The Gaming Den

Draco_Argentum wrote:container ships work nearly as well and are unstoppable.

What? That's not even close to making sense for multiple reasons.


1. If I take that literally, you think that no weapons exist that can destroy container ships. Since that would be stupid i presume you mean smuggling them in.
2. Those things do get checked, sometimes even out at sea.
3. Container ships can only reach coastal areas anyway.

The missile defense things didn't make sense because they can't currently be used against half the nuclear weapons available, anyhow.

Well, no, but we have interceptors and SAMs that can potentially take down most bombers, and we've got attack subs to deal with sub-launched nukes. No bomb large enough to seriously damage things more than a mile from the blast can conceivably be delivered to a non-coastal city any other way except missiles, though they admittedly don't do that very well yet and probably won't beat lasers at it ever.

And the most useful nuclear carrier is the Airbus or Boeing double-decker airliner which flies across the world and lands in every major city in the industrialized world carrying passengers and cargo.

Uh, no. you see, nukes are big. There is simply no way any large bomb can be hidden on a passenger plane, and no way to actually sneak it on even if no one checks the cargo bay (Not that cargo bays are often checked).

Suitcase nukes, which will be picked up by anything that picks up conventional explosives, apparently have a yield of 1 kiloton, which is much more powerful than any conventional explosive but much less powerful than most nukes. Also, they're kinda hard to make, but that's true of all nukes.

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The thing is, nukes are powerful for their size, but that doesn't mean they are small, and it most certainly doesn't mean their yields are unconnected to their size. So a smuggled nuke isn't even close to as powerful as most launched nukes.

Dirty bombs are a different story, but they also only scatter a bunch of radioactive material that isn't even always vaporized, meaning that a lead-lined vacuum cleaner can seriously make the problem mostly disappear.

No, not really.

Bombers don't carry bombs anymore, they carry cruise missiles. They don't have to actually go over enemy territory to launch them, either.

Less than 2% of incoming containers are checked. And of those, the majority are only checked to see if their factory seals are still intact. Most of the checking occurs at ports like LA, Miami, and New York. A goodly portion of the checking occurs in Kansas, Denver, Atlanta, and Phoenix. So yes, a container could contain a bomb as well. But it would be sitting live for weeks before it got where it meant to go.

Dirty bombs are not so easy to clean up after - you'd have to clean everything touched by it as well, and many radioactive isotopes are actually elements (or replacements for) elements we use on a daily basis, which means they can be absorbed and kept by our bodies indefinitely.

A double-decker aircraft actually ships things larger than the largest nuclear device ever created. These aircraft are actually finally larger than such record breakers as the Spruce Goose. Don't be distracted that they're passenger aircraft. They carry cars and other bulky consumer goods on a regular basis - which is the mass of a conventional nuclear weapon.

-Crissa

1. See, fighters can kill things over places other than their territory.
2. Okay, it is true that it's possible to sneak a bomb in on one of those. Still can't use it on anything except the coast, though.
3. Many radioactive isotopes also have short half-lives, and those that don't aren't incredibly dangerous most of the time. Plus, it's not like the scattering effect is very great, so it'll only be absorbed by people in the very immediate vicinity and emergency workers who show up before they figure out it's a dirty bomb. Even then most long-lived isotopes aren't terribly dangerous. Furthermore, the methods of cleaning things are well known, as is the method of putting it into a radioactive waste dump.
4. Doesn't mean you can hide a bomb on board or likely even sneak it on. An elephant is the mass of a car and i'm pretty sure you can tell the difference at a glance. That's even leaving aside any explosives detectors it might or might not have to go through.

Also, to be nitpicky the largest nuclear device ever created has over a third of the mass of an abrams tank, which is more than most cars when you put ten of them together.

If any country, not just the US, got nuclear bombed and we couldn't find out who it was, every country out there would do its damnedest to find out who did it and the people who did do it would be in some deep shit.

I would not want to be the head of any country where terrorists that nuked a city came from. I would certainly not hinder any attempt right to find the people responsible; even if I did everything I could to distance myself from the perpetrators and help the investigation, it would still probably end up with me dead--either from an assassin or torn to pieces by my own countrymen in the streets for being on watch during this time.

Actually committing the act of nuclear terrorism would completely destroy whatever cause that I was fighting for and everyone unlucky enough to share a country as me. That's why you stick to shit like crashing airplanes into buildings and blowing up embassies; you do not actually want to reach a point where the power you're trying to convince is actually willing to slit its own wrists to hurt you. And you certainly don't want to reach the point where ever other country on the planet will want you ground to pieces.

name_here wrote:Okay, it is true that it's possible to sneak a bomb in on one of those. Still can't use it on anything except the coast, though.

You act like this is a serious limitation. Do you know what's on the coasts? Washington, D.C.; New York; Los Angeles. So many of our political, economic, and cultural centers are on the coasts that they make inviting targets. Okay, you're not going to take over the whole country with a nuclear bomb in a coastal city; but if your goal is to take out large numbers of Americans and create chaos, it's totally possible.

name_here wrote:1. See, fighters can kill things over places other than their territory.

Strange, I seem to recall they couldn't even scramble fighters in time to even see any of the 9/11 planes crash.

name_here wrote:2. Okay, it is true that it's possible to sneak a bomb in on one of those. Still can't use it on anything except the coast, though.

Kansas is a coast now?

name_here wrote:3. Many radioactive isotopes also have short half-lives, and those that don't aren't incredibly dangerous...

You're just making shit up now. Toss some cesium in the air, yeah, not so dangerous 'cept to the locals, and screws up any detectors for the next few years. But radium (the least deadly) still kills people every year. Take some longer-lived stuff like uranium isotopes and derivatives and people will have, on average, lost half their life expectancies. Is that better or worse than just killing a few dozen people now? It's terrorism, not economic suppression.

name_here wrote:... be nitpicky the largest nuclear device ever created has over a third of the mass of an abrams tank, which is more than most cars when you put ten of them together.

I know that.

And those aircraft can carry abrams tanks.

And those containers are not scanned. No one scans the equipment, just luggage and people. Not in the US. And if you owned the aircraft, you could put the largest bomb known on board, and fly it around as a cargo plane. Yes, it wouldn't work after the first one. But you only need it to work on a single day.

-Crissa

The thing is you don't even need to get the thing through security check points. Put it on a luxury yacht of the type men rich saudi sheiks own (Or any run of the mill tub that doesn't recieve more than rudimentary checks) and drive in the the local marina in NY or Miami or LA. Then Kablooey. Don't even need to make it to the pier to do catastrophic damage.

name_here wrote:The thing is, nukes are powerful for their size, but that doesn't mean they are small, and it most certainly doesn't mean their yields are unconnected to their size. So a smuggled nuke isn't even close to as powerful as most launched nukes.

This is why I went with a container ship. The hard part of making a crude fission weapon is making it small enough to be portable while still being efficient. Put it on a container ship and it doesn't matter if its the size of several shipping containers.

kangaroo joins australian family in bed for an evening of bouncy
Malaysian uses bomb as anchor for fishing boat

Draco_Argentum wrote:

name_here wrote:The thing is, nukes are powerful for their size, but that doesn't mean they are small, and it most certainly doesn't mean their yields are unconnected to their size. So a smuggled nuke isn't even close to as powerful as most launched nukes.

This is why I went with a container ship. The hard part of making a crude fission weapon is making it small enough to be portable while still being efficient. Put it on a container ship and it doesn't matter if its the size of several shipping containers.

No, no, the hard part is making it go mushroomy instead of turning into a dirty bomb.

Right, efficient use of fissile material. Its easier when you don't have the space/weight constraints required for something to be air dropped or stuck on the end of a missile.

Draco_Argentum wrote:Right, efficient use of fissile material. Its easier when you don't have the space/weight constraints required for something to be air dropped or stuck on the end of a missile.

Not really. It's genuinely hard to make a fission weapon, because it requires compressing fissle material until it starts a chain-reaction. That is usually done by detonating a sphere of conventional explosives around it at percisely the same time, which isn't exactly easy. If that phase gets screwed up even a little the nuke pretty much fails to explode. It's hard to make them small, but past a certain point making it bigger doesn't make it easier.

I suppose that North Korea's failure should either be an indicator of how difficult it is, or that they wanted to have warheads rather than bombs, or how crappy their bomb program was.

ckafrica wrote:kangaroo joins australian family in bed for an evening of bouncy

I live in the city were this happened: He was being interviewed on the radio and said "At first I thought it was a ninja!" in a hilarious Swedish accent. I laughed so hard I nearly crashed.

Michael Steele has come out as pro-abortion. I'm not calling it pro-choice, I hate having to fucking mince words and simper behind labels for a beneficial medical procedure. It's pro-abortion.

Anyway, nice knowing you, Mr. Steele. Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted. Bring on the crazy racist guy.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Michael Steele has come out as pro-abortion.

Goddammit. Nice knowing you, Mr. Steele. Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted. Bring on the crazy racist guy.

Come on now. We all know that Michael Steele was made the head of the G.O.P. to 1) pander to non-conservative voters that voted for Obama and 2) to take the fall when the Republicans inevitably lose their mid-term elections. He didn't have a snowball's chance of hell of sticking around, much less doing anything.

It's true. The Republican Party won their last couple of elections through cheating, which means that the number one thing that they have to do to get power is not to "get votes" but rather to craft a narrative that will be acceptable to enough people that the nation doesn't revolt. After that the real trial begins - trying to subborn the electoral process in enough swing states to give them the edge. The narrative they have been going for lately is that there is virtually inexhaustible supply of "conservative base" voters who will turn out in limitless numbers if the GOP panders to conservative crazies enough.

So the idea is that while your election stealing apparatus is in disarray, you be less conservative so that your narrative gains plausibility.

-Username17

name_here wrote:Not really. It's genuinely hard to make a fission weapon, because it requires compressing fissle material until it starts a chain-reaction. That is usually done by detonating a sphere of conventional explosives around it at percisely the same time, which isn't exactly easy.

You forgot about gun type bombs. Those are scarily easy to make since you only need a single conventional explosive, no need to coordinate a whole bunch with near perfect precision.

So the idea is that while your election stealing apparatus is in disarray, you be less conservative so that your narrative gains plausibility.

So how the hell does that work if your whipping boy gets humiliated in front of everyone and forced to kiss up to Rush Limbaugh and they're forced out of the chair by extremists and replaced by a crazy racist guy?

Also, Frank, I think you're misreading the tactics of the Republican Party. The true believers in the GOP believe that the reason why they lost is because they're not conservative enough. John McCain got slurred for a period of time because his party thinks that he pandered too much to the middle. Mitch McConnell has flat-out said that they're going to obstruct and stick to conservative values come hell or high water.

While anyone should have Steele replaced as RNC chairman because he's woefully off-message, can't fundraise worth a shit, and a gaffe machine, the reason why he's hated so much right now is because he's (correctly) stating that the GOP needs a new message and that he's breaking with the base on some issues. The abortion thing is going to be the nail in the coffin.

How about news from Japan? There's a barrel of laughs involved, terrible as some things can be:

*Some of these have sort-of-NSFW pictures attached, but nothing explicit*

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/02/1 ... nt-resist/

I laughed.

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2008/06/0 ... r-teacher/

I cried.

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2008/09/1 ... %E2%80%9D/

I bothed.

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/03/1 ... -festival/

I laughed again.

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/03/1 ... ompulsory/

This one is kind of cool.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Also, Frank, I think you're misreading the tactics of the Republican Party. The true believers in the GOP believe that the reason why they lost is because they're not conservative enough. John McCain got slurred for a period of time because his party thinks that he pandered too much to the middle. Mitch McConnell has flat-out said that they're going to obstruct and stick to conservative values come hell or high water.

Einstein summed up this situation pretty well:

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

The G.O.P. lost because they have degenerated into a bunch of religious, fiscally bankrupt warmongering lunatics. If they decide to "amp up" the lunacy, they will lose even more political strength and will ultimately go the way of the Whigs and the Tories. This is a good thing.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:While anyone should have Steele replaced as RNC chairman because he's woefully off-message, can't fundraise worth a shit, and a gaffe machine, the reason why he's hated so much right now is because he's (correctly) stating that the GOP needs a new message and that he's breaking with the base on some issues. The abortion thing is going to be the nail in the coffin.

Here's the thought process that was involved in making Steele the G.O.P. Chairman: Michael Steele is black, non-Republicans seem to like black people - maybe we can pick up a few votes while shielding some rich, white people from the potential fallout if we lose the mid-term elections? They did the same thing with Colin Powell - they brought him into the Bush Cabinet to gain votes, and then they sacrificed his integrity in a vain attempt to fool the rest of the world that invading a country that had nothing to do with perpetuating 9/11 was in fact a pretty nifty idea.

It's like when John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be on his ticket. The ONLY reason he picked her as a V.P. candidate is because she had a vagina, and the G.O.P. thought that women will blindly vote for other women without question. He didn't stop to think that maybe Sarah Palin's wingnut tendancies would alienate the Clinton voters that he was trying to pick up, nor did he understand that the rift between the Clinton and Obama camps of the Democratic Party wasn't really that big of a deal, nor did he realize that Hillary Clinton would rather rot in hell then see ANY other woman obtain a political title with the word "President" before she does.

As it stands right now, the Republican leadership doesn't possess enough empathy to either understand or address the needs of the voters that they so desperately need to regain power.

A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censor

This is awesome from a fuck you censorship point of view and hilarious because of the song in question.