As Warren Buffet has said, it is a question of when, not if.
I haven't read the link yet but even after 9/11 I don't think people have thought through the long term secondary effects; social, civil, military, economic.

Barnabus
 

Let us hope " Never"

But we have not done much to prevent it.
 

After having read the report, I think my concerns still stand. The report discusses some of the immediate problems and addresses the economic impact. However, would such an incident spell the end of the modern city as we know it? Would the people of Manhattan, or even Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx for that matter, really stay where they are after a port was nuked? Same question holds for any other city. What would the U.S. reaction be to an event that most Americans would view as an existential threat?

Barnabus
 

This report is very limited. Part of its purpose appears to be to sell a particular methodology.

It's really not of Kahnian proportions. Kahn was looking at the strategy of nuclear war. The horror of the results was, to him, a side issue, albeit one that prevented clear thinking on the strategy.

This report looks at consequences. It doesn't look at why terrorists might want to nuke a port, how they might acquire a nuke, how they might get it into the port, and what the strategic response might be. All that would be included in a Kahnian study.

The trouble with leaving all those things out (and not even giving a nod to the fact that you're doing it) is that then the comic-book scenarios that regularly appear in the MSM gain credibility.

I agree that we haven't done much to prevent it, but in order to do that, we need a truly Kahnian study, unclassified, for everyone to understand and respond appropriately to.

CKR
 

" agree that we haven't done much to prevent it, but in order to do that, we need a truly Kahnian study, unclassified, for everyone to understand and respond appropriately to."

Hear, hear ! Though I meant "Kahnian" more in the sense of being willing to " think about the unthinkable", your criticisms are apt.

Troubled to read today that should a bomb detonate somewhere, there's no great likelihood that we can reliably follow the isotobic signature " breadcrumbs" back to the source. Is this true ?
 

Where'd you read that, Mark? I'd like to read the whole article before I comment.

CKR
 

Hi Cheryl

source: Dr. Eduard Mark,Department of the Air Force, on H-Diplo this past week.

He was subsequently disputed by another poster but not with the kind of certainty you'd like to have for nuclear explosions. So, I thought I'd ask you.
 

I can't find the comments on H-Diplo.

I wouldn't make those kinds of generalizations (she says, making a generalization without having read the comments). I suspect that the reality is that sometimes signatures can be traced, and sometimes they can't.

Sometimes, tracing the signature isn't that much help. Look at the anthrax investigation, whereas they did find some signatures, those signatures seem not to have helped in finding a person. (I'm saying this from memory; as I posted the other day, Wikipedia has a good article with links to people who are keeping track of the details.)

Tracking signatures to countries would be somewhat easier than to individuals, though.

CKR