The book I read to research this post was Nuclear Terrorism by Graham Allison which is an excellent book which I bought from a local bookstore. This book is about the possibilities of nuclear attacks by terrorist organizations which in theory could put even the attacks on the World Trade Center in the shade. According to this book it is more a question of when than if. In Chechnya Soviet forces found a so called dirty bomb before it could be detonated and that is currently the closest we have come to a nuclear terrorist attack. A dirty bomb is any kind of nuclear waste that is in a container along with an explosive that helps spread it around. With a dirty bomb there wouldn’t be many immediate deaths although years later people would succumb to things like cancer as a result. It would cost a lost a lot of money to clear up the nuclear waste and render the area safe though. There is a much greater chance of terrorists building a dirty bomb than using a nuclear warhead as many sites like hospitals house radio-active material that could potentially be used. When the Soviet Union disintegrated many nuclear weapons went missing and almost certainly some of these must either be in terrorist hands or countries with terrorist connections. It’s interesting that not a single nuclear weapon that disappeared in this way has been recovered. A 10 megaton nuclear weapon set off in central New York would probably result in 1 million deaths not counting those who would die of things like cancer much later. There have been cases where terrorists have demanded a ransom in exchange for not setting off a nuclear weapon and these have been hoaxes luckily. There are countries like North Korea & Iran who have nuclear power stations and have a nuclear weapons capability. Most of the information on how to build a nuclear power station is freely accessible and anyone with the money can probably develop a nuclear capability in 5-10 years. This book is very disturbing but is on a brilliant subject and is really well written and is a reasonable length at around 240 pages.
scratbagroberts 