Israel v. Iran nuclear smackdown?

[leejo]

scary stuff. http://www.americanthinker.com/artic...rticle_id=5190

[aeroripper]

Yes I've always thought it funny how Isreals nuke arsenal gets so little attention when talking about middle eastern nations developing nukes, seeing as how its one of the best in the world. If the US wanted to go to nuclear war with Iran, it would most likely be covertly through Isreal military actions. After all, we even gave them a number of our new "bunker buster" nukes to use in a possible war with Iran, not to mention all the military munitions\aircraft support we've given through the decades.

What I am afraid of is, if the nuclear threshold gets broken after 60 some years, will nations become less hesitant about using tactical nukes in future conflicts? What is the purpose of justifying development of underground nuclear "bunker busters" just because they don't hurt civilians as much? Thank you Mr. Bush for your moral guidance.

I always found it funny that the idea of having nukes armed and ready to destroy other nations at a whim is still accepted, rather than making their usage as taboo as the holocaust.

[Phrag]

Oddly enough, an all out nuclear war never scared me very much. If the global political forum ever got to that point, I think we might all want to cash in our chips anyway. We might as well make it quick. (Sorry for being so cynical but thats just they way I see it.)

What worries me is that some small group will get a nuke and put it on a rocket and detonate it in the upper atmosphere above a major country, i.e. US or China. The EMP it creates could destroy anything and everything that needs electricity to run. Imagine the chaos that it would cause if we had a nation wide black out that wiped out the entire power infrastructure. Not to mention every plane flying above the country crashing simultaneously. Who knows if the fail safes in the nuclear power plants would even work.

Gee, am I up beat today or what?

[Rincewind]

They'd have to be a pretty sophisticated small group to accomplish that. Although, the threat is no less real.

[aeroripper]

I'm not worried, if it really comes down to that we're already screwed anyways. Its sort of one of those end-of-civilization scenarios that have been around a long time and hopefully we realize its better to live together in relative peace than total war.

Rainbows and sunshine included

[Phrag]

Yeah. This is what got me started on EMPs and exactly how vulnerable any industrial nation is to anyone who can make them.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...e/1281421.html

Note the publishing date. I got a copy of this 3 days prior to the official publishing date. Needless to say, you could not find one of these the day after.

[leejo]

I don't see how these e-bombs are such a big threat unless they're part of a larger package. Am I missing something?

Suppose someone popped an e-bomb over Houston. Seems that business would stop for a few days and distributors in Dallas would make a fortune as everyone replaced their fried electronics. What else?

[SmokingTarpan]

Originally Posted by leejo

Suppose someone popped an e-bomb over Houston. Seems that business would stop for a few days and distributors in Dallas would make a fortune as everyone replaced their fried electronics. What else?

Except that it wouldn't affect just Houston. The bomb pops in a spherical radius an extends for long distances; low power bombs (compared to today) were detonated over the Pacific on 1958 and not only blacked out Hawaii, but disrupted things in Australia as well. Satellites above would die, every bit of data that didn't have a backup outside of the area of effect would be lost beyond retrieval, communications would be wholely disrupted. How would our military communicate? They'd be crippled and open for invasion. There's also the theory that the EMP wave and aftereffects could travel through any bit of connected circuitry, letting the blackout spread past the blast radius.

[leejo]

Isn't the effect range tied to the altitude of the bomb when it explodes? The test to which you refer was a high-altitude nuclear blast, right? I think it would be exceptionally difficult to deploy a nuclear weapon high over the United States, but if someone could pull it off, the EMP issues might pale in comparison to the dead.

What would the effect range for a likely bad guy detonation be? Suppose they can get as high as a cessena can take them? or maybe atop a tall office building?

[Steeler]

Last year's blackout illustrated the cascade effect of a single major line disruption. So an EMP burst over a significant portion of the US would probably cripple the national power grid for a good while. and recent events in LA have illustrated that our industrial and organizational capacity is not up to handling large infrastructure hits.

Still, this is a pretty far-fetched fear-mongering scenario. A lot of Cold War nightmares were dug up in late 2001.

[leejo]

I wouldn't call it fear-mongering, just creative thinking in an effort to make sure we don't get zapped. I think we can handle EMP. As long as nobody dies, we're doing ok. It's just gizmos.

[SmokingTarpan]

Originally Posted by leejo

It's just gizmos.

Some gizmos can't quite be replaced, though. For example, what happens if a bank gets nailed by the blast? I don't know much about how banks do their record-keeping and backup of files, but suppose their databases all get fried. Perhaps some of the nationwide chains would be okay and have backups outside of the zone, but I'm sure not every bank would. Suddenly you have a lot of people in Houston that have no money outside of what's in their wallets.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to go start my "The World Ends Tomorrow Survival Pack"; I doubt this will happen anytime soon. I just think that there's lots of things that we overlook because electronics have always been an integrated part of our life. We're more apt to pay attention to the visible problems like loss of power, and forget about the not so visible ones like a meltdown of our bank.

[Grunt 70]

Okay...I know I'm going to get creamed for this ...but here goes...

I always wondered why it was acceptable to the West for Isreal to have nukes pointed at enemies in the Mid east but anytime any of the mideast countries considered building nukes it is and always has been met with widespread condemnation from the West.

Okay okay, I know it's coming but I'll beat you to it--with the government in Iran recently spouting off threats to wipe Isreal off the map I can somewhat see why nukes in the hands of Iran may not be a good choice...but that's now. Doesn't it seem a bit of a double standard ?

[CingularDuality]

Originally Posted by SmokingTarpan

How would our military communicate? They'd be crippled and open for invasion.

Military communications equipment are hardened and protected against EMP attacks, FYI.

Whether or not they'll be grounded and the protection works is another subject, though...

[Phrag]

If you read the popular science article that I linked to, you will see that you can make and EMP with out the nuke. They are actually very easy and cheap to make. You could even buy a kit off the internet to get you started if you were so inclined.

While the effects of one of these low tech EMP bombs would not be too difficult to over come, a sting of them placed near major power lines or the internet back bones could be devistating to the economy. That or setting them off near a busy airport or a nuclear power plant could have very nasty effects.


As for the double standard of us having nukes and no one else getting them, the "because we say so" rational has worked so far. Honestly, the US or Isreal enforcing the 'rule' of no more nukes does not make any sense, but if it does lead to less nukes in the world, I'm not complaining.