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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pgerassi who wrote (130915)	1/29/2001 8:55:46 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571068

Pete, You claim that smuggling a weapon is easier. How much do you know about nuclear radiation? It is easy to detect even at low levels. I'm the Los Alamos kid, remember? And you are once again not thinking about what I'm saying. Forget about your stupid nuclear weapons. The real threat now is chemical and biological weapons. The 60's are over Pete! The solutions of the 1960's are not going to help anymore. Provoking terrorists into proving how impotent Star Wars is, is not a good idea. BTW: Rumsfeld's comments indicate that he feels the same way as I do about this issue. Scumbria

To: pgerassi who wrote (130915)	1/29/2001 8:55:59 AM
From: stribe30	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1571068

Pete said: Besides, if such an attack is launched now, we have only three very undesirable options, do nothing, invade, or nuclear strike. In any case, all of the relatives of those who were killed will want someones blood. Missile defense adds a highly desirable option, missile destruct or disablement. Now, we can calmly go after those who struck at us making sure we get the right ones. A nuclear missile into Denver would cause much more in losses than such a program and if, it comes up short, whoops, no more Scumbria or his family. Pete.. with all due respect.. this is a simplistic notion... a) you're presuming missile defence will actually work.. last I saw.. it had failed on 2 out of 3 tests.. not exactly a re-assuring passing grade... b) All Russia and China will do to counter this so called shield is to accelerate the building of nuclear warheads to flood the system and overwhelm it by sheer force of numbers. Even if said percentage progresses.. and you're able to say.. wipe out 90% of the incoming targets.. .. that leaves 10%.. 10% of lets say..3000 warheads is still 300 warheads still getting thru.. still more then enough to wipe out the US. All this plan is as far as I am concerned was wooing the military and the defence contractors to get their support and their money. It is a pie-in-the sky plan that will not work and escalate a once dormant arms race.. the pooh-poohing of the Anti-Ballistic Treaty by Ruimsfield is particularly disturbing.. not only to Europe, but to the most important guys - the Russians and the Chinese. Also.. dont expect Canada to be jumping on the bandwagon either.. particularly if one aspect of the plan is to put ABM sites on Canadian soil. The Cold War is over.. yet instead of spending all that money on something useful, like revamping the US health care sytem or something.. he has to waste it on the military-industrial complex.

To: pgerassi who wrote (130915)	1/29/2001 9:04:36 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571068

Pete, Nobody is going to be stupid enough to launch a nuclear missile at the US. If they did, everyone in their country would be dead in 20 minutes. It is called "mutually assured destruction", and it has worked without a hitch since 1945. Is that hard to understand? Scumbria

To: pgerassi who wrote (130915)	1/29/2001 10:30:45 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571068

"a suitcase bomb while relatively safe to the carrier, can be detected at very long ranges (in the dozens of km). " Are you sure of this? Of the four detectible particles generally emitted, only the gamma has the characteristics you name, being a photon with a bad attitude. Now Plutonium-239, the stuff in weapons, is a very weak gamma emitter, it mostly emits neutrons and alpha, with some beta. Now true, the neutrons are harder to shield than the alpha or beta, but can still be done, especially with certain plastics. Since a nuclear weapon is going to emit radiation spherically with no bias in any particular direction, to detect a small weapon even 10 km. away would mean that the detector would be on a sphere some 1.25 * 10^9 meters in area. Given the weak gamma emissions from a device, and the degree that air absorbs gamma, I would be dubious if the detector would pick up even a single gamma particle. Detection from orbit would be even less likely. Check this like for plutonium info ieer.org