Nuclear Attack?

Discussion in 'Off-Topic' started by NJNetz, Sep 7, 2008.

  1. NJNetz

    NJNetz BBW Banned

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    Do you think one will happen in the near future? If so, by whom?
     
  2. isrus

    isrus Go Devils

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    Don't know that much about this topic but if it happens, i'd say Iran or N. Korea. Maybe Russia
     
  3. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    Boy, I hope not. All the hot spots where it was likely during the cold war aren't so likely anymore. USA/USSR, USA/China, USSR/China, Greece/Turkey were those kinds of hot spots.

    What scenarios are possible?

    I'm not convinced N. Korea actually figured out nukes enough to build any.

    Iran talks about causing a 2nd Holocaust for the Jews in Israel, which is scary.

    Terrorist organization gains a nuke somehow? That's not an all-out war, but still a disaster.

    Some nation with nukes goes rogue? Not sure which one might.

    ...
     
  4. isrus

    isrus Go Devils

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    Do you think that Government or the UN would be able to reverse this, such as the Iran thing you mentioned?
     
  5. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    I don't get the sense that Iran (the govt.) wants to be reasonable. They intend to make the bomb and they'll resist any peaceful/diplomatic attempt to give up on it. The real judgment has to be whether they're all talk or whether they really do want to nuke Israel for what they perceive as some holy/religious purpose (can't reason with fanatics).

    The wider threat is that through enough countries being nuclear powers, terrorists might acquire one from any of those sources. Or that terrorists somehow take over an unstable nuclear armed country like Pakistan.

    There's lesser threats, too, such as dirty bombs which can be made out of nuclear waste, yellowcake (not made into bomb material yet), or even medical waste - whatever you can blow up into the winds to fall on people to make them sick.

    In contrast to nukes, bio weapons are the really scary WMDs. A nuke in a city of 10M might kill 5M or even all 10M. A bio weapon can kill billions of people world wide (it's a disease, designed to spread and kill rapidly).
     
  6. porky88

    porky88 King of Kings

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    If it happens it won't be by a nation unless they are an extremely stupid nation. Iran attacks us we'd nuke them back to the stone age. Same with N. Korea in my opinion. I honestly think American would counter a nuke with a nuke of their own. It wouldn't be a simple invasion of a country. I think we'd show our true technological advantage.

    The only way it'd happen is like actually in 24 and I'm not just saying that cause I'm a fan of Jack Bauer. :)

    I think a terrorist would have to get a hold of a nuke and sneak into the country with it and then use it in a major city. My guess is D.C. or New York would be the big targets or at least that's what I heard on Foxnews once.
     
  7. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    If you have a nation that's run be religious fanatics, then they're going to care little about retribution and are going to be looking forward to whatever their heaven promises. Suicide bombers don't care that they're going to die by their own act as well. I don't think the Iranian masses are like that, but their leader is sounding like a total crackpot/nutcase.
     
  8. CelticKing

    CelticKing The Green Monster

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    I had a dream a couple of months ago about being under a nuke attack. Kind of strange but the dream started with me watching outside the window and looking out as far as I could see, then there was a big explosion and a wave of dust kept coming towards me, the dream went on for a few minutes like that (felt like hours to me in the dream), I was trying to protect myself but putting something on the window so nothing would get in, I had this scary feeling that I would die, etc.

    Strangest dream I've had ever probably.


    As for the question, it will probably happen in the future but it might take few years, or hundreds of years. No one will know.
     
  9. cpawfan

    cpawfan Monsters do exist

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    I believe people blowing up nuclear power plants is far, far more likely
     
  10. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    It would have to be an inside job. Those things are built to withstand an airplane crashing into them.
     
  11. cpawfan

    cpawfan Monsters do exist

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    Where have I heard that before?

    Anyhow, strategic ground assault of highly specialized troops could take over a facility or two or three
     
  12. AEM

    AEM Gesundheit

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    If (hopefully not when) Iran achieves nuclear capability, there is every indication that it won't attack Israel directly, despite the very public rhetoric. A very likely scenario would be giving weapons to Hizbullah and/or Hamas, with false information tying the weapons to either Pakistan or, more likely, North Korea, for purposes of plausible deniability.
     
  13. bbwMax

    bbwMax Member

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    But Assuming Neither Britain nor America is the Rogue Country We're pretty safe I Guess. Obviously if say N.Korea were to launch Their Nuke (And they only have one Apparently) At the UK or USA then it would be a tragedy no doubt. But Both would retaliate. I know that Britain has that At the moment Britain has 16 Trident missiles, based on four nuclear submarines, and we also have a total of 200 warheads. and America Obviously has more then the UK. So if a war were to happen with one of these Token Countries I.E Korea, Iran etc then it shouldn't be that much of a problem. But if We were to go into war with Russia that could signal the end of the world as we know it.
     
  14. isrus

    isrus Go Devils

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    no one would attack Britain :)

    I don't know if you guys know but Israel and i heard India are also working on nuclear weapons i guess for defensive purposes
     
  15. AEM

    AEM Gesundheit

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    ^ Both Israel and India already have nuclear capability, although Israel has not publicly admitted its nuclear capability and India is not known to have 'ready' nuclear weapons, per RAND, though the Dep't of Defense believes that India could put together nuclear weapons within a week.
     
  16. DennisRodman

    DennisRodman Suspended

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    I've heard that too as well. They have an incredibly thick wall of reinforced concrete to protect them.

    Well there is nothing to say that an inside job with 1 employee isn`t impossible.
    1. They would have to figure out a time with minimal security and staff.
    2. They would have to be able to be able to be able to get the core to begin the `meltdown` process before police could be called, and reach them inside the compound and stop them from commencing it.
    3. They would have to figure out if it possible and if possible how to override the failsafes the system may that prevent meltdowns.
    4. They would have to be willing to be die in order to do so.

    I dunno if bioweapons would be threatening than nuclear ones. I mean I`m not familiar with the biological WMDs that have been tested. (Is there data that you can share about their impacts?) I know some about Nukes, and the initial destructive power of a nuke is tremendous, not to mention the large amounts of fallout.

    So we are looking at something about 8000 times more powerful. It`s fortunate that the Tsar Bomba was designed to have very minimal fallout even though mainland was a piece away.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2008
  17. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    Regarding bio-weapons. It's not rocket science or nuclear science to genetically alter an existing disease such as anthrax to make it into a weapon. To make things worse, the kinds of bugs you'd mix anthrax with to weaponize it are the ones that live in hospitals and over the course of generations (bug time), become resistant to the kinds of drugs we use to treat infection. Evolution at its finest - survival of the fittest and all that.

    So you have a kind of anthrax that can't be treated, immune to antibiotics. All it would take is a test tube full (less, actually) and a suicide bomber type (willing to die for the cause). Inject him and put him on a plane to Hethro. The germination time for the disease is 5 to 15 days; he gets everyone on the plane sick, though they won't show it for a few days. They get on connecting flights to Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and other places. The disease would spread like wildfire, killing billions. A single nuke, as I said, would kill millions, but would be contained to a finite area.

    If you want to read up on what an epidemic or pandemic of the sort I described can do, they've been really scared of the bird flu for a few years now, and you can google that and find all sorts of info.
     
  18. DennisRodman

    DennisRodman Suspended

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    I think if this was really so devasting and possible that if a country like Iran hated another country, say Israel that they would just say capture a handful of Israelis without them knowing it and return them to their homes. Some of them would go to hospitals, to work, walk around people on the streets. I'm guessing it would be pretty difficult to trace. (or just do the suicide bomber type and he could come in contact with all sorts of people in market places, no one would be able to tell that he was the one that spread the disease)

    Or a country with a guy like Hugo Chavez that hates the US, or South Korea.

    Does anthrax spread from person to person as you imply?

    Well I'm guessing that a person nukes would probably use more than one, and it would also pretty much guarantee that people can't really hide from it, due to fallout. While even a contagious disease could be quarantined, and people could wait 15 days in their houses, eating canned food until it passes.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2008
  19. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    I don't think you understand. It is highly contagious from person to person, even before someone realizes they have it. It wouldn't matter if Iran or someone sent a carrier to Israel, it'd spread worldwide no matter what - people do get on airplanes there, too. It wouldn't matter who was the carrier, you'd be looking at flight manifests from weeks ago trying to figure out which person was the carrier, and it'd be unlikely they'd use someone obvious.

    If someone used 15 nukes in our biggest cities, it wouldn't have anywhere near the effect of a pandemic or epidemic. The math might be 15 x 10M = 150M for the nukes, and 2B to 4B for the bio weapons. I'm also deliberately overstating the deaths from the nukes by maybe 10x!

    Think about the medieval plague and how it decimated a huge % of the population, if that makes sense. Something like 2 out of every 3 people on the planet died.

    If you're interested in reading further:
    http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/13/9/1288.htm
    http://www.fas.org/biosecurity/resource/agents.htm
    http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/WM104.cfm

    http://www.slic2.wsu.edu:82/hurlbert/micro101/pages/101biologicalweapons.html

    "If you took a gram of smallpox, which is highly contagious and lethal, and for which there’s no vaccine available globally now, and released it in the air and created about a hundred cases, the chances are excellent that the virus would go global in six weeks as people moved from city to city……the death toll could easily hit the hundreds of millions…..in scale, that’s like a nuclear war."

     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2008
  20. Real

    Real Dumb and Dumbest

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    Israel having nuclear capability is an understatement. They're packing quite a punch.
     

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