24 Experts Warn Of Meltdown 2010 : Martial Law : Economic Collapse
Bob Chapman (ALSO: Germany Is Headed Towards Rioting)
First 6 months of 2010, Americans will continue to live in the 'unreality'…the period between July and October is when the financial fireworks will begin.
· The FED will act unilaterally for its own survival irrespective of any political implications …(source is from insider at FED meetings).
· In the last quarter of the year we could even see Martial Law, which is more likely for the first 6 months of 2011.
· The FDIC will collapse in September 2010.
· Commercial real estate is set to implode in 2010.
· Wall Street believes there is a 100% chance of crash in bond market, especially municipals sometime during 2010.
· The dollar will be devalued by the end of 2010.
I *think* that I've seen him interviewed by Alex Jones. Seems very sharp especially about the 1000 Point market loss (and 15 mins to recovery) on 05.06.10(?).
Gerald Celente Trends
Terrorist attacks and the "Crash of 2010". 40% devaluation at first = the greatest depression, worse than the Great Depression.
Mr Doom & Gloom... WTG. When it's rainbows & skittles he can feel free to predict that too; (if we ever come close to producing a trend with that probability.) Of course, a nickname like Mr Rainbows & Skittles doesn't have that ominous ring to it.
Igor Panarin
In the summer of 1998, based on classified data about the state of the U.S. economy and society supplied to him by fellow FAPSI analysts, Panarin forecast the probable disintegration of the USA into six parts in 2010 (June/July 2010, as he specified on December 10th 2000.)
Never heard of Igor, but his credentials seem adequate.
Neithercorps On Youtube? This maybe them IDC.
Have projected that the third and final stage of the economic collapse will begin sometime in 2010. Barring some kind of financial miracle, or the complete dissolution of the Federal Reserve, a snowballing implosion should become visible by the end of this year. The behavior of the Fed, along with that of the IMF seems to suggest that they are preparing for a focused collapse, peaking within weeks or months instead of years, and the most certain fall of the dollar.
Never heard of Neithercorps
Webbots
July and onward things get very strange. Revolution. Dollar dead by November 2010.
I don't consider webbots accurate at all; I could kill a webbot with my pinky! They are wussy girly things! ... Just my opinion.
LEAP 20/20 LEAP20/20
2010 Outlook from a group of 25 European Economists with a 90% accuracy rating:
We anticipate a sudden intensification of the crisis in the second half of 2010, caused by a double effect of a catching up of events which were temporarily « frozen » in the second half of 2009 and the impossibility of maintaining the palliative remedies of past years. There is a perfect (economic) storm coming
...
or in common language, "THE BIG ONE, WHERE WE ALL GO OVER THE FALLS TOGETHER."
Never heard of them... IDC.
Joseph Meyer
Forecasts on the economy. He sees the real estate market continuing to decline, and advised people to invest in precious metals and commodities, as well as keeping cash at home in a safe place in case of bank closures. The stock market, after peaking in March or April (around 10,850), will fall all the way down to somewhere between 2450 and 4125 during the next leg down.
Never heard of him ... His prediction is obviously wrong since we're ½ way through May already.
Can't go wrong with Gold & Silver.
Harry Dent (Investor)
A very likely second crash by late 2010. The coming depression (starts around the summer of 2010).
... the Dow to the 10,700-11,500 range ... market decline ... Dow later this year to 3,000-5,000.
Richard Russell (Market Expert)
On 02.03.10 said that the bear market rally is in the process of breaking up and panic is on the way.
...
He now sees the DOW falling to 7,286 and if that level does not hold, “I see it sinking to its 1980-82 area low of DOW 1,000.” The current action is the worst he has ever seen.
(Bob Chapman (noted above) says for Russell to make such a startling statement is unusual because he never cries wolf and is almost never wrong.)
Niño Becerra (Professor of Economics) Random Link
Predicted in July 2007 that what was going to happen was that by mid 2010 there is going to be a crisis only comparable to the one in 1929.
...
In May of 2010, the crisis starts with all its force and continues and strengthens throughout 2011. He accurately predicted the current recession and market crash to the month.
He seems to have put out many YouTube Videos and seems very popular in the Spanish speaking crowd.
Lyndon LaRouche
The crisis is accelerating and will become worse week by week until the whole system grinds into a collapse, likely sometime this year (2010). And when it does, it will be the greatest collapse since the fall of the Roman Empire.
... Continued
WALL STREET JOURNAL (02.2010)
"You are witnessing a fundamental breakdown of the American dream, a systemic breakdown of our democracy and our capitalism, a breakdown driven by the blind insatiable greed of Wall Street: Dysfunctional government, insane markets, economy on the brink. Multiply that many times over and see a world in total disarray. Ignore it now, tomorrow will be too late."
Clever quote at the end of the statement.
Eric deCarbonnel His Website; Very Interesting
There is no precedence for the panic and chaos that will occur in 2010. The global food supply/demand picture has NEVER been so out of balance. The 2010 food crisis will rearrange economic, financial, and political order of the world, and those who aren’t prepared will suffer terrible losses ...
The US debt markets will freeze again, this time permanently. There will be no buyers except at the most drastic of firesale prices,
...
The dollar's collapse will rob US consumers of all purchasing power,
...
AHA! He's predicting the dollar will completely collapse before 2011. I almost wrote him off... However, he has an interesting website.
Alpha-Omega Report (Trends Forecast)
Going into 2010, the trends seemed to lead nowhere or towards oblivion.
...
Oil prices will skyrocket into the stratosphere and become so expensive that world’s economies will collapse (based on Iranian actions.)
...
2010 could be a meltdown year for the world’s economy, regardless of what goes on in the Middle East.
They have a wishy washy stance. Maybe true maybe not... Only God knows. So, why bother, homey.
Robin Landry (Market Expert)
I believe we are headed to new market highs between 10780-11241 over the next few months. The most likely time frame for the top is the April-May area. Remember the evidence IMHO still says we are in a bear market rally with a major decline to follow once this rally ends.
John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
In my estimation, there is still close to an 80% probability (Bayes' Rule) that a second market plunge and economic downturn will unfold during 2010.
Robert Prechter
Founder of Elliott Wave International, implores retail investors stay away from the markets… for now.
...
“predicting another crash in 2010 that will bring stocks below the 2009 low. His word to the wise, “be patient, don’t rush it” keep your money in cash and cash equivalents.
Richard Mogey
Current Research Director at the Foundation for the Study of Cycles:
... but will crash in 2010 and reach all-time lows late 2012. Mogey says that the 2008 crash was nothing compared to the coming crash. Gold may correct in 2009, but will go up in 2010 and peak in 2011. Silver will follow gold.
James Howard Kunstler (01.2010)
... stimulus and bailouts will just compound the central problem with debt. ... Six Months to Live: The economy that is. ... the buzz I’ve gotten the first two weeks of 2010.
Don't know them; ain't going looking.
Peter Schiff 03.13.10
"In my opinion, the market is now perfectly positioned for a massive dollar sell-off. ... My gut is that the dollar sell-off will be sharp and swift." ... Schiff is famous for his accurate predictions of the economic events of 2008. (AND is running for soon to be Former Senator Dodds' Senate seat in CT.)
Reminds me of a Star Trek episode (or movie) when Kirk exclaims that he trusts a guess from Spock more than having final navigational calculations from a computer!
Lindsey Williams
Dollar devalued 30-50% by end of year. It will become very difficult for the average American to afford to buy even food. This was revealed to him through an Illuminati insider.
Is he milking a 40 year old 'brush with eliteness'? Or is he the real deal.
Unnamed Economist At US Gov't (GLP)
What we have experienced the last two years is nothing to what we are going to experience this year.
If you have a job now…you may not have it in three to six months 08.31.10.
Stock market will fall = Great Depression.
Foreign investors stop financing debt = Collapse.
6.2 million are about to lose their unemployment.
GLP
Jimmy "Doomsday" (AKA Mr. TellUsExactlyWhatYouReallyThink)
· DOW will fall below 7,000 before mid summer 2010
· Dollar will rise above 95 on the dollar index before mid summer 2010
· Gold will bottom out below $800 before mid summer 2010
· Silver will bottom out below $10 before mid summer 2010
· California debt implosion will start its major downturn by mid summer and hit crisis mode before Q4 2010
· Dollar index will plunge below 65 between Q3 & Q4 2010
· Commercial real estate will hit crisis mode in Q4 2010
· Over 35 States will be bailed out by end of Q4 2010 by the US Tax Payer
· End of Q4 2010 gold will hit $1,600 & silver jump to $35 an oz.
AKA Mr. Jimmy "TellUsExactlyWhatYouReallyThink"
George Ure
Markets up until mid-to-late-summer. Then "all hell breaks lose" from then on through the rest of the year.
And if someone has already posted this elsewhere on ATS... This isn't really a duplicate since I've trimmed the quotes as much as could for easy < 5 minute skim. Adding links and comments to uniquely qualify what is appearing to be a widely quoted piece of source text. "24 Experts Agree..."
Bunker For sale
New York City Example
Assumptions
- There is no warning. The population has not been evacuated nor sought shelter. Both measures could reduce casualties.
- There is clear weather, with visibility of 9 miles (16 km).
- This is an isolated attack, leaving the rest of the country free to respond.
- A large percentage of the day time population is outside - 25%.
- The daytime population density is roughly uniform and about 125,000 per square mile.
- The shock wave will spread out uniformly in all directions, being minimally affected by structures.
New York City Example: 1 second after detonation
Blast Wave
At the end of the first second, the shock wave will have an overpressure of 20 psi. at a distance of four tenths of a mile from ground zero. Even the most heavily reinforced steel and concrete buildings will be destroyed. These buildings include the Empire State Building, Madison Square Gardens, Penn Central Railroad Station and the New York Public Library. Most of the material that comprises these buildings will remain and pile up to a depth of hundreds of feet in places, but nothing inside this ring will be recognizable.Casualties
This circle contains a daytime population of roughly 75,000. There will be no survivors. Those caught outside will be exposed to the full effects of the blast, including severe lung and ear drum damage and exposure to flying debris. Those in the direct line of sight of the blast will be exposed to a thermal pulse in excess of 500 cal/sq.cm., causing instant death. Those inside, though shielded from some of the blast and thermal effects, will be killed as buildings collapse.Fireball
The fireball will have a maximum radius of 1,023 feet (0.2 miles). However, the blast effects will greatly outweigh any direct thermal effects due to the fireball.New York City Example: 4 seconds after detonation
Blast Wave
An overpressure of at least 10 psi. extends out for 1 mile. Concrete and steel reinforced commercial buildings will be destroyed or severely damaged out to the edge of this ring. The few buildings that remain standing on the outside edge of this ring will have their interiors destroyed. Though the thermal pulse is intense enough to ignite most materials, the shock wave will likely extinguish most fires in this ring. Landmarks affected by the blast at this distance include the Chrysler Building, Rockerfeller Center, the United Nations, and four hospitals. All of these buildings will be totally destroyed or so severely damaged that they will be unusable and will have to be demolished in the clean-up.Casualties
Most people inside buildings will be killed by flying debris or die as the buildings collapse. Almost all those outside and not in the direct line of sight of the blast will receive lung and ear drum injuries to varying degrees. Those in the direct line of sight will be killed instantly by the thermal pulse. Fatalities are estimated at 300,000 with many of the remaining 100,000 receiving some form of non-fatal injury. Those people in this ring making use of New York's subway system will escape with few injuries, though they may be trapped for days by debris blocking entrances and exits.New York City Example: 6 seconds after detonation
Blast Wave
In the next two seconds the shock wave moves out another half mile, extending the destruction out to a 1.5 mile radius. The overpressure has dropped to 5 psi. at the outer edge of this ring, which covers an area of 4 square miles. Reinforced structures are heavily damaged and unreinforced residential type structures of brick and wood are destroyed. Affected structures include Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center and the Queensboro Bridge. All the named structures are near the outside edge of this ring. All windows in these structures will be shattered and many interior walls will collapse.Casualties
This ring contains 500,000 people during the day. About 190,000 will be killed inside buildings by flying debris. This is roughly half of the assumed indoor population. The other 190,000 will suffer varying degrees of injuries. Most of those outside and not in the direct line of sight of the explosion will escape direct injury from the blast, but may be injured by flying objects. The thermal pulse is still sufficiently intense (40 cal/sq.cm.) to kill anyone in the direct line of sight; approximately 30,000. Those people fortunate enough to be under ground will escape with no injuries. The total number of injured will be approximately 220,000, leaving roughly 60,000 uninjured.Thermal Effects
This region contains the most severe fire hazard, since fire ignition and spread are more likely in partly damaged buildings than in completely flattened areas. Perhaps 5% of the building would be initially ignited, with fire spread to adjoining buildings highly likely. Fires will continue to spread for 24 hours at least, ultimately destroying about half the buildings.New York City Example: 10 seconds after detonation
Blast Wave
This band extends out to a 2.5 mile radius and has an overpressure at the outside edge of 2 psi. Reinforced structures will receive varying amounts of damage, with those buildings at the edge being almost completely undamaged. Wood and brick buildings will receive moderate amounts of initial damage, with the damage becoming less significant at the outside edge of the ring.Casualties
An estimated 235,000 people (15%) will be fatalities in this ring, with another 525,000 injured to varying degrees. No injuries will be due directly to the blast overpressure. However, the thermal pulse will still be sufficient to kill or incapacitate those not indoors or otherwise protected. The degree of injury from the thermal pulse will depend greatly on clothing and skin color. Darker clothing and skin will absorb more of the energy, giving a more severe burn. The material type and thickness will also determine the severity of burns from the thermal pulse.Thermal Effects
The possibility of delayed damage due to fire is very real in this band. The energy in the thermal pulse will still be sufficient to start combustible materials on fire, yet the overpressure and accompanying wind will be less likely to put out these fires. If only a small percentage of the buildings start on fire many may be damaged as the fire spreads out of control since the capability to fight fires will be non-existent. It may be 24 hours or more before the resources are available to even begin to fight fires.New York City Example: 16 seconds after detonation
Blast Wave
This band extends out for almost 4 miles and has an overpressure of 1 psi. at its outside edge. At the inner edge there will be light to moderate amounts of damage to unreinforced buildings of brick and wood. Reinforced structures and commercial buildings will receive light damage at most. This band extends out to the site of the former World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty in the south, across the East River into Queens in the east, and across the Hudson River to New Jersey.Casualties
Though this ring covers an additional 30 square miles, much of this area is over water or less densely populated areas. The affected population in this ring is estimated to be 500,000. There will be almost no fatalities in this ring and only a small percentage, roughly 30,000, will receive injuries from the thermal pulse. Flashblindness and permanent retinal injuries from the blast will extend out beyond 20 miles. Since this is a ground level explosion, the number of people who will be looking in the direction of the blast and have a clear view, will be much less than if the explosion had taken place several thousand feet above the city.New York City Example: Long-Term Fallout Pattern
Radioactive Fallout
A surface explosion will produce much more early fallout than a similarly sized air burst where the fireball never touches the ground. This is because a surface explosion produces radioactive particles from the ground as well as from the weapon. The early fallout will drift back to earth on the prevailing wind, creating an elliptical pattern stretching from ground zero out into Long Island. Because the wind will be relatively light, the fallout will be highly concentrated in the area of Manhattan just to the east of the blast. Predicting levels of radiation is difficult and depends on many factors like bomb size, design, the ground surface and soil type.Fallout Effects
| Dose-rem | Effects |
|---|---|
| 5-20 | Possible late effects; possible chromosomal damage. |
| 20-100 | Temporary reduction in white blood cells. |
| 100-200 | Mild radiation sickness within a few hours: vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue; reduction in resistance to infection. |
| 200-300 | Serious radiation sickness effects as in 100-200 rem and hemorrhage; exposure is a Lethal Dose to 10-35% of the population after 30 days (LD 10-35/30). |
| 300-400 | Serious radiation sickness; also marrow and intestine destruction; LD 50-70/30. |
| 400-1000 | Acute illness, early death; LD 60-95/30. |
| 1000-5000 | Acute illness, early death in days; LD 100/10. |
New York City Example: Recovery
In this simulated attack we have assumed that New York is the only city attacked and that there is nothing to prevent state and federal agencies from concentrating their resources on bringing aid to the devastated area. Though the cleanup and decontamination of the most severely damaged and radioactive areas would take years, much immediate aid could be obtained from the outside.Access
Manhattan is an island connected to the rest of New York and New Jersey by tunnels and bridges. Many of these access points will be affected to some degree by the blast. The Lincoln and Queens Midtown Tunnels are both in the 10 psi. ring and would likely be damaged or blocked by debris. The Queensboro Bridge is in the 5 psi. ring and would likely be damaged. The remaining tunnels and bridges all fall in the 2 or 1 psi. rings and might receive some light damage but would likely be usable. The rescue effort from outside would be further hampered by people trying to flee the area. In general, help from the outside would be slow in coming.Medical Effects
With almost 900,000 people injured to various degrees, the task of caring for the injured will be beyond the ability of the medical system to respond. All but one of Manhattan's large hospitals lie inside the 5 psi. ring and would be completely destroyed. There aren't enough empty hospital beds in all of New York and New Jersey for even the most critically injured. The 1 psi. ring alone has an estimated 30,000 burn victims that will need specialized care. The entire country has a total of 3000 beds in burn centers. In the days to follow it is likely that many of the injured will die from lack of any medical care.Utilities
Most of Manhattan will be without utilities (electricity, gas, water, sewage). Out to the edge of the 2 psi. ring, damaged buildings and the resulting debris will make repairs very difficult, if not impossible, for several weeks. It is likely that the stress to the power system will temporarily knock out power to an area much larger than that directly affected by the blast.Rescue and Recovery
Transportation of the injured and the ability to bring in the necessary supplies, people and equipment will be dependent on the condition of the tunnels and bridges that connect Manhattan to New York and New Jersey. As discussed in Access, these points will be blocked or damaged to varying degrees, except at the far north and south tips of the island. The main train station lies in the 10 psi. ring and would be completely destroyed. Once access is established then true rescue work can begin.It is likely that many tens of thousands of people would become homeless. Creation of temporary shelter would be among the first recovery tasks after all the trapped and injured had been found and cared for. True recovery for New York would take many years. Some areas would remain dangerously radioactive and would have to be cleaned up at tremendous cost or be abandoned for many years to come. Even without the radioactivity it is likely that New York City would never fully recover to its present status as one of the country's leading financial and cultural centers.
| Distance from ground zero (mi.) | Population | Fatalities | Injuries | Uninjured |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 - 0.4 | 75,000 | 75,000 | 0 | 0 |
| 0.4 - 1.0 | 400,000 | 300,000 | 100,000 | 0 |
| 1.0 - 1.5 | 500,000 | 220,000 | 220,000 | 60,000 |
| 1.5 - 2.5 | 1,500,000 | 235,000 | 525,000 | 740,000 |
| 2.5 - 4.0 | 500,000 | 0 | 30,000 | 470,000 |
| Totals | 2,975,000 | 830,000 | 875,000 | 1,270,000 |
New York City Example: Summary
While this simulation of a 150 kiloton nuclear explosion contains many assumptions, and the uncertainty associated with any of the estimates is large, a number of points stand out:
- 20 square miles of property destruction ( 2 psi.),
- Eight hundred thousand killed, nine hundred thousand injured,
- Additional damage from post blast fires,
- Coordinated national rescue and recovery effort necessary.
If you live in Long Beach, California, you may think the city is under attack by terrorists today.
The Adler Realty Investment company in Long Beach has sent a notice to residents (see below) informing them that “response agencies,” including the U.S. Coast Guard, the local police and fire department along with the military will be conducting a training exercise in the city. “Port Protector 2010,” an attachment to the notice states, will consist of a training exercise in response to a “terrorist threat” including a “hostage scenario” and Hazmat training.
“A United States Coast Guard helicopter will be flying overhead as part of the training exercise,” the attachment continues. “Weapons will be brandished (NO GUNFIRE). Long Beach motor officers will be patroling outer permiter (sic) areas of exercise for safety and to keep non-exercise participants out of exercise area.”
The Long Beach exercise is another example of the engineered demise of Posse Comitatus and an usurpation of the right of the states to control their police, emergency services, and National Guard under the guise of the manufactured war on terror.
“The war on terrorism has made the U.S. armed forces active participants in homeland defense and, in the process, has prompted changes in the responsibilities and mission scope of the Defense Department. Assuming that the military forces serve a supporting and supplementary role, working in conjunction with law enforcement authorities, prohibitions against military involvement in anti-terror operations are generally moot — or even irrelevant… It is in this context that the military’s post-September 11 homeland security initiatives must be analyzed vis-á-vis Posse Comitatus,” writes Juliette Kayyem for National Defense Magazine.
In short, Posse Comitatus is dead so far as the government and the Pentagon are concerned. Increasingly there is little divide between the military and local law enforcement.
Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11 establishing a Council of Governors, described as an “advisory panel” that will allow the Pentagon to implement contingency plans designed to seize control of state National Guard in the event of a “national emergency.”
The “terror threat” on the water and shoreline of Long Beach does not specify al-Qaeda or scary Muslim terrorists.
In late April, we reported on the U.S. Military in Kentucky training to confront Tea Party protesters and anti-government demonstrators, who in official intelligence advisories are described as bomb-making terrorists. “Anti-Government – Health Care Protesters have stated that they would join the TEA Party as a sign of solidarity” during a protest at Fort Knox. The Tea Party “groups are armed, have combative training and some are former Military Snipers. Some may have explosives training / experience,” an intel report connected to the exercise stated.
A report issued in 2008 by the U.S. Army War College discussed the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis. The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warned that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”
For more than a decade the Pentagon has endeavored to acclimate Americans to the presence of troops on the streets. Instances of the Pentagon putting troops on the streets are numerous and have increased in frequency over the last few years.
In March of 2009, Infowars reported on U.S. Army soldiers dispatched in Samson, Alabama, supposedly in response to a rampaging gunman.
In December, 2008, the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center and the local California Highway Patrol worked together “in a joint effort to reduce accidents and drinking and driving” in San Bernardino County, a blatant violation of Posse Comitatus.
The Iowa National Guard planned an exercise in the small town of Arcadia but rolled back the invasion after citizens complained about soldiers patrolling the streets of an American town.
Military police were positioned at the 2009 Kentucky Derby and in April of the same year 400 National Guard Combat Support Battalion troops were dispatched to “maintain public order” at the Boston Marathon.
In April of 2009, an Infowars reader sent a page taken from the Hardeman County, Tennessee, Bulletin Times announcing a seat belt checkpoint to be conducted on April 4 “in conjunction with a Homeland Security training exercise by the 251st Military Police in Bolivar who recently returned from Iraq.”
On April 15, 2009, we reported on how the Maryland National Guard was put on alert in anticipation of Tax Day nationwide Tea Party protests. A Force Protection Advisory issued on April 11 instructed the National Guard to be on alert during the Tea Party protests because Guardsmen and Guard facilities might become “targets of opportunity.” It was later learned that the Department of Homeland Security had put the protesters under surveillance.
Joint military, Department of Homeland Security, and local police and emergency exercises are an integral part of this ongoing effort to acclimate the American people to the prospect of troops and heavily armed cops on the streets.
 | |
 | |
| The Long Beach exercise is another example of the engineered demise of Posse Comitatus. | |
“A United States Coast Guard helicopter will be flying overhead as part of the training exercise,” the attachment continues. “Weapons will be brandished (NO GUNFIRE). Long Beach motor officers will be patroling outer permiter (sic) areas of exercise for safety and to keep non-exercise participants out of exercise area.”
The Long Beach exercise is another example of the engineered demise of Posse Comitatus and an usurpation of the right of the states to control their police, emergency services, and National Guard under the guise of the manufactured war on terror.
“The war on terrorism has made the U.S. armed forces active participants in homeland defense and, in the process, has prompted changes in the responsibilities and mission scope of the Defense Department. Assuming that the military forces serve a supporting and supplementary role, working in conjunction with law enforcement authorities, prohibitions against military involvement in anti-terror operations are generally moot — or even irrelevant… It is in this context that the military’s post-September 11 homeland security initiatives must be analyzed vis-á-vis Posse Comitatus,” writes Juliette Kayyem for National Defense Magazine.
In short, Posse Comitatus is dead so far as the government and the Pentagon are concerned. Increasingly there is little divide between the military and local law enforcement.
Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11 establishing a Council of Governors, described as an “advisory panel” that will allow the Pentagon to implement contingency plans designed to seize control of state National Guard in the event of a “national emergency.”
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
The “terror threat” on the water and shoreline of Long Beach does not specify al-Qaeda or scary Muslim terrorists.
In late April, we reported on the U.S. Military in Kentucky training to confront Tea Party protesters and anti-government demonstrators, who in official intelligence advisories are described as bomb-making terrorists. “Anti-Government – Health Care Protesters have stated that they would join the TEA Party as a sign of solidarity” during a protest at Fort Knox. The Tea Party “groups are armed, have combative training and some are former Military Snipers. Some may have explosives training / experience,” an intel report connected to the exercise stated.
A report issued in 2008 by the U.S. Army War College discussed the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis. The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warned that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”
For more than a decade the Pentagon has endeavored to acclimate Americans to the presence of troops on the streets. Instances of the Pentagon putting troops on the streets are numerous and have increased in frequency over the last few years.
In March of 2009, Infowars reported on U.S. Army soldiers dispatched in Samson, Alabama, supposedly in response to a rampaging gunman.
In December, 2008, the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center and the local California Highway Patrol worked together “in a joint effort to reduce accidents and drinking and driving” in San Bernardino County, a blatant violation of Posse Comitatus.
The Iowa National Guard planned an exercise in the small town of Arcadia but rolled back the invasion after citizens complained about soldiers patrolling the streets of an American town.
Military police were positioned at the 2009 Kentucky Derby and in April of the same year 400 National Guard Combat Support Battalion troops were dispatched to “maintain public order” at the Boston Marathon.
In April of 2009, an Infowars reader sent a page taken from the Hardeman County, Tennessee, Bulletin Times announcing a seat belt checkpoint to be conducted on April 4 “in conjunction with a Homeland Security training exercise by the 251st Military Police in Bolivar who recently returned from Iraq.”
On April 15, 2009, we reported on how the Maryland National Guard was put on alert in anticipation of Tax Day nationwide Tea Party protests. A Force Protection Advisory issued on April 11 instructed the National Guard to be on alert during the Tea Party protests because Guardsmen and Guard facilities might become “targets of opportunity.” It was later learned that the Department of Homeland Security had put the protesters under surveillance.
Joint military, Department of Homeland Security, and local police and emergency exercises are an integral part of this ongoing effort to acclimate the American people to the prospect of troops and heavily armed cops on the streets.
Nuclear Weapon Effects
Nuclear detonations are the most devastating of the weapons of mass destruction. To make this point one need only recall the pictures from Hiroshima or the international furor over the accidental but enormous radiation release from the Chernobyl power plant. The contamination from Chernobyl was significantly larger than would have been expected from a nuclear detonation of about 20 kT at ground level, but was comparable in extent to what might result from a “small” nuclear war in which a dozen or so weapons of nominal yield were exploded at altitudes intended to maximize blast damage. A nuclear detonation creates a severe environment including blast, thermal pulse, neutrons, x- and gamma-rays, radiation, electromagnetic pulse (EMP), and ionization of the upper atmosphere. Depending upon the environment in which the nuclear de-vice is detonated, blast effects are manifested as ground shock, water shock, “blueout,” cratering, and large amounts of dust and radioactive fallout. All pose problems for the survival of friendly systems and can lead to the destruction or neutralization of hostile assets.
The energy of a nuclear explosion is transferred to the surrounding medium in three distinct forms: blast; thermal radiation; and nuclear radiation. The distribution of energy among these three forms will depend on the yield of the weapon, the location of the burst, and the characteristics of the environment. For a low altitude atmospheric detonation of a moderate sized weapon in the kiloton range, the energy is distributed roughly as follows:
50% as blast; 35% as thermal radiation; made up of a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum, including infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light and some soft x-ray emitted at the time of the explosion; and 15% as nuclear radiation; including 5% as initial ionizing radiation consisting chiefly of neutrons and gamma rays emitted within the first minute after detonation, and 10% as residual nuclear radiation. Residual nuclear radiation is the hazard in fallout.Considerable variation from this distribution will occur with changes in yield or location of the detonation. Because of the tremendous amounts of energy liberated per unit mass in a nuclear detonation, temperatures of several tens of million degrees centigrade develop in the immediate area of the detonation. This is in marked contrast to the few thousand degrees of a conventional explosion. At these very high temperatures the nonfissioned parts of the nuclear weapon are vaporized. The atoms do not release the energy as kinetic energy but release it in the form of large amounts of electromagnetic radiation. In an atmospheric detonation, this electromagnetic radiation, consisting chiefly of soft x-ray, is absorbed within a few meters of the point of detonation by the surrounding atmosphere, heating it to extremely high temperatures and forming a brilliantly hot sphere of air and gaseous weapon residues, the so-called fireball. Immediately upon formation, the fireball begins to grow rapidly and rise like a hot air balloon. Within a millisecond after detonation, the diameter of the fireball from a 1 megaton (Mt) air burst is 150 m. This increases to a maximum of 2200 m within 10 seconds, at which time the fireball is also rising at the rate of 100 m/sec. The initial rapid expansion of the fireball severely compresses the surrounding atmosphere, producing a powerful blast wave. As it expands toward its maximum diameter, the fireball cools, and after about a minute its temperature has decreased to such an extent that it no longer emits significant amounts of thermal radiation. The combination of the upward movement and the cooling of the fireball gives rise to the formation of the characteristic mushroom-shaped cloud. As the fireball cools, the vaporized materials in it condense to form a cloud of solid particles. Following an air burst, condensed droplets of water give it a typical white cloudlike appearance. In the case of a surface burst, this cloud will also contain large quantities of dirt and other debris which are vaporized when the fireball touches the earth's surface or are sucked up by the strong updrafts afterwards, giving the cloud a dirty brown appearance. The dirt and debris become contaminated with the radioisotopes generated by the explosion or activated by neutron radiation and fall to earth as fallout. The relative effects of blast, heat, and nuclear radiation will largely be determined by the altitude at which the weapon is detonated. Nuclear explosions are generally classified as air bursts, surface bursts, subsurface bursts, or high altitude bursts. Air Bursts. An air burst is an explosion in which a weapon is detonated in air at an altitude below 30 km but at sufficient height that the fireball does not contact the surface of the earth. After such a burst, blast may cause considerable damage and injury. The altitude of an air burst can be varied to obtain maximum blast effects, maximum thermal effects, desired radiation effects, or a balanced combination of these effects. Burns to exposed skin may be produced over many square kilometers and eye injuries over a still larger area. Initial nuclear radiation will be a significant hazard with smaller weapons, but the fallout hazard can be ignored as there is essentially no local fallout from an air burst. The fission products are generally dispersed over a large area of the globe unless there is local rainfall resulting in localized fallout. In the vicinity of ground zero, there may be a small area of neutron-induced activity which could be hazardous to troops required to pass through the area. Tactically, air bursts are the most likely to be used against ground forces.
Surface Burst. A surface burst is an explosion in which a weapon is detonated on or slightly above the surface of the earth so that the fireball actually touches the land or water surface. Under these conditions, the area affected by blast, thermal radiation, and initial nuclear radiation will be less extensive than for an air burst of similar yield, except in the region of ground zero where destruction is concentrated. In contrast with air bursts, local fallout can be a hazard over a much larger downwind area than that which is affected by blast and thermal radiation. Subsurface Burst. A subsurface burst is an explosion in which the point of the detonation is beneath the surface of land or water. Cratering will generally result from an underground burst, just as for a surface burst. If the burst does not penetrate the surface, the only other hazard will be from ground or water shock. If the burst is shallow enough to penetrate the surface, blast, thermal, and initial nuclear radiation effects will be present, but will be less than for a surface burst of comparable yield. Local fallout will be very heavy if penetration occurs. High Altitude Burst. A high altitude burst is one in which the weapon is exploded at such an altitude (above 30 km) that initial soft x-rays generated by the detonation dissipate energy as heat in a much larger volume of air molecules. There the fireball is much larger and expands much more rapidly. The ionizing radiation from the high altitude burst can travel for hundreds of miles before being absorbed. Significant ionization of the upper atmosphere (ionosphere) can occur. Severe disruption in communications can occur following high altitude bursts. They also lead to generation of an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which can significantly degrade performance of or destroy sophisticated electronic equipment. There are no known biological effects of EMP; however, indirect effects may result from failure of critical medical equipment. Although some nuclear weapons effects (NWE) such as blast and cratering have analogs in the effects of conventional weapons, many NWE are unique to nuclear use. In addition, blast and other “common” weapons effects are likely to be much more powerful in the nuclear case than in the realm of conventional weapons. NWE are so severe that combinations of two or more simultaneously (as in a real event) may not add linearly, complicating the design and construction of physical simulators or the writing and validation of computer simulation codes. 
Although thermal radiation, EMP, and ionizing radiation from a nuclear blast are all damage producing, at yields below about a megaton the blast and shock produced by a nuclear weapon are the predominant means of damaging a target. For some targets, such as underground bunkers and missile silos, blast and shock are virtually the only effective destructive mechanisms.
The intensity of thermal radiation decreases only as the inverse square of the distance from a nuclear detonation, while blast, shock, and prompt ionizing radiation effects decrease more rapidly. Thus, high-yield weapons are primarily incendiary weapons, able to start fires and do other thermal damage at distances well beyond the radius at which they can topple buildings or overturn armored vehicles. Nuclear effects on electromagnetic signal propagation, which affects command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C 4 I), are of concern to countries expected to use nuclear weapons, particularly those which intend to explode a weapon at great altitudes or those which expect to have to defend against such a nuclear attack. C3I technology is primarily affected by high-altitude nuclear effects that could interrupt satellite-to-satellite communications, satellite-to-aircraft links, or satellite-to-ground links. Most nations will hope that signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites and ground-based differential GPS transmitters will be usable shortly after a nuclear explosion, as well as traditional communications channels which must be protected.
The electromagnetic pulse generated by the detonation of a single nuclear weapon at high altitudes can be a threat to military systems located as much as a thousand miles away. HEMP can disable communications systems and even power grids at enormous distances from the burst. This type of threat could be used by a third world country that has the capability to launch a rocket carrying a high-yield device (about 1 megaton or more) a few hundred kilometers into the upper atmosphere and a few thousand kilometers from its own territory (to avoid damaging its own systems).
Sources and Methods
- Adapted from - Nuclear Weapons Effects Technology Militarily Critical Technologies List (MCTL) Part II: Weapons of Mass Destruction Technologies
- The Effects of Nuclear Weapons - This is the definitive, unclassified text on nuclear weapons effects. A team effort is underway to scan and digitize as much of the book as time permits.
- The Effects of Nuclear War - Office of Technology Assessment (May 1979) The Office of Technology Assessment has undertaken to describe the effects of a nuclear war on the civilian populations, economies, and societies of the United States and the Soviet Union. The effects of a nuclear war that cannot be calculated are at least as important as those for which calculations are attempted. Moreover, even these Iimited calculations are subject to very large uncertainties that make it much more difficult to predict than blast damage.
- NATO HANDBOOK ON THE MEDICAL ASPECTS OF NBC DEFENSIVE OPERATIONS PART I - NUCLEAR
- Nuclear Attack Planning Base 1990, Final Project Report, Executive Summary, April 1987
Are Nuclear Attacks Even Something To Worry About?
This is considered a lower probability by terrorism experts. However, the nature of terrorism itself is that it is unpredictable. We also thought 9/11 couldn't happen. All of us live close enough to nuclear power plants that it is a viable issue to consider. With the potential capability of terrorists to create smaller nuclear weapon in the range of 20 Kiloton Improvised Nuclear Devices (IND) to 150 Kiloton (KT) Mulistage Nuclear Device, a surprise nuclear attack is not impossible. (This is very different than 1960-1990s' 5 Megaton - 20 Megaton (MT) Nuclear ICBMs of USSR.)
The most important and different aspect is such potential terrorist nuclear weapons would be more localized and are survivable beyond the immediate area of attack. But nuclear fallout does spread via wind, and the after affects would be necessary to protect your family from. NOTE: This is not to diminish the significant threat that even a "small" terrorist nuclear weapon would pose. A 15 KT terrorist IND device would be comparable to explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb.
Typically, there is a wider range of fallout DOWNWIND from a nuclear device or explosion, so that would be a possible consideration in an evacuation plan. With largest nuclear explosure ever measured (huge 15 Megaton bomb), Government identified fallout pattern reached downwind for 320 miles, but there was only a WIDTH of cross section in downwind fallout of 40 miles. If you are thinking a 150 KT nuclear explosion, you could extrapolate estimate of 32 miles fallout downwind, and 4 mile fallout width downwind.
So if you are not NORTH of a nuclear attack, and you are south or downwind of it, try to be at least 4 miles away from downwind, and make effort to be 20 miles - so if you go SOUTH - you would try to go SOUTHEAST or SOUTHWEST of nuclear attack, not just directly South, if possible. To play it safe, you would want to get 50 miles away quickly from an attack. Bottom line in a nuclear attack is DISTANCE = IMPROVED SAFETY.
This is considered a lower probability by terrorism experts. However, the nature of terrorism itself is that it is unpredictable. We also thought 9/11 couldn't happen. All of us live close enough to nuclear power plants that it is a viable issue to consider. With the potential capability of terrorists to create smaller nuclear weapon in the range of 20 Kiloton Improvised Nuclear Devices (IND) to 150 Kiloton (KT) Mulistage Nuclear Device, a surprise nuclear attack is not impossible. (This is very different than 1960-1990s' 5 Megaton - 20 Megaton (MT) Nuclear ICBMs of USSR.)
The most important and different aspect is such potential terrorist nuclear weapons would be more localized and are survivable beyond the immediate area of attack. But nuclear fallout does spread via wind, and the after affects would be necessary to protect your family from. NOTE: This is not to diminish the significant threat that even a "small" terrorist nuclear weapon would pose. A 15 KT terrorist IND device would be comparable to explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb.
Typically, there is a wider range of fallout DOWNWIND from a nuclear device or explosion, so that would be a possible consideration in an evacuation plan. With largest nuclear explosure ever measured (huge 15 Megaton bomb), Government identified fallout pattern reached downwind for 320 miles, but there was only a WIDTH of cross section in downwind fallout of 40 miles. If you are thinking a 150 KT nuclear explosion, you could extrapolate estimate of 32 miles fallout downwind, and 4 mile fallout width downwind.
So if you are not NORTH of a nuclear attack, and you are south or downwind of it, try to be at least 4 miles away from downwind, and make effort to be 20 miles - so if you go SOUTH - you would try to go SOUTHEAST or SOUTHWEST of nuclear attack, not just directly South, if possible. To play it safe, you would want to get 50 miles away quickly from an attack. Bottom line in a nuclear attack is DISTANCE = IMPROVED SAFETY.
Background
Terrorists have tried to obtain weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons. Hearings and media articles since September 11 have highlighted radiological dispersal devices, or "dirty bombs," which would use standard explosives or other means to disperse radioactive materials. Dirty bombs would be quite feasible for a terrorist group to make, given the limited expertise needed and the availability of explosives and radioactive material. An attack with such a weapon likely would kill or injure few people and cause little property damage, though it could cause panic and might require closing some areas for an undetermined time. While a terrorist attack using a nuclear weapon (a device that caused a substantial nuclear explosive yield, as distinct from a dirty bomb) has much lower feasibility, it merits consideration because it would have much higher consequence. The September 11 attacks, as well as earlier and later analyses, showed that many U.S. facilities could be attractive targets for terrorist attack. One set of targets that has attracted attention from Congress is the nation’s seaports. If terrorists smuggled a Hiroshima-sized bomb into a port and set it off, the attack would destroy buildings out to a mile or two; start fires, especially in a port that handled petroleum and chemicals; fallout over many square miles; and disrupt commerce. It could kill many thousands of people. (See CRS Report RS21079, Maritime Security: Overview of Issues.)
Terrorists might attempt to smuggle a bomb into a U.S. port in many ways, such as in a tanker or a dry bulk freighter, but sea containers may provide them a particularly attractive route. A container is "[a] truck trailer body that can be detached from the chassis for loading into a vessel, a rail car or stacked in a container depot." Much of the world’s cargo moves by container. The U.S. Customs Service processed 5.7 million containers entering the United States by ship in 2001.3 It screens data for all these containers, though it inspects "only about 2 percent of the total volume of trade entering the country each year." Containers could easily accommodate a nuclear weapon. U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner believes that with an attack using a bomb in a container, "the shipping of sea containers would stop," leading to devastating consequences for the global economy, bringing some countries to the edge of economic collapse. On the other hand, people can find ways to minimize economic problems.
The Y2K computer bug did not result in disaster, in part because organizations using computers took steps to ward off the problem. German production of tanks, aircraft, and artillery pieces increased in 1943 and 1944 despite Allied bombing.7 Because of concern for port vulnerability, Congress is considering S. 1214, Port and Maritime Security Act of 2001; a conference is pending. (See CRS Report RL31424, Maritime and Port Security: A Comparison of Major Provisions of S. 1214 and H.R. 3983.8)
Terrorist nuclear weapons: routes to a bomb.
A terrorist group (as distinct from a nation) might obtain a nuclear bomb by several plausible routes. In each case, a reasonable estimate of explosive yield is that of the Hiroshima bomb, 15 kilotons, equivalent to the explosive force of 15,000 tons of TNT.
Russia.
Strategic nuclear weapons (long-range weapons the Soviet Union would have used to attack the United States) are reportedly well guarded on missiles or, thanks in part to U.S. assistance, in storage. In contrast, thousands of lower-yield weapons intended for use in combat are less well secured, and numbers and locations are uncertain. (See CRS Issue Brief IB98038, Nuclear Weapons in Russia: Safety, Security, and Control Issues.) Terrorists might buy or steal one of these weapons. The weapons might (or might not) have devices to prevent unauthorized use, or terrorists might lack confidence that they could make a weapon work. Without such confidence, terrorists might "mine" the weapon for nuclear materials and components to make their own device.
Pakistan.
Other nations have nuclear weapons. U.S., British, French, and Israeli weapons are thought to be well guarded. Chinese weapons are also thought to be well guarded, though less is known on this point. Control is less certain for India and Pakistan. Of the two, it appears more likely that terrorists might obtain a bomb from Pakistan. That nation asserts that it has complete control over its weapons, but that could change if Pakistan were taken over by Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. In this scenario, the "donors" would presumably give the terrorists detailed instructions for operating the bombs.
Build a bomb.
The Hiroshima bomb was a "gun assembly" weapon. Its nuclear explosive component was a gun barrel about 6 inches in diameter by 6 feet long. It was capped at each end, with standard explosive at one end, a mass of uranium highly enriched in the isotope 235 (highly enriched uranium, or HEU) at the other end, and a second HEU mass in the middle. Detonating the explosive shot one mass of HEU into the other, rapidly assembling a mass large enough to support a fission chain reaction. (Plutonium cannot be used.) This is the simplest type of nuclear weapon. U.S. scientists had such high confidence in the design that they did not test the Hiroshima bomb.
Many experts believe that a terrorist group having access to HEU and the requisite skills, but without the resources available to a nation, could build such a weapon. Five former Los Alamos nuclear weapons experts held that a crude nuclear weapon "could be constructed by a group not previously engaged in designing or building nuclear weapons, providing a number of requirements were adequately met." The requirements they list, though, are substantial. They include detailed design drawings and specifications; individuals skilled in a wide range of weapons skills; the necessary equipment; and extensive preparations to create a bomb quickly once in possession of HEU so as to reduce the risk of detection. A National Research Council study presents another view. The basic technical information needed to construct a workable nuclear device is readily available in the open literature. The primary impediment that prevents countries or technically competent terrorist groups from developing nuclear weapons is the availability of SNM [special nuclear materials, i.e., HEU and plutonium-239], especially HEU.
It would be difficult for a terrorist group to obtain enough HEU for a weapon. Many nations have gone to great lengths to protect it. The International Atomic Energy Agency has safeguards to protect, among other things, HEU in nuclear reactors. The United States has had a number of programs over the past decade to help former Soviet republics protect nuclear weapons, material, and knowledge. (See CRS Report 97-1027, Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Programs: Issues for Congress.) Perhaps the best evidence that these efforts have succeeded so far is that terrorists have not detonated a nuclear weapon. At the same time, some are concerned that terrorists could obtain HEU. For example, the National Research Council study noted above rated the threat level from SNM from Russia as "High" large inventories of SNM are stored at many sites that apparently lack inventory controls and indigenous threats have increased.
Vulnerability of ports and shipping.
Ports may be attractive targets for terrorists. With many of the largest ports in or near major cities, a nuclear bomb detonated in a port could kill many thousands of people, interrupt flows of U.S. commerce, and perhaps cause a global economic disruption. Ports are vulnerable. Manyare flat, being at the ocean’s edge, so would offer little shielding against weapon effects. Some have great quantities of inflammable material, such as fuel; fires could extend the area of destruction and release toxic gases. While ports may stretch on for miles, a 15-kiloton weapon would have enough force to destroy many key facilities of a typical port.
Current front-line capability to detect nuclear weapons is exceedingly limited. CRS visits to the U.S. Customs Service in Baltimore in July 2002 and to the U.S. Coast Guard in Philadelphia in August 2002 produced the following information. Customs’ Container Security Initiative seeks to improve security at foreign ports for U.S.-bound containers, but Customs inspectors do not inspect cargo there and do not control personnel selection or port operations. The Coast Guard cannot open containers at sea for various reasons. For example, they are tightly packed and the door is part of a container’s structure, so a container under other containers might crumple if the door were opened. Technology is lacking. A Coast Guard officer wrote, "our method of detecting nuclear and biological weapons is ... our eyes, ears, and brains. We currently have no more sophisticated equipment than that." At Baltimore, Customs inspects about 2 percent of containers. For some, it uses a sophisticated machine that x-rays entire containers; for others, it unloads all items from a container, may x-ray them, and searches some items. Customs agents have pager-size radiation detectors. Problems are obvious. Terrorists could infiltrate foreign ports as inspectors or longshoremen, and pass a container with a weapon into a secured zone. The Coast Guard almost certainly could not detect a bomb in a container or in the structure of a ship. Customs targets containers for inspection based on cargo manifest data, port of last call, shipping line, etc. Terrorists, however, could be expected to go to great lengths to make a bomb-carrying container appear normal. Small radiation detectors might detect highly radioactive isotopes that might be used in dirty bombs, but could not be sure of detecting less-radioactive uranium-235. Once a ship arrives in port, any inspection could be too late.
Responses and Countermeasures
The central approach to reducing vulnerability to a terrorist nuclear attack is "defense in depth," in which multiple methods are used to detect and interdict a terrorist nuclear weapon. Many existing technologies could assist the search for nuclear bombs, and others are under development. Intelligence can seek clues that terrorists were seeking or had obtained HEU, or were trying to make or smuggle a bomb. The United States can reach agreements with foreign governments.12 Coast Guard and Customs inspections might help, especially if personnel had more and better equipment. Although no one method is perfect, together they can increase the odds of detecting a weapon. For example, it would be harder to evade several means of detection than just one, as attempts to reduce what one sensor detects may make the bomb more visible to another sensor using a different signature, or may reduce the likelihood that the bomb would work. Further, a terrorist group would not know the limits of detection capability, so would have to assume a capability greater than what existed. Defense in depth could involve outfitting every port, airport, and border crossing with several types of sensors and the personnel to operate them, expanding intelligence capabilities with new sensors and analysts, placing U.S. agents in foreign ports, and upgrading Coast Guard and Customs equipment and adding personnel. Such steps would involve large costs.
While press articles focus on how the United States can augment its detection capabilities, the struggle is two-sided. If we deploy a new sensor at some ports, terrorists might detonate a weapon before it is inspected, or hide it in a container bound for another port. If foreign ports screened containers before being loaded onto U.S.-bound ships, they could infiltrate the port. If we secured the world’s largest ports, they could use smaller ones. If we assured the security of every U.S.-bound container, they might smuggle a weapon in a freighter or supertanker. If we secured all U.S.-bound containers, they might ship a bomb to Mexico and bring it into the United States in a small boat or airplane. In short, despite overwhelming advantages that the United States and its trading partners possess in technology and organization, terrorists have other advantages.
Policy Options
Securing nuclear materials.
The possibility that a terrorist group could make a nuclear weapon given enough HEU, and the difficulty of preventing terrorists from smuggling a weapon into a U.S. port, show the value of the effort to secure nuclear weapons and materials in Russia and elsewhere. Are current efforts sufficient?
Forensics.
The United States can often identify the origin of nuclear material used in a bomb. This forensic capability strengthens the value of controlling Russian nuclear weapons and materials: finding that material for a bomb detonated in the United Statescame from Russia, a likely source, would in all probability lead to the conclusion that the material was stolen rather than that Russia conducted the attack. At the same time, augmenting already-excellent forensic capability through technology and intelligence could help deter other nations from giving nuclear materials to a terrorist group.
Ports in major cities.
The terrorist weapons discussed earlier have much less explosive yield than nuclear weapons carried by bombers and long-range missiles, and a smaller destructive radius. Blast damage might extend 1 to 2 miles. (Fire and fallout might extend beyond that range.) Accordingly, it might be argued that ports with the greatest number of people living or working within a mile or two of cargo docks, such as Philadelphia and New York, should have highest priority in receiving security resources.
Overseas inspections.
Inspection of ships in U.S. ports would be too late to prevent a nuclear explosion, so the United States might require screening of U.S.-bound cargo by U.S. personnel in ports originating shipments. Other nations might view such a requirement as an infringement on their prerogatives, but the size of the U.S. market would presumably make exporting nations more willing to consider such measures.
Ameliorating economic consequences.
Civil defense studies over decades examined how to ameliorate the destructive effects of a large nuclear attack. This effort, and more recent emergency preparedness efforts, provide a template for response and recovery following a terrorist attack using one 15-kiloton weapon. This work does not, however, address possible global economic consequences and how to predict and mitigate them. These issues could benefit from further study and analyses. What level of effort? While the United States is increasing its efforts to counter nuclear terrorism, the current level of effort might stop only an unsophisticated attempt to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States. Terrorists who might acquire a nuclear weapon, though, would surely go to great lengths to deliver it. A massive U.S. counterterrorism effort would increase security, but would require many more security personnel, large-scale diversion of technology resources, possible civil liberties concerns, and high cost. A low level of effort appears politically untenable. At issue is whether a moderate level of effort is effective, and whether a high level of effort is supportable.
ADDITIONAL INPUT ON THIS SUBJECT:
Terrorists have tried to obtain weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons. Hearings and media articles since September 11 have highlighted radiological dispersal devices, or "dirty bombs," which would use standard explosives or other means to disperse radioactive materials. Dirty bombs would be quite feasible for a terrorist group to make, given the limited expertise needed and the availability of explosives and radioactive material. An attack with such a weapon likely would kill or injure few people and cause little property damage, though it could cause panic and might require closing some areas for an undetermined time. While a terrorist attack using a nuclear weapon (a device that caused a substantial nuclear explosive yield, as distinct from a dirty bomb) has much lower feasibility, it merits consideration because it would have much higher consequence. The September 11 attacks, as well as earlier and later analyses, showed that many U.S. facilities could be attractive targets for terrorist attack. One set of targets that has attracted attention from Congress is the nation’s seaports. If terrorists smuggled a Hiroshima-sized bomb into a port and set it off, the attack would destroy buildings out to a mile or two; start fires, especially in a port that handled petroleum and chemicals; fallout over many square miles; and disrupt commerce. It could kill many thousands of people. (See CRS Report RS21079, Maritime Security: Overview of Issues.)
Terrorists might attempt to smuggle a bomb into a U.S. port in many ways, such as in a tanker or a dry bulk freighter, but sea containers may provide them a particularly attractive route. A container is "[a] truck trailer body that can be detached from the chassis for loading into a vessel, a rail car or stacked in a container depot." Much of the world’s cargo moves by container. The U.S. Customs Service processed 5.7 million containers entering the United States by ship in 2001.3 It screens data for all these containers, though it inspects "only about 2 percent of the total volume of trade entering the country each year." Containers could easily accommodate a nuclear weapon. U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner believes that with an attack using a bomb in a container, "the shipping of sea containers would stop," leading to devastating consequences for the global economy, bringing some countries to the edge of economic collapse. On the other hand, people can find ways to minimize economic problems.
The Y2K computer bug did not result in disaster, in part because organizations using computers took steps to ward off the problem. German production of tanks, aircraft, and artillery pieces increased in 1943 and 1944 despite Allied bombing.7 Because of concern for port vulnerability, Congress is considering S. 1214, Port and Maritime Security Act of 2001; a conference is pending. (See CRS Report RL31424, Maritime and Port Security: A Comparison of Major Provisions of S. 1214 and H.R. 3983.8)
Terrorist nuclear weapons: routes to a bomb.
A terrorist group (as distinct from a nation) might obtain a nuclear bomb by several plausible routes. In each case, a reasonable estimate of explosive yield is that of the Hiroshima bomb, 15 kilotons, equivalent to the explosive force of 15,000 tons of TNT.
Russia.
Strategic nuclear weapons (long-range weapons the Soviet Union would have used to attack the United States) are reportedly well guarded on missiles or, thanks in part to U.S. assistance, in storage. In contrast, thousands of lower-yield weapons intended for use in combat are less well secured, and numbers and locations are uncertain. (See CRS Issue Brief IB98038, Nuclear Weapons in Russia: Safety, Security, and Control Issues.) Terrorists might buy or steal one of these weapons. The weapons might (or might not) have devices to prevent unauthorized use, or terrorists might lack confidence that they could make a weapon work. Without such confidence, terrorists might "mine" the weapon for nuclear materials and components to make their own device.
Pakistan.
Other nations have nuclear weapons. U.S., British, French, and Israeli weapons are thought to be well guarded. Chinese weapons are also thought to be well guarded, though less is known on this point. Control is less certain for India and Pakistan. Of the two, it appears more likely that terrorists might obtain a bomb from Pakistan. That nation asserts that it has complete control over its weapons, but that could change if Pakistan were taken over by Islamic fundamentalists sympathetic to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. In this scenario, the "donors" would presumably give the terrorists detailed instructions for operating the bombs.
Build a bomb.
The Hiroshima bomb was a "gun assembly" weapon. Its nuclear explosive component was a gun barrel about 6 inches in diameter by 6 feet long. It was capped at each end, with standard explosive at one end, a mass of uranium highly enriched in the isotope 235 (highly enriched uranium, or HEU) at the other end, and a second HEU mass in the middle. Detonating the explosive shot one mass of HEU into the other, rapidly assembling a mass large enough to support a fission chain reaction. (Plutonium cannot be used.) This is the simplest type of nuclear weapon. U.S. scientists had such high confidence in the design that they did not test the Hiroshima bomb.
Many experts believe that a terrorist group having access to HEU and the requisite skills, but without the resources available to a nation, could build such a weapon. Five former Los Alamos nuclear weapons experts held that a crude nuclear weapon "could be constructed by a group not previously engaged in designing or building nuclear weapons, providing a number of requirements were adequately met." The requirements they list, though, are substantial. They include detailed design drawings and specifications; individuals skilled in a wide range of weapons skills; the necessary equipment; and extensive preparations to create a bomb quickly once in possession of HEU so as to reduce the risk of detection. A National Research Council study presents another view. The basic technical information needed to construct a workable nuclear device is readily available in the open literature. The primary impediment that prevents countries or technically competent terrorist groups from developing nuclear weapons is the availability of SNM [special nuclear materials, i.e., HEU and plutonium-239], especially HEU.
It would be difficult for a terrorist group to obtain enough HEU for a weapon. Many nations have gone to great lengths to protect it. The International Atomic Energy Agency has safeguards to protect, among other things, HEU in nuclear reactors. The United States has had a number of programs over the past decade to help former Soviet republics protect nuclear weapons, material, and knowledge. (See CRS Report 97-1027, Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Programs: Issues for Congress.) Perhaps the best evidence that these efforts have succeeded so far is that terrorists have not detonated a nuclear weapon. At the same time, some are concerned that terrorists could obtain HEU. For example, the National Research Council study noted above rated the threat level from SNM from Russia as "High" large inventories of SNM are stored at many sites that apparently lack inventory controls and indigenous threats have increased.
Vulnerability of ports and shipping.
Ports may be attractive targets for terrorists. With many of the largest ports in or near major cities, a nuclear bomb detonated in a port could kill many thousands of people, interrupt flows of U.S. commerce, and perhaps cause a global economic disruption. Ports are vulnerable. Manyare flat, being at the ocean’s edge, so would offer little shielding against weapon effects. Some have great quantities of inflammable material, such as fuel; fires could extend the area of destruction and release toxic gases. While ports may stretch on for miles, a 15-kiloton weapon would have enough force to destroy many key facilities of a typical port.
Current front-line capability to detect nuclear weapons is exceedingly limited. CRS visits to the U.S. Customs Service in Baltimore in July 2002 and to the U.S. Coast Guard in Philadelphia in August 2002 produced the following information. Customs’ Container Security Initiative seeks to improve security at foreign ports for U.S.-bound containers, but Customs inspectors do not inspect cargo there and do not control personnel selection or port operations. The Coast Guard cannot open containers at sea for various reasons. For example, they are tightly packed and the door is part of a container’s structure, so a container under other containers might crumple if the door were opened. Technology is lacking. A Coast Guard officer wrote, "our method of detecting nuclear and biological weapons is ... our eyes, ears, and brains. We currently have no more sophisticated equipment than that." At Baltimore, Customs inspects about 2 percent of containers. For some, it uses a sophisticated machine that x-rays entire containers; for others, it unloads all items from a container, may x-ray them, and searches some items. Customs agents have pager-size radiation detectors. Problems are obvious. Terrorists could infiltrate foreign ports as inspectors or longshoremen, and pass a container with a weapon into a secured zone. The Coast Guard almost certainly could not detect a bomb in a container or in the structure of a ship. Customs targets containers for inspection based on cargo manifest data, port of last call, shipping line, etc. Terrorists, however, could be expected to go to great lengths to make a bomb-carrying container appear normal. Small radiation detectors might detect highly radioactive isotopes that might be used in dirty bombs, but could not be sure of detecting less-radioactive uranium-235. Once a ship arrives in port, any inspection could be too late.
Responses and Countermeasures
The central approach to reducing vulnerability to a terrorist nuclear attack is "defense in depth," in which multiple methods are used to detect and interdict a terrorist nuclear weapon. Many existing technologies could assist the search for nuclear bombs, and others are under development. Intelligence can seek clues that terrorists were seeking or had obtained HEU, or were trying to make or smuggle a bomb. The United States can reach agreements with foreign governments.12 Coast Guard and Customs inspections might help, especially if personnel had more and better equipment. Although no one method is perfect, together they can increase the odds of detecting a weapon. For example, it would be harder to evade several means of detection than just one, as attempts to reduce what one sensor detects may make the bomb more visible to another sensor using a different signature, or may reduce the likelihood that the bomb would work. Further, a terrorist group would not know the limits of detection capability, so would have to assume a capability greater than what existed. Defense in depth could involve outfitting every port, airport, and border crossing with several types of sensors and the personnel to operate them, expanding intelligence capabilities with new sensors and analysts, placing U.S. agents in foreign ports, and upgrading Coast Guard and Customs equipment and adding personnel. Such steps would involve large costs.
While press articles focus on how the United States can augment its detection capabilities, the struggle is two-sided. If we deploy a new sensor at some ports, terrorists might detonate a weapon before it is inspected, or hide it in a container bound for another port. If foreign ports screened containers before being loaded onto U.S.-bound ships, they could infiltrate the port. If we secured the world’s largest ports, they could use smaller ones. If we assured the security of every U.S.-bound container, they might smuggle a weapon in a freighter or supertanker. If we secured all U.S.-bound containers, they might ship a bomb to Mexico and bring it into the United States in a small boat or airplane. In short, despite overwhelming advantages that the United States and its trading partners possess in technology and organization, terrorists have other advantages.
Policy Options
Securing nuclear materials.
The possibility that a terrorist group could make a nuclear weapon given enough HEU, and the difficulty of preventing terrorists from smuggling a weapon into a U.S. port, show the value of the effort to secure nuclear weapons and materials in Russia and elsewhere. Are current efforts sufficient?
Forensics.
The United States can often identify the origin of nuclear material used in a bomb. This forensic capability strengthens the value of controlling Russian nuclear weapons and materials: finding that material for a bomb detonated in the United Statescame from Russia, a likely source, would in all probability lead to the conclusion that the material was stolen rather than that Russia conducted the attack. At the same time, augmenting already-excellent forensic capability through technology and intelligence could help deter other nations from giving nuclear materials to a terrorist group.
Ports in major cities.
The terrorist weapons discussed earlier have much less explosive yield than nuclear weapons carried by bombers and long-range missiles, and a smaller destructive radius. Blast damage might extend 1 to 2 miles. (Fire and fallout might extend beyond that range.) Accordingly, it might be argued that ports with the greatest number of people living or working within a mile or two of cargo docks, such as Philadelphia and New York, should have highest priority in receiving security resources.
Overseas inspections.
Inspection of ships in U.S. ports would be too late to prevent a nuclear explosion, so the United States might require screening of U.S.-bound cargo by U.S. personnel in ports originating shipments. Other nations might view such a requirement as an infringement on their prerogatives, but the size of the U.S. market would presumably make exporting nations more willing to consider such measures.
Ameliorating economic consequences.
Civil defense studies over decades examined how to ameliorate the destructive effects of a large nuclear attack. This effort, and more recent emergency preparedness efforts, provide a template for response and recovery following a terrorist attack using one 15-kiloton weapon. This work does not, however, address possible global economic consequences and how to predict and mitigate them. These issues could benefit from further study and analyses. What level of effort? While the United States is increasing its efforts to counter nuclear terrorism, the current level of effort might stop only an unsophisticated attempt to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States. Terrorists who might acquire a nuclear weapon, though, would surely go to great lengths to deliver it. A massive U.S. counterterrorism effort would increase security, but would require many more security personnel, large-scale diversion of technology resources, possible civil liberties concerns, and high cost. A low level of effort appears politically untenable. At issue is whether a moderate level of effort is effective, and whether a high level of effort is supportable.
ADDITIONAL INPUT ON THIS SUBJECT:
Much of what is presented below is from a paper presented November, 2002 by John Smalling, Director of Homeland Security Programs at Canberra Industries. Some of it is gleaned from my over 40 years of work in the nuclear industry, including 7 years as Chairman of a Nuclear Technology Program at a major southern college, 2 years at the DOE PANTEX FACILITY, 5 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory and 2 Years a Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
There are 4 basic problems concerning nuclear terrorism facing the U. S. today. These are [not in order of importance]:
(1) A terrorist act at a domestic nuclear facility such as
- A commercial nuclear reactor
- A DOE nuclear facility
- A commercial nuclear fuel enrichment or fabrication facility
- A university nuclear reactor
(2) Explosion of a "Dirty Bomb" in a public place such as
- A major city
- An amusement park
- A sports stadium
- An airport or sea port
(3) Release of radioactive material into and air or water supply
- An aerosol or other airborne radioactive material released into the air intake of a major building
- Radioactive material released into the water supply of a major city
(4) Explosion of a nuclear weapon
- There are over 200 documented cases of persons attempting to purchase special nuclear material (stuff to make bombs) or tactical nuclear weapons on the black market
- There are over 100 "suitcase bombs" missing from the Soviet nuclear inventory
This last item is probably the most important. The former head of Soviet National Security, Alexander Lebed testified to that fact before congress. He stated that the devices measure approximately 24" x 16" x 8" and can be set off by an individual in less than 30 minutes, producing a 1 kilo ton yield. Such a device, set off in New York Harbor would produce a 15 to 20 foot wave that would destroy New York City. Other sources have confirmed that the number of suitcase bombs missing from the Soviet inventory is correct.
Now, how do we detect such a device coming into the U.S.? Weapons grade plutonium, 94% Pu-239 produces a 414 KeV gamma ray, detectable and identifiable by gamma spectroscopy. It also contains approximately 6% Pu-240 that undergoes spontaneous fission, producing neutrons that can be detected by neutron detectors. It also contains Am-241 that produces 60 KeV gamma rays, again detectable by gamma spectroscopy. The significant quantity of weapons grade Pu is about 8 kilograms. The physical size of 8 Kgm of Pu 239 is about the size of a baseball. (Try to find that in a sea/land container.)
Weapons grade uranium is approximately 93% U-235, producing a 186 KeV gamma ray detectable by gamma spectroscopy and 7% U-238, producing a 1001 KeV gamma ray from it's daughter Pa-234m, also detectable by gamma spectroscopy. The significant quantity is about 25 Kgm, a sphere about 7" in diameter. (Again, try to find that in a sea/land container.)
The radiological signature of any of the gamma emitters could easily be shielded by a few inches of lead or tungsten. Four or five inches of steel would effectively reduce the radiations to background. Think about putting it inside the cylinders of and engine in a car being imported!
So where could this material enter the U.S.? It could come in as Sea Cargo. The U.S. Customs has stated that only 2% of Sea Cargo is inspected. It could come in as Air Cargo. FedEx, UPS and USPS are not inspected! It could come across at border crossings. Only a few of the border inspectors are equipped with alarming dosimeters and even fewer are trained in how to use them. A nuclear device or special nuclear material could come in with luggage from commercial aviation, general aviation, cruse ships or by private car. Or, perhaps, by fishing boat or private yacht. As you can see, there are many ways for an enemy to get a device into the U.S. (There's more to this story of our porous borders that can't/shouldn't be shared publicly, but bottom line is, it's actually much worse and easier penetrated than stated here.) Incidentally, there are not enough instruments currently available for purchase to equip all of the ports of entry and it will take at least 2 more years to manufacture such instruments. They are also expensive, ranging in price from a killobuck or so for an alarming dosimeter to detect special nuclear material to more than $100,000 for a single installation to survey a sea/land container.
What is being done to protect us?
Thursday morning, June 6 (anniversary of D-day), 2002, President George W. Bush met with his Homeland Security Council and discussed a Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That evening he proposed that Congress establish a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The mission of the DHS would be to prevent terrorist attacks within the U.S., reduce America's vulnerability to terrorism and minimize the damage and recover from attacks that do occur. There would be four divisions of the Department. They would be Border and Transportation Security, Emergency Preparedness and Response, Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. The DHS would have approximately 169,000 employees and a budget of $37 billion.
There are 4 basic problems concerning nuclear terrorism facing the U. S. today. These are [not in order of importance]:
(1) A terrorist act at a domestic nuclear facility such as
- A commercial nuclear reactor
- A DOE nuclear facility
- A commercial nuclear fuel enrichment or fabrication facility
- A university nuclear reactor
(2) Explosion of a "Dirty Bomb" in a public place such as
- A major city
- An amusement park
- A sports stadium
- An airport or sea port
(3) Release of radioactive material into and air or water supply
- An aerosol or other airborne radioactive material released into the air intake of a major building
- Radioactive material released into the water supply of a major city
(4) Explosion of a nuclear weapon
- There are over 200 documented cases of persons attempting to purchase special nuclear material (stuff to make bombs) or tactical nuclear weapons on the black market
- There are over 100 "suitcase bombs" missing from the Soviet nuclear inventory
This last item is probably the most important. The former head of Soviet National Security, Alexander Lebed testified to that fact before congress. He stated that the devices measure approximately 24" x 16" x 8" and can be set off by an individual in less than 30 minutes, producing a 1 kilo ton yield. Such a device, set off in New York Harbor would produce a 15 to 20 foot wave that would destroy New York City. Other sources have confirmed that the number of suitcase bombs missing from the Soviet inventory is correct.
Now, how do we detect such a device coming into the U.S.? Weapons grade plutonium, 94% Pu-239 produces a 414 KeV gamma ray, detectable and identifiable by gamma spectroscopy. It also contains approximately 6% Pu-240 that undergoes spontaneous fission, producing neutrons that can be detected by neutron detectors. It also contains Am-241 that produces 60 KeV gamma rays, again detectable by gamma spectroscopy. The significant quantity of weapons grade Pu is about 8 kilograms. The physical size of 8 Kgm of Pu 239 is about the size of a baseball. (Try to find that in a sea/land container.)
Weapons grade uranium is approximately 93% U-235, producing a 186 KeV gamma ray detectable by gamma spectroscopy and 7% U-238, producing a 1001 KeV gamma ray from it's daughter Pa-234m, also detectable by gamma spectroscopy. The significant quantity is about 25 Kgm, a sphere about 7" in diameter. (Again, try to find that in a sea/land container.)
The radiological signature of any of the gamma emitters could easily be shielded by a few inches of lead or tungsten. Four or five inches of steel would effectively reduce the radiations to background. Think about putting it inside the cylinders of and engine in a car being imported!
So where could this material enter the U.S.? It could come in as Sea Cargo. The U.S. Customs has stated that only 2% of Sea Cargo is inspected. It could come in as Air Cargo. FedEx, UPS and USPS are not inspected! It could come across at border crossings. Only a few of the border inspectors are equipped with alarming dosimeters and even fewer are trained in how to use them. A nuclear device or special nuclear material could come in with luggage from commercial aviation, general aviation, cruse ships or by private car. Or, perhaps, by fishing boat or private yacht. As you can see, there are many ways for an enemy to get a device into the U.S. (There's more to this story of our porous borders that can't/shouldn't be shared publicly, but bottom line is, it's actually much worse and easier penetrated than stated here.) Incidentally, there are not enough instruments currently available for purchase to equip all of the ports of entry and it will take at least 2 more years to manufacture such instruments. They are also expensive, ranging in price from a killobuck or so for an alarming dosimeter to detect special nuclear material to more than $100,000 for a single installation to survey a sea/land container.
What is being done to protect us?
Thursday morning, June 6 (anniversary of D-day), 2002, President George W. Bush met with his Homeland Security Council and discussed a Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That evening he proposed that Congress establish a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The mission of the DHS would be to prevent terrorist attacks within the U.S., reduce America's vulnerability to terrorism and minimize the damage and recover from attacks that do occur. There would be four divisions of the Department. They would be Border and Transportation Security, Emergency Preparedness and Response, Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasures and Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. The DHS would have approximately 169,000 employees and a budget of $37 billion.
=========================================
Fears Prompt U.S. to Beef Up Nuclear Terror Detection
Sensors Deployed Near D.C., Borders; Delta Force on Standby
Sensors Deployed Near D.C., Borders; Delta Force on Standby
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 3, 2002; Page A01
Alarmed by growing hints of al Qaeda's progress toward obtaining a nuclear or radiological weapon, the Bush administration has deployed hundreds of sophisticated sensors since November to U.S. borders, overseas facilities and choke points around Washington. It has placed the Delta Force, the nation's elite commando unit, on a new standby alert to seize control of nuclear materials that the sensors may detect.
Ordinary Geiger counters, worn on belt clips and resembling pagers, have been in use by the U.S. Customs Service for years. The newer devices are called gamma ray and neutron flux detectors. Until now they were carried only by mobile Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST) dispatched when extortionists claimed to have radioactive materials. Because terrorists would give no such warning, and because NEST scientists are unequipped for combat, the Delta Force has been assigned the mission of killing or disabling anyone with a suspected nuclear device and turning it over to the scientists to be disarmed.
The new radiation sensors are emplaced in layers around some fixed points and temporarily at designated "national security special events" such as last month's Olympic Games in Utah. Allied countries, including Saudi Arabia, have also rushed new detectors to their borders after American intelligence warnings. To address the technological limits of even the best current sensors, the Bush administration has ordered a crash program to build next-generation devices at the three national nuclear laboratories.
These steps join several other signs, described in recent interviews with U.S. government policymakers, that the Bush administration's nuclear anxieties have intensified since American-backed forces routed Osama bin Laden's network and its Taliban backers in Afghanistan.
"Clearly . . . the sense of urgency has gone up," said a senior government policymaker on nuclear, biological and chemical terror. Another high-ranking official said, "The more you gather information, the more our concerns increased about al Qaeda's focus on weapons of mass destruction of all kinds."
In "tabletop exercises" conducted as high as Cabinet level, President Bush's national security team has highlighted difficult choices the chief executive would face if the new sensors picked up a radiation signature on a boat steaming up the Potomac River or a truck heading for the capital on Interstate 95.
Participants in those exercises said the gaps in their knowledge are considerable. But the intelligence community, they said, believes that al Qaeda could already control a stolen Soviet-era tactical nuclear warhead or enough weapons-grade material to fashion a functioning, if less efficient, atomic bomb.
Even before more recent discoveries, some analysts regarded that prospect as substantial. Some expressed that view when the intelligence community devoted a full-day retreat to the subject early last year in Chantilly, Va., according to someone with firsthand knowledge.
A majority of those present assessed the likelihood as negligible, but none of the more than 50 participants ruled it out.
The consensus government view is now that al Qaeda probably has acquired the lower-level radionuclides strontium 90 and cesium 137, many thefts of which have been documented in recent years. These materials cannot produce a nuclear detonation, but they are radioactive contaminants. Conventional explosives could scatter them in what is known as a radiological dispersion device, colloquially called a "dirty bomb."
The number of deaths that might result is hard to predict but probably would be modest. One senior government specialist said "its impact as a weapon of psychological terror" would be far greater.
These heightened U.S. government fears explain Bush's activation, the first since the dawn of the nuclear age, of contingency plans to maintain a cadre of senior federal managers in underground bunkers away from Washington. The Washington Post described the features of the classified "Continuity of Operations Plan" on Friday.
Bush's emphasis on nuclear terrorism dates from a briefing in the Situation Room during the last week of October.
According to knowledgeable sources, Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet walked the president through an accumulation of fresh evidence about al Qaeda's nuclear ambition. Described by one consumer of intelligence as "an incomplete mosaic" of fact, inference and potentially false leads, Tenet's briefing raised fears that "sent the president through the roof." With considerable emotion, two officials said, Bush ordered his national security team to give nuclear terrorism priority over every other threat to the United States.
Tenet told Bush that Pakistan's nuclear weapons program was more deeply compromised than either government has acknowledged publicly. Pakistan arrested two former nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, on Oct. 23, and interrogated them about contacts with bin Laden and his lieutenants.
Pakistani officials maintain that the scientists did not pass important secrets to al Qaeda, but they have not disclosed that Mahmood failed multiple polygraph examinations about his activities.
Most disturbing to U.S. intelligence was another leak from Pakistan's program that has not been mentioned in public. According to American sources, a third Pakistani nuclear scientist tried to negotiate the sale of an atomic weapon design to Libya. The Post was unable to learn which Pakistani blueprint was involved, whether the transaction was completed, or what became of the scientist after discovery. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is believed to include bombs of relatively simple design, built around cores of highly enriched uranium, and more sophisticated weapons employing Chinese implosion technology to compress plutonium to a critical mass.
At the October briefing, Bush learned of a remark by a senior member of al Qaeda's operational command. The operative had been an accurate, though imprecise, harbinger of al Qaeda plans in the past.
After U.S. bombing began in Afghanistan, an American official said, the same man was reliably reported to have said "there will be another attack and it's going to be much bigger" than the one that toppled the World Trade Center and destroyed a wing of the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
"What the hell did that mean?" the official said, recalling the stunned reaction of those briefed on the remark. Other reports reaching Washington described al Qaeda references to obtaining, or having obtained, special weapons. "The benign explanation is bucking up the troops" with false bravado, the official said, but the Bush administration took the report "extremely seriously."
Searches of al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, undertaken since American-backed forces took control there, are not known to have turned up a significant cache of nuclear materials.
The New York Times reported that U.S. personnel in Afghanistan sent three suspected samples to American labs for analysis but found no significant radioactive source.
There is evidence that some of al Qaeda's nuclear efforts over the years met with swindles and false leads. In one case, officials said, the organization was taken in by scam artists selling "red mercury," a phony substance they described as a precursor, or ingredient, of weapons-grade materials.
If al Qaeda has a weapon or its components, U.S. officials said, its whereabouts would be the organization's most closely guarded secret. Addressing the failure of American searchers to find such materials in abandoned Afghan camps, one policymaker noted that "we haven't found most of the al Qaeda leadership either, and we know that exists."
The likeliest source of nuclear materials, or of a warhead bought whole, is the vast complex of weapons labs and storage sites that began to crumble with the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia has decommissioned some 10,000 tactical nuclear weapons since then, but it has been able to document only a fraction of the inventory.
The National Intelligence Council, an umbrella organization for the U.S. analytical community, reported to Congress last month that there are at least four occasions between 1992 and 1999 when "weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials have been stolen from some Russian institutes."
Of those thefts, the report said, "We assess that undetected smuggling has occurred, although we do not know the extent or magnitude."
Victor Yerastov, chief of nuclear accounting and control for Russia's ministry of atomic energy, has said that in 1998 a theft in Chelyabinsk Oblast made off with "quite sufficient material to produce an atomic bomb."
An American official, commenting on that theft, said that "given the known and suspected capabilities of the Russian mafia, it's perfectly plausible that al Qaeda would have access to such materials." The official added, "They could get it from anybody they could bribe."
Col. Gen. Igor Valynkin, chief of the Russian organization responsible for safeguarding nuclear weapons, said on Oct. 27 that any claim Russia has lost an intact warhead is "barking mad."
The U.S. government is not accepting that assurance at face value. "We don't know with any confidence what has gone missing, and neither do they," said one American official.
Thefts of less threatening nuclear byproducts, especially isotopes of strontium, cesium and partially enriched uranium, have been reported more frequently. In November 1995, Chechen rebels placed a functioning "dirty bomb" using dynamite and cesium 137 in Moscow's Izmailovo park. They did not detonate it. Al Qaeda is closely aligned with the Chechens.
There are limits, "governed by the laws of physics," as one official put it, to American technology for detecting these materials. In broad terms they have to do with sensing radioactivity at a distance and through shielding, and with the balance between false positives and false negatives. There are classified Energy Department documents that catalogue what one of them called "shortcomings in the ability of NEST equipment to locate the target materials which if known by adversaries could be used to defeat the search equipment and/or procedures." The Post has agreed to publish no further details.
A division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, known as NIS-6, is leading efforts to build an improved generation of sensors. Some will use neutron generators to "interrogate" a suspected object, and others are planned for long-range detection of alpha particles.
A measure of the government's grave concern is the time devoted by top national security officials to developing options for a crisis involving nuclear terrorism.
One hypothetical scenario, participants said, began with a sensor detecting what appeared to be the radiation signature of a nuclear weapon amid a large volume of traffic on a highway such as I-95.
According to two participants, the group considered how the Energy Department's NEST teams, working with Delta Force, might find and take control of the weapon without giving a terrorist time to use it.
Roadblocks and car-by-car searches, for example, would create chaos, require hours, and give ample warning to those hiding the device. But without roadblocks the searchers might fail to isolate the weapon within a radius defined by the limits of sensor technology. If commandos found the device, they could expect to encounter resistance. Would the president delegate to on-scene commanders a decision that might result in nuclear detonation? Which officials, meanwhile, should be evacuated? Would government inform the public of the threat, a step that would wreak panic without precedent in any country and complicate the job of finding the weapon?
"Evacuation is one of those issues you throw your hands up and say, 'It's too hard,' " said one participant in a tabletop exercise. "Nobody wants to make that decision, certainly not in advance."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 3, 2002; Page A01
Alarmed by growing hints of al Qaeda's progress toward obtaining a nuclear or radiological weapon, the Bush administration has deployed hundreds of sophisticated sensors since November to U.S. borders, overseas facilities and choke points around Washington. It has placed the Delta Force, the nation's elite commando unit, on a new standby alert to seize control of nuclear materials that the sensors may detect.
Ordinary Geiger counters, worn on belt clips and resembling pagers, have been in use by the U.S. Customs Service for years. The newer devices are called gamma ray and neutron flux detectors. Until now they were carried only by mobile Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST) dispatched when extortionists claimed to have radioactive materials. Because terrorists would give no such warning, and because NEST scientists are unequipped for combat, the Delta Force has been assigned the mission of killing or disabling anyone with a suspected nuclear device and turning it over to the scientists to be disarmed.
The new radiation sensors are emplaced in layers around some fixed points and temporarily at designated "national security special events" such as last month's Olympic Games in Utah. Allied countries, including Saudi Arabia, have also rushed new detectors to their borders after American intelligence warnings. To address the technological limits of even the best current sensors, the Bush administration has ordered a crash program to build next-generation devices at the three national nuclear laboratories.
These steps join several other signs, described in recent interviews with U.S. government policymakers, that the Bush administration's nuclear anxieties have intensified since American-backed forces routed Osama bin Laden's network and its Taliban backers in Afghanistan.
"Clearly . . . the sense of urgency has gone up," said a senior government policymaker on nuclear, biological and chemical terror. Another high-ranking official said, "The more you gather information, the more our concerns increased about al Qaeda's focus on weapons of mass destruction of all kinds."
In "tabletop exercises" conducted as high as Cabinet level, President Bush's national security team has highlighted difficult choices the chief executive would face if the new sensors picked up a radiation signature on a boat steaming up the Potomac River or a truck heading for the capital on Interstate 95.
Participants in those exercises said the gaps in their knowledge are considerable. But the intelligence community, they said, believes that al Qaeda could already control a stolen Soviet-era tactical nuclear warhead or enough weapons-grade material to fashion a functioning, if less efficient, atomic bomb.
Even before more recent discoveries, some analysts regarded that prospect as substantial. Some expressed that view when the intelligence community devoted a full-day retreat to the subject early last year in Chantilly, Va., according to someone with firsthand knowledge.
A majority of those present assessed the likelihood as negligible, but none of the more than 50 participants ruled it out.
The consensus government view is now that al Qaeda probably has acquired the lower-level radionuclides strontium 90 and cesium 137, many thefts of which have been documented in recent years. These materials cannot produce a nuclear detonation, but they are radioactive contaminants. Conventional explosives could scatter them in what is known as a radiological dispersion device, colloquially called a "dirty bomb."
The number of deaths that might result is hard to predict but probably would be modest. One senior government specialist said "its impact as a weapon of psychological terror" would be far greater.
These heightened U.S. government fears explain Bush's activation, the first since the dawn of the nuclear age, of contingency plans to maintain a cadre of senior federal managers in underground bunkers away from Washington. The Washington Post described the features of the classified "Continuity of Operations Plan" on Friday.
Bush's emphasis on nuclear terrorism dates from a briefing in the Situation Room during the last week of October.
According to knowledgeable sources, Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet walked the president through an accumulation of fresh evidence about al Qaeda's nuclear ambition. Described by one consumer of intelligence as "an incomplete mosaic" of fact, inference and potentially false leads, Tenet's briefing raised fears that "sent the president through the roof." With considerable emotion, two officials said, Bush ordered his national security team to give nuclear terrorism priority over every other threat to the United States.
Tenet told Bush that Pakistan's nuclear weapons program was more deeply compromised than either government has acknowledged publicly. Pakistan arrested two former nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, on Oct. 23, and interrogated them about contacts with bin Laden and his lieutenants.
Pakistani officials maintain that the scientists did not pass important secrets to al Qaeda, but they have not disclosed that Mahmood failed multiple polygraph examinations about his activities.
Most disturbing to U.S. intelligence was another leak from Pakistan's program that has not been mentioned in public. According to American sources, a third Pakistani nuclear scientist tried to negotiate the sale of an atomic weapon design to Libya. The Post was unable to learn which Pakistani blueprint was involved, whether the transaction was completed, or what became of the scientist after discovery. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is believed to include bombs of relatively simple design, built around cores of highly enriched uranium, and more sophisticated weapons employing Chinese implosion technology to compress plutonium to a critical mass.
At the October briefing, Bush learned of a remark by a senior member of al Qaeda's operational command. The operative had been an accurate, though imprecise, harbinger of al Qaeda plans in the past.
After U.S. bombing began in Afghanistan, an American official said, the same man was reliably reported to have said "there will be another attack and it's going to be much bigger" than the one that toppled the World Trade Center and destroyed a wing of the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
"What the hell did that mean?" the official said, recalling the stunned reaction of those briefed on the remark. Other reports reaching Washington described al Qaeda references to obtaining, or having obtained, special weapons. "The benign explanation is bucking up the troops" with false bravado, the official said, but the Bush administration took the report "extremely seriously."
Searches of al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, undertaken since American-backed forces took control there, are not known to have turned up a significant cache of nuclear materials.
The New York Times reported that U.S. personnel in Afghanistan sent three suspected samples to American labs for analysis but found no significant radioactive source.
There is evidence that some of al Qaeda's nuclear efforts over the years met with swindles and false leads. In one case, officials said, the organization was taken in by scam artists selling "red mercury," a phony substance they described as a precursor, or ingredient, of weapons-grade materials.
If al Qaeda has a weapon or its components, U.S. officials said, its whereabouts would be the organization's most closely guarded secret. Addressing the failure of American searchers to find such materials in abandoned Afghan camps, one policymaker noted that "we haven't found most of the al Qaeda leadership either, and we know that exists."
The likeliest source of nuclear materials, or of a warhead bought whole, is the vast complex of weapons labs and storage sites that began to crumble with the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia has decommissioned some 10,000 tactical nuclear weapons since then, but it has been able to document only a fraction of the inventory.
The National Intelligence Council, an umbrella organization for the U.S. analytical community, reported to Congress last month that there are at least four occasions between 1992 and 1999 when "weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials have been stolen from some Russian institutes."
Of those thefts, the report said, "We assess that undetected smuggling has occurred, although we do not know the extent or magnitude."
Victor Yerastov, chief of nuclear accounting and control for Russia's ministry of atomic energy, has said that in 1998 a theft in Chelyabinsk Oblast made off with "quite sufficient material to produce an atomic bomb."
An American official, commenting on that theft, said that "given the known and suspected capabilities of the Russian mafia, it's perfectly plausible that al Qaeda would have access to such materials." The official added, "They could get it from anybody they could bribe."
Col. Gen. Igor Valynkin, chief of the Russian organization responsible for safeguarding nuclear weapons, said on Oct. 27 that any claim Russia has lost an intact warhead is "barking mad."
The U.S. government is not accepting that assurance at face value. "We don't know with any confidence what has gone missing, and neither do they," said one American official.
Thefts of less threatening nuclear byproducts, especially isotopes of strontium, cesium and partially enriched uranium, have been reported more frequently. In November 1995, Chechen rebels placed a functioning "dirty bomb" using dynamite and cesium 137 in Moscow's Izmailovo park. They did not detonate it. Al Qaeda is closely aligned with the Chechens.
There are limits, "governed by the laws of physics," as one official put it, to American technology for detecting these materials. In broad terms they have to do with sensing radioactivity at a distance and through shielding, and with the balance between false positives and false negatives. There are classified Energy Department documents that catalogue what one of them called "shortcomings in the ability of NEST equipment to locate the target materials which if known by adversaries could be used to defeat the search equipment and/or procedures." The Post has agreed to publish no further details.
A division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, known as NIS-6, is leading efforts to build an improved generation of sensors. Some will use neutron generators to "interrogate" a suspected object, and others are planned for long-range detection of alpha particles.
A measure of the government's grave concern is the time devoted by top national security officials to developing options for a crisis involving nuclear terrorism.
One hypothetical scenario, participants said, began with a sensor detecting what appeared to be the radiation signature of a nuclear weapon amid a large volume of traffic on a highway such as I-95.
According to two participants, the group considered how the Energy Department's NEST teams, working with Delta Force, might find and take control of the weapon without giving a terrorist time to use it.
Roadblocks and car-by-car searches, for example, would create chaos, require hours, and give ample warning to those hiding the device. But without roadblocks the searchers might fail to isolate the weapon within a radius defined by the limits of sensor technology. If commandos found the device, they could expect to encounter resistance. Would the president delegate to on-scene commanders a decision that might result in nuclear detonation? Which officials, meanwhile, should be evacuated? Would government inform the public of the threat, a step that would wreak panic without precedent in any country and complicate the job of finding the weapon?
"Evacuation is one of those issues you throw your hands up and say, 'It's too hard,' " said one participant in a tabletop exercise. "Nobody wants to make that decision, certainly not in advance."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Customs Service, in announcing a new security initiative, on Thursday raised the specter of a nuclear bomb being shipped to and detonated in a United States seaport. "Of greater concern are the possibilities that international terrorists such as al Qaeda could smuggle a crude nuclear device in one of the more than 50,000 (shipping) containers that arrive in the U.S. each day. One can only imagine the devastation of a small nuclear explosion at one of our seaports," said Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner in a speech prepared for delivery at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Bonner raised the concern in announcing a new container security initiative intended to enable officials to have more data on what's in international shipping containers and enhance the ability of the United States to stop suspicious containers before they arrive at an American seaport.
"First and foremost, we concentrate our efforts on the 'mega-ports' of the world -- the largest container ports -- and specifically those ports that send the highest volumes of container traffic into the United States," Bonner said.
Bonner said the top 10 international ports account for almost half of all the container traffic coming into the United States. One idea, he said, is to have the latest X-ray machines and radiation detectors at foreign "mega-ports" to catch worrisome containers on the outbound trip.
He said the idea of delivering a nuclear device by container to the United States was "by no means far-fetched" and said Italian authorities in October had found an al Qaeda operative bound for Canada in a container outfitted with a bed and bathroom.
Aside from the human toll, Bonner also said a nuclear attack via a shipping container would also exact a huge cost economically.
"The detonation of a nuclear device smuggled by way of a sea container would have a far greater impact upon global trade and the global economy. Even a two-week shutdown of global sea container traffic would be devastating, costing billions," he said.
Uranium Found at bin Laden Base
Newsmax.com Wires
Monday, Dec. 24, 2001
LONDON -- Uranium and cyanide have reportedly been discovered in drums at an al-Qaeda terrorist base near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
The discovery -- the first evidence that suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden had obtained materials for a nuclear arsenal -- was confirmed by U.S. officials, the London Telegraph said.
The cache included a low-grade uranium which could be used to make a so-called "dirty bomb," or a crude radiological device wrapped around a conventional explosive. Such a bomb is designed to spread radiation over a large area after exploding.
The suspicious substances were found in tunnels at the edge of an air base controlled by U.S. forces.
Marine Corps Capt. David Romley said that he "cannot deny" that uranium had been found at the airport, USA TODAY reported.
"We are aware that there are CBR (chemical-biological-radioactive)-type environments in the region," he said.
USA TODAY quoted one U.S. official as saying some depleted uranium was found recently, but that the material did not appear to be dangerous and that it isn't clear whether Sunday's claim involves the same discovery. Other U.S. officials said they knew of no discoveries of any radioactive materials anywhere in the country.
Haji Gullalai, the interim intelligence chief for Kandahar province, told The Telegraph that after capturing the airport area earlier this month, his men discovered the materials in the tunnels.
"There were big drums the size of petrol drums and metal boxes with sides seven or eight inches thick," he said.
"The bottles were labeled in four different languages -- Chinese, Russian, Arabic and English."
The Telegraph quoted U.S. officials as saying that Russia, the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union, China and Pakistan were all possible sources for the uranium.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.
New US Terror Alert Linked to Nuke Fear
DEBKA.COM
December 5, 2001; Page A01
DEBKA.COM
December 5, 2001; Page A01
One factor in the third general terror alert raised in the United States since September 11 relates, according to US media, to intelligence information indicating that the former Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden has gained possession of a so-called dirty or radiological bomb. The target date referred to in electronic intercepts is mid-December. It has also been suggested that such weapons may have been smuggled into the United States.
On October 12, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported from its intelligence sources that Bin Laden had almost certainly procured a supply of uranium-235 six months before the September 11 suicide attacks. The uranium was believed to have reached him in a multimillion deal with a Ukrainian-born mobster called Semion Mogilevich.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly came back to the subject more recently on November 30, in another exclusive report: Radiation Poisoning Betrays Mule
In the first week of October, a Pakistani arrested on immigration charges in the course of the FBI investigation into the September 11 suicide attacks, complained of bleeding gums and pain, symptoms of gingivitis. He was treated with antibiotics, but was found dead in his cell in Hudson Count jail in Kearny, New Jersey, three weeks later.
The cause of death was not released, any more than the dead man's identity.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's medical experts note that the bleeding gums the anonymous Pakistani was treated for are a symptom of radiation poisoning, suggesting he might have been a "mule" transporting nuclear materials or devices into America. (A subsequent investigation revealed that he had contracted gingivitis as a result of radiation-induced leukemia.)
This explanation would imply that more than one such carrier is employed by al Qaeda to smuggle nuclear materials or devices into the United States, Western Europe and the Middle East, their mission being to plant their deadly burdens in pre-arranged secret locations, ready for activation.
At roughly the same time, another Pakistani was detained at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan to Israel. According to initial published reports, he was caught trying to smuggle in a "dirty" nuclear device (a conventional explosive mixed with nuclear materials that spreads radiation).
Then came the news blackout.
An exhaustive DEBKA-Net-Weekly investigation revealed that the arrested intruder carried no nuclear device. However, he suffered the same symptoms as the man who died in Hudson Jail, New Jersey, indicating he had been exposed to dangerous doses of radiation. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources reveal that Israel has recently installed hidden Geiger counters in the battery of detectors at its international border crossings. The counter pointed border officials to the suspected "mule", who most probably reached Jordan from Abu Dhabi.
Israel handed him over to the United States, but was left asking itself: What exactly was the Pakistani's mission? And have other members of the mule pack managed to gain entry?
Pakistanis Abet bin Laden's 'Dirty Nuke'
Arnaud De Borchgrave
NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, Dec. 7, 2001
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistani nuclear scientists, in collaboration with former Pakistani intelligence officers, were assisting Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization in developing a "dirty" nuclear weapons capability, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agencies concluded, United Press International learned Thursday.
Speaking not for attribution, intelligence officers in Washington and Islamabad are convinced documents uncovered in Kabul and the interrogation of nuclear scientists, who were frequent visitors to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan ostensibly involved in humanitarian work, are conclusive evidence al-Qaeda was trying to put together a "nuclear device in the 'dirty-bomb' category."
One Pakistani general who has seen the evidence described the device as a "dirty nuclear weapon," i.e., radioactive materials wrapped around conventional explosives. He also believes bin Laden obtained such materials on Russia's nuclear black market.
The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria is aware of 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear materials since 1993, including 18 that involved highly enriched uranium and plutonium pellets the size of a U.S. silver dollar.
18 Million Chances
There are 18 million potential delivery vehicles to covertly introduce a nuclear device in the United States. That's the number of cargo containers that arrive in the United States annually. Only 3 percent of them are inspected by U.S. Customs, and bills of lading do not have to be produced until they arrive at their final destination.
Radioactivity is invisible, as was the case with the Chernobyl disaster in 1985, but not undetectable. There is no way of knowing the future impact on people exposed, although prolonged radiation exposure can cause genetic alterations resulting in birth defects, health problems and even death. Because most of the long-term effects of radiation are unknown, "dirty" nuclear devices are more weapons of mass disruption than mass destruction.
An unidentified former chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency is believed to be the man who coordinated bin Laden's nuclear ambitions. One local intelligence source speculated a dirty bomb could have been smuggled out before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. It would have been transported in a truck all the way to Karachi, in southern Pakistan and then shipped in a cargo container.
That could be the weapon Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar was referring to when he said after the U.S. bombing started Oct. 7 that America would soon have to face extinction. Allowing for hyperbole, he may have known what bin Laden was planning next.
Another ex-ISI chief, retired Gen. Hameed Gul, predicted to UPI after Sept. 11 that one day there would be a single Islamic state stretching from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and it would have nuclear weapons and control the oil resources of the Persian Gulf.
The general is an ISI legend and still popular among the agency's leaders, who were his junior officers in the late 1980s. Gul is vehemently anti-American and a Muslim fundamentalist. He acts as "strategic adviser" to Pakistan's extremist religious parties and spent two weeks in Afghanistan immediately before Sept. 11.
It's Not Over
Gul slowly is emerging as the spokesman for the combined opposition of Islamist fundamentalists. In Thursday's Urdu-language newspapers, he is quoted as saying: "No one can tell us how to run our nuclear facilities and nuclear programs. This is being done in the interest of Pakistan, not the United States. The Taliban will always remain in Afghanistan, and Pakistan will always support them."
He presumably was referring to Taliban intentions to launch a guerrilla campaign once it had lost Kandahar, its last outpost.
Gul's only daughter runs VARAN, the public transportation bus company that enjoys a monopoly in Islamabad and its twin military garrison city of Rawalpindi. Gul himself lives in "Pindi" in an army housing development for retired generals.
Officially, the Pakistani government has accepted the explanation of three nuclear scientists about their "innocuous" relationship to Taliban. Privately, however, some Pakistani officials, working closely with U.S. colleagues, told UPI their activities "cannot be described as innocuous by any stretch of the imagination."
CIA Director George Tenet, on a brief visit to Islamabad last weekend, conferred with President Pervez Musharraf on what was described as the need for "more and better intelligence" from ISI.
The CIA has reportedly submitted a list of six more nuclear scientists it wants to probe on suspicion of having links with al-Qaeda. Two of the six - Dr. Suleiman Asad and Dr. Muhammad Ali Muktar - have been working in Kahora Research Laboratories. They are in Myanmar (Burma) doing undisclosed research with Burmese scientists.
Dr. Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmud, the former director of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and Chief Engineer Dr. Chaudry Abdul Majeed have been questioned by a joint FBI-ISI team.
Apparently anxious to avoid further U.S. probes into Pakistan's ultra-secret nuclear weapons program, these two scientists have been advised by the government to remain in Myanmar until further notice.
The CIA, according to PAEC sources, wishes to conduct a separate interrogation based on documents seized in Kabul. Mahmud is a close associate of Gul. They were colleagues when Gul ran ISI.
Mahmud is one of three scientists who befriended Taliban leaders. He is an expert in enriched uranium and plutonium. He has lectured all over Pakistan and praised the Taliban as "the wave of the future for Pakistan."
Mahmud and two of his colleagues were detained in late October as a result of U.S. questions about Pakistani "relief" organizations active in Taliban-run Afghanistan, including an agricultural project near Kandahar.
Spreading Plutonium to Other Muslims
They admitted to meeting with al-Qaeda associates of bin Laden and were officially cleared of passing on nuclear secrets. Mahmud says publicly that plutonium production is not a state secret and advocates increasing plutonium output to help other Islamic nations build nuclear weapons.
After the start of the U.S. bombing campaign Oct. 7, Musharraf ordered an immediate redeployment of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal to six new secret locations, including separate storage facilities for uranium and plutonium cores and their detonation mechanisms. Army colleagues now say privately Musharraf was fearful of assassination by extremists who were already accusing him of betraying Islam and selling out to the United States. There also were rumors of a coup by hard-lining military Islamists.
The officer corps is 20 percent fundamentalist, according to a post Sept. 11 confidential survey by military intelligence, which operates separately from ISI.
Pakistan's nuclear scientists are known as "profoundly fundamentalist" and anti-American. They are particularly resentful of America's economic and military sanctions against Pakistan as punishment for their country's nuclear weapons program.
Their guru is Abdul Qadir Khan, the scientist who devised Pakistan's first nuclear weapon. Pakistan now has an estimated 20 such weapons in its arsenal.
ISI is still widely distrusted by western intelligence agencies and by all levels of Pakistani society, from people in the street to top political leaders. An ISI general who is regional director in one of the tribal areas told an important tribal leader known to this reporter: "After Afghanistan, Pakistan is next on America's list of countries to be conquered, and after Pakistan, Iran will be next. All that war talk about Iraq being next is just a smokescreen."
The tribal leader said "such silly statements are typical of the Islamist state of paranoia." Gul has been touring federally administered tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan with much the same message about Washington's plans for conquest in the region.
ISI is undergoing a traumatic shock in the wake of the Taliban's defeat, according to knowledgeable secular political party leaders.
"They have lost thousands of operatives in Afghanistan," said one key politician who did not wish to be named. ISI also facilitated the transfer to Afghanistan in the past two months of thousands of young religious school students who had been proselytized by their clerical teachers to volunteer to fight with Taliban.
Musharraf had a dangerous precedent in mind. Six years ago, a group of Pakistani army officers was arrested for plotting to kill Army Chief of Staff Gen. Abdul Waheed. He had fired the ISI chief for secretly assisting Muslim rebels in several countries.
Do Terrorists Really Have Nukes Here?
Enough nuclear material is missing worldwide to make a 'dirty' bomb.
Where is it? What is being done to prevent its use by terrorists?
By Peter Grier | Staff writer - Dec 05, 2001 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1205/p1s3-wogi.html
Jamal Ahmad Al-Fadl said his role in the prospective purchase of nuclear material began with a call from a senior Al Qaeda official. A man in Khartoum, Sudan, supposedly had uranium for sale. At the time, Mr. al-Fadl was an operative in Al Qaeda's terrorist army. His job: Check out the deal. So in late 1993 or early 1994, he met with the first contact, then another, and then another, like a job applicant passing through corporate departments. Along the way, he noticed that at least one of them appeared to have been high in the Sudanese government at some point. Finally, one morning al-Fadl drove with two men to a house north of the city. They disappeared for a moment, and then came back with a large bag, from which they pulled a cylinder two or three feet tall. They handed him a piece of paper covered with English words al-Fadl couldn't read. He recognized one phrase: "South Africa."
The demonstration phase of the sales pitch over, al-Fadl and his contacts returned to Khartoum in their jeep. He took the paper to an Al Qaeda boss. Osama bin Laden's operatives were impressed, or at least satisfied. They told Al-Fadl to pass the word that they would pay the cylinder's $1.5 million asking price. Then they gave him $10,000 and took over the deal themselves. "You did great job, we going to check it, and everything be fine," Al-Fadl said he was told. This story of nuclear shopping was offered as an aside by Al-Fadl during his testimony earlier this year in the trial of Al Qaeda associates accused of bombing US embassies in East Africa in 1998. Is it a tall tale? Maybe. Al-Fadl, a self-described Al Qaeda turncoat, is far from an unimpeachable source. Al-Fadl also said he didn't know whether this transaction ever went through. The "uranium" in the cylinder might have been a worthless prop in a radiological scam.
But its details ring true to many nuclear experts. And the larger point is indisputable: The shadow army of terrorism, the force responsible for the deadliest day on American soil since Antietam, is trying, methodically, patiently, to acquire the most powerful weapon known to man.
The US and its allies have known that intellectually for a long time. But after seeing jetliners turned into cruise missiles, perhaps the West better understands what that really means. Among Sept. 11's effects may be a phase-shift in imaginations. Few can doubt that if Mohammad Atta had access to a nuclear bomb, he would have used it.
Once throw-weights and basing modes and other aspects of strategic weaponry were the crucial issues of US nuclear security. Now patching the holes in Russia's makeshift fissile material protections may be more important. Does bin Laden have the bomb? Is Iraq enriching uranium? How secure are Pakistan's nukes?
"And so we find ourselves, at the dawn of the new century, in a new arms race," said former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia in a recent speech. "Terrorists are racing to get weapons of mass destruction. We ought to be racing to stop them."
New terrorists, new lapses
The old expert consensus used to be that terrorist groups were not terribly serious about getting nuclear weapons. They might try chemical or biological attack, but not nukes: They are highly dangerous, extremely expensive, and difficult to acquire. And their horror would overwhelm the essentially political nature of terrorist acts. Through history, most terrorists have wanted to maxi- mize publicity - not casualties.
That judgment had already begun to change before the events of this fall. The rise of a new generation of terrorists, their goals unclear, their commitment total, their address unknown, saw to that.
A state such as Iraq is dangerous enough. But at least the US has some understanding of its weapons programs. A nation has assets and infrastructure that presumably even a leader such as Saddam Hussein might be loath to expose to US retaliatory attack.
Al Qaeda and its ilk are different. "The problem is, we can't target them like states," says Kimberly McCloud, a researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Then add new opportunity to this equation. It's possible that South Africa could be the source of weapons material. Pakistan might be a proliferation danger, too, considering it is a nuclear-capable state with long-standing Taliban ties.
But it is Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union that are the "Home Depot" of fissile material, in the words of one expert. The collapse of the Soviet Union threw its nuclear programs into a chaos from which they have yet to completely recover.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the closed cities where the USSR's nuclear weapons were produced changed from islands of prosperity to sinkholes of poverty. The human misery this created - especially in the early years - led some scientists to attempt desperate actions. In 1992, a large group of ballistic-missile experts from the closed city of Miass tried to reach North Korea, apparently to work in Pyongyang's intercontinental-ballistic- missile projects. Authorities caught them as they sat in a plane at Moscow's Sheremetievo-2 airport, waiting to take off. Russian authorities insist that their estimated 30,000 actual nuclear warheads have remained under adequate control at all times. But the same cannot be said for its military and civilian fissile material.
Over decades, the Soviet Union produced enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium to produce some 70,000 nuclear weapons. This was scattered at perhaps 100 sites throughout the territory of the former USSR. In the early '90s, some research sites were protected by nothing but padlocks and weeds. Dedicated scientists at times had to improvise defenses. When civil war broke out in the former republic of Georgia in 1992, scientists at one institute in Tbilisi took turns guarding 10 kilograms of weapons-grade HEU with sticks and garden rakes.
Much of this material was later moved to Britain for safekeeping. A cache of similar uranium elsewhere in the former republic met a different fate. In 1993, scientists at the Sukhumi research center in the Abkhazia region of Georgia piled cinder blocks around a building containing 2 kilograms of HEU, and fled oncoming fighting. A Russian team entered the abandoned building four years later, and found the material gone.
The Abkhazia affair remains the only confirmed case of missing weapons- grade fissile material in the world. To this day, no one knows where this HEU is. "It may be in the hands of the Abkhaz separatists, or it may have been stolen by or sold to others," says Matthew Bunn, of Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom.
Overall, there have been 14 confirmed, significant cases of trafficking in fissile material from the former Soviet Union, according to the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
The good news is that most of the cases date to the early and mid-'90s, before Russia stabilized and a US effort to help guard its material took off. The bad news is that there may be more significant cases the world doesn't know about. Most of the confirmed incidents took place in Europe or what used to be the western USSR. Yet a glance at a map shows that southern Russia, and the former republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc., are the logical place for a Middle Eastern group such as Al Qaeda to go nuke shopping.
The US has been involved in cooperative programs with Russia to control its loose nuclear weapons and material for years. Since 1991, US money has paid for the deactivation of more than 5,000 Russian nuclear warheads. It has provided security equipment for dozens of facilities, helped construct a secure storage facility for fissile material, and paid for science and technology centers intended to provide ex-weapons scientists the means to work on civilian research.
"These programs have made tremendous progress," notes Jon Wolfsthal, an associate in the non-proliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But much more may need to be done. Almost half of Russia's fissile material is stored in facilities that have not received US-funded protection upgrades. Russia continues to add to its stockpile of plutonium - not for military purposes, but because the reactors that produce the material also produce desperately needed electricity.
Earlier this year, a Department of Energy advisory group headed by former US Sen. Howard Baker and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler surveyed the US effort - and found it wanting. The programs need a broader mandate, and they need more money, concluded the group.
"The most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen or sold to terrorists or hostile nation-states," concluded the Baker/Cutler study.
That was written before Sept. 11.
Al Qaeda and the black market
There is one point about Al Qaeda's nuclear program on which most experts agree: It does not yet have an actual atomic weapon. If it did, the chances are it would have exploded by now. It's less certain whether the group has any radioactive material at all. Al Qaeda has been a player in fissile-material markets for years, according to intelligence reports. In the early '90s, it allegedly scoured Kazakhstan for USSR-era material, in the belief that the high percentage of Muslims in this former Soviet republic might open doors. Apparently, the group came up empty. Since then, Al Qaeda may have been snared by its share of scams. They were dealing, after all, in a back alley of world commerce that makes drug- dealing look both honest and inexpensive.
At least once, Al Qaeda operatives have been offered low-grade uranium reactor fuel unsuitable for weapons use without further enrichment. Along with other potential buyers, Al Qaeda also may have fallen for the widespread "red mercury" fraud. Clever criminals pitch this element as a crucial component of the Soviet weapons program.
"In the case of Al Qaida, the 'red mercury' turned out to be radioactive rubbish," concluded Gavin Cameron, a professor of politics at Britain's University of Salford, in a paper on terrorist nuclear-proliferation activities. Al Qaeda may have been gullible, but at least the group was subtle. Contrast their approach with that of the apocalyptic Japanese religious group Aum Shinrikyo, whose members were responsible for the release of sarin nerve gas in five Tokyo subway trains on March 20, 1995.
In the early 1990s, Aum actively recruited adherents from Russia's nuclear design facilities, as well as student physicists from Moscow State University. It purchased property in Australia from which it planned to mine natural uranium for enrichment - an arduous task beyond the resources of most nations. In 1993, Aum representatives sought a meeting with then-Russian Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov for the express purpose of discussing the purchase of a nuclear warhead. (The meeting was denied.)
Enough nuclear material is missing worldwide to make a 'dirty' bomb. Where is it? What is being done to prevent its use by terrorists?
But Al Qaeda's and Aum Shinrikyo's nuclear dealings share at least two similarities that experts find worrisome. One is ample funding. At the height of its influence, Aum had an estimated net worth of $1 billion, obtained largely from co-opting the assets of its members. Al Qaeda's operations have bin Laden's personal fortune - inherited from his construction-magnate father - as seed funds.
The second similarity is persistence. Following Aum's path, Al Qaeda has apparently mounted a multinational, many-leveled effort to enter the nuclear club. In recent years, there has been a steady trickle of reports from experts in Europe and the Middle East who say they have been contacted by bin Laden associates and asked for help obtaining fissile material.
Last year, a Bulgarian businessman said he had met bin Laden himself, and had been offered a role in a complex deal to transship nuclear waste to Afghanistan via Bulgaria. This month, Gul Nazir, head of organic chemistry at Kabul University, said he had turned down offers from Taliban delegations to provide substances that could be used to help make chemical weapons and mine uranium.
Then there's the curious case of Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. An architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, he has traveled back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent years, allegedly to advise the Taliban on the construction of food-processing plants.
At least one expert believes a radiological attack of a sort was part of Al Qaeda's original plan for Sept. 11. In a speech delivered to a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in early November, Mr. Cameron of the University of Salford said that it is likely that the target of the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 was a US nuclear facility.
The hijackers' intentions are essentially unknowable, he admits, because they were stormed by heroic passengers, leading to the plane's crash in rural Pennsylvania. But the plane made a sharp turn near the Pittsburgh area, and rapidly lost height, before the passengers acted. Combined with unspecific FBI warnings about threats to power plants, this evidence may point to the terrorists' intended destination.
"It now appears that one of three nuclear reactors in southern Pennsylvania - Three Mile Island, Peach Bottom, or Hope Creek, Salem - may have been the real target," Cameron told the IAEA.
When scientists conspire
On Dec. 18, 1998, an official of Russia's successor agency to the KGB, the Federal Security Service (FSB), said that agents under his command had broken up a conspiracy by employees of a major nuclear facility in the Chelyabinsk region to steal 18.5 kilograms of weapons-usable material. If it had gone through, the theft would have caused "significant damage to the [Russian] state," local media quoted FSB Maj. Gen. Valeriy Tretyakov as saying.
In the US, experts reeled.
Chelyabinsk is home to some of Russia's most important nuclear facilities, including a nuclear-weapons assembly and disassembly plant at Trekhgorny, and a weapons-design lab at Snezhinsk. If a group of insiders at one of these sensitive sites had decided to steal fissile material - well, that would be a highly serious matter. Furthermore, the material involved was apparently not some useless radioactive slurry. It was weapons-usable - meaning 18.5 kilograms might be enough to make an entire nuclear weapon.
This incident is not included on most lists of the most important nuclear trafficking incidents, for the simple reason that it was quashed in its initial phases. But it remains one of the most troubling apparent cases of attempted proliferation of all - because it matches almost exactly the US nightmare scenario for a fissile-material theft.
It wasn't ancient history. It occurred in 1998, after many facilities in the region had received US money for protection upgrades. It involved lots of stuff. And it involved a conspiracy of the knowledgeable.
"Multiple insiders are the hardest thing for any security system to address," says Mr. Bunn of the Managing the Atom project. Consider the ramifications. Russia has a "three-man rule" in regard to its nuclear weapons. Individuals are forbidden from working alone on warheads, as are twosomes.
But if two scientists are in cahoots, they might be able to overpower the third. To guard against this, security might have to institute a four-man, or even five-man rule. Perimeter guards might need to be doubled. The cost and complexity of protection systems escalates exponentially.
And what would be the genesis of such a conspiracy? Perhaps a group of disillusioned scientists or guards would try such a thing on their own, but that may be unlikely, given the difficulties of marketing the stuff. It's more likely that such a theft might come in response to an enticing overture. Such as Saddam Hussein, perhaps, offering enough money for everyone in the group to buy a South Seas island.
"What I worry about is state intelligence agencies contacting these people," says Scott Parrish, an analyst at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute.
If the Chelyabinsk conspiracy is the No. 1 worrisome incidence of potential trafficking in nuclear material, the Prague seizure might be judged No. 2. In December 1994, an anonymous tip led Czech police to a marked car. In it, they found 2.7 kilograms of HEU enriched to 87.7 percent. The amount and purity of the recovered material was highly troubling. Worse, in two instances in 1995, Czech authorities recovered small amounts of additional HEU that appeared to be from the same source.
This suggests that there is a stock of weapons-grade HEU out there, of unknown quantity, in unknown hands. New worries about so-called "dirty bombs," conventional explosives used to spread deadly radioactive material over a wide area, are also making some incidents of trafficking seem important in retrospect.
Earlier this year, for instance, the Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported the seizure of 5 kilograms of cesium 137 from Chechen rebels, who were allegedly loading the material into mortar shells. Most experts do not consider this incident confirmed, but the Chechens have threatened to use radiological material before. And cesium 137 is nasty stuff. Its radiation was the cause of many of the fatalities associated with the Soviet-era explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
In fact, once worries about dirty bombs multiply, the potential sources of dangerous material rapidly multiply as well. Radioactive material is used in many medical and industrial applications. Eastern Europe and the nations of the former Soviet Union even used trace amounts of plutonium in smoke detectors. "I used to joke that if Saddam Hussein placed an order in Russia for 500 million smoke detectors, we should get worried," says Dr. Parrish of the Monterey Institute.
What the U.S. is doing
Preventing a nuclear terrorist attack on the US will require a comprehensive effort far into the future, say US officials. It will be one part - arguably the most important part - of the overall commitment to homeland defense. More narrowly, it may necessitate redoubled cooperation with the most likely source of loose nukes in the world: Russia. Warming relations between President Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, today offer a window of opportunity for such an intensification, say its advocates.
There is a decent foundation of mutual effort to build on. Initiated by Sen. Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana and former Sen. Sam Nunn (D) of Georgia in 1991, the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program has grown into a $1 billion-plus effort overseen on the US side by the Departments of Energy, State, and Defense.
"These programs have achieved impressive results for a relatively minor investment," says Stephen LaMontagne, a nuclear analyst at the Council for a Livable World Education Fund.
CTR funds pay for the destruction and dismantling of Russian ballistic missiles and submarines, for instance. Last year, $57 million of US funds went toward completion of the first wing of the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility, which will ultimately have the capacity to protect 6,250 dismantled warheads.
The Department of Energy's Material Protection, Control, and Accounting program has so far improved physical security at 13 Russian Navy nuclear sites and 24 civilian nuclear installations. But there are some 58 more Russian nuclear sites that need security upgrades, according to DOE figures. A program to blend HEU down into less dangerous civilian reactor fuel is moving slowly. Efforts to replace three Russian nuclear reactors that produce both desperately needed energy and plutonium have stalled in a swirl of politics.
And the Bush administration, in its first crack at drawing up a national- security budget, has slashed the funding of much of the non-proliferation effort. Bush's budget took $100 million out of the Department of Energy's side of the effort, alone. The needs, according to the Secretary of Energy's advisory board task force headed by Mr. Baker and Mr. Cutler, include: a real strategic plan; a high-level position within the White House devoted to the issue, perhaps within the National Security Council; more money, and more urgency.
Concludes the report: "There is a clear and present danger to the international community as well as to American lives and liberties."
NUCLEAR SHELTER EXPEDIENT OPTIONS
Two expedient sheltering options you could do very quickly...
Amongst expedient last-minute sheltering options at home, even just simply pushing a heavy table or pool table (one you can get under) into the corner of a below ground basement, ideally the corner with the grade (earth) highest up the wall on the other side of it, can be surprisingly effective.
You would then pile atop it and all around it (on the two exposed sides), any additional available mass (such as books, wood, cordwood, bricks, sandbags, heavy furniture, full file cabinets, or boxes full of anything heavy, like earth) before then crawling in under it. Have a small entrance and more mass that can be easily pulled in after you to seal it up. Leave two little 4" air spaces, one high at one end and one low at the other, and with a small piece of cardboard you can help fan fresh air in if the natural rising warmer air convection needs an assist bringing in more fresh air. Also, cover up any basement windows or other openings anywhere in the basement where you can see light shining through with sandbags or solid masonry blocks or cordwood, etc.
Amongst expedient last-minute sheltering options at home, even just simply pushing a heavy table or pool table (one you can get under) into the corner of a below ground basement, ideally the corner with the grade (earth) highest up the wall on the other side of it, can be surprisingly effective.
You would then pile atop it and all around it (on the two exposed sides), any additional available mass (such as books, wood, cordwood, bricks, sandbags, heavy furniture, full file cabinets, or boxes full of anything heavy, like earth) before then crawling in under it. Have a small entrance and more mass that can be easily pulled in after you to seal it up. Leave two little 4" air spaces, one high at one end and one low at the other, and with a small piece of cardboard you can help fan fresh air in if the natural rising warmer air convection needs an assist bringing in more fresh air. Also, cover up any basement windows or other openings anywhere in the basement where you can see light shining through with sandbags or solid masonry blocks or cordwood, etc.
A basement already provides a 10 to 50 PF (Protection Factor) and then hunkering down under a sturdy table packed and surrounded by extra mass can add another 2-4 PF which would give you a total of 20 to 200 PF.
That means that if there was an initial 1,000 R/hr radiation intensity outside you would have under that table only 5 – 50 R/hr. And, remember, with every passing hour that fallout would be decaying and quickly losing its energy to where 7 hours later, it would only be 1/10th of that strength. Adding more mass on the floor above and outside against those walls opposite your shelter inside, can add even more sheilding protection.
That means that if there was an initial 1,000 R/hr radiation intensity outside you would have under that table only 5 – 50 R/hr. And, remember, with every passing hour that fallout would be decaying and quickly losing its energy to where 7 hours later, it would only be 1/10th of that strength. Adding more mass on the floor above and outside against those walls opposite your shelter inside, can add even more sheilding protection.
As cramped as that might be, you would have achieved a Protection Factor (PF), in less than half an hour of moving some mass into place, that could clearly be the difference between exposure to a lethal dose of radioactive fallout outside or survival for your family.
Think what you could accomplish if you started now, well before any nuclear emergency, to explore your available options and built (or at least acquired and pre-positioned the materials for) a mass encased small fallout shelter there in your own basement. Clearly, this is too cheap and easy not to have fully explored it.
Or, you could do a combination tornado/fallout shelter in the backyard, if the ground isn't now frozen where you are. With 30" of earth covering alone you would achieve a PF of 300 and occupants would receive less than 1/300th of the gamma-ray dose of fallout radiation that they would otherwise have received out in the open.
A fairly expedient (pretty cheap/fast) option for outside shelter building, especially for all those without basements, is to acquire a section of, under the road rated, corrugated culvert pipe of at least 4' diameter. It's very common, cheap, and you might even find some for next to nothing at your local metal junk yard that you could take home in the back of a long-bed pick-up (if 12' long or less) or on a boat trailer.
Have a hole dug at least as deep as half the diameter of the pipe in an area without a high water table that has good drainage. Roll it in and wall up the ends with cemented block, railroad ties, or even a couple sheets of reinforced plywood a little longer than the diameter, but leaving you an entrance/exit and air shaft at both ends at the top half that's still above ground. (If you've got the expertise/welder or money, and time, you could go ahead and have 10 gauge steel bulkheads welded on each end instead.) Whatever you use, have these end walls extend up past and above the culvert for 2' - 3' for holding back the dirt at the ends you'll later put atop the shelter.
You won't have enough excavation dirt (from the hole you created) to cover the shelter back over to a 2-3' level and still assure the grade atop is gradual enough to thwart future erosion, so you'll need to get some more from elsewhere in your yard or bring in some with pick-up truck loads, etc.
You'll also need sandbags full or solid masonry blocks to pre-position them at one end to pull/lift/push into place when you all get inside. Have one end already stacked solid with them, except for a small air gap at top and have the other end sealed up, too, except for enough room to wiggle in for the largest member of your family. The reason we have created two potential entrances, with removable blocks or bags, is so we also have two potential exits, if part of your house or a tree later fell on one end.
There's a lot of refinements that can make this more permanent, and better assure water doesn't get into the shelter before you do, etc. But, the point is, you can get creative with encasing mass all around your family for little time/money/effort.
Cramped and miserable for a couple days, yes, assuredly, but it'll be a story of survival your family will be around for to recount for years ahead together, especially when compared to the alternative fate of being above ground and exposed to the full intensity of radioactive fallout in those most dangerous first couple days
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/nuclear_terrorism.htm
Think what you could accomplish if you started now, well before any nuclear emergency, to explore your available options and built (or at least acquired and pre-positioned the materials for) a mass encased small fallout shelter there in your own basement. Clearly, this is too cheap and easy not to have fully explored it.
Or, you could do a combination tornado/fallout shelter in the backyard, if the ground isn't now frozen where you are. With 30" of earth covering alone you would achieve a PF of 300 and occupants would receive less than 1/300th of the gamma-ray dose of fallout radiation that they would otherwise have received out in the open.
A fairly expedient (pretty cheap/fast) option for outside shelter building, especially for all those without basements, is to acquire a section of, under the road rated, corrugated culvert pipe of at least 4' diameter. It's very common, cheap, and you might even find some for next to nothing at your local metal junk yard that you could take home in the back of a long-bed pick-up (if 12' long or less) or on a boat trailer.
Have a hole dug at least as deep as half the diameter of the pipe in an area without a high water table that has good drainage. Roll it in and wall up the ends with cemented block, railroad ties, or even a couple sheets of reinforced plywood a little longer than the diameter, but leaving you an entrance/exit and air shaft at both ends at the top half that's still above ground. (If you've got the expertise/welder or money, and time, you could go ahead and have 10 gauge steel bulkheads welded on each end instead.) Whatever you use, have these end walls extend up past and above the culvert for 2' - 3' for holding back the dirt at the ends you'll later put atop the shelter.
You won't have enough excavation dirt (from the hole you created) to cover the shelter back over to a 2-3' level and still assure the grade atop is gradual enough to thwart future erosion, so you'll need to get some more from elsewhere in your yard or bring in some with pick-up truck loads, etc.
You'll also need sandbags full or solid masonry blocks to pre-position them at one end to pull/lift/push into place when you all get inside. Have one end already stacked solid with them, except for a small air gap at top and have the other end sealed up, too, except for enough room to wiggle in for the largest member of your family. The reason we have created two potential entrances, with removable blocks or bags, is so we also have two potential exits, if part of your house or a tree later fell on one end.
There's a lot of refinements that can make this more permanent, and better assure water doesn't get into the shelter before you do, etc. But, the point is, you can get creative with encasing mass all around your family for little time/money/effort.
Cramped and miserable for a couple days, yes, assuredly, but it'll be a story of survival your family will be around for to recount for years ahead together, especially when compared to the alternative fate of being above ground and exposed to the full intensity of radioactive fallout in those most dangerous first couple days
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/nuclear_terrorism.htm
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