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2006-08-22 India-Pakistan
A.Q. Khan diagnosed with prostate cancer
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Posted by Steve 2006-08-22 10:01|| || Front Page|| [11129 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 His affinity for radioactivity made manifest poetically. Radio isotope treatment indicated for his balls area.
Posted by Duh! 2006-08-22 10:57||   2006-08-22 10:57|| Front Page Top

#2 So that's how he was smuggling uranium, or was that urethreum.
Posted by ed 2006-08-22 11:24||   2006-08-22 11:24|| Front Page Top

#3 Unfortunately, it's highly treatable with a 90% + remission rate.
Posted by 11A5S 2006-08-22 11:43||   2006-08-22 11:43|| Front Page Top

#4 All you need to make a nuke is: fissionable core material; plastic explosive, covering the core; ignition coil array (similar to that on your car engine); battery-detonator manifold; dhimmi morons who let Muslims treat our universities and nuclear facilities, as terror candy-stores.
Posted by Snease Shaiting3550 2006-08-22 11:46||   2006-08-22 11:46|| Front Page Top

#5 Can't seem to manage an ounce of sympathy.
Not really tryin though.
Posted by Anginenter Angavimble1051 2006-08-22 12:11||   2006-08-22 12:11|| Front Page Top

#6 Unfortunately, it's highly treatable with a 90% + remission rate.

That's assuming the Pakistani government doctors are tasked with keeping you alive.
Posted by Steve 2006-08-22 12:15||   2006-08-22 12:15|| Front Page Top

#7 Sounds like it was caught pretty early, unfortunately. Gentlemen, have you had YOUR annual exam? Take this as a hint.
Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore  2006-08-22 13:27||   2006-08-22 13:27|| Front Page Top

#8 annual? I thought it was weekly....
Posted by Frank G">Frank G  2006-08-22 13:31||   2006-08-22 13:31|| Front Page Top

#9 If Khan wants radiation treatment, jam an armed nuclear warhead up his @ss. "You may feel some slight pain ..."
Posted by Zenster 2006-08-22 14:12||   2006-08-22 14:12|| Front Page Top

#10 Frank G - I think I see the problem... Next door to Mistress Nastywhip's House of Pain is Dr Well B Good's Quick Care Clinic. You were given the wrong address or transposed the last 2 digits. :)
Posted by Shung Phinetle2153 2006-08-22 14:22||   2006-08-22 14:22|| Front Page Top

#11 All you need to make a nuke...

It takes a BIT more than that, SS. If someone were to build a "nuke" as you describe, what they would get would be a very hot neutron-emitter. It also depends on what nuclear "fuel" you're using. A plutonium weapon is much easier to build than a uranium weapon. Still, designing a nuke explosive isn't rocket science. Getting it to work so you get a BIG boom IS.
Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot  2006-08-22 14:35|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]  2006-08-22 14:35|| Front Page Top

#12 Old Patriot, you left out the requirement for safe fusing. Having a powerful weapon without absolute control over its time and place of use is more commonly refered to as a "work accident".

I firmly believe this is likely how we will find out about terrorists finally assembling their own nuclear weapon. Somewhere there will be the mother of all work accidents.
Posted by Zenster 2006-08-22 14:42||   2006-08-22 14:42|| Front Page Top

#13 Shove one of his nukes up his ass. Maybe that'll cure it.
Posted by tu3031 2006-08-22 15:35||   2006-08-22 15:35|| Front Page Top

#14 I think those last posts are what that article was referring to, about the dangers of self-trained terrorists learning from the web. ;-)
Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-22 15:42||   2006-08-22 15:42|| Front Page Top

#15 I see Dr. Zenster concurs...
Posted by tu3031 2006-08-22 15:45||   2006-08-22 15:45|| Front Page Top

#16 Always nice to have a second opinion, tu3031.
Posted by Zenster 2006-08-22 16:50||   2006-08-22 16:50|| Front Page Top

#17 I was reading somewhere not too long ago that a simple low-yield nuclear/atomic bomb is not that hard to make. The trick is to force two different masses of the right radioactive materials together with high enough force to make the combined mass go critical.

The article seemed to indicate that a vertical arrangement where one mass is at ground level and the other is a floor or two above, dropped or driven by an explosive charge, might actually do the trick.

I'm not sure what the setup was using as baseline material, but I have to assume it was at least enriched uranium (weapons grade).

Anyone know anything about this article or where it might be found?

Posted by FOTSGreg">FOTSGreg  2006-08-22 19:07|| www.fire-on-the-suns.com]">[www.fire-on-the-suns.com]  2006-08-22 19:07|| Front Page Top

#18 Two aircraft with just the right amount of fissile material might work. Maybe even 2 ships, difficult to tell. A cheap method might be dropping 1/2 the fissile material from a tall building onto a hotdawg cart containing the rest of the necessary.
Posted by 6 2006-08-22 19:27||   2006-08-22 19:27|| Front Page Top

#19 I remember that article. Summary:

Buy a two story house with a basement. Put in a two story, high strength tube. Put a subcritical mass of bomb grade uranium at the bottom. Put another subcritical mass at the top and put a propellant charge on top of that. Weld the tube shut and evacuate it. I'm assuming that if you could get a hold of bomb-grade uranium, you could get a neutron source, too.

The first gun-type uranium bomb was so simple that we didn't bother to test it before we dropped it on Japan. The Pakis made it work on their first try, so that says a lot.
Posted by 11A5S 2006-08-22 19:42||   2006-08-22 19:42|| Front Page Top

#20 no trains, 6er?
Posted by Frank G">Frank G  2006-08-22 19:43||   2006-08-22 19:43|| Front Page Top

#21 Place two hemi-spheres in a heavy walled steel pipe with one closed end, polish the hemi-sphere's flat faces to a mirror gloss and make them absolutely flat (This is where the "Homemade part fails, not possible without high precision machine tools)

Place one hemisphere at the closed end, with the polished surface facing the other end, Align the mirror surface absolutely flat with the bore (Again where the "Homemade" part fails)
place the other hemisphere at the other end, again align it absolutely parallel with the bore (Homemade flops again)

Put a good bit of high explosive behind the open end, figure out some way to have the two hemispheres slide without ANY deflection or warpage/breakage, (again the Homies, flop)
Devise some form of detonator, close the end, pump out ALL the air (Again, el floppo) and set it off.

Odds of a BOOM about one in a Billion, odds of a rupture and a fizzle, about one in a Million, odds it will just burst and shit up the area with radioactive junk, almost certain.
Posted by Redneck Jim 2006-08-22 19:59||   2006-08-22 19:59|| Front Page Top

#22 Anyone know anything about this article or where it might be found?

According to my older brother, this was covered in an issue of Analog science Fiction magazine way back in the early 1970s.

The article concluded that actually obtaining the fissile material was the gating factor. They examined the most likely source, theft from a nuclear reactor, and determined that disassembling and recombining the fuel rods was far too intensive of an operation. Ditto with hijacking a truckload of unrefined uranium and purifying it.

One interesting observation of note was that it was far easier to simply take over a nuclear power generating facility (something our special forces do with exceeding regularity) and then forcibly cause a meltdown. This alternative was dismissed due to how the majority of reactors are situated far from metropolitan centers for safety's sake.

They concluded that such a scenario was non-optimal for a terror attack because there would be minimal loss of life, a factor that is always of paramount concern for terrorists.

Finally, this is why it is of such importance to dismantle Iran's, North Korea's (and Pakistan's, for that matter), nuclear technology. Neither has demonstrated the least intention of good stewardship, a key factor in managing nuclear material. The few nations who currently possess nuclear weapons have, so far, demonstrated a fair degree of responsibility in their management. Rogue regimes need not apply.
Posted by Zenster 2006-08-22 22:14||   2006-08-22 22:14|| Front Page Top

#23 no trains, 6er?

Frank, you'd love a rare copy I found of a book called "Applied Atomic Power." Its various chapters covered such wonders as nuclear powered airplanes (the Air Force tried this only to abandon the project due to excessive weight issues). One section covered nuclear powered locomotives ...

One word; Amtrak.
Posted by Zenster 2006-08-22 22:18||   2006-08-22 22:18|| Front Page Top

#24 :-) I think you just gave 6 wood. He loves trains....nuke powered would do it for him
Posted by Frank G">Frank G  2006-08-22 22:27||   2006-08-22 22:27|| Front Page Top

#25 That partially shielded late 40s early 50's era partially shielded nuke plane is likely still glowing in its Idaho hanger ... to hot to approach.

Either that or the stories the SAC guys used to tell were great dis-info.
Posted by 3dc 2006-08-22 22:33||   2006-08-22 22:33|| Front Page Top

23:39 2b
23:37 Jan
23:37 2b
23:36 Old Patriot
23:33 twobyfour
23:22 Zenster
23:22 twobyfour
23:20 2b
23:11 Jan
23:09 rjschwarz
23:09 rjschwarz
23:08 3dc
23:05 DMFD
23:03 tipper
23:03 3dc
23:00 trailing wife
22:56 trailing wife
22:49 flyover
22:49 trailing wife
22:46 Elmolusing Glomose5369
22:46 flyover
22:43 Zenster
22:42 3dc
22:40 JSU









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