American Hiroshima

[Dave (imported)]

Or how many more could have been saved in the future by not using military force, or how many more will be killed by reinforcing old religous and ethnic hatered? I bet the German's wished they stood up to their guy when he tried socialism on for size.

Just a thought

chilli-

I'm with Riverwind on this one.

Which German Socialist are you talking about? There have been several.

Most of Europe is socialist. There is no equivalent in the USA of a European socialist. There is no equivalent in the USA of the European Green Party either, or the Christian Democrats (Don't ask, I don't know what they are. I've never been able to figure them out because they are war hawks...) If Republicans were oranges and Democrats were apples, then the European left and right would be peaches and pears with sides of plums and prunes.

If you are referring to Adolf Hitler, he wasn't a socialist, he was a "national socialist" and that is an entirely different political system/philosophy than the socialism prevalent in Europe today.

[Riverwind (imported)]

I think he was referring to that goose stepping Fascist Hitler, if so a Fascist is about as far away from a socialist as there is.

River

[sag111 (imported)]

Thanks for your input and as I have said it probly is for selling some book deal.But it dose make for good discussion dosent it.My real thought is we need to keep the CIA and FBI strong.I also feel we need to get info any way we can from people we know are out to kill us not put the people doing there best to keep us safe behind bars.If we do this WE WILL BE LESS SAFE there is no way it will make us safer.Remember these folks chop there enemys heads off that could care less how we treat our presioners.

[chilliwilli (imported)]

Which German are you talking about??????

River

"Well, you have a very proper prominent English nose!" Spoken words from a woman to her children. Her grandmother had left England just before the Great War. Here in the States, she met a man from a working class background and married him. His mother was as he says "All German", and she even named her son after one of the original Germanic tribes.

So she carried on with snippets about her upperclass family her grandmother had told her when she was a child, and of coarse picking out which of her children had a more "proper prominent English nose". Likely she was half mad, so secretive and deliberate in her ways, and so controlling.

Well it wasn't till years later that one of her daughters tested her DNA. She discovered they were Jews. Their family had lived in England, had done well there, and she was never told that she was a Jew! She had married a man of German decent right after the WW2!

Isn't DNA testing amazing, the crazy jewish lady was my mother, now let's just forget about it...ok?

chilli-

[chilliwilli (imported)]

I think he was referring to that goose stepping Fascist Hitler, if so a Fascist is about as far away from a socialist as there is.

River

More refering to the shift in power from the people to the government and some of the problems that have been created by that in recent times.

Goodnite guys

chilli-

[gareth19 (imported)]

You need more than 10 kg of U235 or Pu239 to build an atomic bomb (and some sources suggest at least 30); a ten centimeter cube would weigh about 19.84 kg for Pu239 and U235 would weigh about 18.95 kg. That wouldn't include shielding and the detonation device. Oh and by the way, plutonium is radioactive, so much so that it reaches blue hot heats and melts itself. Aside from being grotesquely carcinogenic, it is literally too hot to be handled. Only in James Bond movies do people handle these materials without without massive amounts of protection. If you are talking about uranium or plutonium technology, there isn't much to fear from the unexamined orange juice container.

[Dave (imported)]

And just for information -- if you see that blue flame of plutonium combustion, you are dead (or will be). The blue light is a neutron event. If you see it, you're dead. If you could hold plutonium without suffering radiation damage, it's poisonous effects (not just radiation) would kill you. It's a toxic substance.

Think back a number of years to an accident in Japan where some workers at a nuclear plant violated rules and put too much uranium in close proximity. They reported the blue flash and then the alarms went off. That was the neutron event of fission occuring.

The nuclear blast (mushroom cloud) as we have see it, is not simple fission. It is a detonated explosion. The mushroom cloud type of explosion doesn't occur naturally. It must be created.

[ramses (imported)]

A mini-nuke is the least of our worries. If terrrorist can pull of piloting passenger jets into skyscrapers, I'm sure they can handle driving a tractor trailer or a f-350 van which can carry a cargo of several tons safely. For a motivated transporter, he could probably carry 5 tons in a cargo van and even more if they spent a few grand beefing up the suspensions.

If I were a terrorist mastermindand could get a nuke, I would load up a 20 foot ISO Shipping container and use a freight forwarder to ship the payload with lead shielding straight to New York or New Jersey. It's common to use a satelite tracker. Once they are tracked by satelite to the harbor, all it needs is a signal back through the tracking unit to detonate. It could even be pre programed to go off once it enters a certain geographic area.

IF the bad guys can get one of the weapons, it's not that hard to get something into the US. That is why they need to be exterminated in their caves over there instead of waiting for our overburdened law enforcement to TRY and get them here.

One of the largest Thermo-nukes ever built (Tsar Bomba) was a 50MT bomb that was tested in 1961 USSR, only weighed 54,000 lbs which is well within normal unpermited commercial transportation. THis bomb was only 26 feet long and 6.5 feet wide.

Suitcase nukes for terrorists are fantasy. All the rest is reality. Maybe we should just be nice to them and they may love us and not try and kill us. Give peace a chance...lol.

[TheOtherSide (imported)]

Quite honestly? Screw nukes altogether.

If I were a terrorist, dedicated to trying to cause fear and panic, I'd arrive in the country without any weapons of any kind. From there, one Home Depot credit card, a small amount of technical knowledge, and a little bit of time should enable me to build something capable of taking out airplanes at takeoff/landing.

If you can build a cannon capable of launching a 10lb pumpkin 1000 feet, surely you can launch something filled with homebrew explosives at a jet near a runway. Anyone who's ever watched some of the impressive 'IEDs' built on Mythbusters can probably attest to their destructive potential.

Hell, even a coffee whitener fireball at the wrong time could likely result in problems. And honestly, how do you stop someone from building a device that can create such a fireball?

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

Quite honestly? Screw nukes altogether.

Hell, even a coffee whitener fireball at the wrong time could likely result in problems. And honestly, how do you stop someone from building a device that can create such a fireball?

You can't. In the days of my mis-spent youth I built all sorts of explosive and truly awe-inspiring potentially lethal devices just because I could. I have no doubt many others could build them too. As a result I worry less about terrorists than many people seem to worry about them. If someone wants to cause mayhem there are many paths to follow. The trick, as I see it, is to not give in to fear of such things; fear,after all, is what they are trying to achieve. Destruction and injury are mostly the means to spread fear. --FLO--