>An actual bomb is beyond the capability of anybody but a nation-state. No, no it isn't. The theory is well known. More importantly, the theory has been been

>An actual bomb is beyond the capability of anybody but a nation-state. No, no it isn't. The theory is well known. More importantly, the theory has been been put into practice before, and the practice is pretty well known too. Actually making the parts would be relatively easy. The hard part, as usual, is getting one's hands on the fissile material. In a study* from either the late 40s or early 50s, the US put a handful of "normal" physicists (ie, not exceptionally brilliant) in a room without access to any classified nuclear research, and told them to design a bomb based only on what information was publicly available. Their design was handed to the people actually designing and building atomic bombs for evaluation. The result? The design was a viable a-bomb, not the most efficient, but it would have worked. *I don't have details handy, but the guy who wrote "Dark Sun" covered it in either "Dark Sun" or his first book.