Whenever I see stories like this one I get fairly annoyed.
Lieberman Sends Nuclear Note to Executive Branch
Sen. Joe Lieberman, in his capacity as chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee, has assigned gloomy homework to 16 federal agencies, asking them for full descriptions of their preparations in case of a nuclear device detonating on U.S. soil. It's the nightmare scenario, terrorists importing a nuclear weapon and setting it off in an American city. So, the agencies will soon be receiving a letter from Lieberman and ranking Republican Sen. Susan Collins, asking them to answer a series of questions.
What annoys me is that all this is, is fear mongering. It's the Republican's only defense against liberal arguments. Whenever the American people start to get a little disillusioned with the idea of torturing terrorists, or fighting pointless wars, a little post like this one comes out which reminds the people that there are bands of wooping religious extremists loaded to the teeth with nuclear weapons backed up on the four-lane-highway leading to Times Square.
So I ask the people who might be worried about these alleged nuclear weapons, how many nuclear explosions have gone off in countries that don't have 8-10 security agencies working around the clock thinking up ridiculous preventative scenarios for events that won't occur? How many big mushroom clouds have gone off huh? In fact… how many nations do you know that deliberately detonated a nuclear bomb on another nation's soil?
When stories about national security and nuclear threats hit the networks, isn't it curious how they never bring in a nuclear scientist to talk about such security? How hard is it to track a nuke? What actually is done other than tapping our phones and torturing suspected terrorists?
Okay, I'm doing a bit of research which is thus-far incomplete, but I work in the oil industry, and one of the things we in the business do to scan and understand rock formations 2 to 3 km below the surface is that we shoot nuclear isotopes down there into the rock formations, and those isotopes send readings back to our instruments allowing geologists to literally map that formation based on where the isotopes travel to. That means they send particles through MILES of rock that we can sense.
So if we have instruments that can read particle readings through miles of rock, it maybe makes sense that we might have instruments that can say pick them up through miles of say… air? Obviously there are probably ways to shield these signatures, but how hard is it? How heavy would such a container be, and how would you ship it over? The logistics of such an endeavor make it not feasible.
Now with that said, here's what we can fear. The real danger isn't nukes tucked away in closets, it's dissident citizens brewing up explosives with normal household chemicals. These are activities that can't be easily tracked or monitored except by the people of a country themselves. How, by being friendly neighborly and aware of the world around you. Suspicion isn't the answer because it turns everyone against us, but if everyone is neighborly and open, then the people who aren't will stick out like a sore thumb.
And thus my message, don't look to your government to protect you, because they're ineffective at it and will only subvert your freedoms. Instead open your eyes not to what they would tell you, but what you see around yourself, and talk to people, converse and be friendly and in doing that you will avoid danger.
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