4 ms·

I'm curious, why would a nuke be less feasible?

sterlind 5y ago
in my view: anyone can build a suicide vest or IED. it's much harder to attribute than a nuke. even if you have the uranium, you need precisely-shaped explosive lenses and lots of machined parts for a regular atomic bomb, not to mention tritium and highly-classified knowledge for hydrogen bombs. you also can't covertly test it. even if you had a nuke that got lost in the 90s, you would need to replace its tritium , and likely other components. even after all that, you might be able to attribute the radioactive material by analyzing isotopes from the fallout. it'd just be a monumental stretch to claim the Ukrainians somehow assembled their own nuke in a matter of weeks. even with Russia's propaganda I can't see anyone inside the country or out buying it. a dirty bomb (the rumor Putin is running) is more feasible, since it's just a conventional bomb with radioactive shrapnel. but that's much less dramatic, and would be feasible to clean up without incurring many casualties, unless it's air-dropped. so I don't think a dirty bomb would be cause for thermonuclear retaliation - it plays more like using a chemical weapon. also, as crazy as Putin is, I have a hard time believing anyone at FSB would follow an order to nuke their own citizens.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  I see how isotope fingerprinting can be a big issue in the plan. No way that the world at large wouldn't recognise this as a false flag attack if they got a 99% match with known Russian military nukes. That said, I don't see why people domestically wouldn't buy it. They could spin any number of stories, such as that a corrupt/kidnapped military/government official allowed the weapon to escape Russian custody and detonation control. Or they could just lie. Some fraction of people will believe it, either because they are not nuclear experts, or because it's repeated so often they'll start believing it eventually.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > anyone can build a suicide vest or IED. it's much harder to attribute than a nuke. One of the apartment bombings used RDX, a tightly controlled explosive only made in one factory in Russia. Compare this to the Oklahoma City bombing in the US. It used ANFO, an explosive made from ingredients commonly found on farms. You couldn't blame a random terrorist, but you can point to the mushroom cloud and say "NATO did it" pretty convincingly on Russian state TV.

in my view: anyone can build a suicide vest or IED. it's much harder to attribute than a nuke. even if you have the uranium, you need precisely-shaped explosive lenses and lots of machined parts for a regular atomic bomb, not to mention tritium and highly-classified knowledge for hydrogen bombs. you also can't covertly test it. even if you had a nuke that got lost in the 90s, you would need to replace its tritium , and likely other components. even after all that, you might be able to attribute the radioactive material by analyzing isotopes from the fallout. it'd just be a monumental stretch to claim the Ukrainians somehow assembled their own nuke in a matter of weeks. even with Russia's propaganda I can't see anyone inside the country or out buying it. a dirty bomb (the rumor Putin is running) is more feasible, since it's just a conventional bomb with radioactive shrapnel. but that's much less dramatic, and would be feasible to clean up without incurring many casualties, unless it's air-dropped. so I don't think a dirty bomb would be cause for thermonuclear retaliation - it plays more like using a chemical weapon. also, as crazy as Putin is, I have a hard time believing anyone at FSB would follow an order to nuke their own citizens.

selfhoster11 5y ago
I see how isotope fingerprinting can be a big issue in the plan. No way that the world at large wouldn't recognise this as a false flag attack if they got a 99% match with known Russian military nukes. That said, I don't see why people domestically wouldn't buy it. They could spin any number of stories, such as that a corrupt/kidnapped military/government official allowed the weapon to escape Russian custody and detonation control. Or they could just lie. Some fraction of people will believe it, either because they are not nuclear experts, or because it's repeated so often they'll start believing it eventually.
dehrmann 5y ago
> anyone can build a suicide vest or IED. it's much harder to attribute than a nuke. One of the apartment bombings used RDX, a tightly controlled explosive only made in one factory in Russia. Compare this to the Oklahoma City bombing in the US. It used ANFO, an explosive made from ingredients commonly found on farms. You couldn't blame a random terrorist, but you can point to the mushroom cloud and say "NATO did it" pretty convincingly on Russian state TV.