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To: long-gone who wrote (91201)	11/15/2002 7:52:39 AM
From: d:oug	Respond to of 117071

it might be possible... they are liars & braggarts . You will go in circles thinking like that. The terrorist want to kill & destroy the United States. The terrorist do not fear death but see honor in it as one would do if one attacked the enemy of its own people and eventhought they die, they help protect their people from the sickness of the United States spreading. These terrorist do not see themselves as representing any nation like Iraq or Pakistan that if these nations did a nuclear attack onto United States soil, they would be totally destroyed in return, so yes the terrorist can nuclear bomb any big US city without any fear of their homeland being hurt. What do they have to lose? Nothing, only can gain. They are now being hunted down, as in a kill zone. In the United States, nothing really since 9/11 meaning - they have been defeated and will fade away - organized to launch a big attack -on their terms-

To: long-gone who wrote (91201)	11/15/2002 10:44:29 AM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 117071

Sure we will know the light -- with 20-20 hindsight. But if that light is from the Chernykov effect, the lesson will be far too late for the learning. The Al Quaeda or "way" (I don't think it means just base..) could not have A-Bombs or H-bombs. They need about one year's running with a reactor at least the size of India's Cirus reactor to produce the plutonium. If Pakistan did not give them the plutonium then they would not have it. There is no way they could make enriched or depleted uranium for an H-bomb as it takes far too much industrial setup with gas centrifuges and hexafluoride gas diffusors in multi stage setups. The building is the size of a city block. When you get to making even A-Bombs with plutonium triggers, the technology of compression and simultaneous explosion is not that easy. Most scientists I talk to do not even know that plutonium will not compress with just a chemical explosion. (Chemical explosions expand with a constant rate. Atomic fission chain reaction is a geometric rate of increase. After 50 microseconds, with plutonium, any chemical pressure is exceeded and a second chemical explosion would not be big enough even to compress ... you cannot play catch-up with a geometric rate once surpassed, and a single stage chemical explosion big enough to succeed in one stage would be very large. (size of an apartment and weigh tens of tons) It would be unwieldy and require heavy pre-fission-runaway containment. Walls 3 feet thick or better with 3 feet thick of C-4) ( Little Boy bomb in WWII was almost too heavy for a B-29) ... tricky, huh?) Remember Einstein was not exactly stupid. He had practical mechanical and chemical (refrigeration) patents (and designed electric motor improvements for his father's business) as well as being a theoretician and he thought an A-bomb would have to be the size of a house and weigh a hundred tons. (Containment pressures was the issue) This was overcome by a clever means. Plutonium is far too hot to compress easily with chemicals alone. That is secret one. The H-Bomb too needs this tech of compression and most people do not know it. The A-bomb was described as a chinese puzzle of devilish complexity and the person who described it that was the person built it first, and he was no dummy. The simplistic diagrams you see in magazines are just that. Simplistic. And they are designed to give false information to potential rogue builders. In order to get the electrical simultaneity alone the calibration is quite advanced. Any dummy can match capacitors and wire lengths. But just contact solder variances can throw off the timing. There are ways today with modern electronics to get raw timing down, but gross part uniformity as in caps and macro wiring which is just as required is hard to do. Even wireless stuff is possible but each board must be calibrated and all the calibration of the dependent physical parts must still be achieved. It is the industrial, chemical and mechanical design standards and compression that will foil amateurs, not the pure simultaneity concept. It all has to be tested to microseconds. In fact not many people know how to design the capacitors to achieve simultaneity. They are quite specialized. Explosive material and individual charge pieces too have to be very carefully made for uniformity and shelf life, and a very precise uniformity in the igniter caps must be achieved. (How do you test that non-destructively?) Plutonium shell pieces must be very carefully machined from same refinery batch in order to reduce lopsided effects due to small variations in shape and size and chemistry. The pieces must arrive in the centre when triggered at the precise microsecond, so they have to be held apart with great precision and in a rugged assemblage that cannot change by even a fraction of a millimetre. This distance apart of trigger pieces must not allow radio heating, so they have to be intrashielded in a small device. Sliding of pieces must be uniform towards the centre with very small difference in path friction. Building a successful bomb is a web of frighteningly complex technical problems that while easy of concept at first glance are in fact quite hard in real implementation. Chances of failure are great. The Russian suitcase bombs with Californium or Americum triggers are all fizzled now as the trigger has short (6 month) shelf life due to its short half life or the trigger. Their chances of implementation are remote. Bottom line. They don't have a bomb. That is also why so few countries are members of the nuclear club. Takes lots of money and lots of time to do. Lots of testing too to get it right. And it is hard to get parts thru customs as they are very hot and very heavy often. EC<:-}

To: long-gone who wrote (91201)	11/15/2002 2:55:57 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 117071

long gone, Only an ancient warhead would still be good after 2-3 years. These use the full amount of fissionable metal and an implosion device...not small. Modern large ones with tritium soon lose yield to decay of the tritium(half life 12.3 years). I think the USA replaces them every year. Smaller suticase nukes become useless even faster. The ones supposedly stolen in 1998 in USSR will be a lot lower yield, but even 50 tons of TNT and a cloud of radiation is a large problem in a city. Of course, if they nuke Chicago, what do we do to Mecca? Bill