|
|
|
Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
 Posted - 03/10/2008 : 09:29:25 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by bngbuck
I emphatically do not agree with Dude that it is would be a simple matter for anyone, possessing enough poundage of WG U235 to be capable of fission, to transform that weapons-grade material into a workable fission bomb! |
You misread his comment. Chippewa's assumption is not false in the case of fusion weapons.
|
bngbuck thanks for the explanation but in addition to what Dave clarified I was also stipulating that the non-radioactive hardware be assembled "in a basement" and the much more difficult specialized workings, which you outlined, being done off-site and brought in much later. |
Diversity, independence, innovation and imagination are progressive concepts ultimately alien to the conservative mind.
"TAX AND SPEND" IS GOOD! (TAX: Wealthy corporations who won't go poor even after taxes. SPEND: On public works programs, education, the environment, improvements.) |
 |
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2008 : 10:33:45 [Permalink]
|
bng said:
I do not see this procedure as child's play, or simple, or easy! Particularly for an amateur or weekend tinkerer. Oh,yeah - you also have to produce four polonium-beryllium neutron initiators, and install them in exactly the right place!
|
With uranium, a neutron trigger is not required. They were used in little-boy to ensure a precision detonation and high yeild. Also, they are easier to make than the bomb itself if you have access to some polonium....
As for your continued mischaracterization of the construction of a gun-type uranium fission bomb, I'm done arguing with you. It is a simple matter, requiring no great skill. Especially if you are unconcerned with living through the process. Any small metal fabrication shop here in the US has all the tools you'd need, and terrorist organizations are filled with college educated people.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2008 : 11:28:54 [Permalink]
|
| Yeah, the uranium devices are scary in their simplicity. As for plutonium, well you just get a incubation chamber and some photo strobes! |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2008 : 14:08:36 [Permalink]
|
Dave and Chippewa.....
Originally posted by bngbuck
| I emphatically do not agree with Dude that it is would be a simple matter for anyone, possessing enough poundage of WG U235 to be capable of fission, to transform that weapons-grade material into a workable fission bomb! |
|
Dave said....| You misread his comment. Chippewa's assumption is not false in the case of fusion weapons. |
|
Chippewa's full "assumption" was:The point is, aside from the crucial and expensive radioactive material and the very crucial apparatus and processes that permit the physics to work, the rest is commonly available hardware. If there's no concern for how old the tech is, the machinery could be built over time in a basement. However, this gradual buildup has not happened because the final steps and processes required to make even an old fashioned atomic bomb are guarded on many levels including the knowledge itself.
Or - is that a false assumption? |
Chippewa said....| aside from the crucial and expensive radioactive material and the very crucial apparatus and processes that permit the physics to work, the rest is commonly available hardware. |
For a fusion bomb? Dave I do not understand what you are saying when you say "his assumption is not false in the case of fusion devices or weapons"! Do you mean "the crucial and expensive radioactive material and the very crucial apparatus and processes that permit the physics to work" as components that would be fully prefabricated and that the "basement" work would be some form of assembly?
Even so, and that is not clear from Chippewa's statement, I disagree that the assembly would be easy or even possible except possibly by a team of skilled and experienced technicians - and not in a "basement", but in a laboratory or well equipped workplace of some sort. "Basement" connotes to me, like, anybody's home work shop. Same as "garage".
and.....just to be sure I understand what you are claiming...| aside from the crucial and expensive radioactive material and the very crucial apparatus and processes that permit the physics to work, the rest is commonly available hardware. If there's no concern for how old the tech is, the machinery could be built over time in a basement. |
Both a fission U235 or PU239 trigger and a fusion lithium deuteride or tritium/deuterium primary COULD BE BUILT IN A BASEMENT? Please explain exactly what components could be assembled over time and built in a basement!| this gradual buildup has not happened because the final steps and processes required to make even an old fashioned atomic bomb are guarded on many levels including the knowledge itself. |
Various technical aspects of both fission and fusion bomb design are still classified, but a number of countries and individual scientists around the world very likely have the necessary information, including several middle east countries. As Dude has pointed out, the fissile or fusional materials (U235, PU239, lithium deuteride, or tritium and deuterium) are diffucult to produce and require extensive industrial infrastructues (i.e. the resources of a nation or a large corporation) to manufacture.
The actual mechanical components of a projectile-to-target fission bomb are relatively simple compared to all other types of nuclear explosive weapons - implosion fission, or fission triggered fusion devices!
But, as I have said repeatedly, and provided ample authoritative references for -- (the "Bibles" - Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (886 pages) and Dark Sun the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (731 pages); , and also excellent wiki references on the Trinity fission device, the Hiroshima Little Boy, the Nagasaki Fat Man, and the first fusion device Mike -- the mechanical construction of even the simplist system, the Little Boy type -- is quite complex and demanding!
The detail for this is in all these references, and clearly defines the complex mechanical processes and industrial machinery necessary to build even the most elementary projectile-to-target fission bomb, once someone somehow obtained the fissile material!
The idea that this is "childs play", or simple, or somehow could be done "in a basement" is just plain ludicrous, naive, and dead wrong!
As to a home-made fusion bomb or device, the very idea is utterly preposterous! Construction of such a device requires extremely high technical proficiency, handling and placing complex components, significant weight movement, and any fusion bomb demands a fully functional fission trigger to initiate the fusion reaction!
So to build a fusion bomb in your basement, you have to first build a fission bomb small enough to fit inside the fusion bomb's casing, and as I understand the Teller-Ulam design, the fission trigger must be the plutonium implosion type to assure sufficient compression! (This is from Rhodes, wiki shows a diagram that is in error indicating a projectile U235 fission device could be used!)
You ain't gonna be building one of those babies in your basement very soon either!
Just as no one can walk down to their neighborhood nuclear reactor and buy some U235 or Pu239, no one can walk down their basement stairs with graphite buckets of U235 or Pu239 and canisters of lithium deuteride(under oil), and commence to tinker together a fission or a fusion device.
| the crucial and expensive radioactive material and the very crucial apparatus and processes that permit the physics to work, |
Perhaps, if this refers to and you are visualizing all of the extremely dangerous and volatile finished components as pre-fabricated and requiring physical assembly, (and, of course, detailed instructions to those of extremely high mechanical skill,) the final assembly could be accomplished in a "basement" Or a penthouse! Or a chicken coop!
As long as it was large enough and had all the requisite assembly tools and radiation protection, and lifts and hoists and.... oh, hell, I don't have any idea of everything that would be needed to assemble any of these devices, much of it is still classified and even Rhodes could not give really fine detail on all of the niceties of construction and fabrication; but I am quite sure from the very extensive reading that I have done on this subject, that it would be substantial! And as to fabricating and machining and working U235 and Pu239 ---not in MY basement!
Read all the wiki articles;Gadget, Little Boy, Fat Man, Nuclear weapons design, Teller-Ulam design, "tickling the dragon's tail" (The death of Louis Slotin), Trinity nuclear test, and dozens more. If anyone is really interested, read Pulitzer winner Richard Rhodes' books which are totally definitive of the subject!
I would give links to all of these but it's too damn much work! I'm old and weak and terminally stupid, and have been told so by experts! Put the key words above into Google and you will have more in ten seconds than you can read in several hours!
Unless Rhodes and all the multitudinous Wiki articles are DEAD WRONG, nobody's about to build a fission bomb OR a fusion bomb in their "basement" And I sure as hell wouldn't want to have my child playing with any of it!
|
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2008 : 15:07:25 [Permalink]
|
Kil.....
Maybe as or more likely as a bioweapon attack! I can't find much of anything in the way of serious studies on this subject - as to how effective, how practical, and the like! I have repeatedly asked Dude for his back up on his opinions regarding both nukes and bioweapons which I disagree with, but to avail.
All anybody can do with regard to what terrorists are likely to do, is guess! I guess that if terrorists obtain nuclear materials, they will make a serious attempt to make them into weapons - very difficult! If they obtain ready-to-go nukes of any size, they will attempt to use them against the US or Israel!
As to bioweapons, the cost to effect ratio might prevail. They can't very seriously wound the US Government with bioweapons. Nor with a dirty bomb. Nothing like a nuke on D.C.! And of course there would be increased retaliation instead of a phony Iraq war, if we get Hillary or Obama instead of McCain. I don't know! Maybe.
I wish I could give you dozens of links on this opinion, but I can't. Nor can Dude - god knows I've needled him enough! It's easy to damn near prove how hard it would be to build a bomb in your basement, as there is a ton of stuff written about the subject - all the way back to 1945! But opinions on what Bin Laden, or Hamas, or Hezbollah will do next must remain only opinions as of now.
My very serious guess is that there is a fair probability that terrorists of some stripe will obtain either a working nuke, or highly radioactive material, or really nasty biological agents sometime in the next five to ten years. As long as there is even a credible possibility that my guess could become fact, I feel that it is a mistake to simply shrug it off as too unlikely to merit serious attention. I think they will probably try to use anything they get!
9/11 did happen. I'm not sure why there hasn't been at least something else in the past seven years. Maybe they can't, in which case Bush and Cheney and the neocons really deserve some kind of credit. Somehow, I can't go down that road!
Maybe they don't want to, as Dude apparently believes. Well, perhaps, but why did they pull off 9/11 in the first place and then change their minds after a pretty successful attack? Our Iraq adventure disuade them? I don't think so!
I think that possibly they are really damaged somewhat by Bush's efforts, but still have cohesion and strength and are at least planning to pull off another sizeable attack! Shit, I sound like a fucking Republican!
Anyway, as long as there is any credible chance that there is a threat, I think this country has to address it - like getting the hell out of Iraq, getting the hell into Afghanastan and Pakistan, getting Bin Laden and his dentist (whatever) dead, and getting our ports a hell of a lot better inspected. We'll never fence both Canada and Mexico effectively, so some arab fanatic certainly will be able to come into the US with something. If a nuke isn't practical, maybe a dirty bomb is. Maybe something like a dirty bomb or anthrax is necessary to force us to stop fucking around with many of these oil countries (Saudi Arabia, for example) and really fix the problem in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
|
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2008 : 15:59:09 [Permalink]
|
bng said:
As to bioweapons, the cost to effect ratio might prevail. They can't very seriously wound the US Government with bioweapons. Nor with a dirty bomb. Nothing like a nuke on D.C.! And of course there would be increased retaliation instead of a phony Iraq war, if we get Hillary or Obama instead of McCain. I don't know! Maybe.
I wish I could give you dozens of links on this opinion, but I can't. Nor can Dude |
Some things are common knowledge. If you have taken a university level microbiology class, as I have, then you have the basic skill set to culture anthrax and separate the spores. All you need is the procedure which I briefly outlined. Even if you have never specifically done it, you already know how to use the equipment and the procedure is easy to follow.
It is also a FACT that no prototype of the little-boy bomb was ever made or tested. Because the basic concept was considered virtually foolproof. Everyone involved looked at it and said, 'Yep, that fucker is hot, don't drop it!"
Maybe, by the standards of 1940, building it was a complicated task (it wasn't, but just for argument). By the standards of metal fabrication in 2008, you could fabricate the entire little-boy bomb in a small fabrication shop (minus the fissiles and HE). Something a well funded terrorist could indeed do in their basement. All you have to make is a gun barrel and a big target/tamper to hold the target rings and hold them in place for a few fractions of a second after the projectile hits.
But hey, I said I wasn't arguing this with you any more, so whay am I? I recognize invincible ignorance when I encounter it, and your continued insistance that nukes are so hard to make counts. Not to mention that it counters your primary argument in this thread, that we are in some danger of having DC nuked by angry brown people.
Which is it, nukes are impossibly hard to make? Or they are a real threat to us because terrorists can get/make/use them on us?
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2008 : 16:25:06 [Permalink]
|
bngbuck- You aren't quite reading what I wrote:
In my post, "commonly available hardware" means any and all machinery and hardware that has nothing directly to do with the radio active material or the explosion. Such as generators, wires, cables, ducts, frameworks, switches.
I wrote:
"aside from the crucial and expensive radioactive material and the very crucial apparatus and processes that permit the physics to work, the rest is commonly available hardware."
"Aside from" means not having any direct connection to the very crucial apparatus and processes that permit the physics to work. "Very crucial" things are not made in the basement.
bngbuck wrote:
Even so, and that is not clear from Chippewa's statement, I disagree that the assembly would be easy or even possible except possibly by a team of skilled and experienced technicians - and not in a "basement", but in a laboratory or well equipped workplace of some sort. "Basement" connotes to me, like, anybody's home work shop. Same as "garage". |
Within the parameters of 1945 technology, everything EXCEPT the components that make an atomic explosion work (in other words the non radioactive hardware) is gradually built in the rented or abandoned basement of a major city building. The components are constructed so as to accommodate future crucial material that isn't made there. Then LATER, the CRUCIAL components that were made far away in a lab by skilled technicians are brought by stealth to the basement and finally installed.
And I concluded with a question: "IS" that a false assumption? (And I hinted that I suspect it is due to safeguards and technical difficulty rising very sharply as one approaches the methods of exploding a bomb.)
I did not say: This is an assumption.
My concern is that old atomic technology can explode a bomb as much as the latest atomic tech. So even though outmoded experimental atomic bombs circa 1945 are not made today, the older technology might be obtainable by determined terrorists - or is that a false assumption?
|
Diversity, independence, innovation and imagination are progressive concepts ultimately alien to the conservative mind.
"TAX AND SPEND" IS GOOD! (TAX: Wealthy corporations who won't go poor even after taxes. SPEND: On public works programs, education, the environment, improvements.) |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2008 : 03:44:03 [Permalink]
|
Dude.....
In recent chronological order, starting with:
3/10 10:33
With uranium, a neutron trigger is not required.They were used in little-boy to ensure a precision detonation and high yeild.Also, they are easier to make than the bomb itself |
I have searched for, and cannot find a source for this statement. I will gladly accept your expertise with regards to this matter if you will give me at least one specific source that I can reference, other than your statement.
3/10 10:33
As for your continued mischaracterization of the construction of a gun-type uranium fission bomb, |
If I have mischaracterized, it is due to the unreliability of my sources. Tell me specifically where wiki errs? Or where Richard Rhodes misspeaks?
3/10 10:33
Any small metal fabrication shop here in the US has all the tools you'd need, |
Please specify how a small metal fabrication shop fabricates a gun barrel with a bore of 6.50 inches, approximately five feet long, and a barrel thickness of 1.3 inches made of standard tank-gun artillery steel alloy, with a machined and threaded breech plug capable of containing and directing an explosive charge of five standard bags of triple-base flashless cordite tank gun propellant. Also a tungsten-carbide cylinder 6.5 inches in diameter and eight inches long, and four 13 inch diameter tungsten-carbide cylinders with a wall thickness of approximately five and one-half inches and totalling eighteen inches in length. Plus the six and one-half inch tungsten carbide projectile plug. Tungsten carbide is essential for tamper neutron reflection.
Monotungsten carbide, WC, or Ditungsten Carbide, W2C, is a chemical compound containing tungsten and carbon, similar to titanium carbide. Its extreme hardness makes it useful in the manufacture of cutting tools, abrasives and bearings, as a cheaper and more heat-resistant alternative to diamond. Tungsten carbide is also used as a scratch-resistant material. Specialized cutting and handling tools are necessary to machine tungsten carbide due to it's hardness and the fact it is somewhat frangible.
3/10 15:59
Some things are common knowledge |
But not those things, or anything, that requires referencing to understand or verify! You go on to detail your skill in cultivating anthrax spores. I do not doubt this. What is it's relevance to "some things are common knowledge?"
3/10 15:59
It is also a FACT that no prototype of the little-boy bomb was ever made or tested. |
Absolutely true! Did I state otherwise? So what is your point with the upper-case "FACT"?
3/10 15:59
Because the basic concept was considered virtually foolproof. Everyone involved looked at it and said, 'Yep, that fucker is hot, don't drop it!" |
That is not the reason it was never tested! The reasons were:| There were several reasons for not testing the "Little Boy" device. Primarily, scarcity of uranium-235 compared with the relatively large amount of plutonium which, it was expected, could be produced monthly from the Hanford reactors. Additionally, the weapon design was conceptually simple enough that it was only deemed necessary to do laboratory tests with the gun-type assembly (known during the war as"tickling the dragon's tail") |
.
3/10 15:59
By the standards of metal fabrication in 2008, you could fabricate the entire little-boy bomb in a small fabrication shop |
No, you could not. Very few small or large machine and metal -fabricating shops have the necessary equipment to machine tungsten carbide. And practically no "small fabrication shop" has the size of turret lathes and boring machines necessary to produce a five foot, 9.1 inch diameter cannon barrel of high-tensile munition steel alloy with a six and one-half inch bore, and appropriate breech thickness to accomodate a standard tank cannon charge with a 6.5 inch threaded breech plug necessary to place the explosive.
3/10 15:59
I recognize invincible ignorance when I encounter it, and your continued insistance that nukes are so hard to make counts. |
You should recognize ignorance in yourself as well as in others, when you insist repeatedly to refuse to tender references for your naive opinions. If Mr. Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Simon and Schuster 1986, pp 443-485) or the wiki authorities are in error, call them out, not me!
Somehow, I tend to trust a Pulitzer prize historian, funded by the Ford Foundation, who took five years to research and write the definitive history of the making of the first fission and fusion bombs, more than I trust your unsupported and unreferenced opinion, Dude
3/10 15:59
it counters your primary argument in this thread, that we are in some danger of having DC nuked by angry brown people.
|
Only if you assume that the terrorists are going to make their own bomb. We certainly know that several nations have indeed manufactured atomic (fission) bombs, My speculation is that terrorists might be able to procure a finished, working bomb from a country that has the ability, and has used their ability to manufacture such a bomb; not that the terrorists acquire the knowledge and ability to make one themselves!
3/10 15:59
Which is it, nukes are impossibly hard to make? Or they are a real threat to us because terrorists can get/make/use them on us? |
I have never, nor never would, state that "nukes are impossibly hard to make! Really, Dude! You cannot insult me by quoting statements that I never made - that truly is way below your potential for sensible, adult discourse! I feel they are a real threat because terrorists may be able to get and use them on us. Very low probability of terrorists making a fission device - with the possible exception of Iran who appears to be some way along in the ability to manufacture and refine U235!
3/10 10:33
I'm done arguing with you. |
If so, it is because you have lost an argument in which I have given authoritative references for every factual statement I have made, and in which you have given nothing but your unsubstantiated opinion on the same subjects!
3/10 15:59
I said I wasn't arguing this with you any more, so whay am I? |
I really don't know. I am not forcing you to do so! Perhaps it is because you cannot answer the questions I have asked you as to the sources for your opinions?
|
|
|
|
Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2008 : 03:48:52 [Permalink]
|
 |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2008 : 12:58:56 [Permalink]
|
An appeal to common knowledge is appropriate in this instance.
Such a barrel could be fabricated in small interlocking sections in a modern machine shop. Even a small shop, like those of custom car or motorcycle builders, has the capability.
As for the tungsten parts, there are modern composite materials that could be substituted, if a small shop couldn't fabricate the parts.
And, obviously, you are overlooking the idea that you could just order all the pieces you need, from a dozen different commercial fabricators, and put them together yourself.
You should recognize ignorance in yourself as well as in others, when you insist repeatedly to refuse to tender references for your naive opinions. If Mr. Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Simon and Schuster 1986, pp 443-485) or the wiki authorities are in error, call them out, not me!
|
Show me where they are making the same claim you are, that the components of a little-boy bomb can't be fabricated by a small, modern machine shop.
Somehow, I tend to trust a Pulitzer prize historian, funded by the Ford Foundation, who took five years to research and write the definitive history of the making of the first fission and fusion bombs, more than I trust your unsupported and unreferenced opinion, Dude
|
So there is a section of this book that contains data on how modern fabrication techniques, materials, and equipment could be used, and explains how difficult it would be to use them, to make this device? Interesting.
Yet another false representation by you. Good job.
Show me where this book supports your position. I'll grant you, 100%, that building a little-boy bomb in the '40s would have been impossible for anything but a major machine shop with state of the art equipment.
Where you go wrong here is to take that conclusion and apply it to 2008. I'm sure you are familiar with the specific fallacy of logic you are resorting to here, so I'll spare you the lecture.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2008 : 14:23:50 [Permalink]
|
While Bngbuck is busy nuking himself in the foot, I'd just like to inject two pertinent (or not) notes:
1) Handling weapons-grade Uranium isn't as dangerous radiation-wise as it's been made up to be. It has a half-life of 700 million years, and is an Alpha-emitter. Besides chemical and toxicological concerns, you could basically handle it with rubber gloves. Spontaneous fission rate is relatively low, so as long as you don't do anything stupid like throw that chunk of metal in the pile with the other chunks, the additional radiation from fission would be kept low.
2) You don't have to build an exact replica of Little Boy to get a nuclear detonation. The yield would be lower, but a 10KT or a 25KT blast is nothing to quibble about from a terrorist's point of view.
|
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2008 : 14:48:58 [Permalink]
|
Chippewa
| bngbuck thanks for the explanation but in addition to what Dave clarified I was also stipulating that the non-radioactive hardware be assembled "in a basement" and the much more difficult specialized workings, which you outlined, being done off-site and brought in much later. |
I appreciate your response, and I admit your earlier comment was difficult to understand!
I still don't know what Dave meant by this:| You misread his comment. Chippewa's assumption is not false in the case of fusion weapons. |
Certainly not that a fusion bomb is easier to fabricate than a fission bomb! Not only does the fusion apparatus require a fission device to trigger it's reaction, the fusion process demands a much higher overall level of technology to produce a viable bomb!| bngbuck- You aren't quite reading what I wrote: |
I read, but obviously I didn't understand! Dude has informed me that I am stupid, full of shit, invincibly ignorant, absurd, an ass, and that I am grasping at straws! So, considering my current excrementitious existence, perhaps you can pardon a little misunderstanding!
Industrial lathes and milling machines capable of working tungsten carbide are not "commonly available". Boring machines capable of rifling a three and one-half inch bore in a billet of munitions -grade steel that is five feet long are very large machines, not on a shelf or showroom somewhere! And much more, as I have detailed to Dude in an earlier post.| Within the parameters of 1945 technology, everything EXCEPT the components that make an atomic explosion work (in other words the non radioactive hardware) is gradually built in the rented or abandoned basement of a major city building. The components are constructed so as to accommodate future crucial material that isn't made there. Then LATER, the CRUCIAL components that were made far away in a lab by skilled technicians are brought by stealth to the basement and finally installed. |
Well, now that I understand that the "basement" is to be the lower level of a major commercial building (could be the main floor, too!) and you are assembling over a period of time the heavy and complex machinery necessary to build the operating frame of a projectile fission device, and you have time to special order all the unusual and exotic things necessary to constuct this device, and you have millions of dollars, and many other factors I have already addressed in this thread - with all of these resources, I would say that you possibly could construct the mechanical infrastructure of a projectile fission bomb.
Somewhere along the way, FBI or CIA eyebrows would probably raise if they got wind of your highly unusual purchases of rare industrial equipment and supplies! You would need a cover, of some sort, or you would probably have a bunch of federal cops on your ass long before you started to get it together! And I concluded with a question: "IS" that a false assumption? (And I hinted that I suspect it is due to safeguards and technical difficulty rising very sharply as one approaches the methods of exploding a bomb.)
I did not say: This is an assumption. |
Yes, I did not pick up on that subtlety in your comment and I see it now in retrospect! I commend you for comprehending the highly complicated process necessary to even build the "simple" mechanical apparatus of a fission bomb - much less, the truly exotic, expensive, illegal and dangerous radioactive materials that make it work!| My concern is that old atomic technology can explode a bomb as much as the latest atomic tech. So even though outmoded experimental atomic bombs circa 1945 are not made today, the older technology might be obtainable by determined terrorists - or is that a false assumption? |
I believe it to be a very fair, reasonable and reasoned assumption! Actually, by far most of the original fission bomb technology, including remarkable detail, is available on the internet and in readily purchased literature! Rhodes alone gives many pages of footnote references as to technical construction details.
Of course there is secrecy classification of some of the highly detailed parameters of the device, but a well trained team of engineer-physicists could pretty well fill in the blanks! Not me, or you, or Dude, but people with a rich technical background in nuclear physics and mechanical engineering. Look at the pedigrees of the people that invented these machines!
Any nation, or really large private enterprise, with the desire, money, and chutzpah necessary to build a fission device, will do so! All it takes is the money part to eventually buy one, from an idiot like Kim Jong Il or others like him that will appear from time to time!
You are absolutely correct to be concerned about it. And I am very pleased that you have expressed that concern, instead of "doan wurry aboudit doan wurry aboudit!" which is a naive, smug, and stupidly dangerous attitude to have about a very serious matter! |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2008 : 15:06:57 [Permalink]
|
bng said:
| and you are assembling over a period of time the heavy and complex machinery necessary to build the operating frame of a projectile fission device |
You really don't have a clue about modern fabrication equipment, do you.
But what the hell. Scratch off the idea of making the parts yourself, even though all you need is a lathe and an abrasive waterjet machine along with a few smaller tools. All of which could easily fit in the basement of your average 3 bedroom house. Even though you could make the barrel in smaller interlocking sections with the precision of computer controlled lathes.
Forget all of that.
You could order your parts, spaced out in time, from dozens of different commercial metal fabricators. And put it together in your basement.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 03/11/2008 : 17:27:00 [Permalink]
|
Dude.....
Thank you for the link to Think Quest that I requested concerning the
neutron initiator. Is this a reliable site, with information to be trusted? I have never used it and know nothing about it! |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
"Muslim jihadists"
