The (Hypothetical) Nuking of Washington DC
Posted by StormWarning on 16 Apr 2008 at 02:08 pm | Tagged as: Uncategorized
My counterterrorism talisman (Beware Jihadists!…bouncing boobs below)
I continue to maintain that a nuclear device does not now exist on US soil in the hands of terrorists. We’ve seen the mass destruction of Washington DC in movies like Independence Day. Think of the strict Constitutionalists who would like to start all over again, and “do it the way they oughta.” But while they are Americans all (and patriots at that), undoubtably there are some conservative “thinkers” and small governmentists who might actually want to see this happen. A University of Georgia model shows that a 10 kT bomb exploding near the White House (like the one that hit Hiroshima) would likely kill 100,000 people, throw shards of glass the length of the Mall, and contaminate 1000’s more with radioactive residue.
As for my belief that no terrorist nuke currently exists (a position not shared by at least one “self-proclaimed counterterrorism expert”), there are at least two camps of thought:
“It’s inevitable,” said Cham E. Dallas, director of the Institute for Health Management and Mass Destruction Defense at the University of Georgia, who has charted the potential explosion’s effect in the District and testified before a hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. “I think it’s wistful to think that it won’t happen by 20 years.”
- Versus/compared to -
“The scenarios we discuss today are very hard for us to contemplate, and so emotionally traumatic and unsettling that it is tempting to push them aside,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and committee chairman. “However, now is the time to have this difficult conversation, to ask the tough questions, and then to get answers as best we can and take preparatory and preventive action.”
- And buffered by -
Ashton B. Carter, co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at Harvard University, said the likelihood of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil is undetermined, but it has increased with the proliferation of weapons by Iran and North Korea and the failure to secure Russia’s nuclear arsenal following the Cold War.
“For while the probability of a nuclear weapon one day going off in a U.S. city cannot be calculated, it is almost surely larger than it was five years ago,” Mr. Carter said.
jihadist boobs, nuclear attack, Washington DC
