Curve III.

This is coolbert:

Curve - - Feasibility!!

And from the book by John McPhee: "Curve of Binding Energy". [as written in 1973/1974]

As to the feasibility, the possibility of some terrorist group or even the crack-pot but very talented and "inspired" amateur-and-alone individual making an atomic bomb in the basement or garage of his home we have from a variety of sources in the nuclear industry the opinions that IT COULD NOT BE DONE OR AT LEAST NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE:

"No one could just steal material and make a nuclear bomb."


"It is not possible."


"You would need your own Manhattan Project."


"It would take sophisticated, scientifically literate gangsterism to cope with it,"


"I don't think it's like to be a threat to world peace."


"It's 'Mission : Impossible'"


"I don't' see a radical group coming up to this plant and blazing away with machine guns. [stealing fissionable material]"


"A self-respecting ambitious terrorist has better things to do than to take nuclear material,"


"Biological and chemical agents and less complex and more available,"


"A homemade nuclear bomb would be a six-by-six foot monster. it would take cranes to life it. You're not going to get a sophisticated little thing that fits into a desk drawer."


"It requires a plot . . . To get all the people without the plot leaking seems all but impossible. A dozen, maybe two dozen would be needed - - all highly trained individual. ONE [my emphasis] man could not do it. The scenario of the home bomb-maker is overplayed. That piece has been highly over-played. Suppose you have a set of plans for a gasoline engine. How many people do you know who could make one?"


Ted Taylor and Carson Mark- - however, of the opinion in interview and conversation with John McPhee that an atomic device, a bomb, COULD  be fabricated and assembled even by the crack-pot but talented "lone wolf" amateur. NOT to even mention the terrorist group having at their beck and call experts with ability and knowledge. The field expedient bomb put together "McGyver style" was not only do-able but more likely so than not, the effort not easy but NOT so difficult as imagined!!

"Lay off any sophistication altogether. Try to see what the simpleminded way to make something that could knock over the World Trade Center." - - T. Taylor.

"Everybody has it in mind that it would be impossible to do. They say you would need your own Manhattan Project. They speak of the scale of the ingenuity, of the required genius; they think of it as a tremendous operation. But the context has changed. It would not be impossible now. . . . It is not beyond reach. It is much within reach. There's a great difference between 1943 and now." - - Carson Mark.

[Carson Mark for decades the director of the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos Laboratories. If anyone other than Ted Taylor would understand the feasibility of the expedient atomic bomb, it would be this man!]

Remember - - "Curve" was written nearly forty years ago now. So much has changed. The "context" as spoken of by J. Carson Mark and the entire terrorist mentality that such weapons [WMD] are not only NOT out of reach but are very desirable!

The key here is a LACK of sophistication? Don't try to design and build a bomb as would a physicist at Los Alamos. Field expedient weaponry is just that, expedient, and lacks the "elegance" that sophistication calls for.

The "elegant" solution is neither needed nor is desirable. Rather the opposite is more likely to "work"?

coolbert.