Start a discussion about either or both of two topics — victim disarmament (“gun control”) or anarchy — and invariably, sooner or later, you’re going to get an earful about private nukes.
“We must have some restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms — after all, we can’t have every Joe Sixpack walking down the street with a hydrogen bomb strapped to his back.”
“If we get rid of governments, what happens to all those nukes they have lying around? What if al Qaeda gets them?”
These two lines of argument are intended to shut down the respective discussions, and they’re often successfully deployed to that purpose. But just this once, let’s have a look at the facts instead of throwing up our hands in horror and conceding the validity of.
The first fact to take into consideration is that nuclear weapons (or even primitive atomic fission devices) are incredibly expensive and difficult to develop and build. So expensive, in fact, that it generally takes a huge organization with a coercive monopoly on the incomes of lots and lots of people — in other words, a government — to build one.
The US government spent about $23.6 billion (in 2008 dollars) on the Manhattan Project, which yielded three fission weapons: One detonated as a test, the other two dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Altogether the US government has probably spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 trillion (once again in 2008 dollars) — or, to put it a different way, more than half its “national debt” — on nuclear weapons development, testing, maintenance and production. Even relatively well-funded governments of relatively populous nations — that of Iran, for example — haven’t figured out a way to make the production of nukes cheap or easy.
The second fact to keep in mind is that nukes really aren’t really good for very much. Or, rather, they’re not good for much here on Planet Earth. Elsewhere they may be good for quite a few things, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Here on Earth, the only thing they’re useful for is extortion or deterrence of same, and then only in the context of huge populations whom small groups of individuals — in other words, governments — claim the authority to negotiate on behalf of.
Those two facts taken together inevitably lead us to two conclusions:
First, that no matter how badly someone might want a private nuke, there aren’t more than a handful of people on Earth who could afford one.
Second, that among that handful of people on Earth who might be able to afford a private nuke — if they liquidated all their assets and devoted those assets exclusively to the purchase of one — it’s likely that not a single one of them would see any reason to buy/build one for terrestrial use.
The threat of “private nukes” is non-existent, and would be so even in the absence of laws forbidding them. Anyone who pulls out the “private nukes” argument in favor of “gun control” — or the continued existence of the state — is, by doing so, confessing that they’re all out of real arguments and grasping at straws.
But let’s come back around to my note that there’s a potential use for “private nukes” off-planet — and that hanging threat of nukes just “lying around” in the absence of government. These two topics were made from each other.
Off-planet, nukes could be useful. For example, they could be used to propel a Project Orion type spacecraft. Or they could be used to terraform Mars — detonated over its polar caps to melt them and release their water and carbon dioxide, thickening the atmosphere, etc.
On-planet, nukes are a threat because they are, in fact, just “lying around,” waiting to either be unleashed on all of us in war, or to be stolen and used by al Qaeda or some other nefarious group. For either outcome, we can thank government, if we live through the experience. The existing nuclear threat isn’t the threat of “private nukes.” It’s the threat of stolen “public nukes.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t believe in rewarding knotheads who bring threats like this by leaving them in charge. Government should go, and so should its nukes … preferably at a deep discount to private space exploration/exploitation firms which promise to get them the hell off of our home planet and put them to some useful purpose elsewhere.
Purchasing is only a fraction of the cost of nuclear armaments. Storage, maintenance, target selection, and delivery could easily dwarf the cost of initial purchase from a cash-strapped seller.
Pyramids and nukes. Two great tastes that don't exist without slavery.
"The first fact to take into consideration is that nuclear weapons (or even primitive atomic fission devices) are incredibly expensive and difficult to develop and build. So expensive, in fact, that it generally takes a huge organization with a coercive monopoly on the incomes of lots and lots of people — in other words, a government — to build one."
doesn't this line of reasoning (one that i 100% agree with) imply that private space firms would be virtually impossible to build? furthermore, doesn't this also imply that much of modern technology, in fact much of industrialization would cease along with nuclear development?
chomsky and others point out that much of modern technology and its infrastructure were built only by the mostly state-subsidized nasa/pentagon system, with the patents given almost freely to private corporations.
one example:
http://jessehirsh.com/chomsky-technology-and-the-…
i say good riddance to all the earth destroying technologies, not only to public/private nukes.
through the centuries, production itself, at its core, has mostly been about pyramids anyway.
brock,
Yes, you're absolutely correct. Even if you have a functioning nuke, there's a lot of other stuff you have to do to a) keep it viable and b) make it useful for any particular purpose.
xveganx,
You write:
"doesn’t this line of reasoning (one that i 100% agree with) imply that private space firms would be virtually impossible to build? furthermore, doesn’t this also imply that much of modern technology, in fact much of industrialization would cease along with nuclear development?"
I don't think it necessarily implies that private space firms would be virtually impossible to build. Private space firms operating on a "Project Orion" (nuclear detonation/push-plate propulsion) would have to be VERY heavily capitalized, though.
Absent government subsidies, almost all technological and industrial development would likely at the very least have taken different directions. I doubt that it would "cease," though, and I suspect that we'd actually see more innovation in an environment where government contracts don't crown "winners" and give them artificial competitive advantage and the ability to exclude competitors by setting high barriers to entry into the market.
We might see less "growth," or we might not. What "growth" we did see would probably be a function of more market entities instead of just more capital going to a selected/subsidized few such entities. Personally, I don't consider "growth" as such either a good or bad thing. I'd just to see it occur naturally rather than being engineered through government policy.
Sorry Thomas, but I come down very heavily on the other end. I think the issue of private nukes is VERY relevant, VERY threatening… and the best argument for Anarchism there is today.
"Nukes" in specific are a red herring, a stand-in for WMD in general. And the argument made above doesn't apply to WMD in the present. And it damn well doesn't apply to WMD in the future.
Right now I can build an EMP capable of knocking out a city for a few thousand dollars. While it's true that certain avenues of infrastructural development have been shaped by the military industrial complex, and it's true that full scale explodey-nukes are 1) detectable 2) incredibly hard to build 3) incredibly hard to acquire the parts for. This is not relevant to the broader point…. Read More
Technology and technological innovation — in any direction — expands our capacity to engage with the world. And consequently not only is its destructive scale expanded, as all military strategists know: Technology Favors The Attacker. Every aspect of technology in our lives provides us with such capacities. Today it's commercial planes into skyscrapers. Tomorrow it's using your houses' genetic resequencer to write a xenocidal virus. Except, oh wait, such resequencers already went on the market last year. They're being used by hackers and entrepreneurs in their basements in Seattle.
You don't get to brag about the decentralized personal fabrication possibilities of nanotechnology without eating the unintended consequences.
The issue is thus: We are rapidly moving towards a world in which either every human being has their finger on an apocalyptic veto button, or a world in which government becomes so strong, so panoptic, so preemptive, that it limits our every move and ultimately, past a certain level of technological development, has to outlaw ingenuity and exploration wholesale.
It is my belief that the infinite-totalitarian option would be no different from the megadeath it would purport to prevent. It would be the extinction of consciousness under a different name. We cannot stop science, cannot stop the forward creep of our capacity to physically alter the world, without extinguishing the human spirit itself.
Thus we must learn to live with essentially private nukes (if only so small and limited!). We must build a politics — a society — capable of handling such a reality. Hmm… now if only there were an entire movement of people with centuries of experience developing and evangelizing a system of Consensus and Autonomy wherein it is just assumed that everyone ultimately has the capacity to veto. Where — unlike in every other system — problems are never solved by attempting to group up and beat people — no matter how small of a minority, no matter what they have signed or done before — into submission.
If only. Because then they'd be our species' only damn hope.
First, let's dispense with this completely mistaken idea that it is difficult and expensive to make nuclear weapons. There was a fact article published in Analog magazine many years ago with a title like "How to make an atomic bomb and wake up the neighborhood."
Uranium oxide is about $45 a pound. Check uxc.com for a current price. Lots of handy info there about chemicals and other costs.
Suppose you needed a thousand pounds of uranium oxide for an effective weapon? People spend more on a used aircraft. Or an armored pickup truck with a .50 cal machine gun in the bed. Each of which has obvious potential as a weapon.
A critical mass of uranium or plutonium, a pipe, and a three story brownstone building were called for in the aforementioned article in Analog. The pipe has to be the diameter of your half-critical mass hemisphere, maybe ten or twelve inches. It passes from the top story to the basement. The other hemisphere is down there. Gravity does the rest.
Today one could add a cell phone detonated mechanism to release the upper hemisphere. No, it would not be an optimised weapon. Yes, it would provide an explosion with dispersion of radioactive material. Which could be enhanced with additional radioactive dust stockpiled in the basement.
Remember, the USA military designed and built three weapons, including the production of plutonium, using technology from 65 years ago. The technical difficulties were substantial then, but aren't, now. Heavy water has been made by electrolysis for almost eighty years. Electrolysis is not complex technology.
Depending on how long the people involved want to live, making plutonium out of uranium and a neutron moderator like heavy water can also be undertaken without much cost or technical accomplishment. The tricky part is shielding, if you want to survive the experience.
There are many good books on this topic, including a nifty little yellow and black cover book about how South Africa probably did the job. I'm reminded of the Motorhome Diaries RV whenever I see it.
Second, let's take a look at that private space firms bit. It turns out that the technology for advanced, guided rockets is also very old. Robert Goddard was doing impressive stuff out of his garage shortly after WW One. Werner von Braun lifted almost all of Goddard's patents in building the V2 rockets he used to slaughter civilians in England and Belgium.
Something is preventing private space firms from providing us with destination resorts in orbit, and I don't think incompetence is sufficient to explain it. Look at Chirinjeev Kathuria, John Carmack, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Walt Anderson, not to mention Bigelow, Benson, Shuttleworth, Garriott, etc., and tell me there isn't a great deal of competence available. The technical challenges of putting a man in space were conquered in the early 1960s.
Yet there are no routine supersonic passenger aircraft operating today. There are no trips to orbit, or even to suborbital weightlessness, no destination resorts on the Moon. What's more, there is strong evidence that general aviation aircraft are being discouraged and commercial airlines are being driven out of business. The powers that be don't want us to fly, ever, at all. Flight is for the power elite.
Neither the complexity and difficulty and expense of nukes nor those attending on private space firms are sufficient to explain why there are none of either to speak of. Nothing about the tens of billions of dollars available to the list of men I can name off the top of my head who are dedicated space enthusiasts (and sometimes space travelers) is too little money to get the job done. But neither job is being done.
It appears to be policy, and poorly conceived policy, at that.
rechelon's comment "outlaw ingenuity and exploration wholesale" reminds me a great deal of my frequent lament about Antarctica, Outer Space, and Sea treaties passed in 1957, 1967, and 1982, respectively. Cutting off exploration and new frontiers appears to have been done, deliberately.
Ingenuity will be next.
Rechelon, you are so right. We are the last best hope for peace/survival. Trying to solve the problem and keep the State is impossible. Kudos.
If you outlaw ingenuity however only outlaws will have ingenuity, and they'll be the kind of outlaws that make corrupt tax-collectors long for the good old days of Robin Hood.
"Suppose you needed a thousand pounds of uranium oxide for an effective weapon?"
I guess that depends on what you mean by "effective weapon." If I dumped a thousand pounds of uranium oxide on your head, it would probably kill you. If I build a cage out of it and made you live there, you might eventually die of cancer.
Making a nuke, on the other hand, is a little more complicated.
A ton of uranium oxide contains about 14 pounds (0.7%) of U-235 . You're going to need at least 45 pounds of uranium at 80% U-235 for a bargain-basement gun-type fission weapon a la "Little Boy." Call it 4,000 pounds of the raw oxide.
You might be able to get a mass that's capable of achieving a fission reaction at as little as 20% enrichment. Or it might just fizzle.
To do any enrichment, though, you're going to need a shitload of expensive equipment and a whole lot of kilowatt hours of power. You're going to have to convert that oxide into uranium hexafluoride gas. Then you're going to have to centrifuge that gas or run it through diffusion membranes to separate the U-235 out.
If you can only afford one centrifuge or gas diffusion unit, I guess you could go for it and hope that your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren hang tight on the project until it produces enough enriched uranium to build a bomb with. If you want to do it in your lifetime, though, you're going to need a bunch of units running simultaneously and they're going to dim all the lights in xxxxxxxx while they run.
The whole concept of "private" nukes escapes my reason, logic and common sense. I can't say this for everyone as surely there is someone out there that would manage to prove me wrong, but the major reason I have for a firearm is to protect myself. If we had a voluntary society the thought of having a private nuke would never cross my mind. Or most likely the mind of MOST people. What would be the use? What purpose would it serve? How would it make anyone have a better life?
So four thousand pounds at $45 is $180K. Still within reach of a huge number of people.
You make the false and rather lame assertion that the cheapest approach is this enriched uranium design. You don't explain why you can't moderate natural uranium with heavy water to make plutonium. I guess because you haven't thought that one through.
I really don't understand why the Little Boy design is your favorite. It was not the design for the Trinity device. It wasn't the design for Fat Man. So what makes you think it is simplest or cheapest?
You don't even need plutonium for the very simplest type of radiation weapon. Use ordinary explosives to distribute ordinary radioactive materials. Say, hospital waste radioactives – they use some pretty short half life stuff for some of their cancer burning gizmos.
Where is this xxxxxxxx place?
Anyway, when you get done publishing all kinds of information about your friends, we know where the fluoride from that uranium hexafluoride gas can go. Straight into your city's water supply. They'll be happy to buy it so they can give children neurological disorders. Whee.
You have a firearm to protect yourself. So fucking what? People with firearms get burned out of their homes and churches, and sometimes you read about it.
Pigs will kick in your door day or night without giving a second thought to your firearm. They have bulletproof vests with those nifty ceramic insert panels for vital areas. You have, what? A vest? Maybe?
You are faced with tyranny, and you have a gun. Great. And…ammo? Sight? Night vision gear? Air support? A buddy with a radio? Or were you going to use your cell phone when they drop a net around your home and crash the nearest cell towers? Sudden trouble with your wifi connection?
Here's a use for a nuke. Building a canal, or excavating a mine. Lots of applications. Check the literature from about 1950-55.
Maybe you just want a nuke because you like complex technology. Or, as Tom Knapp sneers, because you want to use Project Orion to get off the ground. You know, when the government never lets people fly in space again.
The article, by the way, is "Be the First to Build a Nuclear Bomb in Your Basement and Wake Up the Entire Neighborhood." It gave very explicit instructions on how to cheaply build everything you need to make a 20 kiloton nuke. Try it, you'll like it.
Oh, hey, here it is: http://www.parksontheair.org/wp/wp-content/upload…
Which says you can get by with 12 pounds U235. Gee. But you know everything. Go, get published.
"You make the false and rather lame assertion that the cheapest approach is this enriched uranium design. You don’t explain why you can’t moderate natural uranium with heavy water to make plutonium. I guess because you haven’t thought that one through."
Not because I haven't thought it through, so much as because I haven't tried to compare the cost of cascades of gas centrifuges or diffusion equipment and the power required for enriching uranium to the cost of cascades of stills or electrolysis chambers, or of towers and hydrogen sulfide gas and water (340,000 tons of H2O per ton of D20) and power to make plutonium.
"I really don’t understand why the Little Boy design is your favorite. It was not the design for the Trinity device. It wasn’t the design for Fat Man. So what makes you think it is simplest or cheapest?"
Trinity and Fat Man were implosion-type bombs. If the implosion isn't perfectly symmetric, you get a nice fizzle. The gun design is more forgiving of imperfection.
"You don’t even need plutonium for the very simplest type of radiation weapon. Use ordinary explosives to distribute ordinary radioactive materials. Say, hospital waste radioactives – they use some pretty short half life stuff for some of their cancer burning gizmos."
Yes, a "dirty bomb" would be fairly cheap. But it wouldn't be a nuke.
Sorry for the privacy intrusion. It was inadvertent. I hadn't the slightest idea that the general area of the US in which you've lived at one or more points in time was some kind of secret. I suppose someone might try to figure out whether the xxxxxxxx I referred to was, indeed, xxxxxxxx — or… But I doubt it.
unfortunately for planetaryjim, the article he linked to was actually a sarcastic rebuttal of the "A-Bomb Kid" media sensationalism at the time. It hardly makes his case; in fact, it actually undermines his case. The point being that knowledge of how to design a modest fission weapon prototype, which is more or less in the public domain for those curious enough, is not sufficient to actually build a working prototype. And that university physics students, or even readers of that article, can rest easy; they are not going to be kidnapped by terrorists. To me, that point being made in that old late 70's article was obvious…
No, it doesn't undermine my case, it says very clearly that the gravity acceleration gun (with a slightly taller building) works fine for holding a critical mass together long enough to get the job done. Moreover, it very clearly illustrates how easy it is to think through the issues of making, e.g., plutonium. A granite mountain or a lead mine does a fine job of removing the risk of aircraft flying overhead or satellites detecting the activity.
The cost of getting yellow cake uranium out of the ground in, say, Wyoming or one of the many other places where one can find uranium in the ground (e.g., those hills north and a bit West of Mogadishu) for a private nuclear weapons project is also trivial compared to the cost of uranium oxide. But, nobody wants to do very much thinking, nor admit to themselves that for far less than a quarter million dollars a great deal of uranium and plutonium can be obtained and worked with. Not to mention the obvious fact of the secondary market for Kazakhstan based MIRV warheads.
Tom, I think you know better. You know that people are constantly being spied upon by your government, attacked, investigated, audited, arrested for non-violent non-crimes. You just don't give a shit. You don't care about anyone's privacy or safety, and you blab whatever comes out of your head to whatever blog or site you want to blab on.
My position in this matter is that you have endangered my life by casually mentioning something that you didn't need to talk about. So, fuck you. Fuck you and fuck the center for a stateless society and fuck all this chatter about how wicked cool you are because you can condescend and patronise about what other people think.
I'd like you fat fucks to delete my account and never contact me again for any reason.
It don't even need to go boom to cause millions of cancers. Just get some radioactive crap, some thermite and vaporize it, kinda like FUKUSHIMA is doing to all of us right now. Breathe deeply folks!
Build a canal or use it for mining? Where these people get this moon touched crazy ideas? This type of activity requires controled and limited area explosions, a battery of well timed explosions to create a blast wave. And then work to remove the debris. Common, mining with nuke are an argument made in Alongside Night, when the author have little idea whatsoever of the usefullness of nukes in a libertarian society, and yet let people know it wold be availiable to them. I think it wold be useful in destroying an massive asteroid in collision course with earth. Or as someone already said, it could be used to terraform a planet. But without intellectual and capital monopoly, soon new technologies will spring and throw the prices down. With is a good thing indeed, if mankind is about to become the next dinosaurs!