"Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious"

[Bombtrack]

found this link on another blog. Certainly an attention grabbing read. I guess I'm too dumb to really have a great knowledge about "Transhumanism". I excerpted the disclaimer and what I (myopically I know) read as the scariest part.

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=120

Disclaimer: if this post bothers you, please do spend serious time on coming up with solutions, and feel free to send them to me. My purpose in writing it is obviously to encourage people to spend more of their time and money on potential solutions, instead of sitting around, watching television and waiting for the government to do everything (it won’t). Be forewarned, these type of scenarios are invented regularly by poorly educated fiction authors, and are nothing new, even if you personally haven’t happened to have heard of them. I’ve gotten some angry comments, most of which I delete, and it’s funny that if many of you ran across the same scenario in a Bond film, you would be entertained, but when you see it here, you get all hot under the collar. This is a counterterrorism article, not a pro-terrorism article. To defeat your enemy, you must start thinking like him. Intelligent commentary welcome.

...

3. Nuke New York City, particularly Manhattan.


Here, people are packed so closely that a million casualties from a nuclear attack, even if “only” a 1-megaton nuclear attack, is harrowingly realistic. According to this nuclear weapon effects calculator, the thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns) of a 1-megaton nuclear blast is ~11.7 km. Calculating the area from the radius gives us 430 square kilometers of people with 3rd degree burns. The blast radius would extend well into adjacent boroughs. A million deaths would wipe out 1/300 of the American population. A more impressive 10-megaton explosion would triple the blast radius. The global psychological and economic effects of such an attack are unknown, but would obviously be very severe.

[greenman3610]

1. Unrealistic scenario - it won't be one megaton

because you can't come close to that with
a portable/concealable nuke.

The best book on this is still
John McPhee's
"Curve of Binding Energy" -

conversations with bomb maker Ted Taylor about national
or subnational groups obtaining or building small
nuclear devices big enough to "topple the
world trade center like giant trees".

I always thought that would be the way WTC would go down.
Written 30 years ago, it was prescient then, and our
lawmakers have still not caught up.

[tocqueville]

2. a standard THERMONUCLEAR military nuke is 150-500 Kt

since the American population is about 300 millions, one million deaths leaves 299 millions alive. That's a far better ratio than WWI. A 10 megaton explosion is a stupidity since not even the military have such weapons in use. The biggest test the US ever did was 15 Mt, and never did again.

of couse even a 10 Kt explosion would have tremendous consequences where it hit, but the psychological ones would be the worse.

this article is nothing but fearmongering.