CRUDE NUKES. J. at Armchair Generalist highlights this Foreign Policy article about the dangers posed by a crude nuclear device. Long story short, it's not at all hard to construct a crude, cylinder atomic device, as long as you have the material. It can be fairly responded that "Yes, and if I had a Maserati I could go 185", but fissile material is not impossible to get; there's an almost limitless supply of plutonium on the shelf in Russia, and only a very small amount would be needed for a bomb. Back in late October, Bob Galluci of the Walsh School of Foreign Service scared the hell out of gathered Pattersonites by arguing in an after-dinner speech that a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States was a virtual certainty in the next fifteen years. While Lexington, Kentucky isn't a likely target, many of our graduates go on to live and work in Washington, a fact which had me thinking about what kind of memorial we would build to the alumni lost in the attack. Galluci suggested that the four problems that a terrorist group would need to overcome were will, design, material, and delivery system, and argued that the only of these in question was the third. I don't think that the situation is as dire as he suggested (I think that "will" may also be in question, and that the material will be harder to get than he suggested), but his presentation was, nevertheless, sober and quite frightening.
--Robert Farley
