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Al-Qaida may have nuclear weapons
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| NYCTrancefan |
"A Pan-Arab newspaper has said al-Qaida bought tactical nuclear weapons from Ukraine in 1998 and is storing them in safe places for possible use.
There was no independent corroboration of the report on Sunday, which appeared in the newspaper al-Hayat under an Islamabad dateline and cited sources close to the Islamist network.
The newspaper claimed al-Qaida bought the weapons in suitcases in a deal arranged when Ukrainian scientists visited the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1998.
The city was then a stronghold of a Taliban government that refused to hand over Usama bin Ladin for trial abroad.
The report claims al-Qaida could use the weapons inside the United States or anywhere else should the network face a "crushing blow" which threatened its existence.
Feasible
Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union but in 1994 it agreed to send 1900 nuclear warheads to Russia and sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, a former Russian National Security Adviser, Alexander Lebed, said that up to 100 portable suitcase-sized bombs were unaccounted for.
Moscow has denied such weapons existed, but Lebed said each one was equivalent to 1000 tons of TNT and could kill as many as 100,000 people.
Al-Hayat did not say how many weapons al-Qaida bought or say who exactly had provided them.
The United States has repeatedly said its worst fear is that a group like al-Qaida might obtain access to weapons of mass destruction and use them against the American people."
------- From AlJazeera.net so I would take it with a grain of salt frankly, however if any truth to it God help us after all we have seen that terrorists have no morals about what they would do in the name of their ideological beliefs. Probably a weak story but nonetheless makes one wonder, what if. |
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| Yoepus |
| Thats it Ukraine. First you shot down one of our planes, now you sell our enemies nuclear secrets, good going you've made it onto the list.:whip: ;) |
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| ahlamalek |
| quote: | Originally posted by NYCTrancefan
------- From AlJazeera.net so I would take it with a grain of salt frankly, however if any truth to it God help us after all we have seen that terrorists have no morals about what they would do in the name of their ideological beliefs. Probably a weak story but nonetheless makes one wonder, what if. |
I would trust aljazeera over many news networks out there.
The 100 unaccounted suicates nukes isn't exactly news. It has been known for some times now.
but on a related note, did anyone hear about american satelites that can detect nuclear radiation? Nuclear bombs emit radiation and could be detected if transported from eurasia to the north american continent. anyone else hear about these possiblities? |
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| Yoepus |
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
I would trust aljazeera over many news networks out there.
The 100 unaccounted suicates nukes isn't exactly news. It has been known for some times now.
but on a related note, did anyone hear about american satelites that can detect nuclear radiation? Nuclear bombs emit radiation and could be detected if transported from eurasia to the north american continent. anyone else hear about these possiblities? |
Ya .. the USA put up some satilites back in the 1960s (or somewhen in the Cold War) that can detect a nuclear detentation (used to know when the Ruskis were testing), but they can't really detect a nuke in transit. These same satilites btw also uncovered solar radiation which led to the discovery of blackholes - just goes to show that military dollars many times = science dollars.
I'm sure some of the technophiles here will give you a bit more accurates specs on the thing... |
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| Q5echo |
You'll have to take this at face value because I have no links to coroberate this, but I am in the military and have been for the better part of a decade. Back in the 60's the the Soviets had
a great idea to put their Pershing II ICBM's on the modified tractor trailer's which quickly evolved into very large and highly mobile independent all terrain launchers that could roam freely throughout the vast Soviet countryside. This is something that could not have possible here in the U.S. for obvious reasons. Anywho, the Pentagon
was very concerned about this because they had enough problems with ttracking a portion of their strategic weapons underwater (ballistic missle submarines) now they had mobile independent launchers on land
now. The Pentagon, tasked with accounting for every warhead in the Soviets stratigic arsenal, developed nuetron emmsion satellites.
Put simply, all nuke warheads, especially the crude massive ones that the Soviets made, give off tremendous amounts of gamma radiation. gamma is the bad radiation that you want to avoid if possible as opposed to the radiation coming off your monitor right now or what we recieve from the sun. Fissionable material such as uranium or plutonium decay rapidly as you probably already know and this decay can be detected at great distances given the right technology and equipment. Anyway since then, the technology as you can imagine has come a long way and we can detect strategic and tactical nukes day or night anywhere on earth as they move across it's surface. This is how we watch other countries and their fledgling nuclear programs like Iran, India , Pakistan, South Korea ect. Thats why the U.S. government is so trigger happy about chemical and bio weapons because we have the nuclear threat covered(crossing fingers) :conf: |
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| Q5echo |
| Now the suitcase nukes that the russians made, I'm not sure how detectable those are. |
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| St_Andrew |
| that is scary... :nervous: :nervous: |
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| dukes |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
Now the suitcase nukes that the russians made, I'm not sure how detectable those are. |
i very much doubt the al-qaida has them due to how expensive they would be.
i also doubt that the al-qiada are stupid enough to use nuke weapons due to there cost! bio/chem weapons are many times cheaper to create/mass produce and can be almost undetectable.
there has been research done to find the cost to create a bio/chem weapons production lab....... $100,000. this is far cheaper than andy nuke weapon exception of dirty bombs which are less potent than the bios and chems.
oh the lab was created in a room 10ft square and was fully operationable in under 6 months with that money.
i recon the al-qiada are smart enough to know this sort of information otherwise they really are a rubish terrorist agency!! |
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