Talk:Suitcase bomb
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This article should mention that, even if any such Soviet-era "suitcase nukes" had fallen into the wrong hands, the fact remains that the fissile cores would have decayed into duds years ago. They'd only be valuable as crappy "dirty bombs" (and there are so many better substances to use than uranium or plutonium) or for the fissile material inside, and that itself would only be worth anything to people who already have nuclear weapons programs.
- Why assume that the plutonium or uranium would have decayed enough to be useless in a weapon? Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, so if the bombs were made even as early as the 1970s (which is, I believe, around when the USSR would have been able to miniaturize their arsenal to that degree), it would still have some 99.92% of its original plutonium, would it not? I'm not a physicist but I'm not sure why that amount of time would render them completely duds. I'd be more worried about the chemical explosive degrading than I would the cores. The US replaces its cores sooner than that but that is because they set the threshhold very high, of course. I'm betting that most weapons made in the 1970s would still detonate today. And since the Soviet weapons could have been made as late as the end of the 1980s, that's even more time. Anyway, I'd want to see an official source saying such a thing before I'd want it on this page. Uranium-235 has a half-life of some 700 million years, according to our page on it. --Fastfission 02:08, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
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Image should be fair-use. Its source is not identified, and it's all over the Internet. -- Victor 22:06 10 May 2004
Apparently the image is of Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana) from 2000 with a hypothetical mock-up of a suitcase nuclear weapon. However whether Soviet bombs exist or not -- or whether they would look anything like this -- is still highly dubious. --Fastfission 00:26, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Isn't there a more professional word for "suitcase nukes?" I mean, "Suitcase-sized nuclear explosives" would sound stupid. -- Victor
The problem is that when people talk about "suitcase nukes," they usually just say "suitcase bomb" and don't differentiate between conventional suitcase bombs like those used in attacks on Israeli buses or on airplanes. I suppose the most "professional" way to talk about it would be something like "a nuclear weapon small enough to fit into a suitcase," because that's what it is really about -- the size of it, not the suitcase (they could be in a backpack or a trash can or any other receptical). A nuclear weapon capable of being carried clandestinely by one individual is a real psychological threat because it is much more likely to be stolen and secretly deployed than a typical nuclear bomb or warhead, which way many tons and are only deliverable typically by plane or missile. So maybe, "highly miniaturized nuclear warheads," but we'd really just be making up our own terminology on that one. --Fastfission 05:45, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Why I removed the link about OBL and suitcase nukes
I removed the following link [1] about bin Laden purchasing suitcase nukes for two reasons: 1. the source is unbashedly partisan and 2. many of the claims are pretty hard to swallow and are not, in my mind, accepted as being plausible by society at large (that OBL had hundreds of ex-Soviet nuclear physicists working in Afghanistan with tons of sophisticated enrichment equipment -- and where did they all disappear to? why didn't we find mountains of evidence of this? and if OBL has had suitcase nukes since the early '90s, why hasn't he used them yet? hasn't he had ample opportunity, what with the USA invading Afghanistan in 2002? It doesn't add up). If you can find a better source for this, that would be fine, but as it stands, it's the equivalent of linking to tabloids. --Fastfission 04:35, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
"Even if such weapons do exist, and have been lost or stolen, the dangers of a terrorist organization getting its hands on them may be highly overestimated, given the logistical difficulties of advertising, seeking, and actively purchasing such a politically and economically valuable device in total secrecy."
this is total bollocks. go look "meet the stans", a 4pt-documentary about kazahstan, uzbekistan, etc., broadcasted by BBC and CBC, available at fileshare-networks. simon reeve is just a normal reporter, and he walks into unguarded places, you won't believe they exist. THEY DO!
- Mmm, so one BBC documentary of questionable veracity about the difficulties of infrastructure in various eastern bloc countries (unguarded, but what was in them?), and suddenly a line about the difficulties in purchasing something like nuclear weapons on the blackmarket becomes "total bollocks"? I don't think so... --Fastfission 01:34, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
How about including this link [2] it talks about suitcase bombs from Russia, there existence, the decay of the tritium neutron generators neccessary to detonate such a device, the possible scenarios for loss of these devices, and much more. It conludes that the threat is remote and secondary to other threats.
- Looks good! I added the link and a note about the tritium. --Fastfission 23:41, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Decay
You can make bombs that won't decay for a long time you can use an artificial element that was created in a partical accelerator or something I dont't really see much point in a suitcase bomb you can put a bomb in the trunk of a car or in the back of a van Dudtz 7/25/05 4:15 EST
- Mmm, what an insightful comment! --Fastfission 01:26, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Report from Monterey Institute
It my personal opinion that authors of this report were trying to hide the truth for some reason. They did not say a word about GRU defector Lunev, although they knew very well about his existence (he gave a testimony to US Congress, as far as I know). Biophys 03:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
