An article recently published in a Catholic periodical alleges that America dropped The Bomb on Hiroshima "without any prior warning whatsoever, so as to ensure the highest possible number of casualties." See
http://www.spiritdaily.com/timestemplate.htm
This is not quite true.
The Potsdam Ultimatum to the Japanese, as to which the Japanese formally responded with one word -- "Mokusatsu," or "Ignored" -- warned only of "prompt and utter destruction" -- not "prompt and utter destruction by a newly-developed weapon of immense power."
The main reason for this was fear of a dud, and of having to face the consequences of it being a dud.
Contrary to popular opinion, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a crude but completely untested Uranium device. The Trinity Test in the American Southwest in the months before the Hiroshima blast involved an absurdly-complex failure-prone Plutonium bomb. The Nagasaki bomb was of that variety. The failure-prone "fat man" design for Plutonium bombs was regarded as less reliable than the simple-but-fabulously-expensive "little boy" gun trigger design originally employed in Uranium 235 bombs -- the Hiroshima bomb. So, though untested, we used the "little boy" gun trigger design Uranium 235 bomb design first.
Though it as regarded as much more reliable, because it was untested the fear among Los Alamos scientists, the military, the President's cabinet and President Truman himself was that if the dropping of the bomb were announced in advance, it would draw major fighter resistance; and even if the bomber got through, if all it did is fall to the ground and splatter some mud the Japanese would be encouraged to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight on, endlessly, hoping for more duds.
In other words, there was a feeling that more American AND Japanese lives would be saved if an initial unannounced succesful bombing shocked the Japanese terribly, than if an initial announced successful bombing or an especially an announced unsuccessful bombing occurred.
Proof that the American government had limiting losses of Japanese civilians in mind, too, is the giant leaflet drops made by American bombers before and after the Hiroshima bombing.
Before the bombing of Hiroshima, on August 1, 1945 American bombers dropped leaflets asking the Japanese to please leave Hiroshima and other cities because they faced imminent destruction from bombing, which the picture inferred would be utterly massive...
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no3/graphics/Graphic4front.jpg
No one is reported to have left the cities.
The government reviewed the warnings, and pooh-poohed them.
After the destruction of Hiroshima, we warned the Japanese people in another mass leaflet drop that we were in a position to destroy more cities in the same fashion, and begged them to please demand that the war end.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-08-06&documentid=6-1&studycollectionid=abomb&pagenumber=1
Read that leaflet. Determine for yourself if that is an effort to "to ensure the highest possible number of casualties."
It's not.
The article writer who accused the United States of that was irresponsible.
Even despite the successful Hiroshima blast, and even despite careful consideration of the leaflets, the Japanese government was so intent on conquest and on continuing mass murder in Asia that they decided to gamble that we had no more atomic bombs remaining.
They were wrong.
Nagasaki was destroyed next.
Finally, the Japanese murder machine, which produced results like this...
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nanking-massacre.com/content_images/nanking_massacre_11911575.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.nanking-massacre.com/Nanking_Massacre_Photo_Group_One.html&usg=__T6gBAMHJuaqhQnJXIgloFwuEnl8=&h=681&w=1036&sz=59&hl=en&start=0&tbnid=ojHaYeo_UxXAeM:&tbnh=138&tbnw=200&prev=/images%3Fq%3DNanking%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26biw%3D1020%26bih%3D572%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=500&ei=lh9gTKu4NcP68AbjhpW0DQ&oei=lh9gTKu4NcP68AbjhpW0DQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0&tx=136&ty=117
...and like this...
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/nanking-massacre-rape-of-nanking-killing-children.jpg&imgrefurl=http://erud-awakening.blogspot.com/2009/09/righteous-nazi.html&usg=__ioGCmxI-xWNXhrufFk6IHBQWM-k=&h=421&w=685&sz=74&hl=en&start=0&tbnid=NqAR9jso8mjvFM:&tbnh=144&tbnw=206&prev=/images%3Fq%3DNanking%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26biw%3D1020%26bih%3D572%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=390&vpy=239&dur=2671&hovh=176&hovw=287&tx=152&ty=87&ei=lh9gTKu4NcP68AbjhpW0DQ&oei=lh9gTKu4NcP68AbjhpW0DQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:0
...surrendered.
We did it right, in a way God would have approved of.
Showing posts with label nuclear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuclear. Show all posts
Monday, August 9, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
The 1960 Nuclear Accident in Ocean County, New Jersey
All of us have "earliest memories." One of my early memories is so vague and improbable that I wasn't sure whether it is a vague memory of reality or a memory of a vague dream. It runs like this...
It is around 1960. I am 7 years of age, asleep in my parents' home in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. It is the middle of the night. A loud roaring on the street outside awakens me. I get up out of bed and look out. There I see a very large tractor-trailer, where the trailer is a flatbed carrying a large white missile. It looked like this...
http://www.600ckat.com/images/2009/bomarc.jpg
...but the rear 2/3s of the missile on the flatbed was covered with a light-colored tarp.
I thought something to myself like, "The government moves rockets through the streets at night?"
Again, was that real, or just the memory of a dream?
Years later, a kind of X-Files-style "Deep Throat" walked up to me in Municipal Court in New Jersey and told me something that suggested to me that it might have not been a dream.
"Deep Throat" was a government researcher who had done work on the effects of acid rain. He said, "You look like a pretty good lawyer. Could you help me with something? Some lawyers are suing some companies for polluting the water table in Toms River, Ocean County, New Jersey, causing some very exotic cancers in Toms River. Could you call those lawyers and tell them that a the government's own research indicates that the government caused the Toms River cancer deaths?
"It happened like this. In 1960, a BOMARC Missile in Fort Dix, Burlington County, armed with a plutonium nuclear warhead, exploded and caught fire. Local volunteer fire companies responding to the fire poured water on the flames, spreading plutonium shrapnel all over the site. Many of the firemen died of radiation poisoning. The government responded to the mess by covering it over with a sheet of concrete and throwing up a fence around it.
"Everything was fine until along came acid rain. As certain industries in the United States and Canada began spewing exhaust into the atmosphere, the particles in the exhaust mixed with water in the clouds and generated acid rain.
"Acid rain, it turns out, mixed with the plutonium in the soil beneath the concrete at the Fort Dix site, and formed the only plutonium compound which is water-soluable. So, extremely radioactive plutonium began issuing-forth out from under the concrete pad in Burlington County, into the water table. It washed into the headwaters of streams which ended-up in Toms River, in Ocean County, New Jersey. I believe that the plutonium was sucked-into the water supply system of Toms River, New Jersey, causing all of those people to die of the exotic cancers, there. The lawyers should be suing the United States government -- not those companies. I think that those companies are innocent of any wrongdoing."
I went back to my office and checked out "Deep Throat's" facts. He was mostly correct. In the 1950s, the government began erecting BOMARC Missile sites near several US cities. The BOMARC Missile, I was surprised to learn, relied on the same kind of technology as the rumored Aurora spyplane -- a rocket engine lifted the BOMARC into the air, and sped it up to above the speed of sound, when the speed of the air entering intakes on the BOMARC was large enough to enable ramjets to take over the load. Ramjets carried the BOMARC to up to 65,000 feet, and a Westinghouse tracking system enabled the BOMARC to zero-in on flights of incoming bombers. When the BOMARC was close enough, the on-board 8 to 10 kiliton plutonium device would explode, destroying the enemy bombers.
On June 7, 1960, a tank of Helium in one of these nuclear-armed BOMARC Missiles, at a small BOMARC missile launch site in the Ocean County end of Fort Dix, New Jersey, in Plumstead Township, just off County Route 539 about 2 miles north of Route 70, exploded, setting-off a huge fire. I could not find an article verifying that firemen had died, but a 1960 article by David Neese of the Trentonian verified that "military firefighters and volunteers from nearby small towns began to converge on the scene." Neese added, though the government had assured personnel that there was no danger from radioactivity, "Some of the small-town firefighters at the scene wondered, though. They'd noticed the 'green men' poking and probing around the base. These were eight-man military nuclear warfare whose members wore green protective outfits." I.e., if there was zero danger from radiation, why were they wearing radiation suits?
Finally, checking maps, I verified that the site was close to headwaters of streams emptying into Toms River.
I examined photos of BOMARC Missiles, and, sure enough, that's what the missile on the flatbed looked-like in my memory, jutting from beneath the tarp, in size and shape. Probably, a crew was rushing a replacement missile to Fort Dix, and became lost in Northeast Philadelphia.
In any event, I decided that I was looking at probable cause, and so I contacted one of the lawyers in the Toms River lawsuit.
They weren't interested in what the whistleblower, "Deep Throat," had to say. They explained, "Look, we're really close to a settlement, here. If you're right, the defendants and their insurance carriers will be 'off the hook.' We will have to start over from scratch, and probably spend decades fighting a government which doesn't want to take responsibility."
So, nothing happened.
But I wonder if anyone else is dying of exotic forms of cancer in Toms River.
It is around 1960. I am 7 years of age, asleep in my parents' home in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. It is the middle of the night. A loud roaring on the street outside awakens me. I get up out of bed and look out. There I see a very large tractor-trailer, where the trailer is a flatbed carrying a large white missile. It looked like this...
http://www.600ckat.com/images/2009/bomarc.jpg
...but the rear 2/3s of the missile on the flatbed was covered with a light-colored tarp.
I thought something to myself like, "The government moves rockets through the streets at night?"
Again, was that real, or just the memory of a dream?
Years later, a kind of X-Files-style "Deep Throat" walked up to me in Municipal Court in New Jersey and told me something that suggested to me that it might have not been a dream.
"Deep Throat" was a government researcher who had done work on the effects of acid rain. He said, "You look like a pretty good lawyer. Could you help me with something? Some lawyers are suing some companies for polluting the water table in Toms River, Ocean County, New Jersey, causing some very exotic cancers in Toms River. Could you call those lawyers and tell them that a the government's own research indicates that the government caused the Toms River cancer deaths?
"It happened like this. In 1960, a BOMARC Missile in Fort Dix, Burlington County, armed with a plutonium nuclear warhead, exploded and caught fire. Local volunteer fire companies responding to the fire poured water on the flames, spreading plutonium shrapnel all over the site. Many of the firemen died of radiation poisoning. The government responded to the mess by covering it over with a sheet of concrete and throwing up a fence around it.
"Everything was fine until along came acid rain. As certain industries in the United States and Canada began spewing exhaust into the atmosphere, the particles in the exhaust mixed with water in the clouds and generated acid rain.
"Acid rain, it turns out, mixed with the plutonium in the soil beneath the concrete at the Fort Dix site, and formed the only plutonium compound which is water-soluable. So, extremely radioactive plutonium began issuing-forth out from under the concrete pad in Burlington County, into the water table. It washed into the headwaters of streams which ended-up in Toms River, in Ocean County, New Jersey. I believe that the plutonium was sucked-into the water supply system of Toms River, New Jersey, causing all of those people to die of the exotic cancers, there. The lawyers should be suing the United States government -- not those companies. I think that those companies are innocent of any wrongdoing."
I went back to my office and checked out "Deep Throat's" facts. He was mostly correct. In the 1950s, the government began erecting BOMARC Missile sites near several US cities. The BOMARC Missile, I was surprised to learn, relied on the same kind of technology as the rumored Aurora spyplane -- a rocket engine lifted the BOMARC into the air, and sped it up to above the speed of sound, when the speed of the air entering intakes on the BOMARC was large enough to enable ramjets to take over the load. Ramjets carried the BOMARC to up to 65,000 feet, and a Westinghouse tracking system enabled the BOMARC to zero-in on flights of incoming bombers. When the BOMARC was close enough, the on-board 8 to 10 kiliton plutonium device would explode, destroying the enemy bombers.
On June 7, 1960, a tank of Helium in one of these nuclear-armed BOMARC Missiles, at a small BOMARC missile launch site in the Ocean County end of Fort Dix, New Jersey, in Plumstead Township, just off County Route 539 about 2 miles north of Route 70, exploded, setting-off a huge fire. I could not find an article verifying that firemen had died, but a 1960 article by David Neese of the Trentonian verified that "military firefighters and volunteers from nearby small towns began to converge on the scene." Neese added, though the government had assured personnel that there was no danger from radioactivity, "Some of the small-town firefighters at the scene wondered, though. They'd noticed the 'green men' poking and probing around the base. These were eight-man military nuclear warfare whose members wore green protective outfits." I.e., if there was zero danger from radiation, why were they wearing radiation suits?
Finally, checking maps, I verified that the site was close to headwaters of streams emptying into Toms River.
I examined photos of BOMARC Missiles, and, sure enough, that's what the missile on the flatbed looked-like in my memory, jutting from beneath the tarp, in size and shape. Probably, a crew was rushing a replacement missile to Fort Dix, and became lost in Northeast Philadelphia.
In any event, I decided that I was looking at probable cause, and so I contacted one of the lawyers in the Toms River lawsuit.
They weren't interested in what the whistleblower, "Deep Throat," had to say. They explained, "Look, we're really close to a settlement, here. If you're right, the defendants and their insurance carriers will be 'off the hook.' We will have to start over from scratch, and probably spend decades fighting a government which doesn't want to take responsibility."
So, nothing happened.
But I wonder if anyone else is dying of exotic forms of cancer in Toms River.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Unknown Nuclear Attacks on Atlantic City and Other Places
People in the 1950s and 1960s grew up with the fear that America and Communist Russia might go to war, and that hydrogen bombs might start coming down onto heads of everyone.
What we did not know is that several times the American Air Force accidentally dropped hydrogen bombs onto America!
Obviously, the dropped hydrogen bombs did not explode. But in a few cases, the hydrogen bombs were never found!
To understand what happened in these cases, we have to know a little bit about how hydrogen bombs of the 1950s and 1960s worked.
Inside the hydrogen bombs of the 1950s and 1960s, conventional explosives were wrapped around a very heavy radioactive metal like plutonium or uranium, which was placed near a mix of forms of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium. If all of the ordinary explosives were caused to explode at the exact some moment, this squeezed the heavy metal inside enough to force the metal’s molecules together enough to make the radiation of each molecule drive the other molecules around it wild, generating “critical mass,” making it explode as an atomic bomb, which heated the hydrogen enough to make it explode as a hydrogen bomb.
Making all of the ordinary explosives explode at the same moment is a very hard thing to do. Hitting the explosive very hard with a hammer, or dropping the bomb out of a plane so that it hits the ground very hard, for instance, will not do this. Being hit by a hammer or just hitting the ground makes the ordinary explosives explode in a disorganized way, so that they just break the hydrogen bomb into little pieces.
So, in May, 1957, a B-36 bomber flying over New Mexico...
What we did not know is that several times the American Air Force accidentally dropped hydrogen bombs onto America!
Obviously, the dropped hydrogen bombs did not explode. But in a few cases, the hydrogen bombs were never found!
To understand what happened in these cases, we have to know a little bit about how hydrogen bombs of the 1950s and 1960s worked.
Inside the hydrogen bombs of the 1950s and 1960s, conventional explosives were wrapped around a very heavy radioactive metal like plutonium or uranium, which was placed near a mix of forms of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium. If all of the ordinary explosives were caused to explode at the exact some moment, this squeezed the heavy metal inside enough to force the metal’s molecules together enough to make the radiation of each molecule drive the other molecules around it wild, generating “critical mass,” making it explode as an atomic bomb, which heated the hydrogen enough to make it explode as a hydrogen bomb.
Making all of the ordinary explosives explode at the same moment is a very hard thing to do. Hitting the explosive very hard with a hammer, or dropping the bomb out of a plane so that it hits the ground very hard, for instance, will not do this. Being hit by a hammer or just hitting the ground makes the ordinary explosives explode in a disorganized way, so that they just break the hydrogen bomb into little pieces.
So, in May, 1957, a B-36 bomber flying over New Mexico...
... accidentally dropped its hydrogen bomb. The bomb hit the ground with full force. Impact made the ordinary explosives in the bomb explode with no hydrogen blast or atomic blast, but the area was splattered with radioactive materials.
In July, 1957, a C-124 Globemaster cargo plane flying along the New Jersey coast...
In July, 1957, a C-124 Globemaster cargo plane flying along the New Jersey coast...
...and carrying 3 hydrogen weapons coincidentally lost power in 2 of 4 engines. Hydrogen weapons were very heavy objects in the 1950s. To increase their chances of landing safely, the plane’s crew dropped 2 of the bombs into the ocean near Atlantic City. Afterwards, the bombs were never found.
In 1987, 30 years later, hundreds of dead dolphins, covered with what looked like radiation burns, washed up onto the beaches from New Jersey to Virginia. Perhaps one of the Atlantic City bombs were corroded by the sea water, and released some of its radioactive material into the water where the dolphins were swimming.
In February, 1958, a United States Air Force B-47 bomber...
In 1987, 30 years later, hundreds of dead dolphins, covered with what looked like radiation burns, washed up onto the beaches from New Jersey to Virginia. Perhaps one of the Atlantic City bombs were corroded by the sea water, and released some of its radioactive material into the water where the dolphins were swimming.
In February, 1958, a United States Air Force B-47 bomber...
...carrying a powerful hydrogen bomb collided in the air with an American jet fighter over the state of Georgia. The plane’s crew, afraid that if they crashed when they tried to land the plane the radioactive parts of the bomb would be spread all over their Air Force base, asked for, and received, permission to drop their hydrogen bomb into the waters below without setting it off. They dropped the bomb into the Atlantic Ocean, in shallow water just beyond the mouth of the Savannah River, where they believed it would be easy to recover. The bomb was never found.
In March, 1958, a B-47 accidentally dropped a hydrogen weapon onto Florence, South Carolina. Like the accident in New Mexico in 1957, the bomb hit the ground, and this set off the explosives intended to make the uranium in the bomb “go nuclear,” which in turn was intended to make the hydrogen mix inside explode as a hydrogen bomb. Only the ordinary explosives went “ka-boom,” however, spraying the area with radioactive materials.
A museum in the area proudly displays pieces of the hydrogen bomb dropped on Florence, South Carolina.
In January, 1961, a B-52 bomber flying over North Carolina...
In March, 1958, a B-47 accidentally dropped a hydrogen weapon onto Florence, South Carolina. Like the accident in New Mexico in 1957, the bomb hit the ground, and this set off the explosives intended to make the uranium in the bomb “go nuclear,” which in turn was intended to make the hydrogen mix inside explode as a hydrogen bomb. Only the ordinary explosives went “ka-boom,” however, spraying the area with radioactive materials.
A museum in the area proudly displays pieces of the hydrogen bomb dropped on Florence, South Carolina.
In January, 1961, a B-52 bomber flying over North Carolina...
...suddenly broke apart in the sky, dropping two hydrogen bombs. One bomb experienced only slight damage and was found again. The second bomb broke into many pieces, and its dangerous uranium center was never found.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
9/11 Was Good Luck!, Or, Why the US Fears a Nuclear Iran
On 9/11, my dad called me and said, "Pete, quick, turn on the TV! Someone crashed a passenger jet into the World Trade Center! It looks like an intentional act!"
I did, and I was amazed as I watched Jet #2 slam into the other tower, and then I heard about the Pentagon jet, and the jet which crashed in Pennsylvania.
I watched and watched and watched the TV, sitting there with raw fear, wondering if something else was about to happen to New York or Washington or both -- something I had feared since my college days.
I knew that we wouldn't be out of the woods until nightfall, when the TV cameras couldn't get really good shots of the World Trade Center or Pentagon.
And, God bless us!, it didn't happen!
I began to tell people that we were lucky on 9/11.
Why did I say that?
Today, an Islamic extremist wrapped in explosives covered, I heard on the radio, with an Iraqi poilice uniform jumped onto an ambulance with a person badly wounded by another suicide bomber. He escorted the bombing victim into the hospital, filled with doctors and mauled and bleeding helpless people. He probably carefully walked into the center of this place of human love, and probably yelled soimething like, "ALLAH AKBAR!" and blew everybody up.
That's the way they do it. Once help comes to clean up the damage, and the TV cameras are rolling, Islamic extremists cause a bigger catastrophe, so that all watching their TVs will see how deadly they really are.
What I was waiting for and feared terribly on 9/11 was something like this happening in New York, or Washington, or both, while 1 billion eyes, worldwide, were focused on their TVs...
Think of the devastating effect that would have had upon our civilization, in the name of Allah.
As demand for oil worldwide begins to vastly outstrip remaining supply, OPEC stands to make ten times as much as they did from the sale of the first half of the supply.
That will tend to make OPEC the "center of the world." Competing tribes of Muslims will undoubtedly conflict over this unique power over the world. We will have to choose whether to lket them fight over the supply, or instead to become involved.
Every time we sit back, oil will jump from $15 per gallon to $50 per gallon, as the flow is distupted by attacks upon the presiding group.
But if we alienate parties to such warfare -- or even if we just sit here and watch and wait, remembering that 9/11 was essentially unprovoked -- the following might occur, if radical Islam has nuclear capability.
Early one morning, the captain of one of the ferries feeding rush hour traffic to New York City is greatly annoyed at a vast container ship improperly anchored in his path. He gets out his binoculars and examines the vessel for signs that they are about to weigh anchor and depart.
Instead, all he sees is a lone dark-skinned man sitting in a chair on a vast pile of container-ship containers, with a shiny steel something in his left hand and a book in his right hand. As the ferry captain studies the figure, he sees him put down his book and look at his watch.
The ferry captain was the right man in the right spot at the right time. Rather than use his ship's radio easily-monitored ship-to-shore frequency, he dials the head office with his cell phone, and he says, "Boss, this is Perkins. I haven't been drinking. I'm cold sober. I'm not playing an irrational joke. I'm serious: Out here, just off the Battery at Manhattan's southern tip, a giant container ship is anchored in the wrong place, dead ahead of where the ferry is supposed to go. I only see one man on board through my binocs -- a fellow in a lawn chair soaking up some rays on the top of the container pile. If you ask me, he looks like an extremist suicide bomber type reading the Koran in his right hand while he holds a Dead Man Switch in his left hand."
While the report gets passed up the chain of command, a computer monitoring calls for something called the Echelon Program flags the call because of the words "extremist suicide bomber," "Koran," and "Dead Man Switch." A front line "triage" listener reviews the system's recording of the ferry captain's call, and sounds an alarm which goes off in about 20 offices at once. Intelligence and spy people in New York and Washingtopn rush to their phones and listen to the recording. Within a few minutes about a dozen binoculars are trained on the giant container ship. Trusted officers in Homeland Security think, "The ferry captain was correct. Good powers of observation." The President and Joint Chiefs are instantly notified, and everyone is quickly joined by telephone.
It's 20 minutes before 9:00 a.m. The President thinks, "If we're lucky, that gives us 20 minutes."
A secret anti - nuclear - terrorism unit convenes in the President's conference room. They quickly decide that the situation doesn't make sense unless there is a very, very powerful nuclear weapon in the container ship. A check quickly confirms that every major port in the United States has a similar problem -- a container ship with a man in a chair sitting on top with a Koran and what looks like a Dead Man Switch.
If these weapons go off, the President thinks, between 10,000,000 and 50,000,000 people will die outright, depending on megatonnage and bomb ignition success rate. The President knows that milliseconds count, here.
If we send Tomahawks to poison the weapons with neutron bomb explosions, how many can we cause to arrive at their targets with perfect simultaneity?"
"Four," says the anti - nuclear - terrorism unit's quartermaster. The President looks annoyed. "Four???!!!" he asks, angrily.
The trick is to explode a neutron bomb with a very low yield explosion but an extremely high yield of neutrons as close as possible to each container ship at the exact same moment, across the country. The aim was not to "kill terrorists." The aim, ironically, was to cause the fissionables in the weapon to "go nuclear." In effect, by showering them with shielding-penetrating neutrons, the fissionables in the terrorists' weapons would get hot and explode without a massive nuclear blast, because this would happen before conventional shaped explosives outside the fissionable mass had had an opportunity to smash the fissionable core down to critical massive. By "igniting" the fissionable core without any compression, it would heat up and blow itself up with a harmless number of "doublings" -- functionally, increases in power due to critical mass -- and just destroy the ship.
About 80,000 people would have to die in the trade-off in the case of each neutron bomb, but that was worth it.
Only 4 simultaneous neutron bombs meant that only four weapons were "guaranteed" to be "neutralized" in this fashion. Six were at risk of going off before their Tomahawk arrived, if word reached their triggerman of the other blasts.
"Okay, I authorize the immediated coordinated launch of 4 neutron bomb Tomahawks. And 6 more uncoordinated, but as close as possible to the first 4, time-wise. Maybe we'll get lucky. Gentlemen, I hereby declare martial law. I need my helicopter to take me out to Andrews. This is going to be messy."
Nobody ever figures out exactly what happens. 3 nuclear weapons, only, were neutralized. The other 7 destroyed their respective port cities, including New York and Newark, and San Franciso. Washington, it turns out, was incinerated by the most powerful blast of all. The American system collapses and descends into 100 years of deadly chaos. Nationwide, transporatation and utilities shut down. Millions starve to death. In four years, the population of the United States drops from 300,000,000 to 70,000,000.
We've been "bombed back to the stone age."
I did, and I was amazed as I watched Jet #2 slam into the other tower, and then I heard about the Pentagon jet, and the jet which crashed in Pennsylvania.
I watched and watched and watched the TV, sitting there with raw fear, wondering if something else was about to happen to New York or Washington or both -- something I had feared since my college days.
I knew that we wouldn't be out of the woods until nightfall, when the TV cameras couldn't get really good shots of the World Trade Center or Pentagon.
And, God bless us!, it didn't happen!
I began to tell people that we were lucky on 9/11.
Why did I say that?
Today, an Islamic extremist wrapped in explosives covered, I heard on the radio, with an Iraqi poilice uniform jumped onto an ambulance with a person badly wounded by another suicide bomber. He escorted the bombing victim into the hospital, filled with doctors and mauled and bleeding helpless people. He probably carefully walked into the center of this place of human love, and probably yelled soimething like, "ALLAH AKBAR!" and blew everybody up.
That's the way they do it. Once help comes to clean up the damage, and the TV cameras are rolling, Islamic extremists cause a bigger catastrophe, so that all watching their TVs will see how deadly they really are.
What I was waiting for and feared terribly on 9/11 was something like this happening in New York, or Washington, or both, while 1 billion eyes, worldwide, were focused on their TVs...
As demand for oil worldwide begins to vastly outstrip remaining supply, OPEC stands to make ten times as much as they did from the sale of the first half of the supply.
That will tend to make OPEC the "center of the world." Competing tribes of Muslims will undoubtedly conflict over this unique power over the world. We will have to choose whether to lket them fight over the supply, or instead to become involved.
Every time we sit back, oil will jump from $15 per gallon to $50 per gallon, as the flow is distupted by attacks upon the presiding group.
But if we alienate parties to such warfare -- or even if we just sit here and watch and wait, remembering that 9/11 was essentially unprovoked -- the following might occur, if radical Islam has nuclear capability.
Early one morning, the captain of one of the ferries feeding rush hour traffic to New York City is greatly annoyed at a vast container ship improperly anchored in his path. He gets out his binoculars and examines the vessel for signs that they are about to weigh anchor and depart.
Instead, all he sees is a lone dark-skinned man sitting in a chair on a vast pile of container-ship containers, with a shiny steel something in his left hand and a book in his right hand. As the ferry captain studies the figure, he sees him put down his book and look at his watch.
The ferry captain was the right man in the right spot at the right time. Rather than use his ship's radio easily-monitored ship-to-shore frequency, he dials the head office with his cell phone, and he says, "Boss, this is Perkins. I haven't been drinking. I'm cold sober. I'm not playing an irrational joke. I'm serious: Out here, just off the Battery at Manhattan's southern tip, a giant container ship is anchored in the wrong place, dead ahead of where the ferry is supposed to go. I only see one man on board through my binocs -- a fellow in a lawn chair soaking up some rays on the top of the container pile. If you ask me, he looks like an extremist suicide bomber type reading the Koran in his right hand while he holds a Dead Man Switch in his left hand."
While the report gets passed up the chain of command, a computer monitoring calls for something called the Echelon Program flags the call because of the words "extremist suicide bomber," "Koran," and "Dead Man Switch." A front line "triage" listener reviews the system's recording of the ferry captain's call, and sounds an alarm which goes off in about 20 offices at once. Intelligence and spy people in New York and Washingtopn rush to their phones and listen to the recording. Within a few minutes about a dozen binoculars are trained on the giant container ship. Trusted officers in Homeland Security think, "The ferry captain was correct. Good powers of observation." The President and Joint Chiefs are instantly notified, and everyone is quickly joined by telephone.
It's 20 minutes before 9:00 a.m. The President thinks, "If we're lucky, that gives us 20 minutes."
A secret anti - nuclear - terrorism unit convenes in the President's conference room. They quickly decide that the situation doesn't make sense unless there is a very, very powerful nuclear weapon in the container ship. A check quickly confirms that every major port in the United States has a similar problem -- a container ship with a man in a chair sitting on top with a Koran and what looks like a Dead Man Switch.
If these weapons go off, the President thinks, between 10,000,000 and 50,000,000 people will die outright, depending on megatonnage and bomb ignition success rate. The President knows that milliseconds count, here.
If we send Tomahawks to poison the weapons with neutron bomb explosions, how many can we cause to arrive at their targets with perfect simultaneity?"
"Four," says the anti - nuclear - terrorism unit's quartermaster. The President looks annoyed. "Four???!!!" he asks, angrily.
The trick is to explode a neutron bomb with a very low yield explosion but an extremely high yield of neutrons as close as possible to each container ship at the exact same moment, across the country. The aim was not to "kill terrorists." The aim, ironically, was to cause the fissionables in the weapon to "go nuclear." In effect, by showering them with shielding-penetrating neutrons, the fissionables in the terrorists' weapons would get hot and explode without a massive nuclear blast, because this would happen before conventional shaped explosives outside the fissionable mass had had an opportunity to smash the fissionable core down to critical massive. By "igniting" the fissionable core without any compression, it would heat up and blow itself up with a harmless number of "doublings" -- functionally, increases in power due to critical mass -- and just destroy the ship.
About 80,000 people would have to die in the trade-off in the case of each neutron bomb, but that was worth it.
Only 4 simultaneous neutron bombs meant that only four weapons were "guaranteed" to be "neutralized" in this fashion. Six were at risk of going off before their Tomahawk arrived, if word reached their triggerman of the other blasts.
"Okay, I authorize the immediated coordinated launch of 4 neutron bomb Tomahawks. And 6 more uncoordinated, but as close as possible to the first 4, time-wise. Maybe we'll get lucky. Gentlemen, I hereby declare martial law. I need my helicopter to take me out to Andrews. This is going to be messy."
Nobody ever figures out exactly what happens. 3 nuclear weapons, only, were neutralized. The other 7 destroyed their respective port cities, including New York and Newark, and San Franciso. Washington, it turns out, was incinerated by the most powerful blast of all. The American system collapses and descends into 100 years of deadly chaos. Nationwide, transporatation and utilities shut down. Millions starve to death. In four years, the population of the United States drops from 300,000,000 to 70,000,000.
We've been "bombed back to the stone age."
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