I don't know if this thought is out dated or what ?? Do these terrorist have nuclear bombs. Was remembering all the fear we had in the 60's and what people did back then with bomb shelters etc. Wonder if this is something we really should think about. How do you prepare...or can you really for something like this !! Hopefully, we will never, never have to fear this but what ideas do you all have on this thought. Thanks !!

-- Helena Di Maio (windyacs@ptdprolog.net), September 21, 2001

Answers

There has been a remote possibility of a nuke hitting our shores for several decades. I ask, if my life would have been better spent worrying about it (the bomb) or enjoying the opportunities which life offered. Only one thing is for certain,and that is something is going to take each and every one of us out. Don't worry, be happy. It's good for the economy.

-- jz (oz49us@yahoo.com), September 21, 2001.

I was just thinking about this. INdia and Pakistan has the bomb,, Pakistan has close ties to Afghanistan,, how far off the track would it be to assume Afghanistan has it also? Wasnt it Nostradamus (?) that said the third world war would start in PERSIA ??

-- stan (sopal@net-port.com), September 21, 2001.

We've been at a heightened risk of nuclear warfare ever since the fall of the Soviet Empire. It may well be that as we more fully prosecute this "war on terrorism" that at least one, possibly more, nuclear warheads will be detonated, possibly even by us.

The facts of the matter have not changed much in the last ten years:

Very few nations, actually only two, have sufficient warheads and means of delivering them to distant targets quickly to be able to cross the U.S. in a nuclear confrontation and neither of those two seem to show any inclination to do so, mostly because they'd lose just as big as we would and would serve no useful purpose.

A nation with a number of nuclear warheads could try to sneak them into the U.S. but as anyone who has ever tried to pull off a conspiracy knows the more people who know about it the exponentially greater the chance there is the secret will get out. It wouldn't matter if the warheads ever got detonated or were even armed, if nation X snuck them into the U.S. and we caught them at it then it would be a near certainty that we'd consider it to be an act of war no different than if they had actually blown one of our cities up. This is why I think Russia never snuck many (if any at all) warheads into the U.S. in freight cars or anything else. Getting caught with them here would be as bad as detonating one. Given sufficient motivation (and we'd have plenty of it) by us to find out it would be very difficult for a nation to keep it completely secret from us where that warhead came from. Once we knew we'd have a definite target to attack.

The situation is somewhat different with "terrorist" groups since they have no definite home address that we can vaporize but their problem is first getting their hands on nuclear warheads and then getting them into place. There's also the further problem that once they detonated their warhead they'll almost certainly develop a badcase of geopolitical plague in that no nation in their right mind would want to be found harboring them. This will be especially true if we do a sufficiently good job on Afghanistan for harboring Bin Laden. Still, there's always that risk and it cannot be entirely discounted. Large cities are attractive targets and large building with lots of prestige and fame in those large cities are especially attractive. We allowed ourselves to forget this to our regret.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), September 21, 2001.

I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that the countries with long range nuclear warheads are: USA, Russia, China and it is believe that probably India.

I am a tad nervous because the President said in his speach last night that "We will direct every resource at our command .........and EVERY NECESSARY WEAPON OF WAR -- to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network." Pretty strong statement and with President Bush's blank check given to him, makes me nervous! What type of retaliation will be get from the offending countries??? This also covers biological/chemical weapons as well.

-- Karen (db0421@yahoo.com), September 21, 2001.

Although I don't dwell on the fear or phobia (bet the psychologists will coin a word for this soon if there isn't one) of a nuclear war, i have to admit that this is a very good possibility considering the recent events of today. When the former USSR disbanded there were several silos in many of the smaller more rebel cointries that had the potential to or window of opportunity to capatailze on this. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist or CIA investigation to say that Bin Ladin has in all good probability access to nuclear weapons, etc. if he doesn't already own some.

This was the concern of our political leaders back in the early 1990's that some crazed terrorist would get their hands upon a nuclear weapon and use it. The reason we or Russia never chose to was as mentioned, the ramifications and the point, we destroy each other.

Personally, I don't want to go to a bomb shelter, i would rather be incinerated immediately than die from the radiation poisioning. The wheels are in motion, there is really nothing we can do to prevent anything, that decision is out of our hands and in the political leaders of the world. i also feel like the terrorists may try to hold us "hostage" by threatening a bomb or by bio-chemical warfare, scrap try, they already are.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), September 21, 2001.

A nuclear device could relatively easily be constructed by one of these groups and smuggled anywhere they would like to take it as modern technology has reduced the size of the component parts needed. No longer is a truck or a train necessary. A small suitcase will do. This is the real reason I feel we must persue the terrorist network and hopefully destroy or severely cripple its financial base. I feel it is only money that has held these individuals in check up to now and the presence of bin Ladin as well as others has begun to remove that difficulty for them. Our time is running short IMHO.

-- Sandra Nelson (Magin@starband.net), September 21, 2001.

I heard a chilling commentary on BBC last night on my drive home from work. They made the point the the whole point of hitting the Towers and other "biggie" sites is the publicity. There will be, in their opinion, several attempts at "copycat" terrorism, much as there were copycat school shootings after the first on got so much press. However, eventually (sad to say) blowing up buildings will become less and less news, like the school shootings (which have died off as the fame associated with them gets smaller and smaller). Then, if the terrorists want to make that big of a splash, they'll have to escalate. That's how we got to where we are this week.

There's very little "up" left to these attacks without using nukes, which can now be put into a suitcase, as a previous poster pointed out. It will become too tempting in, I fear, a very short period of time.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), September 21, 2001.

I had been wondering, also, about what the terrorists would try next in order to top what they pulled off on September 11. Seems like it would be a tough one to top, unless they go to either nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. And I do think they have that desire to make each attack more "spectacular" than the last.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), September 21, 2001.

I think the most credible risk is the BIOLOGICAL threat. Even easier to conceal than nuclear devices. The idea that you can carry a nuclear bomb in a brief case is doubtful. The nuclear bombs that I have been in the presents of are much larger than a brief case. We already live with radiation from nuclear testing a nd Chernobl(sp?) My father was the radiological defense officer for Oregon in the early 60's, North Dakota in the late 60's, and Northern Minnesota in the 70's. After Chernobl we took radiation readings in our yard in northern Minnesota. Wow that was an eye opener, we where hot. So radiation is nothing new, but Anthrax or something like that will kill even more people and at an even more agonizing pace. Contaminate one major city and kill the continent. The bomb has it's limits.

-- Del Grinolds (dgrinolds@gvtel.com), September 21, 2001.

I was very surprised they didn't have a Nuclear Power Plant as a target. Think about just a release of Small Pox, killing every man woman and child under the age of 40, leaving all the beer bellies to defend the US, makes you shutter doesn't it! LOL Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 21, 2001.

There've been a number of whacko's who've been advocating "nuke Afghanistan back to the stone age". Well, we'd better just hope no- one does that. Thing is, Afghanistan, which is an Islamic state in case you haven't noticed, is bordered by Pakistan, which is a nuclear power and an Islamic state. And China, which is a nuclear power. And about three former USSR states to the North, which were part of an atomic power, and may have kept or at least are in a better situation than most to get A-bombs, and are Islamic states - and are bordered by Russia itself. And Iran (former Persia), which is an Islamic state. And you can bet that in the case of an attack on major Islamic states, you'd definitely see a show of solidarity with others. And it also goes very close to India, which is a nuclear power, although the wind would have to cross Pakistan or China or both to get to India.

Now, which way would the fallout blow, and in the end result would it really matter to the USA, since the end result would be likely to be the same?

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), September 22, 2001.

There are semi-credible reports that Bin Laden has possession of or access to one or more suitcase nukes "liberated" by Chechnyan fighters from the old Soviet Union. (And yes, they do come that small -- about the size of a carry-on bag.) But as Live Oak pointed out, popping a nuke is a guaranteed way of becoming an international pariah in even the most fundamentalist Islamic countries. My real fear is that fundamentalists mount a coup in Pakistan, which already has nuclear capability, and use them to start a holy war with India.

If you're looking for sweat-on-the-forehead scenarios, think chemical or biological attack. The FBI has grounded crop-dusting aircraft throughout the US because a crop-dusting manual was found among the items left behind by the 9-11 suicide squads. Imagine a biplane crop duster put-putting across Omaha or Kansas City or Los Angeles leaving a fine mist of anthrax or smallpox behind. Just another reason to avoid cities, I guess.

-- Cash (Cash@andcarry.com), September 24, 2001.

Here's a hair raising site about "suitcase nukes". http://www.fas.org/nuke/hew/News/Lebedbomb.html)

-- (halfc@fidnet.com), September 24, 2001.