Let me see if I have this right. You do not need any physical evidence from a nuclear detonation to determine all the design details, material sources, and country of origin, just a WAG?
A country that you are proposing to nuke without warning?
No that is not what I am saying, of course you need a sample of the debris of the explosion of the device that you wish to identify as to its origin and or origins, the evidence will be everywhere and easily to obtain if you detonated over your country.
What you do not need however, is a sample of the debris of an exactly identical device to use as a positive reference point to identify devices origins. You can both track down the origins of the materials used within the devise and the histories of the device’s design, construction, storage, refurbishment, modification, and method of use without having a sample of an exactly identical device. These weapons have developmental histories that are well documented in libraries. The reason that governments went to great deal of trouble in the past to collect the both the intentional and unintentional retroactive debris of nuclear bombs was to create these libraries and track them over time. Devices come in families and are developed over time from processes that require strict control and thus are stable over time but not completely so, and all have unique properties common specifically to those families, types, ages, and upgrades. Even if you got together a bunch of geniuses to put together a bomb that was made from (parts of this) and from (parts of that), detailed analyses would probably be ably to identify most of the origins of the parts and materials. I hope this dose not scare you too much.
Response to nuclear attack through proxy ?
- Thread starter Tomte47
- Start date
I did not say you needed samples from the detonation of an identical weapon. What you need are samples of the nuclear materials produced from the same facilities that provided the material for that bomb. These will work even if you cannot identity the design of the bomb.
You can identify the source of the nuclear materials in the bomb if you have several samples from the facility that processed it. You may even be able to determine where the ore was mined for any uranium components. As for identifying the sources of the materials used besides the nuclear material, there will not be enough extractable evidence left to even started, because the only way to identify which atoms might have been in the bomb is by their radioactive state. Most will have half-lives too short to collect and identify, and in any case it will not be possible to determine what part of the bomb they were used in.
Most of what is in the libraries if from the open air tests. We have much less information on the underground tests, and almost no data on the ones that are a complete camouflet. That is why the USA and the USSR had shifted almost exclusively to deep underground testing even before the open air test ban was signed.
None of which will do you any good if the device is cobbled up by a bunch of semi-educated fanatics from nuclear materials obtained in multiple purchases (some of which may well be much less than advertized) from black market smugglers, who got it from multiple sources. Then fabricated using a crude design based on information in the public domain. It will not be efficient, probably less that 20kT from materials that a nuclear power could easily get 200kT out of, it may well be only be a ‘fizzle’, but in the eyes of the Press it will be a nuke. And nothing like it may have ever been tested before, or after. Even the nuclear material will, in all likelihood, be an unidentifiable hodge-podge mixed from multiple sources.
I must disagree. First even deep underground blasts have released very small but measurable quantities of byproducts. And all too often the countries of concern will reopen the detonation chamber to evaluate their weapon’s full characteristics; this is imperative if they have never had, an above ground tests, to gather the accurate yield data to compare with their seismic data. Also any tools, other equipment, and even people that came into conduct with harmless low level amounts of debris will have trace transference to analyze. Are these people as careful with their used tools to the point that can not be gathered up by a smart intelligence agency? Spies are also a factor though not a great one.
I do not know where you received your scientific education but here is a refresher. Though you are correct that many of the nuclides have short half life’s, they all eventually decay into isotopes of ether a stable type or in to ones of a much longer half life, (radiogenic nuclide’s) . It is the ratio of the various isotopic populations that made it relatively easy to trace back to the original ratios existing before the blast which gives the fingerprints. The sensitivity of the equipment in use today in the order of, fractions of parts per billion.
I am not a nuclear scientist or even technician but I knew a few Nuclear Power people back in the Navy and what they could do even thirty years ago was and still is, just amazing.
As to your" Even the nuclear material will, in all likelihood, be an unidentifiable hodge-podge mixed from multiple sources." There are not realy that many sources.
People do not go in to examine the cavities until they are completely cooled (a number of months or several years later), it is just too dangerous. For earlier examinations, instruments are lowered into the cavity, and then dropped in to dispose of them rather than decontaminated. Only a few small samples are taken at that point, which must be kept in shielded containers.
The 2006 nuclear test in North Korea leaked, but only a small quantity of Xenon gas which isotopic analysis indicated could be the results of a nuclear detonation, nothing more. The 2009 nuclear test had no detectable leaks.
The problem is the signal to noise ratio. Let us try a couple of analogies, where we are analyzing a sample from 1 randomly selected cubic kilometer of seawater to check for the addition of a known contaminant, a 1 gram of sodium chloride.
Case 1 -- Standard table salt is added, producing a concentration change of approximately 1 part per trillion. Any difference is well within normal variations. We cannot separate our gram of salt from the approximately 20,000,000 tons of naturally occurring salt.
Case 2 – We use salt specially made with Na-22 (half life 2.6 years) instead of Na-23 (stable) and detection is simple, just look for the characteristic radiation signature from approximately 200 atoms of Na-23 decaying per cc of seawater per second. Using micro-chemistry this still cannot be confirmed. The decay product is neon-23 (stable), not that it makes any difference in detecting it chemically.
The simple fact is that it is extremely easy to detect the presence of particular radioactive isotopes. First, because only a few isotopes exist naturally. Secondly, because each isotope emits radiation only at specific frequencies when it decays, it is easy to mask out the naturally occurring radioactive isotopes. Atoms of stable decay isotopes are typically obscured by the quantities of the same isotope already existing in the same environment.
Outside of a hard vacuum, you can detect every stable isotope nearly everywhere, even if it is only at a few a few hundred atoms per liter. Which is the concentrations that you will be looking for in the debris of a nuclear detonation.
And no one of those sources match the composition of the sample.
The nuclear component of professionally designed nuclear weapons is ‘tweaked’ to minimize the differences between each set of components. This uniformity is what allows precision designs based on experience from testing to produce smaller, more powerful, weapons and allows mass production. None of which are factors in a ‘one off’ bomb built from illegally obtained nuclear materials.
I think I understand your problem. You are looking at the various technical difficulties of doing the fine grain analyses, and seeing all the many potential problems and then assuming that they can not be overcome because there are so many challenges. In many cases this would not be an unreasonable assumption but in this case it is different.
A very large number of very smart people have been working on this problem for over sixty years now. These people worke side by side with the people that make our bombs so they are not working in the dark. We have spent a great deal of money and time working on this very problem long before the threat of terrorists and the more recent appearance of bad actors came into being. It was always a very high national priority to establish the source of any nuclear detonation. Like, was the bomb that was just dropped on DC Russian or Chinese? The importance of which I think you can understand was critical even forty years ago. I remember back in the sixties when they said that you could never hit a built with a built. That ABM defense was imposable because it was just too hard and there were many problems that had to be over come but over the years each of those problems were solved. No matter how difficult the problem, as long as you do not violate physical laws, it is only a function of time and money.
As to small radioactive leaks from underground explosions, you sighted the one in North Korea as if that was the only one. Not every low level leak that has occurred over the years has been reported in the press.
No, I sited them as examples. Not every underground explosion produces a DETECTABLE leak.
No. I am aware of the physical limitations as well as the technological ones. It is not always a matter of applying sufficient brain power over a limited amount of time, if that were so then Unified Field Theory would have been cracked years ago. Some problems are just hard, and some do not have solutions. Theoretically you could create a computer model that could trace every particle back to its point of origin, but that would require exact current position and momentum values for every particle as a starting point for the calculation. This would require violating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in a massive way.
The ABM defense was a technology problem only, given a description of the problem the specifications for a successful ABM system could have produced back in the 1920’s. In fact there are a number of science fiction writers who got close, given that radar would not exist for another 15 years, or programmable computers for over 20.
We can detect every element that is a nuclear fireball (which will include every naturally occurring element, no matter how little), but we cannot tell if the blasting caps used were manufactures in Uzbekistan or Illinois, or even if something else was used. We can detect and separate the signals from the radioactive materials that do not occur in nature, precisely because they do not occur in nature.
Ok, so we have got half way to the problem as I quote you.
“We can detect every element that is a nuclear fireball (which will include every naturally occurring element, no matter how little), but we cannot tell if the blasting caps used were manufactures in Uzbekistan or Illinois, or even if something else was used. We can detect and separate the signals from the radioactive materials that do not occur in nature, precisely because they do not occur in nature.”
So that leaves the second part of the problem to address, taking that information from the fire ball and tracing it back to the origins of the components, from the data gained from the spectrum of the decay products. Besides the library of previous nuclear tests already mentioned, there are other tell tails to consider. In many cases the precision of the parts required, (especially as to all issues that operate within the domain of time) which are necessary to construct a functioning bomb means that the sources for these components are few, (blasting caps are not nearly precise enough to ever work). Those component sources have acquired unique skills in making those critical components that may in fact only do very simple things, so simple as just to act like a switch. These skills and the process used to construct them, which are in themselves completely unrelated to those of designing and building a bomb but are never-the-less still required to make one work is the reason why you need a complete infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons but even so. Those parts which have duel use, which are available outside the weapon chain establishment, in ether restricted or unrestricted form, often have tracers built into them. Many of the components that can be used for explosives, both for chemical and nuclear use, have trace elements deliberately incorporated into them of a type that would not be a natural contaminate of the manufacturing process for the very purpose of later identifying those components from the debris of the explosion. Often you can trace it back not only to the original manufacture but to a particular batch. If an explosion were to occur and there were no tracers found or some tracers from some components but not from others that would be information of a kind in its own right. You see there is more to this story than you have assumed.
Those trace elements, called taggants, are complex microstructures that can only be read if you can if you can obtain them as intact pieces of debris. This may be possible in the case of a fizzle, or failed detonation, if the bomb material is not completely vaporized. The yield would have to be less 0.050 kT for that, probably much less. Otherwise you end up with the ‘salt-in-seawater’ analogy I mentioned earlier, and that is to detect the materials that the taggants were made from, the actual taggants no longer exist as such.
Also, the cruder the weapon, the fewer the number of those critical components are needed. If they build a gun-type weapon (look up ‘Little Boy’ or Hiroshima Bomb) then they probably do not need any if they know enough chemistry to make the small quantity of RDX required from scratch. To do it right would require weapons grade uranium, but even using weapons grade plutonium you should be able of getting a yield of several kT.
The tracers used in devices that have nuclear weapons potential, do not rely upon the chemical arrangement of elements to perform their function, though they may have that capacity as well. The tracers consist of small amounts of an introduced nuclei of a highly isotropic enriched elements rarely found in nature that relay upon neutron bombardment during the explosion to perform their intended function. The nuclei selected will be ones that readily accept neutrons that will change their atomic number, and in many cases, will become highly radioactive themselves. The additional cascade of daughter products (the transmutation of elements through bombardment and decay), some of which may be additionally radioactive adds to the strength of the signal.
You may argue that the amount of the tracer within the bomb will be so small, as compared with the overall debris, that they will not be detectable from the rest of the fall out, especially from a ground level detonation. But the fact that you are looking for the comparative ratios of radioactive nuclei which are different and distinct from the normal radioactive by products of the detonation and are not just looking at the distribution of normal chemical elements, means that the tracers can be detected and can be counted, on an atom, by atom bases, giving you the ratios you need.
As far as I know the methods and equipment used for this kind of quantitative analyses, even as used within the civilian sector, (leak detection mainly) are the most sensitive and accurate of any type known to man. When added to other sources of information available to the decision makers it will become the smoking gun that they will require in order for them to act.
Using your simplest case, the (little Boy bomb) I am not sure that would be the way a terrorist would first go. The Little Boy bomb required a lot of highly enriched uranium for a relative small blast. Not that it wouldn’t be worth it for them no mater how wasteful it would be but to get that much highly enriched uranium together, all at the same time, would be more difficult (for the longer it takes to get the required materials to gether the more likely they would be found out), than by using less uranium. And then using other methods to increase the neutron flux density to reach criticality.
Many of the nucular weapons used to day, i. e. Hydrogen Bombs (fission-fusion-fission), do not have enough highly enriched uranium within them to even detonate without using enhancements to incress the neutron flux density to get the necessary chain reaction going.
Should work if you can get enough of the tracer elements into the component. Depends on the neutron absorption cross-section of the isotope and the normal distribution of fission products, but probably somewhere between 0.1gr. – 10gr. of each isotope. Only the radioactive byproducts would be identifiable in a significant event (>1 kT).
Several countries have uranium based bomb programs (North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran for sure. South Africa use to.). None of those countries could be considered secure from theft of materials.
But a gun type bomb can easily be built with plutonium to produce a high yield fizzle, say 0.1 kT to 1 kT. An implosion device would have a much better yield, but requires a number of your easily traceable parts. Which, obviously, makes it much more vulnerable to capture in the construction and transportation phases of the operation.
Beatmaster
New Member
Iam not sure if terrorists can get their hands on nukes, and if so then it will be not a complete nuke or warhead, but probably just a dirty bomb.
Non the less still, imagine a dirty bomb in a city like new york, or a chemical agent....:crazy
Thats not going to be funny.
However if the source can be traced back towards a foreign goverment then the option to drop a nuke in return becomes real i think.
Aside from the worldwide manhunt as the US will do whatever it takes to get its hands on the "mastermind" who planned this.
But depending on the damage and casualties i think that if (for example) a nation would plan this then this nation will suffer serious military and economic punishement not to mention the international pressure and anger they are going to face. And that is if they are lucky :flame
And if this terrorist act is done by a rebel group or some rogue warlord then i think that this warlord would have to run and hide for the rest of his life (If they can trace it back) Because as i said the US will call upon every ally, goverment, and human/asset to find this person or group.
And will probably use any means to achieve this.
On a side note: If this would happen wich is not that unreal as there are weapons and chemical agents out there and accesible for rich terrorist groups, then the US has another battle to fight as there will be some heads rolling in D.C and there will be some serious questions about national security.
Because after all the security laws that the last 10 years where enabled you might assume that the US goverment did go to great lenghts to secure its own borders.
So if this would happen then there will be hell to pay in the pentagon just to make sure that this is not going to happen a second time.
Because keep in mind if 1 person/group would be able to pull this off then you can be sure that others might try this as well.
I mean lets face it there are loads of rebel/rogue groups and goverments out there who are not exactly friends with the west or with the US in this case.
However in order to get such a action done you need to have some serious connections wich means that such a terrorist act would only be possible for a few groups and goverments.
I mean you are not delivering a everyday letter... so you will need to be able to carry out cover-ops to the highest level in order to be able to pull this off in the first place.
So my question is wich groups would have the assests do carry such a thing out?
Non the less still, imagine a dirty bomb in a city like new york, or a chemical agent....:crazy
Thats not going to be funny.
However if the source can be traced back towards a foreign goverment then the option to drop a nuke in return becomes real i think.
Aside from the worldwide manhunt as the US will do whatever it takes to get its hands on the "mastermind" who planned this.
But depending on the damage and casualties i think that if (for example) a nation would plan this then this nation will suffer serious military and economic punishement not to mention the international pressure and anger they are going to face. And that is if they are lucky :flame
And if this terrorist act is done by a rebel group or some rogue warlord then i think that this warlord would have to run and hide for the rest of his life (If they can trace it back) Because as i said the US will call upon every ally, goverment, and human/asset to find this person or group.
And will probably use any means to achieve this.
On a side note: If this would happen wich is not that unreal as there are weapons and chemical agents out there and accesible for rich terrorist groups, then the US has another battle to fight as there will be some heads rolling in D.C and there will be some serious questions about national security.
Because after all the security laws that the last 10 years where enabled you might assume that the US goverment did go to great lenghts to secure its own borders.
So if this would happen then there will be hell to pay in the pentagon just to make sure that this is not going to happen a second time.
Because keep in mind if 1 person/group would be able to pull this off then you can be sure that others might try this as well.
I mean lets face it there are loads of rebel/rogue groups and goverments out there who are not exactly friends with the west or with the US in this case.
However in order to get such a action done you need to have some serious connections wich means that such a terrorist act would only be possible for a few groups and goverments.
I mean you are not delivering a everyday letter... so you will need to be able to carry out cover-ops to the highest level in order to be able to pull this off in the first place.
So my question is wich groups would have the assests do carry such a thing out?
My argument of a possible massive retaliation in the event of a nuclear weapon being detonated on US soil dose not extend to most of the dirty bomb cases that have been put forward. I don’t think unless, there are extremely high civilian causalities we would go all out and nuke all the bad people in the world. That doesn’t mean we would not be far more aggressive in dealing with those governments and groups that have even tangentially supported terrorists, like bombing them with convention weapons or the use economic blockades,or even selective strikes to take out their leaderships and the like, but it would not extend to destroying complete cities, which is what the nuclear option really means after all.
I think by and large the dirty bomb threats are over stated. Most of the dirty bomb attack plans I have heard being talked about, are not much more than hazardous materials spills with some added dispersal agents. Governments deal with similar incidents every day and of every kind. Hazardous materials are common in every day life and they are transported in great qualities and accidents do happen. The attraction of a dirtily bomb to the terrorist is besides the psychological part of anything assonated with nuclear (Ho my God! Nuclear.) is that the quantities that can do great damages are so small, but not as small or as dangerous as some biologicals. That added with the possibility that they could possibly be put into position very close to unusually large concentrations of vulnerable people, like sporting events. An association of risks that would be very unlikely to never happen in an industrial or transportation setting, in which those hazardous materials are usually confined and exposed to people are ar least some what prepared to deal with them.
The confluences of factors to make a spectacular attack, an attack that will cower the American people into submission, (in the minds of the terrorist’s at least) are few and the risks of a failure very great because this is what is expected. An attack on some ordinary every day American activity is far more likely to succeed but would the results be worth the effort?
Beatmaster
New Member
Aha...well the only thing i can say, from what i have seen and what i have been told dirty bombs come in all kinds.
Most of them just have a big bang and some destruction, but dirty bombs can be very very nasty.
Specially when chemicals or bio agents are mixed in it.
It might be not a nuke then....but the casualties do not lie.
However getting a older type nukewarhead and rebuild it to a pocket size bomb aint that unreal.
In the past similair things have been discovered by agency's world wide.
Its rare.....very rare but by far not impossible.
I mean a nuke dropped by plane or from a rocket you will see it comming....but some truck with a bomb crate...can be missed during shipping checks and such.
And then the danger becomes real very real.
If i recall correctly there was a national test in the US where they simulated such a scenario and the outcome would be that its actually very easy to get a hidden bomb on US soil.
* Note with very easy i mean compared to the wide security nationwide.
Also other nations world wide did some tests and nearly all faced the same problem that they could not stop it from happening as they where able to detect 80% of all the shipping and transport of goods but somehow if planned correctly it would be perfectly possible to get a nuke into the US.
Most of them just have a big bang and some destruction, but dirty bombs can be very very nasty.
Specially when chemicals or bio agents are mixed in it.
It might be not a nuke then....but the casualties do not lie.
However getting a older type nukewarhead and rebuild it to a pocket size bomb aint that unreal.
In the past similair things have been discovered by agency's world wide.
Its rare.....very rare but by far not impossible.
I mean a nuke dropped by plane or from a rocket you will see it comming....but some truck with a bomb crate...can be missed during shipping checks and such.
And then the danger becomes real very real.
If i recall correctly there was a national test in the US where they simulated such a scenario and the outcome would be that its actually very easy to get a hidden bomb on US soil.
* Note with very easy i mean compared to the wide security nationwide.
Also other nations world wide did some tests and nearly all faced the same problem that they could not stop it from happening as they where able to detect 80% of all the shipping and transport of goods but somehow if planned correctly it would be perfectly possible to get a nuke into the US.
There is no such thing as perfect security but 80% lapse is far fetched also.
Chances of getting caught with radioactive material (i.e. nuke) into U.S. are much higher than anything else. Biological and chemical agents can be of serious concern.
Making RDD or dirty bomb from radioactive materials is quite risky. Radioactive materials like plutonium or cobalt-60 will kill the handler if he is no expert. But if he is an expert chances are he'll get caught since he'll need a proper infrastructure to build workable weapon (be it RDD) - the resources and time he'll require are enough to trigger off intelligence. Plus, this will have to be done on U.S soil to keep the risk of getting caught at borders and ports minimum to zero. Blame would be on U.S alone then.
Beatmaster
New Member
I totally agree with you, thats why i said in my previous post that its very difficult to make a RDD, however there are some "rebel" group out there who have alot of support.
So lets say for example that a "rebel" group gets enough support and aid from a goverment to carry out a covered ops then even if the risks are high it does not guarantee that it fails.
I mean the security of most western nations are for most nations a serious prio.
I think that there is still alot that can be done to ensure security but most intel organisations like, FBI, CIA, NSA, Interpol, SAS and Mosad (Not to mention russian and chinees agency's) to name a few will probably have their stuff well sorted.
But is it enough?
If there is money (if enough) then anything is possible.
Personally i think that ruling out the possibilities of a serious RDD (Or any kind of such terror attacks) would be a massive mistake as history does show us that with the right amount of effort, money and planning even less organised groups can be very very deadly and even with all the security networks around the world they still where able to carry out their missions.
Having that said, IMO a normal group would not be able to pull such a stunt off at least not at a grand scale.
But if a (rogue/evil) agency or goverment has special intrest and thus supporting a rebel group then i believe that any nation can be hit as they have enough time, planning, money and acces to the proper infrastructure and people.
And thats exactly the scary part as you never know how when and where...there is only IF.
Btw you said that the plutonium or cobalt-60 will kill the handler if he is not an expert.
Well personally i think that the guy who is going to create a RDD based upon these components does not care if he dies or not as it is only a matter of time.
If he fails he dies probably and if he has succes he will be dead to cover up the tracks.
And if he surives the previous 2 options then he probably will get shot on sight if they ever find out who he is and what he has done, as others said before, the targetted nation will probably shake heaven and earth upside down to find who ever is responsible for such a attack.
And as i said before if you got money and connections then the proper infrastructure and people are not that big of a problem to obtain.
Iam not sure but there are alot of arms dealers and corrupted highranking peepz out there who can get their hands on the needed stuff and if not they might have at least the right connections.
just my 2 cents
EXSSBN2005
New Member
Fewer than 2 percent of the trucks crossing the border are subject to extensive searches requiring the complete off-loading and inspection of cargo, says Rene Felix, a U.S. Customs supervisory inspector at the commercial-truck crossing in Nogales.
Phoenix
I know that port inspections are a little bit higher percentage but its only about 5% still with the exception of radioactive materials as its harder to modify a shipping container to contain the shielding nessary to fake out the gieger counters due to the nature of radiation thats detectable in relation to the amount needed to be useful if your refining it here in the USA. It could be brought in sufficiently enriched and just needing to be assembled in a private plane of relatively small size, or brought in in a tanker truck as they are not going to check the load out (also helps with shielding) if it is an extremely dangerous / hazardous chemical unless they are suspicious, which if they are nothing will stop them from getting it or just plan luck. The volume of road / rail traffic is such that only small percentage of all cargoes are sufficiently checked hence the idea behind the club - k missle system (sure its not nuclear but Ill try to get back to topic after this slight detour) [nomedia]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6dKCkv1fzs[/nomedia]
fftopic
A chemical weapon might not be as spectacular but it would be alot easier to move it to where it would be used but then again you would be going for cities that are heavily populated.
As for killing themselfs with Co-60 or Pu for a dirty bomb they had a chart in the service showing exposure times and life expectancy at varying levels, (I'm too tired to dig much but here is close to the info, in nuke school it was in a quick reference chart but I cant find that one open source any where [http://www.nukeworker.com/study/hp/..._Biological_Effects_of_Ionizing_Radiation.pdf ] ). Here it is again about 1/2 way down. [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning"]Radiation poisoning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Gisei_Colored.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e8/Gisei_Colored.jpg/230px-Gisei_Colored.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/e/e8/Gisei_Colored.jpg/230px-Gisei_Colored.jpg[/ame] Total probability you would get cought before hand is approx 50% or less, post detonation though they will find the parties responsable to more than 95% of the time, the question as I believe to be the origional intent of the post was what would be the planned response and level of response based on that we could figure out who carried out and financed the attack. Do the governments that would carry out an attack thru proxie hide behind their citizens if the bombs were going the other way. (After reading that the last sentance was really disjointed but I'm too tired to care atm)
Phoenix
I know that port inspections are a little bit higher percentage but its only about 5% still with the exception of radioactive materials as its harder to modify a shipping container to contain the shielding nessary to fake out the gieger counters due to the nature of radiation thats detectable in relation to the amount needed to be useful if your refining it here in the USA. It could be brought in sufficiently enriched and just needing to be assembled in a private plane of relatively small size, or brought in in a tanker truck as they are not going to check the load out (also helps with shielding) if it is an extremely dangerous / hazardous chemical unless they are suspicious, which if they are nothing will stop them from getting it or just plan luck. The volume of road / rail traffic is such that only small percentage of all cargoes are sufficiently checked hence the idea behind the club - k missle system (sure its not nuclear but Ill try to get back to topic after this slight detour) [nomedia]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6dKCkv1fzs[/nomedia]
fftopicA chemical weapon might not be as spectacular but it would be alot easier to move it to where it would be used but then again you would be going for cities that are heavily populated.
As for killing themselfs with Co-60 or Pu for a dirty bomb they had a chart in the service showing exposure times and life expectancy at varying levels, (I'm too tired to dig much but here is close to the info, in nuke school it was in a quick reference chart but I cant find that one open source any where [http://www.nukeworker.com/study/hp/..._Biological_Effects_of_Ionizing_Radiation.pdf ] ). Here it is again about 1/2 way down. [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning"]Radiation poisoning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Gisei_Colored.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e8/Gisei_Colored.jpg/230px-Gisei_Colored.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/e/e8/Gisei_Colored.jpg/230px-Gisei_Colored.jpg[/ame] Total probability you would get cought before hand is approx 50% or less, post detonation though they will find the parties responsable to more than 95% of the time, the question as I believe to be the origional intent of the post was what would be the planned response and level of response based on that we could figure out who carried out and financed the attack. Do the governments that would carry out an attack thru proxie hide behind their citizens if the bombs were going the other way. (After reading that the last sentance was really disjointed but I'm too tired to care atm)
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