![]() ![]() Even a moderate amount of shielding would be enough to hide its radioactive signature from most detectors at shipping hubs. It would be simple to transport such a device to America aboard a container ship, just another unseen object in a giant metal box among millions of other metal boxes floating on the ocean. A ten-kiloton bomb, which would release as much energy as 10,000 tons of TNT, would be only seven feet long and weigh about 1,000 pounds. The last step in the process - smuggling the weapon into the United States - would be even easier. ![]() Several months later, they gave their answer: Without resorting to any illegal activities or drawing on classified information, and using only commercially available parts, they had built a nuclear bomb that was “bigger than a breadbox but smaller than a dump truck.” To underscore the danger, Biden had them bring the device to the Senate. In 2002, when Joe Biden was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he asked several nuclear laboratories whether a terrorist group could construct an off-the-shelf nuclear weapon. Compared to modern nuclear missiles, which are far more powerful and complex, constructing a crude gun-type nuke is fairly straightforward. A gun-type nuke uses traditional explosives to fire a slug of uranium through a tube directly into another chunk of uranium, fracturing huge numbers of atoms and unleashing a massive amount of energy. Once terrorists obtained the uranium, they would need only a small team of sympathetic engineers and physicists to build what is known as a gun-type nuclear bomb, like the one dropped on Hiroshima. The Frightening Lessons From Hawaii’s False Missile Alert In the long run, the best deterrent to nuclear war may be to understand what a single nuclear bomb is capable of doing to, say, a city like New York - and to accept that the reality would be even worse than our fears. If nuclear war is considered “unthinkable,” that is in no small part because of our refusal to think about it with any clarity or specificity. In our imaginations, fueled by apocalyptic fictions like The Road and The Day After, the scale and speed of nuclear annihilation seem too vast and horrific to contemplate. The second reality we have failed to understand is what a nuclear detonation and its aftermath would actually look like. Building a ten-kiloton bomb nearly as destructive as the one dropped on Hiroshima would require little more than some technical expertise and 46 kilograms of highly enriched uranium - a quantity about the size of a bowling ball. Experts warn that it would be relatively easy for terrorists to build an “improvised nuclear bomb” and smuggle it into America. First, a nuclear attack on the United States could well come not from the skies but from the streets. But the current state of dread, while entirely understandable, has overshadowed two crucial realities about the threat of a nuclear calamity. North Korea may already have nuclear missiles capable of striking anywhere in the U.S., and there is no way to know whether Trump’s negotiations with Kim Jong-un will wind up increasing or decreasing the prospect of nuclear war. Iran has announced plans to ramp up its production of enriched uranium. and Russia, both of which maintain massive nuclear arsenals, are increasingly at odds. What made the false alarm all the more frightening is just how plausible the prospect of a nuclear strike has become. In January, when a state employee in Hawaii mistakenly triggered an emergency alert, warning that a ballistic missile was inbound, many islanders raced to take shelter and unite with their loved ones, believing they were only minutes away from utter devastation. If you’ve felt a new shiver of nuclear fear over the past year, you’re not alone: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its “ Doomsday Clock” to within two minutes of midnight - closer than it has been since the height of the Cold War. His national-security adviser, John Bolton, openly advocates a first-strike policy against nuclear-armed enemies, and the Pentagon, after decades of careful disarmament, wants to spend $1.2 trillion to upgrade its nuclear arsenal. ![]() Since taking office, the president has boasted about the size of his “Nuclear Button,” jettisoned the nuclear deal with Iran, and threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea. In his efforts to Make America Great Again, Donald Trump has succeeded in reviving at least one aspect of America’s past: the fear of nuclear war. ![]()
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