"small 10-megaton bomb"?

Delete before reading. The guy is a doomie.

Yeah, that's out of line. For reference, the warheads on Russia's new SS-27 Topol ICBMs are estimated around 550 kT. And the chance of a terrorist making a 10 MT (10,000 kT) weapon are close to zero - that's a hydrogen bomb, not an atomic weapon. Hiroshima size (20 kT) is by far the most likely, and even India and Pakistan have warheads in the 20-50 kT range.

I've emailed Kris, we'll see if it was a typo or a misfire or what.

This time I read it, and the comments. The commenters pasted him for this too. He did really mean 10 megatons. Look at his charts.

The guy is a yo-yo with a cause.

I was right in saying, "Delete before reading."

Sorry folks. I got sloppy with the science. Blame it on no sleep from having a six week old baby or being a product of the Texas puplic schools. I meant 10kt and will change the post to reflect my errors. Thanks for the catch.

Yo-yo with a cause?

Kris

The bottom image on the second illustration to Part Two of "Houston We Have A Problem" has a caption stating:

"This depicts a 4MT device delivered by an aircraft, a 10MT device on top of an 80 story building might yield similar results."

This caption is consistent with the original 10MT yield used in the links, and inconsistent with a 10kt yield.

The damage characteristics of a 10kt device detonated at ground level are completely different from anything in the 1-10 megaton range detonated 500'-1000' in the air. This includes EMP. Orders of magnitude make a difference.

Thanks again for your comments. Any other thoughts on what else I had to say?

Let's just cool down and wait for the corrected version - but Tom is drawing attention to something of significance in comment #5, Kris.

Quillnews says the G8 needs to put loose nukes very high on the agenda. Here

How about a nuke between 15-20kt? Something that AQ could get their hands on from say Pakistan. (http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/) That's probably still a little too "Clancy" for my tastes but possible.

This significantly reduces the damage, but it would still be pretty heavy. The response would still be massive. That's the point of the post.

Like I said in the original post, the science was a SWAG--a bad one as it turn out, but still a SWAG.

Anyway, thanks for the catch and the traffic. Fact checking is a wonderful thing. I'll fire up the powerpoint at home tonight and modify my slides based on your input.

Kris

Two comments on what I take to be the point of your posts, Kris.

It's been a while since I was involved in the mass transit / emergency services marketplace and I don't have a read on the situation in places like NYC since. At that time, GIS (geographical information systems) and GPS receivers with differential correction for several meters accuracy were just coming into fleet use in urban agencies and the problem of common radio systems was just really starting to surface in a serious way.

IIRC 9/11 did show that we are only starting to fix that, but I'm not fully up on what has - or has not - been done at the technical interoperability level among service agencies since then. Presumably that is mainly a matter of money and a little political squabbling about standards - nothing that can't be overcome.

What is harder is to generate in the population as a whole a clear and persistent sense of the THREAT and the NEED for serious planning. It has been a very very long time since this country thought of itself as truly vulnerable to major attack here at home. I regularly talk with otherwise well-informed people who either discount the threat of WMD terrorism on our soil or who seem to feel that there is nothing to be done about the possibility.

Overcoming that is the single most important step in defending against such an attack, because it will be public will and public urgency that makes this a priority in planning, budgets and execution.

I've been doing this sort of thing for a long time - about thirty years.

Kris is completely correct about the economic importance of the Houston ship channel, but his use of a terrorist nuke to close it is a titanic understatement. The place is vulnerable to much less dramatic attack. It is possible to hijack a tanker in the channel and, with far less effort, convert the tanker itself in a remarkably short period into an explosive device with much the same destructive effect on that area as a 10kt nuke.

This is also far more likely, and there is precedent. Consider how the 9/11 terrorists used the hijacked airliners as ersatz WMD.

It is important to think outside the box in such matters. As an example, the most destructive way to use any single nuclear device is as a high-altitude EMP device. That maximizes the use of the weapon's own energy, makes use of available other energy (the earth's own magnetic field) and uses all that energy to maximum destructive effect over the widest possible area.

The Houston ship channel concentrates a vast amount of fossil fuel energy in a small area, and in forms most conducive to destructive effect in terms of both energy release, and potential physical and economic damage. Furthermore this energy is easily released by field expedient weapons and devices. The fossil fuels and chemicals in the tankers, refineries and pipelines can be used as expedient weapons.

Likewise the major chemical weapons terrorist threat comes from expedient use of locally available chemicals. The abortive terrorist attack on Amman, Jordan, last year seems to have been planned with such expedient use.

No amount of emergency management planning can begin to prepare for such attacks. It is more efficient to use the financial and human resources which would be required for that to instead prevent such attacks, on internal security, foreign intelligence and military operations overseas.

Think of efficient use of resources, both on how terrorists might conduct attacks and how to reduce the consequences of such attacks. Getting into the right mindset is critical.

This means in particular not thinking that whatever you are doing is important just because you are the one doing it.

Totally agree with Tom on the ship channel. There is a variety of ways to damage it. Hell, drop the 610 bridge into the ship channel with a big truck bomb and it would cost millions of dollars a day in economic damages while the channel was closed. Texas Monthly ran an interesting article a few months back about Houston being a target. Sorry, no link. They're stingy. The EM/HS community (of which I am part BTW) is starting to take critical infrastructure protection seriously and there has been some progress. Not enought, but some.

I also agree that it's hard to wrap your mind around the consequences, but you have to try. That's why UD04 was so bogus.

All I wanted to do was illustrate some of the challenges that we would face if something like this happened. Maybe if I had picked Austin everyone would have been happier.

Kris

That's why UD04 was so bogus

No doubt. But if the relevant jurisdictions and agencies bungled that one, then they're definitely not going to learn much from a more realistic scenario.

Consider it a training exercise ... ;-) Not for the full-up threat, but as an initial orientation to a way of working that is well beyond what people are used to. Anything more is unrealistic to expect, unless you can isolate all the involved individuals in a boot camp environment. OR ... unless the public is taking the threat seriously and WANTS realistic assessment of where we are and aren't wrt preparation.

This information is pre 9/11.
Illustration #4 give insight to the parameters of thought about this problem.

The prevailing winds are from the southeast not to the southeast.
The illustration has the fallout going straigt out I-45 to Galveston Beach.

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