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Yes. Why not? They’re small enough.
Ports and the like do have radiation sensors to try and combat any such thing. I don’t know how effective or widespread they are exactly, though, and you’d think if you have a nuke just crossing in somewhere else wouldn’t be hard.
Yes, but at this point it would be cheaper and quicker to have spacex fly to orbit, capture a 5 ton rock and drop it on a city.
There’s a reason Iran has been ‘weeks’ from making a bomb for decades now.
I’ll add to what other people are saying with a caveat.
Detonating a Nuke at ground level significantly reduces it’s effectiveness and range. It’s still going to be bad, but it won’t be city levelling bad. A couple of miles at best for the worst explosion/fire damage, even if it’s stronger than Fat Man.
There’s a reason why the two bombs dropped on Japan were detonated at 500-600 meters(1600-1900 feet) above the ground.
Doesn’t the ground just absorb about half of the energy? (And become nasty fallout)
Fat Man was tiny by later standards. The B41, which was actually deployed, was three orders of magnitude more powerful. Sizes have come down again since delivery got really accurate, but the workhorse B61 can be dialed to somewhere from 10 to 20 times Fat Man’s yield.
It absorbs a lot, and it channels a lot of the blast up.
Yes, but also its not easy to smuggle a large bomb either.
Considering that you only need the warhead: absolutely.
Easily. That is one reason why ports and other national entry points have systems in place to detect that. Of course there is nothing to stop a bad actor from reaching the border or coast with a weapon and setting it off.
Yup, as a foreign national, I had to jump through a myriad of hoops to get a TWIC which enables me to enter and exit US ports freely without someone escorting me around. Fun fact: A TWIC allows even foreigners to register as a known traveler and TSA pre-screening, allowing me to skip a lot of the hassle when flying in the US.
Hell, getting a TWIC was the only reason why I bothered with getting an actual US work visa. I now hold B1, B2, C1/D, and it was all for the TWIC. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be fine just going on a tourist visa.
I am curious now on how much of it is about being worried about nuclear bomb, and how much is about people either knowingly importing illegally radioactive materials or worker forgetting that the big orange box is actually radioactive materials (believe me, it’s way more common than it seems, especially with low activity parts)
A little from column A, and a little from column B, I would imagine.
Yes, they even put nukes in backpacks
That was Einstein’s probosal to fdr in 1938. nobody was interested. When the English checked the numbers they realized it was airplane size and encouraged the us to build on. Airplane bomb bays are small, a row boat could haul little boy around ( though it is likely to capsize if the seas are not perfect calm)
Given that they got it down to a bazooka, yeah.
No. If it was that easy, a significant City would’ve been nuked by terrorists by then.
I mean, getting a bomb in the first place is hard as hell. Al Qaeda literally just got scammed until they gave up. It’s a major project for largish states, even.
This is something that USA has discussed and there may be radiation sensors installed in and around major cities to prevent this.
i assume for a truck you can shield the radiation with lead walls, or insulating materials.
Fat Man and Little Boy would fit in a small Uhaul… but both could fit in a big one together.
The test nukes were the size of one of those county fair huge pumpkins
On May 25, 1953 the Grable test under Operation Upshot Knothole fired the W9 nuclear artillery shell over 6 miles downrange at Frenchman’s Flat detonating at 15 kilotons. The artillery shell weighed roughly 803 lbs. This was 1950’s technology that could still fit in the back of a pickup truck and level a city. I’m sure they’re a lot lighter and a lot more powerful today. So, yes. If we could do it in '53 we could definitely do it today, but with orders of magnitude more destructive force and likely lighter weight.
Edit: I did some more digging. For instance, the W88 warhead aboard MIRV’s on nuclear subs today have an explosive force of 475 kilotons with a mean average weight of 400 lbs for comparison. Though, most of that weight is probably shielding for reentry, so you could probably cut it back significantly if you’re just putting it in a car trunk.
Delivered? Unlikely.
Detonated? Absolutely.
