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![]() | The contents of the Pocket nuke page were merged into Suitcase nuclear device. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Placeholder Title US.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 10:24, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
This article should mention that, even if any such Soviet-era "suitcase nukes" had fallen into the wrong hands, the fact remains that the fissile cores would have decayed into duds years ago. They'd only be valuable as crappy "dirty bombs" (and there are so many better substances to use than uranium or plutonium) or for the fissile material inside, and that itself would only be worth anything to people who already have nuclear weapons programs.
Image should be fair-use. Its source is not identified, and it's all over the Internet. -- Victor 22:06 10 May 2004
Apparently the image is of Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana) from 2000 with a hypothetical mock-up of a suitcase nuclear weapon. However whether Soviet bombs exist or not -- or whether they would look anything like this -- is still highly dubious. -- Fastfission 00:26, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Isn't there a more professional word for "suitcase nukes?" I mean, "Suitcase-sized nuclear explosives" would sound stupid. -- Victor
The problem is that when people talk about "suitcase nukes," they usually just say "suitcase bomb" and don't differentiate between conventional suitcase bombs like those used in attacks on Israeli buses or on airplanes. I suppose the most "professional" way to talk about it would be something like "a nuclear weapon small enough to fit into a suitcase," because that's what it is really about -- the size of it, not the suitcase (they could be in a backpack or a trash can or any other receptical). A nuclear weapon capable of being carried clandestinely by one individual is a real psychological threat because it is much more likely to be stolen and secretly deployed than a typical nuclear bomb or warhead, which way many tons and are only deliverable typically by plane or missile. So maybe, "highly miniaturized nuclear warheads," but we'd really just be making up our own terminology on that one. -- Fastfission 05:45, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
I removed the following link [http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30003] about bin Laden purchasing suitcase nukes for two reasons: 1. the source is unbashedly partisan and 2. many of the claims are pretty hard to swallow and are not, in my mind, accepted as being plausible by society at large (that OBL had hundreds of ex-Soviet nuclear physicists working in Afghanistan with tons of sophisticated enrichment equipment -- and where did they all disappear to? why didn't we find mountains of evidence of this? and if OBL has had suitcase nukes since the early '90s, why hasn't he used them yet? hasn't he had ample opportunity, what with the USA invading Afghanistan in 2002? It doesn't add up). If you can find a better source for this, that would be fine, but as it stands, it's the equivalent of linking to tabloids. -- Fastfission 04:35, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
"Even if such weapons do exist, and have been lost or stolen, the dangers of a terrorist organization getting its hands on them may be highly overestimated, given the logistical difficulties of advertising, seeking, and actively purchasing such a politically and economically valuable device in total secrecy."
this is total bollocks. go look "meet the stans", a 4pt-documentary about kazahstan, uzbekistan, etc., broadcasted by BBC and CBC, available at fileshare-networks. simon reeve is just a normal reporter, and he walks into unguarded places, you won't believe they exist. THEY DO!
How about including this link [1] it talks about suitcase bombs from Russia, there existence, the decay of the tritium neutron generators neccessary to detonate such a device, the possible scenarios for loss of these devices, and much more. It conludes that the threat is remote and secondary to other threats.
You can make bombs that won't decay for a long time you can use an artificial element that was created in a partical accelerator or something I dont't really see much point in a suitcase bomb you can put a bomb in the trunk of a car or in the back of a van Dudtz 7/25/05 4:15 EST
It my personal opinion that authors of this report were trying to hide the truth for some reason. They did not say a word about GRU defector Lunev, although they knew very well about his existence (he gave a testimony to US Congress, as far as I know). Biophys 03:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Some of this are major plot spoilers for people who havent seen 24 season 6 yet, and totally unnecessary. Im gonna clean it up a little
In regards to the Jericho reference, the television show stated it was from dismantled warheads, vs a suitcase nuke. It was around the size of a portable nuke, but was apparently a bit more in power (city leveling). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.31.251.3 ( talk) 04:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Wasn't there an episode of The Cook Report on which Roger Cook (journalist) successfully bought a Russian suitcase nuke from a shady arms dealer? 93.96.236.8 ( talk) 22:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Due to ongoing long term persistent vandalism by the anonymous editor behind http://wtcdemolition.blogspot.com/ and http://covertoperations.blogspot.com/ ("The WTC was nuked on 9/11"), the articles W54, David Worby, Suitcase nuke, and Health effects arising from the September 11 attacks have been permanently semiprotected. Only logged in editors with Wikipedia accounts who have been autoconfirmed (are at least 4 days old) can edit the articles from now. Georgewilliamherbert ( talk) 21:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure why this guy keeps popping up all over Wikipedia, but Lunev is a fringe source with many theories, sometimes bordering on the bizarre, about what the Soviet Union was up to after he defected. I'm not sure his theory here should be taking up half of this page. I also think we need a more precise definition of what kind of weapons are entailed here.
Also, I removed the popular culture section as trivia, but perhaps there should be further discussion of that -- if a "suitcase nuke" is a popular culture term itself (rather than a precise category) should we restore that section? csloat ( talk) 23:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Please do not be deceptive when using edit summaries. I made the changes to the Lunev section per my comments above; there is no need for several paragraphs of this fringe source. Another user reverted this change with the mendacious edit summary "provided some citation." Yet he did not provide any citation -- he re-added the disputed text; the only citations he added are to a text that is ALREADY cited. If you dispute that this material gives undue weight to Lunev, please indicate here why you think this material is so central. At least have the courtesy to defend your edits rather than trying to sneak them through with mendacious and innocuous sounding edit summaries. csloat ( talk) 22:46, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
(od) There is nothing "undue" about adding the most recent expansion of narrative. FYI, I've been interested in nuclear proliferation ever since my university senior year advanced physics paper on waste disposal (that would be back in 1976-1977). An encyclopedia has to include detail, not just who said what summary statements. Cheers! VЄСRUМВА ♪ 03:13, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
There are several grammatical errors in the last paragraph. "suitcase nukes might be already deployed by the GRU operatives at the US soil . . ." etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.186.224.74 ( talk) 18:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Wikipedia:Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.
The following request appears on that page:
![]() | Many of the articles were selected semi-automatically from a list of indefinitely semi-protected articles. Please confirm that the protection level appears to be still warranted, and consider unprotecting instead, before applying pending changes protection to the article. |
Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Pending changes" would be appreciated.
Please update the Queue page as appropriate.
Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially
Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 00:13, 17 June 2010 (UTC).
Hi all. I've gone ahead and merged content in from Pocket nuke, as there was very little there that wasn't already here and maintaining two articles on substantially the same subject would be a waste of time. Pocket nuke is now a redirect here and any non-duplicate material has been merged over. I started to clean up the resulting article, but more eyes is always helpful. Cheers. Zachlipton ( talk) 06:27, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
Hello,
Nobody would seriously consider going through this article or any of the others concerning nuclear devices, and changing the parts showing "nuclear device" to nuke.
"Nuclear terrorism refers to an act of terrorism in which a person or persons belonging to a terrorist organisation detonates a nuke"
"Nuclear terrorism could include:
Acquiring or fabricating a nuke" - Nuking terrorism, Antrangelos ( talk) 23:11, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
However despite thefts and trafficking of small amounts of fissile material, all low-concern and less than Category III Special nuclear material (SNM), there is no credible evidence that any terrorist group has succeeded in obtaining Category I SNM, the necessary multi-kilogram critical mass amounts of weapons grade plutonium required to make a nuke.
oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/nuke Informal
Having a relaxed, friendly, or unofficial style, manner, or nature
Denoting the grammatical structures, vocabulary, and idiom suitable to everyday language and conversation rather than to official or formal contexts.
The article content description (i.e. the title) of nuclear devices doesn't belong in everyday unofficial contexts, not at least outside of physics social groups (and possibly wanna-be terrorist plots), since they are all owned by governments as far as the general public know of, or exist in computer gaming possibly (i.e. the imagination of gamers). Antrangelos ( talk) 23:18, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Something on the physics-based limits should be in the article, i.e. on critical masses and what they mean for such a device, how you can (and can't) shape these bombs so that they still work, etc. -- 89.182.88.213 ( talk) 16:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Isn't the "the theoretical minimum mass of a Plutonium-239 fission warhead being estimated at close to 15 kg" just the weight of the P-239, excluding the not-inconsiderable weight of the apparatus? 203.80.61.102 ( talk) 01:37, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Suitcase nuclear device article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | The contents of the Pocket nuke page were merged into Suitcase nuclear device. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Placeholder Title US.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 10:24, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
This article should mention that, even if any such Soviet-era "suitcase nukes" had fallen into the wrong hands, the fact remains that the fissile cores would have decayed into duds years ago. They'd only be valuable as crappy "dirty bombs" (and there are so many better substances to use than uranium or plutonium) or for the fissile material inside, and that itself would only be worth anything to people who already have nuclear weapons programs.
Image should be fair-use. Its source is not identified, and it's all over the Internet. -- Victor 22:06 10 May 2004
Apparently the image is of Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana) from 2000 with a hypothetical mock-up of a suitcase nuclear weapon. However whether Soviet bombs exist or not -- or whether they would look anything like this -- is still highly dubious. -- Fastfission 00:26, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Isn't there a more professional word for "suitcase nukes?" I mean, "Suitcase-sized nuclear explosives" would sound stupid. -- Victor
The problem is that when people talk about "suitcase nukes," they usually just say "suitcase bomb" and don't differentiate between conventional suitcase bombs like those used in attacks on Israeli buses or on airplanes. I suppose the most "professional" way to talk about it would be something like "a nuclear weapon small enough to fit into a suitcase," because that's what it is really about -- the size of it, not the suitcase (they could be in a backpack or a trash can or any other receptical). A nuclear weapon capable of being carried clandestinely by one individual is a real psychological threat because it is much more likely to be stolen and secretly deployed than a typical nuclear bomb or warhead, which way many tons and are only deliverable typically by plane or missile. So maybe, "highly miniaturized nuclear warheads," but we'd really just be making up our own terminology on that one. -- Fastfission 05:45, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
I removed the following link [http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30003] about bin Laden purchasing suitcase nukes for two reasons: 1. the source is unbashedly partisan and 2. many of the claims are pretty hard to swallow and are not, in my mind, accepted as being plausible by society at large (that OBL had hundreds of ex-Soviet nuclear physicists working in Afghanistan with tons of sophisticated enrichment equipment -- and where did they all disappear to? why didn't we find mountains of evidence of this? and if OBL has had suitcase nukes since the early '90s, why hasn't he used them yet? hasn't he had ample opportunity, what with the USA invading Afghanistan in 2002? It doesn't add up). If you can find a better source for this, that would be fine, but as it stands, it's the equivalent of linking to tabloids. -- Fastfission 04:35, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
"Even if such weapons do exist, and have been lost or stolen, the dangers of a terrorist organization getting its hands on them may be highly overestimated, given the logistical difficulties of advertising, seeking, and actively purchasing such a politically and economically valuable device in total secrecy."
this is total bollocks. go look "meet the stans", a 4pt-documentary about kazahstan, uzbekistan, etc., broadcasted by BBC and CBC, available at fileshare-networks. simon reeve is just a normal reporter, and he walks into unguarded places, you won't believe they exist. THEY DO!
How about including this link [1] it talks about suitcase bombs from Russia, there existence, the decay of the tritium neutron generators neccessary to detonate such a device, the possible scenarios for loss of these devices, and much more. It conludes that the threat is remote and secondary to other threats.
You can make bombs that won't decay for a long time you can use an artificial element that was created in a partical accelerator or something I dont't really see much point in a suitcase bomb you can put a bomb in the trunk of a car or in the back of a van Dudtz 7/25/05 4:15 EST
It my personal opinion that authors of this report were trying to hide the truth for some reason. They did not say a word about GRU defector Lunev, although they knew very well about his existence (he gave a testimony to US Congress, as far as I know). Biophys 03:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Some of this are major plot spoilers for people who havent seen 24 season 6 yet, and totally unnecessary. Im gonna clean it up a little
In regards to the Jericho reference, the television show stated it was from dismantled warheads, vs a suitcase nuke. It was around the size of a portable nuke, but was apparently a bit more in power (city leveling). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.31.251.3 ( talk) 04:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Wasn't there an episode of The Cook Report on which Roger Cook (journalist) successfully bought a Russian suitcase nuke from a shady arms dealer? 93.96.236.8 ( talk) 22:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Due to ongoing long term persistent vandalism by the anonymous editor behind http://wtcdemolition.blogspot.com/ and http://covertoperations.blogspot.com/ ("The WTC was nuked on 9/11"), the articles W54, David Worby, Suitcase nuke, and Health effects arising from the September 11 attacks have been permanently semiprotected. Only logged in editors with Wikipedia accounts who have been autoconfirmed (are at least 4 days old) can edit the articles from now. Georgewilliamherbert ( talk) 21:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure why this guy keeps popping up all over Wikipedia, but Lunev is a fringe source with many theories, sometimes bordering on the bizarre, about what the Soviet Union was up to after he defected. I'm not sure his theory here should be taking up half of this page. I also think we need a more precise definition of what kind of weapons are entailed here.
Also, I removed the popular culture section as trivia, but perhaps there should be further discussion of that -- if a "suitcase nuke" is a popular culture term itself (rather than a precise category) should we restore that section? csloat ( talk) 23:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
Please do not be deceptive when using edit summaries. I made the changes to the Lunev section per my comments above; there is no need for several paragraphs of this fringe source. Another user reverted this change with the mendacious edit summary "provided some citation." Yet he did not provide any citation -- he re-added the disputed text; the only citations he added are to a text that is ALREADY cited. If you dispute that this material gives undue weight to Lunev, please indicate here why you think this material is so central. At least have the courtesy to defend your edits rather than trying to sneak them through with mendacious and innocuous sounding edit summaries. csloat ( talk) 22:46, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
(od) There is nothing "undue" about adding the most recent expansion of narrative. FYI, I've been interested in nuclear proliferation ever since my university senior year advanced physics paper on waste disposal (that would be back in 1976-1977). An encyclopedia has to include detail, not just who said what summary statements. Cheers! VЄСRUМВА ♪ 03:13, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
There are several grammatical errors in the last paragraph. "suitcase nukes might be already deployed by the GRU operatives at the US soil . . ." etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.186.224.74 ( talk) 18:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Wikipedia:Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.
The following request appears on that page:
![]() | Many of the articles were selected semi-automatically from a list of indefinitely semi-protected articles. Please confirm that the protection level appears to be still warranted, and consider unprotecting instead, before applying pending changes protection to the article. |
Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Pending changes" would be appreciated.
Please update the Queue page as appropriate.
Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially
Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 00:13, 17 June 2010 (UTC).
Hi all. I've gone ahead and merged content in from Pocket nuke, as there was very little there that wasn't already here and maintaining two articles on substantially the same subject would be a waste of time. Pocket nuke is now a redirect here and any non-duplicate material has been merged over. I started to clean up the resulting article, but more eyes is always helpful. Cheers. Zachlipton ( talk) 06:27, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
Hello,
Nobody would seriously consider going through this article or any of the others concerning nuclear devices, and changing the parts showing "nuclear device" to nuke.
"Nuclear terrorism refers to an act of terrorism in which a person or persons belonging to a terrorist organisation detonates a nuke"
"Nuclear terrorism could include:
Acquiring or fabricating a nuke" - Nuking terrorism, Antrangelos ( talk) 23:11, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
However despite thefts and trafficking of small amounts of fissile material, all low-concern and less than Category III Special nuclear material (SNM), there is no credible evidence that any terrorist group has succeeded in obtaining Category I SNM, the necessary multi-kilogram critical mass amounts of weapons grade plutonium required to make a nuke.
oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/nuke Informal
Having a relaxed, friendly, or unofficial style, manner, or nature
Denoting the grammatical structures, vocabulary, and idiom suitable to everyday language and conversation rather than to official or formal contexts.
The article content description (i.e. the title) of nuclear devices doesn't belong in everyday unofficial contexts, not at least outside of physics social groups (and possibly wanna-be terrorist plots), since they are all owned by governments as far as the general public know of, or exist in computer gaming possibly (i.e. the imagination of gamers). Antrangelos ( talk) 23:18, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Something on the physics-based limits should be in the article, i.e. on critical masses and what they mean for such a device, how you can (and can't) shape these bombs so that they still work, etc. -- 89.182.88.213 ( talk) 16:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Isn't the "the theoretical minimum mass of a Plutonium-239 fission warhead being estimated at close to 15 kg" just the weight of the P-239, excluding the not-inconsiderable weight of the apparatus? 203.80.61.102 ( talk) 01:37, 5 September 2017 (UTC)