IS - We'll buy nuclear weapon within 12 months.

[Hugo a Gogo]

in fact, if you had the radioactive material to spread about, why would you need the bomb to disperse it anyway? why not just scatter about the streets? or supermarkets/train stations/schools
same effect, less noisy delivery

[Timmy40]

drivetrain said:

Timmy40 said:

I won't spend all day typing a huge essay on here, but here's a link to an article that sums up fairly succinctly where ISIS came from, and what they believe.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/0...

An interesting read, thanks.

I think the best thing to sum them up is saying "imagine David Koresh and the Branch Davidians had gained control of an area the size of the UK". Same mindset as the Branch Davidians in the aptly named Waco. Just with a lot more money and in a part of the world where a medieval mindset can still flourish, which is I think what's befuddled Western politicians.

[Mr Whippy]

They won't be buying anything if western governments stop funding fundamentalist nob jockeys to blow stuff up.

[dirty boy]

Going slightly off at a tangent here, but with modern technology, can the UK or USA or whoever, restrict certain places to the internet?

Might sound silly, but we forgot to pay our BT bill last year (change of bank) and we simply got blocked from using it.

Surely we're in a position to prevent IS or that region from having access to it and subsequently make their communications very difficult? What obvious things am I missing here?

Back on topic more or less, what happens if we pull out of Iraq completely and leave them to it?

[s2art]

dirty boy said:

Going slightly off at a tangent here, but with modern technology, can the UK or USA or whoever, restrict certain places to the internet?

Might sound silly, but we forgot to pay our BT bill last year (change of bank) and we simply got blocked from using it.

Surely we're in a position to prevent IS or that region from having access to it and subsequently make their communications very difficult? What obvious things am I missing here?

Back on topic more or less, what happens if we pull out of Iraq completely and leave them to it?

If it were possible, how do you stop just IS? In Iraq the bulk of the people are not IS, similarly in Syria. Do you potentially cripple the economies of the non-IS to hurt IS?

[Timmy40]

s2art said:

Do you potentially cripple the economies of the non-IS to hurt IS?

IS will do that themselves. It's very sad, but actually I can't see any other alternative than letting IS run it's course. Sooner or later they will become very unpopular, and it will be sooner if we don't send any ground troops in which is what they want.

[s2art]

Timmy40 said:

s2art said:

Do you potentially cripple the economies of the non-IS to hurt IS?

IS will do that themselves. It's very sad, but actually I can't see any other alternative than letting IS run it's course. Sooner or later they will become very unpopular, and it will be sooner if we don't send any ground troops in which is what they want.

But its too easy to work around a regional blocking. Just install proxy servers in a neighboring state and route everything through them. I doubt there are many (any) of the states in the vicinity that would try and stop such a thing, even if they could detect it. In which case you would have to block access to at least the middle east, and even then that may not prevent Pakistani providers, so where do you stop?

Edited by s2art on Wednesday 27th May 16:25

[Digga]

The other problem with 'fighting' ISIS is that essentially the conflict is also about the boundary between Eastern and Western ideals and culture. It is impossible to disentangle the fringes of extremism and Islam from some of the things we in the West hold dear - equality and sexual freedom being the crux - and therefore extremely ill-advised to go into a conflict without clear boundaries and objectives.

[AreOut]

Vipers said:

We should be good to them and just give them a nuclear bomb for free.

Preferably dropped from about 5,000 feet.

you would want to fly a VERY fast bomber to drop the nuke from that altitude...

[s2art]

AreOut said:

Vipers said:

We should be good to them and just give them a nuclear bomb for free.

Preferably dropped from about 5,000 feet.

you would want to fly a VERY fast bomber to drop the nuke from that altitude...

TSR2 might have been able to do it.

[AJL308]

knitware said:

Good grief, calm down chaps and have a word with yourselves.

It's takes billions in cash and some rather clever people to create, deploy and detonate a nuke and that is with a lot help from various government departments and help from the best minds on the planet plus a work force of skilled engineers, chemists, physicists, scientists. Also a manufacturing capability say in a few hundred acres, and other items. Neutron source, a moderator, explosive facility, oh yes, a deployment strategy, a few million terraflops of computing power and a huge amount of other resource, power would be good, so a power plant and a huge amount of cash. Oh and all this has to be hidden.

You can't just drop Uranium from a great height or hit it with a hammer to 'set if off'.

Now, sit down and have a think. How would sand rats buy a nuke, deploy it, detonate it and make sure all of this is done in the right area without anyone knowing until the big bang. It can't happen, it's comic book journalism. ISIS can shout ally snakbar all they wan't but it ain't going to change the fact the only thing they are good at is playing at being 14th century only with bullets.

Unimaginative rubbish akin to Elvis on the moon.

Edited by knitware on Sunday 24th May 01:19

I have to agree with this. If ISIS can 'buy' a nuclear weapon then why hasn't one of the more established terrorist organisations done so already?

North Korea has detonated a couple but that was after putting their entire national effort into building them and with probably no insignificant support from the Chinese. Whether they actually have anything which is deliverable or not is an entirely different matter! Their bombs may be the size of a house and so of no practical value unless the fat leader want to go out in a massive blaze of glory one day.

If you can simply go out and buy a nuclear device then why didn't they just do that?

Where is this mythical weapon going to appear from? Nuclear states keep their weapons under pretty close protection and they are under international audit as well for disarmament treaty purposes. Nuclear armed states aren't likely to be selling any of their inventory for pretty obvious reasons. None have ever admitted to any ever having been stolen and any accidental losses are accounted for; either the weapon was recovered or was deemed irrecoverable or destroyed.

Quite simply - where is one going to come from?

ajl

[AJL308]

cymtriks said:

If it so easy to make a nuclear bomb why have so few states built one?

And this is the key point. The USA spent billions in the 1940's designing them. It wasn't all spent on making the stuff which goes bang and using the few hundred bucks left over on an old tank gun breech.

ajl

[s2art]

AJL308 said:

cymtriks said:

If it so easy to make a nuclear bomb why have so few states built one?

And this is the key point. The USA spent billions in the 1940's designing them. It wasn't all spent on making the stuff which goes bang and using the few hundred bucks left over on an old tank gun breech.

ajl

And yet the UK built one on a shoestring a few years later. It can be done.

[llewop]

Wow! Go out for the day and this thread explodes with speculation (even more than before), misunderstandings, lack of understanding and just plain wrong!

So far the prize goes to:

Gecko1978 said:

Not sure of the exact science etc so you may be right or wrong but. Picture this I have a car or a van full of old xray machine stuff. I blow it up radiation spread over a large area. Now the radition maybe so low as to make no difference but the word radiation would terrify people and would you go back to work if they said it glows a bit but not a lot at night...

er - if you have 'a car or a van full of old xray machine stuff' - mostly what you've got is lead! X-ray sets are not in themselves radioactive, they emit radiation (hence lead shielding so only get x-rays in direction of interest), but only when power (lots of it) is applied. (sorry to pick you out - but that was so wrong it had to be corrected)

As stated previously: building a bomb (if you've the right material) is actually not that difficult. What is difficult is getting that material and/or (if you're a nuclear power) developing delivery systems and controls so it only goes bang at a time and place that you want it to.

dirty bombs have been described as 'weapons of mass disruption' - not destruction, I'd anticipate more casualties in the rush to escape than from the device itself.

and as for 'wastelands for thousands of years'..... use the search engine of your choice with 'Hiroshima (or Nagasaki) today/2015' and you'll find, for instance:
http://sequinsandcherryblossom.com/2015/01/11/conf...

It is not impossible ISIS (or others with nasty ideas) will get hold of a viable device (purchased/stolen/constructed) - getting it somewhere interesting for them might (or might not) be a challenge. There are undoubtedly many plans and arrangements in place to try and mitigate this, but it would not surprise me in the least to one day wake up and hear there is a hole in the scenery somewhere. What happens next in terms or reaction would be fascinating - where for instance is ISIS's 'capital city'......?

[Einion Yrth]

llewop said:

and as for 'wastelands for thousands of years'..... use the search engine of your choice with 'Hiroshima

This is actually a place where MX5 would be a viable answer.

[Joey Ramone]

I wouldn't worry too much. IS will hopefully succeed in buying a nuclear weapon. Unfortunately for them it will be from a Mossad double agent in Pakistan, who hands it over to a Mossad triple agent in Raqqa who detonates it in place

[Mojocvh]

jimreed said:

My background is in the R.A.F. and a subsequent civilian career in engineering, I also have a physics degree.

I have to say that there is simply no real info on the central physics package of a nuclear weapon available out side of deeply secret governmental research.

In service yellow sun/green grass/red snow, ( the second two referring to the 'innards'), were the earliest weapons we studied, yet absolutely nothing was known by us, not even a hint of the detailed inner workings.
Its possible to conjecture about green grass because of the 'balls', but nothing firm is known.

drip drip little steel balls?





the catherine wheel at the left is the distribution unit that triggers the firing pattern of the explosives in a set order to ensure criticality.....

Ref: http://www.nuclear-weapons.info/vw.htm#Violet%20Cl...

Edited by Mojocvh on Wednesday 27th May 19:34

[Gecko1978]

llewop said:

Wow! Go out for the day and this thread explodes with speculation (even more than before), misunderstandings, lack of understanding and just plain wrong!

So far the prize goes to:

Gecko1978 said:

Not sure of the exact science etc so you may be right or wrong but. Picture this I have a car or a van full of old xray machine stuff. I blow it up radiation spread over a large area. Now the radition maybe so low as to make no difference but the word radiation would terrify people and would you go back to work if they said it glows a bit but not a lot at night...

er - if you have 'a car or a van full of old xray machine stuff' - mostly what you've got is lead! X-ray sets are not in themselves radioactive, they emit radiation (hence lead shielding so only get x-rays in direction of interest), but only when power (lots of it) is applied. (sorry to pick you out - but that was so wrong it had to be corrected)

As stated previously: building a bomb (if you've the right material) is actually not that difficult. What is difficult is getting that material and/or (if you're a nuclear power) developing delivery systems and controls so it only goes bang at a time and place that you want it to.

dirty bombs have been described as 'weapons of mass disruption' - not destruction, I'd anticipate more casualties in the rush to escape than from the device itself.

and as for 'wastelands for thousands of years'..... use the search engine of your choice with 'Hiroshima (or Nagasaki) today/2015' and you'll find, for instance:
http://sequinsandcherryblossom.com/2015/01/11/conf...

It is not impossible ISIS (or others with nasty ideas) will get hold of a viable device (purchased/stolen/constructed) - getting it somewhere interesting for them might (or might not) be a challenge. There are undoubtedly many plans and arrangements in place to try and mitigate this, but it would not surprise me in the least to one day wake up and hear there is a hole in the scenery somewhere. What happens next in terms or reaction would be fascinating - where for instance is ISIS's 'capital city'......?

Hey no offence taken at all my posts on this subject have been deliberately fanciful as I have no idea of the science behind such devices or as I stated a likely response to an attack of this nature. The post you highlighted was a response to a post where the author said a dirty bomb was a sort of myth. My point an yours to I think is the fear factor the word radiation generates. Also while people did go back to hiroshima ate war heads today not many more times powerful. Also and it's just a thought but a nuclear strike today would be about wiping out the enemy with no possibility of them recovering. So 1000 years no I agree fanciful but a waste land with no buildings etc and 1000s dead I suspect is more the reality.

[llewop]

Gecko1978 said:

My point an yours to I think is the fear factor the word radiation generates.

True - something that myself and many colleagues are fighting an uphill battle about; trying to improve understanding about radiation, it's effects and how to protect people from it in all it's forms. Hence RDDs (dirty bombs) are weapons of disruption.

[Ayahuasca]

I am not sure ISIS would want to use a dirty bomb on a Western city. It seems to be a local terror group for local people and more concerned with defending and expanding its territory; no territory, no caliphate; no caliphate, no ISIS. AQ might have done damage with a dirty bomb however.