Nuclear 9.11

Hendryk

Banned
The thing i would wonder if Al-Qaeda would dare to claim this attack. As they will be hunted down by 120 countries at the same time untill all of them and people suspected of being one of them are hanging from a tree or smoldering in a big crater. Radioactive crater even. Countries that harbor terrorists will be invaded by its neighbors(if not, these countries will be invaded as well), the USA and the EU untill every trace of terrorism will be gone.

Well, that is what i hope will happen at least.
And this kind of toxic wish fulfilment is why so many of us are wary of nuclear terrorism WIs. They almost always turn out to be a thinly veiled excuse to speculate about nuking the Middle East.
 

Eurofed

Banned
And this kind of toxic wish fulfilment is why so many of us are wary of nuclear terrorism WIs. They almost always turn out to be a thinly veiled excuse to speculate about nuking the Middle East.

Like sex porn, there has always been, and always shall be, a demand for revenge porn. ;)
 

MacCaulay

Banned
And this kind of toxic wish fulfilment is why so many of us are wary of nuclear terrorism WIs. They almost always turn out to be a thinly veiled excuse to speculate about nuking the Middle East.

Precisely.

Like sex porn, there has always been, and always shall be, a demand for revenge porn. ;)

That's why, the one time I responded to one of those awful "DBWI: OMG! Washington got nuked!!11!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!11!" with a post about HAZMAT and emergency services responses, I got ignored. No one gives a shit about reality, they just want to turn it into a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.
 

boredatwork

Banned
while a nuclear 9-11 would almost certainly lead to nuclear strikes (tactical at least, possibly intermediate as well) on various parts of the middle east, I have no idea why folks are so eager to contemplate such a scenario.

My guess is that they have been fortunate enough not to experience up close and personal a lot of death and dying in real life. The slow lingering painful sort of death that cancer, starvation, poisoning, and radiation sickness would bring to millions in such scenarios, is, in my limited experience, one of the most depressing aspects of the human condition.

Why folks would devote their free time to marinating their minds in such misery is baffling. Especially this close to the holidays.


Why not an optimistic (relatively) scenario?

What if one or both the NYC planes ended up hitting the Hudson, or overshooting into battery park or governors island?

What if the pentagon plane overshot into arlington national cemetery, or the Mall?

You still have the massive scary terrorist attack, but with far fewer deaths, there would be much less pressure on GWB to move away from the relative isolationism of his campaign & first months.
 

burmafrd

Banned
It took several years to set up 9/11. I see no reason why several years could not be used to get the machinery and find those able to use it - use enough money and you can usually get someone to do what you want. There are many skilled machinists in places like India and elsewhere in the 3rd world who could do it. It would not be hard to find some there willing to do anything for a lot of money. Probably could find some in the first world as well. There is no reason it cannot be done.
 

Enji_Daimyo

Banned
Nope, not concentrated enough.

You could get a slow reaction with pure UO2 enriched to 3-4% U-235.
With a uranium ore, we are talking about <0,1% U in the rock, with just 0,7% of it being U-235.

So: nothing happens except we get a big radioactive hole in the ground.

thank you. I wasn't sure so thought Id ask someone smarter on that part then myself.
 
We'd make Iraq and Afghanistan in OTL look like a joke! Try 2x, 3x the amount of troops today, from just America. America would have a lot more supporters for a war in Iraq too I'm sure, on both a domestic and international scale. The only problem with nuking terrorists is that they're guerillas, you don't know where they are, and they're a small force at best. While we may have international support, it'd just be a waste of a nuke in the middle-east. The only possible target, assuming we just fight Iraq and Afghanistan, is Baghdad. And, nukes actually, just thinking about it, would probably just piss off the terrorists even more.
 
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MacCaulay

Banned
It took several years to set up 9/11. I see no reason why several years could not be used to get the machinery and find those able to use it - use enough money and you can usually get someone to do what you want. There are many skilled machinists in places like India and elsewhere in the 3rd world who could do it. It would not be hard to find some there willing to do anything for a lot of money. Probably could find some in the first world as well. There is no reason it cannot be done.

Okay...here's the problem with all this. Let's say you get a killer setup guy. He's been working at John Deere for 20 years, and he can do the machining and fixture construction for you, assuming of course that you've got god knows how much money to throw away scrapping (steel?)bomb casings.
Any machine that would get sold in the 3rd World (Iraq is a good example, as it actually happened) is usually beat up and needs reconditioning. That's not something a machinist knows how to do. Sure, I can do a setup on a lathe, but if the spindle's crooked or the turret is busted I'm just another Teamster standing around on company time.
So, you hire a technician (at around 400 bucks an hour) to fix this machine. Then you pay him to keep quiet about that week that he spent fixing a Mori-Seiki in the middle of nowhere to make god knows what for a bunch of guys named Al Kyda.

Long story short, if you want to make a nuclear bomb yourself, it's possible. The machinery is there, mostly from Japan, Germany, and America. But you're basically going to have to buy your own machine shop in order to build everything reliably. No one ever said DIY was cheap.
 
We'd make Iraq and Afghanistan in OTL look like a joke! Try 2x, 3x the amount of troops today, from just America. America would have a lot more supporters for a war in Iraq too I'm sure, on both a domestic and international scale. The only problem with nuking terrorists is that they're guerillas, you don't know where they are, and they're a small force at best. While we may have international support, it'd just be a waste of a nuke in the middle-east. The only real target, assuming we just fight Iraq and Afghanistan, is Baghdad. And, nukes actually, just thinking about it, would probably just piss off the terrorists even more.

Even in that case, the only case I imagine for the use of a (small) nuke is a terrorist camp away from any habitation, and only in the initial days of the war to make a point without making too many new enemies. Even then, a conventional carpet bombing or a FAE is more likely.
Nobody will use a nuke on Baghdad. Firstly, counter-population strikes are out of fashion since 1950s, outside of popular fiction; and secondly, whatever targets there are in Baghdad, they can be destroyed by far cheaper and more efficient conventional ammunition.

So, except more troops / equipment / money, I don't think the response will be different from OTL.
 
So, except more troops / equipment / money, I don't think the response will be different from OTL.

Expect also a lot less support from allies, since nukes ARE scary, most Europe will shy away from a confrntation with people that could do it again in, say, Madrid in 2002, pretending higher moral ground in face of the devasting counterstrike that the U.S. will surely deliver...
 
Well, even in OTL, there were some who suggested the use of tactical nukes against possible targets. (Someone from the McKenzie Institute mentioned the possibility on CBC.*)

*I'm not that familiar with Canadian politics, so I'm not sure how right-wing the McKenzie Institute is. As for how I watched CBC on 9/11, my mom was a fan of HSN, which showed Newsworld International after the attacks. (My hometown doesn't get CBC, despite having a major business owned by RBC in my hometown, the former Bowater HQ in my hometown, and a Magna Automotive plant nearby. I CAN watch The National online, though...)
 
Even in that case, the only case I imagine for the use of a (small) nuke is a terrorist camp away from any habitation, and only in the initial days of the war to make a point without making too many new enemies. Even then, a conventional carpet bombing or a FAE is more likely.
... whatever targets there are in Baghdad, they can be destroyed by far cheaper and more efficient conventional ammunition.
:confused:
I meant to agree with you! I must really suck at writing clearly! (it makes sense to me) I was arguing with someone I forgot to quote saying that we would nuke the crap out of the middle east. (They appeared to have deleted it) I said that Baghdad would be the only real (which I meant more as possible) place in the two current countries America is fighting in that could be seen as a nuclear target, if America was that much for nuking the Middle east to make a point (which Baghdad would still suck as a target), seeming how you really can't hit any large guerrilla camps, that would defeat the point of being a guerilla band. America would definitely use the conventional weapons that they are using today, and not risk their reputation further abroad.
 

burmafrd

Banned
There was some discussion about using a tactical nuke on Tora Bora to make sure we got Osama and his top people. In the end we tried to get to them quickly with mostly local troops and SF and failed. Hindsighters now claim we should have sent in a full division. Which at that time we could not have logistically supported; even if we sent in an airborne division finding a place to drop that many paratroopers in THAT terrain was pretty much impossible.
 
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