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The likelihood of a nuclear attack on U.S. soil – part 1

June 18, 2008

Before I make the decision to start nuclear survival preparations—and, perhaps, make lifestyle changes–I need to know: What’s the probability of a nuke attack on U.S. soil?

Many people have qualitative opinions but I’ve found little quantitative analysis. Perhaps the risk can’t be calculated; or perhaps the numbers have been crunched and classified, I don’t know. But I’m looking for more than vague commentary with language like “serious threat” or “vanishingly small.”

The challenge is to decipher the misinformation and conflicting information. Some initial observations:

  1. There’s stuff from experts on both sides, pro and con (pro, it’s a serious threat; con, it’s not a serious threat).
  2. There may be people with extreme positions on both sides–alarmists and naysayers–and it’s hard to know who’s reasonable and who’s extreme.
  3. Voices in the debate may have an agenda, pro or con. After all, the Iraqi nuclear threat was one of the primary reasons President Bush took the U.S. to war.
  4. Short of a pro-agenda (that there’s a serious threat), I wonder if there’s a simple bias. When I think of everyone involved in securing the safety of America, from government to private security firms to equipment suppliers, I think of the old Mark Twain saying: “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” This would be unfortunate because the people involved in securing our lives know the most about the threat.

Another issue to consider as I weigh the threat is a passive mindset, an out-of-sight out-of-mind thing. Does the low frequency of domestic terrorist incidents–and a zero-incidence of nuclear terrorism worldwide–make it underrated as a risk? It’s easy to dismiss the absurd. As journalist Mark Steyn said recently on Fox News, “Every jihadist is a joke if you catch them in time. If those September 11th guys had been caught on September 10th, they would have seemed like jokes too.”

Does the headline “Nukes Kill 100,000!” sound absurd? It sounds like science fiction except it would have been an accurate headline in 1945 after the bombings in Japan. Didn’t the 9/11 Commission accuse the CIA and the FBI of a passive mindset when the Commission said that a “failure of imagination” contributed to the success of the 9/11 attack?

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Warren Buffet on a nuclear “incident” – part 2

May 8, 2008

I’m researching the probability of a nuke attack and I want to revisit my post of 1/21/08 regarding Warren Buffet’s remark that a nuclear incident on U.S. soil is a “virtual certainty.”

According to a footnote on page two of a paper by political scientist John Mueller (pdf file), who argues the risk of an atomic bomb is “vanishingly small” and has been “substantially exaggerated,” Mr. Buffet is worried about any nuclear event, including reactor accidents, and he had a time frame of 100 years. The footnote states: “…Contacted by the Wall Street Journal, however, Buffett says he was worrying about any nuclear explosion, not just one set off by terrorists, and that he was talking about something that might come about over the next century, not within a ten-year period…”

Even if Mr. Buffet’s comments are based on a time frame of 100 years and includes Chernoyble-like disasters, there seems to be no doubt that he believes nuclear terrorism is a threat. As I noted earlier, he’s concerned enough to be an Advisor to the Board of Directors of the The Nuclear Threat Initiative. He told his Berkshire Hathaway shareholders to watch the movie, Last Best Chance, which dramatizes terrorists obtaining unsecured Russian nuclear material. Here are additional excerpts from the 6/19/05 interview Mr. Buffet gave CNN’s Lou Dobbs, which I cited in my 1/21/08 post:

“…And, you know, thousands of years ago we had psychotics and we had religious fanatics and we had megalomaniacs. But about the most they could do was throw a stone at somebody if they wished evil on them.

“Today, since 1945, the ability to inflict evil, or harm, on other people in huge numbers has grown exponentially. And right now there’s the knowledge around to use nuclear material. And we’ve got to hope that the wrong people don’t get their hands on it.

“… there are lots of loose nukes around the world. We’ve got multiple governments that have the capability. We have lots of chemical and biological agents that are ill guarded around the world and it should be at the top of the list for our government.

“… There are people out there that would like to do a lot more than the World Trade Center or the Spanish trains or that sort of thing.

“… The nuclear, chemical and biological threat is real. And it’s one we should attack.”

Two side notes:

1) When I read something in the press and I’ve known the inside story, there are often mistakes. I don’t have 100% faith in the press to accurately quote and get a story straight. Apropos to this post, recently there was a misunderstanding with Mr. Buffet. The press quoted him saying that the dollar will soon be “worthless.” He actually said it will soon be “worth less.”
2) In the “irony department”—in this case, nuclear power plants may be the only practical solution to global warming so nuclear energy has the potential to both destroy the earth and to save the earth—The Wall Street Journal reported on 12/7/07 that Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway was interested in nuclear power: “MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., controlled by investor Warren Buffett, notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday that it is pursuing the possibility of building a nuclear power plant in Payette County, Idaho…”

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Will I survive a nuke? Estimating what size nuke to plan for

April 5, 2008

I want to know if I’ll survive a nuclear blast just three miles from ground zero. The first step is to estimate the size of the bomb that would most likely be used in an attack.

Disclaimer to Self: If I’m wrong about my conclusion, i.e., if a larger bomb is used, well, I could unexpectedly get nuked.

Nuclear bombs range in size from .25 kilotons to 100,000 kilotons (100 megatons). Hiroshima was 12.5 kilotons and Nagasaki was 22 kilotons. A suitcase nuke is about 1 to 3 kilotons. Given a particular size bomb, there are variables that affect the extent and type of damage such as weather, terrain (including tall buildings) and where, in relation to the ground, the bomb is detonated. A groundburst causes less blast damage to the surroundings but it creates more debris so nuclear fallout is worse. An airburst causes more blast damage but less fallout.

During the Cold War the possibility of state-sponsored nuclear war gave a legitimate fear of large bombs, in the megaton range. Today, with terrorism a greater risk, I think the smaller the bomb, the greater the risk (if anyone can correct me on that, please do). While very small bombs can be hard to make as you need a minimum amount of fissile material for a bomb to work, larger bombs need more enriched uranium, which is hard to get. Also, terrorists would likely deploy a nuke tactically, so the smaller the bomb the easier it is to sneak into place.

I believe 10 kilotons is the size to plan for. A bomb of this size is small and simple so it could be “homemade” and snuck into place. A couple of important studies, one from the Preventive Defense Project, a joint Stanford-Harvard program, and one from the RAND Corporation, a non-profit think tank, both chose 10 kilotons as a likely size. It’s also roughly the size of Hiroshima so we have firsthand information about the actual damage caused by that load. While Hiroshima was an airburst (about 1900 feet), the Preventive Defense Project modeled their results on a bomb at ground level or in a tall building, hundreds of feet in the air.

Planning for 10 kilotons provides a margin of safety because I think there’s a greater probability of something smaller than 10 kilotons, like a suitcase nuke (I keep wondering, where are all the Russian suitcase nukes?). Also, an untested, homemade 10 kiloton bomb by a non-state group may “fizzle” and produce a lower yield, which is what happened to the North Korean underground test in 2006. And bomb much larger than 10 kilotons could fizzle and yield 10 kilotons or less.

The target I live near is on the water so it would not make sense to use a large bomb as half the blast would be wasted over the water. You hear that, you would-be-bombers? Don’t waste your money on big bombs near the water.

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Surviving a nuclear terrorist attack on New York City (video: 7 min., 20 sec.)

February 20, 2008

I do this blog largely because nuclear terrorism gets little coverage in the mainstream press. I taped this ABC News piece, which aired in Sept. 2005 as part of a post-Katrina program on disasters, and find it informative and well-balanced. It speculates on the fate of New Yorkers after a 10 kiloton bomb explodes in Times Square.

I captured it on VHS and I want to get it in the archives of this blog before the tape disintegrates (I crudely converted it to digital so, bear with me, the quality is poor). The segment is from ABC Primetime and is reported by Chris Cuomo. (Here’s a link to the transcript, which is titled, “Experts’ Keys to Surviving a Nuclear Terror Attack.”)

Here are some important points:

  1. There will be several hundred thousand immediate deaths. Most people will survive and most buildings will remain intact.
  2. Radioactive nuclear fallout will begin within 15 minutes and the fallout will drift with the wind. Nuclear fallout could be dangerous for as long as two weeks.
  3. The government will be tracking the deadly plume with sophisticated software. “Officials should be able to tell you which direction is safe and that is the direction to go…. First responders will use available communication to inform you where the danger is and then evacuate people out of the path of the fallout.” (See my comment below.)
  4. Your initial instincts of what to do could be wrong. Instead of evacuating your best bet may be to shelter in place.
  5. Duct tape and plastic can be helpful in sealing your shelter from radioactive dust. (I’m reminiscing about the Duct Tape and Plastic Panic of 2003…)
  6. While decontamination centers will be operational, no city is prepared for the hundreds of thousands of people who will need decontamination and medical care.
  7. You can decontaminate yourself by quickly shedding contaminated clothing and taking a shower with soap.
  8. A recent survey, reports BusinessWeek magazine, found that “just 57% of healthcare workers in the region would report for work during a radiological event.” (Wow.)
  9. “And so far the government doesn’t seem to have educated citizens about what they can do to protect themselves if a bomb goes off in the city.” (Yup.)

As I speculated in my post of 9/27/07 (Nuclear Fallout: Which Way is the Wind Blowing?), I think point #3 above could be a serious problem—and deadly if anybody screws-up. First, note that points #3 and #4 are contradictory. It means that, depending upon the situation, you may have to either shelter in place or evacuate. If you’re close to the blast I think that decision will have to be made in less than 15 minutes.

Second, the quote in point #3 above is vague (“available communication”) in describing how you’ll get evacuation information. By what method should you try first (TV, radio, email, telephone, cell phone, text-messaging, loudspeaker, talking to a first responder, etc.) and in what form will you get the information (i.e., will you understand it)? Will you get the information within 15 minutes of the blast or should you have a back-up plan?

I’d like to know now so I can do some prep, plan a response and not be prone to panic.

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Warren Buffet on Nuclear Bombs

January 21, 2008

[Go to a 5/8/08 UPDATE on this post]

“It’s inevitable.” A quote by Warren Buffet.

This is old news but worth reviewing to get it in the record of this blog. It’s important because if I needed just one person to make the case that a nuclear attack on U.S. soil was a slam-dunk, it would be Warren Buffet. He thinks it’s inevitable.

Warren Buffet is the second richest person in the world and the most respected investor on Wall Street. He’s cautious and self-effacing; he’s the opposite of flamboyant and not prone to hyperbole. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns not just insurance companies (like GEICO), but it owns at least one reinsurance company, which means Warren Buffet insures other insurance companies. His business is to predict, plan and pay for the cleanup of disasters (in fact, he lost $2.4 billion from 9/11; see the last quote below for his take on covering nuclear disasters). He also serves as Advisor to the Board of Directors of The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a group working to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism.

From the lips of Warren Buffet regarding a nuclear bomb in the U.S.:

In a CNN interview with Lou Dobbs on 6/19/05, Warren Buffet said, “It’s the number one problem of our time.”

Both CNN and the BBC News on 5/6/02 quote Warren Buffet with this: “We’re going to have something in the way of a major nuclear event in this country… It will happen. Whether it will happen in 10 years or 10 minutes, or 50 years … it’s virtually a certainty.”

A Slate piece on 6/18/02 quotes Warren Buffet with this: “I don’t know anything [about potential threats to U.S. security] but I know basic probabilities. … I understand how things that seem very unlikely happen when time passes. … There’s just plenty of people out there who hate us … more psychotics, more megalomaniacs, more religious fanatics today than 50 years ago.”

A Fortune piece on 11/11/02 quotes Warren Buffet with this: “…the ultimate depressing thing. It will happen. It’s inevitable. I don’t see any way that it won’t happen. But we can reduce the probabilities. If there’s a 10% probability of something happening in a given year–and I don’t know if that’s the right probability; nobody knows–then the chances that it will happen in 50 years are 99.5%. If you get it down to 3%, there is about a 78% chance. If you get it down to 1% per year, there’s like a 40% chance, so reducing the probabilities per annum of anything happening obviously increases the chance significantly that your kids will get through their lifetimes without this happening. You can’t get rid of the knowledge [how to make a bomb]. You can try to control the materials [enriched uranium and loose nukes]. You’ll never get rid of the intent. It is the ultimate problem of mankind.”

Finally, the UK’s Guardian on 5/6/02 quotes the “Oracle of Omaha” on whether he’ll offer nuclear terrorism insurance. I’m confused by the last sentence in the quote below. Perhaps he believes financial institutions are willing to insure themselves for small disasters but not large disasters, even if the probability of a large disaster were the same or greater. Or perhaps he believes these companies are worried about terrorism but they’re not willing to pay the high premiums, especially for nuclear events. I give up, you decide:

“…It could make the World Trade Centre loss look like nothing. We are excluding nuclear, chemical and biological events in terrorism insurance. The twin towers came close to the limit of what we can do. We cannot do nuclear, chemical and biological. We will take an occasional nuclear risk if they’ll pay us enough. It’s strange that financial institutions want terrorism insurance but they’re not willing to buy what I’m worried about.”

Mr. Buffet, I’d like a clarification on that last sentence. Please call me.

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Journalist Paul L. Williams talks about an ‘American Hiroshima’

December 11, 2007

My post of 10/25/07 (“How much is that nuclear bomb in the window?”) mentions award winning journalist Paul L Williams. He has a large body of work documenting attempts by terrorist groups to obtain enriched uranium and nuclear weapons and their conviction to use them. He was interviewed on 11/28/07 on a radio show called Third Rail Radio, which bills itself as “politically abrasive new media radio” talking about “the stuff that old media won’t touch.” He talks about nuclear terrorism and you can listen to the podcast here. It’s just audio and runs, I’m guessing, about 45 minutes.

Dr. Williams has an impressive bio. He was a consultant to the FBI. He has been a subject on PBS, History and Discovery channels and is a guest on Fox News, MSNBC and NPR. He won the National Book Award and has written numerous books on terrorism, the latest being, The Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World.

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‘…widespread panic, chaos and death is inevitable and will happen soon…’

December 6, 2007

When it comes to nuclear weapons, Iran still gets all the headlines. They cancelled their nuke program…blah blah…I get it. But google for the “International Conference on Illicit Nuclear Trafficking,” a meeting just two weeks ago, and there’s virtually no press.

If you follow the last link in my post of 11/30/07 (“Nuclear Terrorism News”) about a warning from a top UK official, you eventually get to a piece from Scotland’s Sunday Herald, “Top police officer warns that nuclear attack is inevitable.” The article is about the conference noted above, which took place in Edinburgh. It was hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency and was attended by 300 experts from 70 countries. I’m heartened to see the world taking action—wait, correction, I mean they’re talking about the problem.

Sorry to be cynical, I’m sure there’s action being taken. Wait, correction, I don’t know if there’s any action—I barely knew there was a meeting—but I hope there’s action. What I do know is that, from my perch, there’s a lack of information being published on nuclear terrorism.

Here are some excerpts from the Sunday Herald article that raised my eyebrows or dropped my jaw or made me spill my coffee:

A nuclear attack by terrorists causing widespread panic, chaos and death is inevitable and will happen soon, a senior Scottish police officer has warned.

Ian Dickinson, who leads the police response to chemical, biological and nuclear threats in Scotland, has painted the bleakest picture yet of the dangers the world now faces.

Efforts to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining materials that could be made into radioactive dirty bombs – or even crude nuclear explosives – are bound to fail, he said. And the result will be horror on an unprecedented scale.

“These materials are undoubtedly out there, and undoubtedly will end up in terrorists’ hands, and undoubtedly will be used by terrorists some time soon,’ he declared. ‘We must plan for failure and prepare for absolute terror…”

He said: “An incident will continue for days and all the public will see is people dying without reason. What will we do when our children come home from school with blisters on their skin and their parents don’t know what to do…”

Worldwide efforts to stem the spread of radioactive materials by the governments represented at the conference were vital, Dickinson concluded. “But the sad fact is that your work will fail.”

Dickinson’s nightmare analysis was backed up by Dr Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant who used to work at the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire. “The amazing thing is that this hasn’t happened already,” he told the Sunday Herald.

“We should expect it any minute. It’s an obvious thing for a terrorist to do. A primitive nuclear explosion would simply eliminate the centre of a city like Glasgow or Edinburgh….”

Richard Hoskins, from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Office of Nuclear Security in Vienna, revealed that there had been 1266 confirmed incidents in which radioactive materials had been stolen or lost around the world since 1993.

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