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Simple really. Rational nations led by rational leaders have had access to nuclear weapons. Both sides had one goal, to live, which means never really wanting t

Simple really. Rational nations led by rational leaders have had access to nuclear weapons. Both sides had one goal, to live, which means never really wanting to use them the danger this day and age is that are some very irrational powers, possibly including leaders and the countries they represent, that, well, don't think the same. Even India and Pakistan get along because neither side is governed by fanatical leadership. Likely the real danger comes from one of the more intolerant sects of Islam

yodsanklai 12y ago
I wonder, why are nuclear weapons so hard to build? is it possible that in a near future an average terrorist is able to build one?
- simonh 12y ago
  They are hard to build because once the chain raction starts in the nuclear material, the resulting reaction tends to break up and disperse the nuclear material before the chain reaction progresses very far. It's called a fizzle. Fission bombs are designed with a wrap-around concave shaped charge of conventional explosive around the nuclear material. This is detonated as the critical mass of nuclear material is slammed together, and the compression wave from the conventional explosion holds the fissioning mass of nuclear material together long enough for the chain reaction explosion to complete. The engineering for this and the precise timing and controll of the detonation sequence is extremely hard.
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    My understanding is that the engineering for this can be done by someone who has studied the stuff, and uses publicly available materials. He or she does need to be competent but does not need to be Einstein. See John Aristotle Phillips. [0] The main challenge is simply the industrial process required to collect the fissionable material. That is why Iranians have centrifuges and why Stuxnet attacked those centrifuges. [1] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aristotle_Phillips http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aristotle_Phillips [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
    - coob 12y ago
      For a fission bomb yes, not s fusion (thermonuclear/hydrogen) bomb. Fire bombing can (and has done) more damage to a city than a fission bomb.
      - Houshalter 12y ago
        But a terrorist can't fire bomb a city, but they can potentially build a fusion bomb.
        ptaipale 12y ago
        A terrorist can't really build a fusion bomb, because you need a government to support the infrastructure. But the fear is not entirely unjustified because a government would be able to give the bomb to a terrorist who then uses it. Or perhaps a government employee might steal it (for bribes) and give to a terrorist. So I can imagine terrorist having a small fission bomb. But I cannot imagine an arrangement where a terrorist would acquire a fleet of B-29's that could be used to fire-bomb a city.
        Houshalter 12y ago
        To build it from scratch yes, it's possible to build a primitive bomb from stolen refined plutonium. After the collapse of the soviet union, a lot of it went missing and there a dozen cases of people getting caught trying to sell it on the black market (and those are just the people that've been caught.) Mass arson is possible, though not on the scale of firebombing. The US in WWII developed the idea of strapping incendiary bombs on bats and releasing them in a city, where they would roost in random buildings and start hundreds of small fires.
- hga 12y ago
  Getting the fissionables to make a bomb requires major industrial effort. And an "average terrorist" would only be able to build a gun assembly bomb like Little Boy, which requires a lot of uranium 235.
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    If we think fission. If we think fusion - you could build something nasty with tritium and deuterium with some depleted uranium as neutron deflectors ... but the ignition will be bitch ... Edit: replaced neutrinos with neutrons
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - arethuza 12y ago
      I think you mean neutrons - neutrino deflectors would be quite interesting...
- venomsnake 12y ago
  They are quite easy to build. Finding pure enough fissile material is the hard part.
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  Nuclear weapons are hard to engineer [1]. Assembly requires a lot of expensive engineering resources and access to raw materials. By the time you've got the infrastructure together you're no longer an average terrorist, but more like a small state or maybe a corporation, and vulnerable to espionage or military disruption by other players. Terrorists are interested in using terror to achive BUT the US government ran a study in the early sixties, called the "Nth Country Experiment" [2], that took a few recent physics PHDs and paid them to see if they could develop a design for a nuclear weapon. They surprised everyone by designing a credible implosion weapon. So it can be done. And the amount of available information and technology is better than fifty years ago. [1] http://fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/design.htm http://fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/design.htm [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
- lmm 12y ago
  The ones in 1945 were prototypes with everything that implies. And fundamentally we don't build or use a lot of them, so they're slow to improve (think space rockets, not microchips). That said they're not that hard, and they get easier every day. At an anti-proliferation conference a few years ago Iran argued that any world-class university physics department probably has the capacity to build a nuclear weapon, and commentators agreed. Eventually it'll reach the point where a high school AP student could do it.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  I've always wondered about the Chicago Pile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 It's a very primitive device compared to a nuclear weapon, but it could have created an runaway nuclear reaction and do a ton of damage.
meira 12y ago
United States dumps two bombs with no reason in Japan and you are saying that only rational leaders and rational nations have access to nuclear weapons? We are not in a nuclear war because US makes more profit based in the fear than in the use of the bombs. Don't play this "intolerant" game.
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  I´m neither American nor a fan of US foreign policy, but you seem to be overlooking the small fact that the US was at war with Japan at the time. The bombs made clear that the US had the upper hand in warfare technology (and no scruples in taking advantage of it) and that action ended the war without additional casualties on US part. The decision wasn't neither humane nor merciful , but from a rational point of view made a lot of sense.
  - meira 12y ago
    That's why we celebrate, in August, the end of world war II. Not in May.
    - arethuza 12y ago
      Today is the 70th anniversary of VE day and it's actually have quite a lot of coverage here in the UK given that there are other things happening today. There were a few quite moving interviews with veterans on Radio 4 this morning - including one with a chap who had fought in Europe and was, like many others, about to be shipped out to the Far East to help the US invade Japan. He was, perhaps understandably, delighted to hear that Japan had been bombed. Personally, I think the motivations for using the atomic bombs on Japan are complex and unclear - even with hindsight.
      - kuboa 12y ago
        I don't think the motivations were unclear at all: They were in a Total War where there was no distinction between military and civilian targets, and they had a new, powerful weapon; of course they were gonna use it. There was never a discussion as to whether use it or not. The immediate political effects of the bombs, if they were really the main factor in Japan's decision to surrender for instance, are indeed murky, though it was most probably Soviets entering the war that did it more than the bombs.
simonh 12y ago
It's not that simple at all. Several times systems and procedures were set up to trigger nuclear escalation, and even though those sytems and procedures indicating making an attack, the person who had the final say in doing so chose not to. Thsy didn't make that choice necessarily knowing about game theory or Nash equilibriums, they weren't following deliberately concieved national strategic policy. They just made a judgement call.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  You don't need to know anything about game theory to say "hey, I don't want to start a nuclear war and think I should precede very cautiously." The only two incidents I'm aware of where it got that close, one was stopped by an officer before it even got up the chain of command. The other got to Yeltsin, who made the very rational call to wait and see if there was an error before starting a nuclear war.
tormeh 12y ago
Even Iran and Saudi Arabia are pretty rational when it all comes down to it. The leaders are usually just pious on the surface - not even close to suicidal martyrs[0] The real problem is the suicide sects, which is what I assume you meant. 0: http://nerdist.com/sex-nerd-sandra-30-harem-hottie/ http://nerdist.com/sex-nerd-sandra-30-harem-hottie/ (Interview with a former prostitute to the harem of the prince of Brunei. Alcohol is verboten in Brunei as a muslim country. Not only did the royals, other leaders and prostitutes do alcohol, they also did cocaine and everything else you can imagine)
- abandonliberty 12y ago
  This is reminiscent of Machiavelli's The Prince, which is a very interesting read far more nuanced than popular knowledge would imply. He mentions a leader should only appear to be very pious. Of course, there are claims that the book was seditionary; designed to mislead the powerful and create unrest.
coob 12y ago
Rationality won't save us, according to McNamara[1] [1] http://nothingbuttherain.com/2013/08/12/lesson-2-rationality-will-not-save-us/ http://nothingbuttherain.com/2013/08/12/lesson-2-rationality...
exarch 12y ago
What a bunch of colonialist garbage. You're probably Israeli, right? "Rational nations"? Get real. No nations are rational. Nations are driven by political systems that are driven by the emotions of the populations of those places. Are human emotions rational? Are human emotions more rational in Israel than they are in Ghana or North Korea?
classicsnoot 12y ago
https://www.ted.com/talks/irwin_redlener_warns_of_nuclear_terrorism https://www.ted.com/talks/irwin_redlener_warns_of_nuclear_te...

yodsanklai 12y ago

I wonder, why are nuclear weapons so hard to build? is it possible that in a near future an average terrorist is able to build one?

simonh 12y ago
They are hard to build because once the chain raction starts in the nuclear material, the resulting reaction tends to break up and disperse the nuclear material before the chain reaction progresses very far. It's called a fizzle. Fission bombs are designed with a wrap-around concave shaped charge of conventional explosive around the nuclear material. This is detonated as the critical mass of nuclear material is slammed together, and the compression wave from the conventional explosion holds the fissioning mass of nuclear material together long enough for the chain reaction explosion to complete. The engineering for this and the precise timing and controll of the detonation sequence is extremely hard.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  My understanding is that the engineering for this can be done by someone who has studied the stuff, and uses publicly available materials. He or she does need to be competent but does not need to be Einstein. See John Aristotle Phillips. [0] The main challenge is simply the industrial process required to collect the fissionable material. That is why Iranians have centrifuges and why Stuxnet attacked those centrifuges. [1] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aristotle_Phillips http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aristotle_Phillips [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
  - coob 12y ago
    For a fission bomb yes, not s fusion (thermonuclear/hydrogen) bomb. Fire bombing can (and has done) more damage to a city than a fission bomb.
    - Houshalter 12y ago
      But a terrorist can't fire bomb a city, but they can potentially build a fusion bomb.
      - ptaipale 12y ago
        A terrorist can't really build a fusion bomb, because you need a government to support the infrastructure. But the fear is not entirely unjustified because a government would be able to give the bomb to a terrorist who then uses it. Or perhaps a government employee might steal it (for bribes) and give to a terrorist. So I can imagine terrorist having a small fission bomb. But I cannot imagine an arrangement where a terrorist would acquire a fleet of B-29's that could be used to fire-bomb a city.
        Houshalter 12y ago
        To build it from scratch yes, it's possible to build a primitive bomb from stolen refined plutonium. After the collapse of the soviet union, a lot of it went missing and there a dozen cases of people getting caught trying to sell it on the black market (and those are just the people that've been caught.) Mass arson is possible, though not on the scale of firebombing. The US in WWII developed the idea of strapping incendiary bombs on bats and releasing them in a city, where they would roost in random buildings and start hundreds of small fires.
hga 12y ago
Getting the fissionables to make a bomb requires major industrial effort. And an "average terrorist" would only be able to build a gun assembly bomb like Little Boy, which requires a lot of uranium 235.
- venomsnake 12y ago
  If we think fission. If we think fusion - you could build something nasty with tritium and deuterium with some depleted uranium as neutron deflectors ... but the ignition will be bitch ... Edit: replaced neutrinos with neutrons
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I think you mean neutrons - neutrino deflectors would be quite interesting...
venomsnake 12y ago
They are quite easy to build. Finding pure enough fissile material is the hard part.
andyjohnson0 12y ago
Nuclear weapons are hard to engineer [1]. Assembly requires a lot of expensive engineering resources and access to raw materials. By the time you've got the infrastructure together you're no longer an average terrorist, but more like a small state or maybe a corporation, and vulnerable to espionage or military disruption by other players. Terrorists are interested in using terror to achive BUT the US government ran a study in the early sixties, called the "Nth Country Experiment" [2], that took a few recent physics PHDs and paid them to see if they could develop a design for a nuclear weapon. They surprised everyone by designing a credible implosion weapon. So it can be done. And the amount of available information and technology is better than fifty years ago. [1] http://fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/design.htm http://fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/design.htm [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
lmm 12y ago
The ones in 1945 were prototypes with everything that implies. And fundamentally we don't build or use a lot of them, so they're slow to improve (think space rockets, not microchips). That said they're not that hard, and they get easier every day. At an anti-proliferation conference a few years ago Iran argued that any world-class university physics department probably has the capacity to build a nuclear weapon, and commentators agreed. Eventually it'll reach the point where a high school AP student could do it.
Houshalter 12y ago
I've always wondered about the Chicago Pile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1 It's a very primitive device compared to a nuclear weapon, but it could have created an runaway nuclear reaction and do a ton of damage.

meira 12y ago

United States dumps two bombs with no reason in Japan and you are saying that only rational leaders and rational nations have access to nuclear weapons? We are not in a nuclear war because US makes more profit based in the fear than in the use of the bombs. Don't play this "intolerant" game.

Kurtz79 12y ago
I´m neither American nor a fan of US foreign policy, but you seem to be overlooking the small fact that the US was at war with Japan at the time. The bombs made clear that the US had the upper hand in warfare technology (and no scruples in taking advantage of it) and that action ended the war without additional casualties on US part. The decision wasn't neither humane nor merciful , but from a rational point of view made a lot of sense.
- meira 12y ago
  That's why we celebrate, in August, the end of world war II. Not in May.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    Today is the 70th anniversary of VE day and it's actually have quite a lot of coverage here in the UK given that there are other things happening today. There were a few quite moving interviews with veterans on Radio 4 this morning - including one with a chap who had fought in Europe and was, like many others, about to be shipped out to the Far East to help the US invade Japan. He was, perhaps understandably, delighted to hear that Japan had been bombed. Personally, I think the motivations for using the atomic bombs on Japan are complex and unclear - even with hindsight.
    - kuboa 12y ago
      I don't think the motivations were unclear at all: They were in a Total War where there was no distinction between military and civilian targets, and they had a new, powerful weapon; of course they were gonna use it. There was never a discussion as to whether use it or not. The immediate political effects of the bombs, if they were really the main factor in Japan's decision to surrender for instance, are indeed murky, though it was most probably Soviets entering the war that did it more than the bombs.

simonh 12y ago

It's not that simple at all. Several times systems and procedures were set up to trigger nuclear escalation, and even though those sytems and procedures indicating making an attack, the person who had the final say in doing so chose not to. Thsy didn't make that choice necessarily knowing about game theory or Nash equilibriums, they weren't following deliberately concieved national strategic policy. They just made a judgement call.

Houshalter 12y ago
You don't need to know anything about game theory to say "hey, I don't want to start a nuclear war and think I should precede very cautiously." The only two incidents I'm aware of where it got that close, one was stopped by an officer before it even got up the chain of command. The other got to Yeltsin, who made the very rational call to wait and see if there was an error before starting a nuclear war.

tormeh 12y ago

Even Iran and Saudi Arabia are pretty rational when it all comes down to it. The leaders are usually just pious on the surface - not even close to suicidal martyrs[0] The real problem is the suicide sects, which is what I assume you meant. 0: http://nerdist.com/sex-nerd-sandra-30-harem-hottie/ http://nerdist.com/sex-nerd-sandra-30-harem-hottie/ (Interview with a former prostitute to the harem of the prince of Brunei. Alcohol is verboten in Brunei as a muslim country. Not only did the royals, other leaders and prostitutes do alcohol, they also did cocaine and everything else you can imagine)

abandonliberty 12y ago
This is reminiscent of Machiavelli's The Prince, which is a very interesting read far more nuanced than popular knowledge would imply. He mentions a leader should only appear to be very pious. Of course, there are claims that the book was seditionary; designed to mislead the powerful and create unrest.

coob 12y ago

Rationality won't save us, according to McNamara[1] [1] http://nothingbuttherain.com/2013/08/12/lesson-2-rationality-will-not-save-us/ http://nothingbuttherain.com/2013/08/12/lesson-2-rationality...

exarch 12y ago

What a bunch of colonialist garbage. You're probably Israeli, right? "Rational nations"? Get real. No nations are rational. Nations are driven by political systems that are driven by the emotions of the populations of those places. Are human emotions rational? Are human emotions more rational in Israel than they are in Ghana or North Korea?

classicsnoot 12y ago

https://www.ted.com/talks/irwin_redlener_warns_of_nuclear_terrorism https://www.ted.com/talks/irwin_redlener_warns_of_nuclear_te...