The Race to Save L.A. from Nuclear Terror

I once asked a journalist friend, who had been chained inside the courtroom every single day of the O.J. Simpson trial, the obvious question. "Did he do it?" Or had the LAPD, instead, planted a boatload full of fake "evidence," in an effort to frame the famous defendant?

"How do you know," she replied, "that it wasn't both?"

These days, working as a policy wonk on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament, I am sometimes asked whether the danger of nuclear terror is "real" -- or whether, instead, certain modern-day Machiavellis are manipulating our most nightmarish fears, to promote their own cynical political agendas.

"How do you know," I am inclined to reply, "that it isn't both?"

Nuclear Terror -- Mission Impossible?

During the Cold War, it became commonplace to observe that "mutually assured destruction," or MAD, was surely the most appropriate acronym in human history. But I have always preferred the label given to fun characters like me who study these things, "nuclear use theorists," whom one can hardly resist acronyming as NUTS.

The NUTS today usually identify four broad scenarios that can loosely be called "nuclear terror." (This is the framework adopted, for example, by the excellent 2005 book The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism by Charles D. Ferguson and William C. Potter.)

In one, perpetrators obtain -- through theft, bribery, a paramilitary operation, pick your poison -- an intact nuclear warhead. There are probably more than 25,000 worldwide. Then, they find a way to transport it to a "high-value target" (e.g., a large American city). Then, they find a way to set it off. The sudden and unexpected vaporization of a major American city, without any warning whatsoever, by your everyday garden-variety nuclear warhead, would kill tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, possibly even more than a million. All in the blink of an eye, the snap of a finger, the single beat of a human heart. Many thousands more would die slow and agonizing deaths from radiation poisoning in the weeks that followed -- and all our modern medical marvels will do little even to alleviate their suffering, let alone to save their lives.

It could also plunge the planet into a worldwide depression. It could plunge the U.S. into martial law. It could plunge the nation into military responses -- without evidence any state was behind the dastardly deed -- that could take us from nuclear terror to nuclear war. In which case, the death and devastation would increase by a factor of 10. Or 100. Or more. (Khrushchev famously observed that after a nuclear exchange, "the survivors will envy the dead.")

In another scenario, perpetrators obtain -- through similar methods -- weapons-usable plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU). (The latter is far more likely, since HEU is easier to handle, easier to procure, and easier to design a bomb around.) Then they manage to assemble it into a crude nuclear device, transport it to the target (unless they had actually built it in, oh, a warehouse in Culver City), and set it off. If successfully constructed with a large enough yield, such an act could have identical consequences.

In another scenario, perpetrators attack or sabotage a nuclear power plant, causing not a nuclear explosion but a release of radioactivity. Such an act could kill thousands, and contaminate hundreds of square miles for many years to come.

Finally, perpetrators obtain a bit of radioactive material, assemble a conventional explosive around it, and set it off in a concentrated urban area -- discharging radioactivity in all directions. That's the "dirty bomb" you have heard so much about. While such a bomb could kill hundreds, contaminate several square miles, and impose a widespread psychological shock, its consequences would be nothing like those of an actual nuclear explosion.