So uh, Obama Made A Historic Deal With Iran On Nukes

[gla22]

[eynon81]

[The Dharma Bum]

Is the "suitcase nuke" a dream goal that has actually been realized yet?

[Spider]

Oh sure. Don't forget, even half a century ago they had tactical nukes. Even nukes you could fire out of an artillery piece. Some of the compact nukes weighed about 50 lbs and were meant to be able to be carried by a single guy in a backpack. And that was back before most people even had color TV.

[eynon81]

[Spider]

Ya, probably nothing of that sort of yield, but I have little doubt they got it miniaturized down to suitcase level. Even if they only had a 5 kiloton yield, it's still a third of a Hiroshima. One would hope that would be adequate.

[eynon81]

[Spider]

Yes, as a matter of course. But the nuclear deterrent was designed for defense against other major powers. Terrorists are stateless, at least nominally so, and to what exact degree do we have to prove that the weapon wasn't stolen? Or misplaced? (The Russians have "lost" countless weapons) Do we hold a nation responsible and vaporize it if some rouge political group stages a coup and supplies a terror group with a weapon? If the coup is then defeated and the old government is reasserted, can that nation prove that the coup was real, and not a merely a firewall against legitimate reprisal? What margin of error is acceptable for being absolutely certain of the origin of the weapon?

Etc etc etc...

I mean...how well can we possibly know what exact radioactive toys the North Koreans have managed to stash?

Is the message, "You have nukes now, and if one of them gets used, regardless of how it happened, and we can absolutely track it to you...you die no matter what." ? Are there extenuating circumstances, or does Country X get erased regardless? Do we accept tens of millions of civilian casualties, inflicted after the attack, totally as a matter of revenge? I mean, the damage is already done. What if it takes a couple months to track the weapon to Country X? Do we then methodically slaughter that population with an arrangement of plutonium and rocket fuel such that future archaeologists will suspect an asteroid strike? Because, "Well, your government decided to do a bad thing, and so now you all have to die. Don't hate the player, hate the game."?

F*ck this whole train of thought, actually.

[exploited]

It is precisely that train of thought which prevents governments from supplying nukes. And even if it were a coup situation, presumably we would be aware of it, and take care of the nukes before anything could actually be done with them.

Also keep in mind that security measures for nukes are insane. Even if you got ahold of one doesn't mean you'd be able to set it off. Many if not most modern nukes are equipped with permissive action links - units that are attached to weapons that prevent tampering and will actually explode conventionally if the appropriate codes and sequences aren't followed to the letter. And these codes aren't breakable without supercomputers, and would render the nuke inoperable after one wrong code. In fact, the US has spent roughly $100 million helping Pakistan secure their weapons, and has guided allies development of PALs since the 1970s.

In other words, it is extremely difficult to imagine those scenarios coming into play.

[Spider]