4 ms·

How to Get a Nuclear Bomb (2006)

38 points by CaptainZapp 15y ago

ifearthenight 15y ago
"Hiroshima was destroyed in a flash by a bomb dropped from a propeller-driven B-29 of the U.S. Army Air Force, on the warm morning of Monday, August 6, 1945." Nice use of subtle patriotism here. Wouldn't it have been a little more impartial to write it as below? "Hiroshima was destroyed in a flash by the U.S. Army with a bomb which was dropped from a propeller-driven B-29, on the warm morning of Monday, August 6, 1945."
- user24 15y ago
  I don't agree that the difference between the two phrasings changes the partiality of the sentence.
  - ifearthenight 15y ago
    In both sentences Hiroshima is the object. The subject in the original sentence is the bomb but in my edited sentence the subject is the U.S. Army. Talking of partiality (and the sentences use of passive voice) "Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1994) recommends the passive voice when identifying the object (receiver) of the action is more important than the subject (agent), and when the agent is unknown, unimportant, or not worth mentioning"
    - _djo_ 15y ago
      I think this is a really small nitpick which does not change the partiality of the sentence. Both phrases attribute the ultimate responsibility to the US Army Air Force (not 'US Army', which is incorrect) and it could be argued that as it was the bomb itself which did the actual destroying it should be the primary subject.
      - ifearthenight 15y ago
        Oops, right about the US Army Air Force mistake. My bad. Also, agree it might be nitpicking but for me the dropping of the A-bombs and associated killing of a crap load of civillians is one of last centuries most conveniently forgotten topics. So treatment of the subject has a tendency to get me riled up! One last question though...Can inanimate objects really be responsible of anything?
        oelewapperke 15y ago
        Cute how people react these days. Strategy, which in the end is what currently (mostly) keeps the world at peace, is discarded. And what is to take it's stead ? Politically motivated assigning of blame. In reality the America-Japan situation is morally much more complex than given credit here. America used, with reluctance, weapons it developed from a blueprint stolen from enemy forces that intended to use it against New York (ie. from Hitler). And they used it against a country that had invaded half of East-Asia, and was running genocides, rape campaigns, and all sorts of fun stuff all over the place. Does "the end justify the means" is an interesting discussion, but it is not even considered here : all that matters is showing one's political colors. American government bad ! And while the Japanese government was far worse, let's just not mention that. Let's also neglect the reasons things were done, and let's not go anywhere near the result of those actions. After all, while the act itself is definitely in the "not OK" department, you can hardly feel sorry for the enemy in this case. The reasons the action was taken are at the very least very serious reasons, worthy of extensive discussion in any judgement. And the result of those actions ... well, frankly, look at what happened ! What could possibly have been a better (realistic) outcome ? And being against nuclear weapons is very stupid considering that it is well documented that those weapons were indeed what kept the Soviets from attacking America. Without nuclear weapons, WWIII would have followed WWII after a decade and a half at most, probably less. That much is a certainty given historical evidence released at the fall of the Soviet union ... But of course we can't have the American government, now totally different from what it was in 1945, escape blame for an absolute moral standard, can we ? After all, that's the important part. Blame. Here's what I want to say : if you judge with absolute moral standards, we all deserve the death penalty. Laws, even moral laws, while useful as a baseline, are a very bad idea when people use them in absolute terms without context. So don't.
- _THE_PLAGUE 15y ago
  And Hiroshima bloody well deserved it too, as everyone knows.
jonmrodriguez 15y ago
Nuclear is not as scary as bioterror. I'm a college senior, and last spring I and two class teammates were able to re-engineer virus Phi X 174 in only 10 weeks, starting from zero knowledge of genetic engineering. Then we payed DNA 2.0 (a DNA synthesis contractor) to build us the custom virus for only $2k. Also: on the third day of class, the prof showed us the complete genome of Ebola, and that based on DNA 2.0's price per length, it would only cost $20k to make.
- saulrh 15y ago
  I'll paste from my last post on this topic. There was an article that went over exactly this in Discover magazine a month or two ago. Summary is that it's harder than you might think. "You would need more than a garage; you would need a great garage and a lot of money. And it's not trivial. You need the oligonucleotides to stitch genes together, and as far as I know, most companies will check the order if the sequence represents that of a dangerous virus." http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the-biohackers http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the-biohacke...
- anateus 15y ago
  Not a great comfort, but companies like DNA 2.0, Invitrogen, etc. have pretty intensive safety checking of what they're synthesizing. No sending off for smallpox.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    So all a terrorist would have to do is get a job there and smuggle an order past the checklist?
sylvinus 15y ago
I strongly considered stopping reading at "Uranium is the heaviest element on earth"...
- pm90 15y ago
  It is the heaviest naturally occurring element (source:http://chemistry.about.com/od/elementfacts/f/heaviest-element.htm http://chemistry.about.com/od/elementfacts/f/heaviest-elemen...)
- tokenadult 15y ago
  I strongly considered stopping reading at "Uranium is the heaviest element on earth" Do you prefer "uranium is almost twice as dense as lead" as I do, for that sentence? That transitions well enough to the idea next mentioned by the author, that a small volume of uranium can nonetheless explode with the force of tons of TNT (which would be much bulkier, besides much heavier, to carry to the target). Yes, it also bothers me when writers don't use the word "dense" when the physical concept of density is what they are writing about. Of course, I had to look up a specific gravity table to check my recollection of the specific gravity of uranium, something I don't experience every day. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001826.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001826.html
tomjen3 15y ago
>and the use of even a single fission device could pose an existential threat to the West. Hardly. There was some "let's drop a bomb and see what the effect roughly is" emulator online that I used about a year ago -- and I was shocked how tiny the effect of neuclear weapons was. A Chinese 15 Kiloton weapon dropped in the middle of the city I was in wouldn't even result in elevated radiation were I lived unless the wind was in the wrong direction. The tiny suitcase bombs they are shitting themselves that the terroists might get their hands on? Yeah, those do so little damage that you would be better of with a large van conventional explosives.
ck2 15y ago
While they busy groping millions of people each year in security theater, the next attack would likely come from one of the hundreds of thousands of shipping containers that have zero security and plenty of storage and mobility.

38 points by CaptainZapp 15y ago

"Hiroshima was destroyed in a flash by a bomb dropped from a propeller-driven B-29 of the U.S. Army Air Force, on the warm morning of Monday, August 6, 1945." Nice use of subtle patriotism here. Wouldn't it have been a little more impartial to write it as below? "Hiroshima was destroyed in a flash by the U.S. Army with a bomb which was dropped from a propeller-driven B-29, on the warm morning of Monday, August 6, 1945."

user24 15y ago
I don't agree that the difference between the two phrasings changes the partiality of the sentence.
- ifearthenight 15y ago
  In both sentences Hiroshima is the object. The subject in the original sentence is the bomb but in my edited sentence the subject is the U.S. Army. Talking of partiality (and the sentences use of passive voice) "Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1994) recommends the passive voice when identifying the object (receiver) of the action is more important than the subject (agent), and when the agent is unknown, unimportant, or not worth mentioning"
  - _djo_ 15y ago
    I think this is a really small nitpick which does not change the partiality of the sentence. Both phrases attribute the ultimate responsibility to the US Army Air Force (not 'US Army', which is incorrect) and it could be argued that as it was the bomb itself which did the actual destroying it should be the primary subject.
    - ifearthenight 15y ago
      Oops, right about the US Army Air Force mistake. My bad. Also, agree it might be nitpicking but for me the dropping of the A-bombs and associated killing of a crap load of civillians is one of last centuries most conveniently forgotten topics. So treatment of the subject has a tendency to get me riled up! One last question though...Can inanimate objects really be responsible of anything?
      - oelewapperke 15y ago
        Cute how people react these days. Strategy, which in the end is what currently (mostly) keeps the world at peace, is discarded. And what is to take it's stead ? Politically motivated assigning of blame. In reality the America-Japan situation is morally much more complex than given credit here. America used, with reluctance, weapons it developed from a blueprint stolen from enemy forces that intended to use it against New York (ie. from Hitler). And they used it against a country that had invaded half of East-Asia, and was running genocides, rape campaigns, and all sorts of fun stuff all over the place. Does "the end justify the means" is an interesting discussion, but it is not even considered here : all that matters is showing one's political colors. American government bad ! And while the Japanese government was far worse, let's just not mention that. Let's also neglect the reasons things were done, and let's not go anywhere near the result of those actions. After all, while the act itself is definitely in the "not OK" department, you can hardly feel sorry for the enemy in this case. The reasons the action was taken are at the very least very serious reasons, worthy of extensive discussion in any judgement. And the result of those actions ... well, frankly, look at what happened ! What could possibly have been a better (realistic) outcome ? And being against nuclear weapons is very stupid considering that it is well documented that those weapons were indeed what kept the Soviets from attacking America. Without nuclear weapons, WWIII would have followed WWII after a decade and a half at most, probably less. That much is a certainty given historical evidence released at the fall of the Soviet union ... But of course we can't have the American government, now totally different from what it was in 1945, escape blame for an absolute moral standard, can we ? After all, that's the important part. Blame. Here's what I want to say : if you judge with absolute moral standards, we all deserve the death penalty. Laws, even moral laws, while useful as a baseline, are a very bad idea when people use them in absolute terms without context. So don't.
_THE_PLAGUE 15y ago
And Hiroshima bloody well deserved it too, as everyone knows.

jonmrodriguez 15y ago

Nuclear is not as scary as bioterror. I'm a college senior, and last spring I and two class teammates were able to re-engineer virus Phi X 174 in only 10 weeks, starting from zero knowledge of genetic engineering. Then we payed DNA 2.0 (a DNA synthesis contractor) to build us the custom virus for only $2k. Also: on the third day of class, the prof showed us the complete genome of Ebola, and that based on DNA 2.0's price per length, it would only cost $20k to make.

saulrh 15y ago
I'll paste from my last post on this topic. There was an article that went over exactly this in Discover magazine a month or two ago. Summary is that it's harder than you might think. "You would need more than a garage; you would need a great garage and a lot of money. And it's not trivial. You need the oligonucleotides to stitch genes together, and as far as I know, most companies will check the order if the sequence represents that of a dangerous virus." http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the-biohackers http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-dawn-of-the-biohacke...
anateus 15y ago
Not a great comfort, but companies like DNA 2.0, Invitrogen, etc. have pretty intensive safety checking of what they're synthesizing. No sending off for smallpox.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  So all a terrorist would have to do is get a job there and smuggle an order past the checklist?

sylvinus 15y ago

I strongly considered stopping reading at "Uranium is the heaviest element on earth"...

pm90 15y ago
It is the heaviest naturally occurring element (source:http://chemistry.about.com/od/elementfacts/f/heaviest-element.htm http://chemistry.about.com/od/elementfacts/f/heaviest-elemen...)
tokenadult 15y ago
I strongly considered stopping reading at "Uranium is the heaviest element on earth" Do you prefer "uranium is almost twice as dense as lead" as I do, for that sentence? That transitions well enough to the idea next mentioned by the author, that a small volume of uranium can nonetheless explode with the force of tons of TNT (which would be much bulkier, besides much heavier, to carry to the target). Yes, it also bothers me when writers don't use the word "dense" when the physical concept of density is what they are writing about. Of course, I had to look up a specific gravity table to check my recollection of the specific gravity of uranium, something I don't experience every day. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001826.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001826.html

tomjen3 15y ago

>and the use of even a single fission device could pose an existential threat to the West. Hardly. There was some "let's drop a bomb and see what the effect roughly is" emulator online that I used about a year ago -- and I was shocked how tiny the effect of neuclear weapons was. A Chinese 15 Kiloton weapon dropped in the middle of the city I was in wouldn't even result in elevated radiation were I lived unless the wind was in the wrong direction. The tiny suitcase bombs they are shitting themselves that the terroists might get their hands on? Yeah, those do so little damage that you would be better of with a large van conventional explosives.

ck2 15y ago

While they busy groping millions of people each year in security theater, the next attack would likely come from one of the hundreds of thousands of shipping containers that have zero security and plenty of storage and mobility.