. However, the attempted assassinations of Musharraf by elements in the intelligence service were thought to be in response to the alliance with the USA. I'd be surprised to learn that the problem people's worldview is limited to seeing India as the only enemy.