U.S. to scan millions of containers

Originally posted by Bhadhidar
Not on the ship, you jihadist fools!

UNDER the dang thing!

It's called "Using Available Cover", idiots!

If you've only got one bomb, one "egg" in your basket, you don't hide it in the first, and most accessible place your enemies are likely to look for it!

What is this insane, and inane, obession the government has with shipping containers?

Do they really think that our "enemies", who have proven themselves to be not only intelligent, but fiendishly innovative, time and again, to be so stupid as to risk an asset as valuable as a nuclear weapon to possible discovery by port security?

And having, Allah willing, eluded port security scans, to further risk detection by then attempting to transport and, again, Allah take pity on the fools!, trying to hide said device from the authorities? For how long?

We're PAYING these people to protect us???

You've somehow managed to acquire a workable nuclear weapon. You managed to deliver it into a port. Ports, no matter what country they are located in, are strategic military and economic targets in their own right.

Why would you pass up such a target to risk detection, capture, loss of your weapon and defeat at the hands of the infidels for the entire jihad, by trying to move your device to a "softer target"?

The very idea that AQ has even been able (or will be able) to acquire nuclear weapons is stretching the bounderies of credibility. That they would likely deploy such a device via shipping container is purely ridiculous.

Interesting but i doubt it.
If they ship it with large [oil like] container ships there would be very very little space between the bottom of canals and the keel of the ship. I know here in the port of Rotterdam dredging boats -and machines have to dredge every once in a while so the very large ships can go through the canals and even then with sometimes just a couple of meters to spare between the keel and the bottom of the canal!
This is off course when the ship is loaded and has a high water-line, if it doesnt and the ship is empty, wouldnt that cause supsicion as wel?
So in such a case it should be the smaller more inconspicuous vessels, like the holy grail was the ugliest and inconspicuous cup[ok we all know it wasnt a cup ]



[edit on 27-8-2007 by Foppezao]

Originally posted by Bhadhidar
The very idea that AQ has even been able (or will be able) to acquire nuclear weapons is stretching the bounderies of credibility. That they would likely deploy such a device via shipping container is purely ridiculous.

You seriously think so? Take a peek at this....

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The al Qaeda terrorist organization was building a serious weapons program with a heavy emphasis on developing a nuclear device, according to an exhaustive review of documents discovered in Afghanistan.

"I don't have any doubt that al Qaeda was pursuing nuclear, biological and chemical warfare capabilities. It's not our judgment at the moment that they were that far along, but I have no doubt that they were seeking to do so," U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton told CNN on Thursday. "It underlines just how serious the threat of the use of these weapons of mass destruction could be, and why it's such an important part of the global campaign against terrorism."
archives.cnn.com...

One document, labeled "Superbombs," appears to be a plan for a nuclear device.

Arabic letters on the front of this
manual spell the word "Superbombs."
Pic Courtesy: CNN

That was in Jan 2002. It's 2007 now. A full 5 years on! They could have a 'dirty' bomb by now.

Ref:
archives.cnn.com...

Originally posted by mikesingh

Pardon, but your slip is showing. You see, I read at least five news papers everyday in the morning before and during breakfast. This headline isn't mine but from a newspaper. Here it is...

You must have missed this one on the from AUG 23 :

This is where the HINDU got their piece from,

US Tasked to Scan Millions of Containers

So it's not really a breaking story at all.....

Oh, the HINDU is just chalk full of sensationalized headlines, thanks for pointing this out to me, I will remember to ignore them as a source.

My apologies to the members, this will be my last post on this subject.

Originally posted by Agit8dChop
I cant imagine it would be to hard to weld together a airtight compartment on the hull of a ship.

very interesting...

Accept, the only thing is, why wait for it to be searched 'on port'

surely not every country sending out goods on freighters is scanned.

why not slip it in, wait till the ship enters thus port, then boom.

a few thousand dead infidels, and many more to suffer later.

A watertight compartment containing a bomb is often called a "Tordepo".


As I recall from the Litvineko (ex-Russian spy poisoned to death by ingestion of Polonium-210.) (Po-210 having once been used as a triggering device/component for Russian nukes.) incident; there was a rumor circulating that at least a couple of Russian nuclear torpedos were purposely "sunk" off the coast of Italy, by Russian security forces, for later "use".

And I too, fail to see why, the terrorists would risk detection and capture by debarking their bomb from the ship it came in on, just to detonate it at another target miles away. Seems illogical, bordering on stupid, to me too.

Originally posted by mikesingh
Well, isn’t this a classic case of shutting the stable after the horses have bolted? What if terrorists have already been able to smuggle a ‘dirty’ bomb inside one of the many ports in the US? They’ve had plenty of time to do so.

Are you talking about radiological weapons (aka "dirty bombs") or nukes? They aren't the same thing. As far as that goes, we have way too much border with no monitoring in too many places, if someone wanted to get a weapon in, there's no stopping it. Not that they need to actually GET it in.

It can be much more effective to detonate the weapon in the harbor. That works better, typically, on a west coast city due to the prevailing winds. But you can get really good results if you can navigate inland a bit, or if the city is built around the harbor area. NYC and Washington DC are good examples - up the Potomac a bit there is a target rich ground zero which would render facilities useless from Dahlgren to DC. A water detonation would loft tons of seawater full of radioactive contaminants and spray it over the area. Done right, you also get a really nice "tidal wave" effect that will drive the water all over the city area of your choice.

> Slipped out of the dockyard after cursory inspection. Not detected due to deep lead lining of the container housing the bomb and due to other ‘adequate’ precautionary measures taken to avoid detection.

A radiological weapon WOULD require shielding, but a nuke would not. Nuclear weapons have very low emissions in general. It's damn tough to spot one by its radiation. You can mask what little there is from most detectors by using bananas, potassium salts (edit: fertilizer), pottery etc. It requires a gamma spectrum analyzer to distinguish it then, there aren't that many of those. And the pottery with uranic glazes will hide even that.

In fact, if you HAD a nuke, you would absolutely NOT put it in a lead lined container, because that would make it obvious to the scanner. They're probably using that gamma scanner, it produces what looks like an x-ray image, you just run the container through it. A big opaque place would stand out.

[edit on 27-8-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

reply to post by Foppezao


If (and it is a BIG IF) terrorists from AQ were able to secure a nuclear weapon, I would think that the most likely source for that weapon would be Pakistan; the only Islamic country known to posses such weapons.

If the source of the device were to be Pakistan, there are few, if any, canals between there and say, Tokyo, Seattle, Portland, Oakland/San Francisco, Los Angeles, Long Beach, or San Diego.

If the source of the device were based in Europe, say Chechnyan's (Sp?) with stolen Russian arms for example, virtually any port city in Europe with direct, deep water access would be at risk. Additionally, since I doubt that the Strait of Gilbralter is a hinderance to deep-draugh shipping, any such port along the eastern coast of North and South America would be similarly vunerable.

reply to post by mikesingh


The contents of a few smoke detectors (radioactive Americum) dumped into a basic pipe bomb would be considered a "dirty bomb" (AKA: a radiologic device).

"Dirty bombs" are more of a distraction than a disaster.

We are speaking here of the threat of an actual nuclear weapon; a device that requires careful design and manufacture, difficult (though not impossible) to obtain materials, and most daunting of all...testing, by detonation, to insure that the previously identified components work as desired.

Even if AQ were to design and build their own nuclear weapon, not just a radiologic device, but a real, honest-to-Allah, mushroom-cloud making nuke, they could never be certain that it would work on demand...unless they tested it!

And then their cover is (pardon the pun) blown.

The whole world will know, and it will not be happy! And it will not rest until AQ is no more.

There are unfortunately more ways to Rome. A terrorist determined to detonate a Nuke in American soil would not necessary to bring it in via highly-controlled deep see ports.

reply to post by Tom Bedlam


Tom, that was an excellent post!

Agreed that a dirty bomb is primarily used to refer to a radiological dispersal device (RDD), and not the same as a nuclear device, but it is far easier to produce and deploy the former.

Since a dirty bomb is a weapon of mass disruption, not destruction, apart from the casualties resulting from ionizing radiation, the psychological effects would be pretty horrendous! And the terrorists will do anything to screw one's happiness - may it be with a WMDestruction or a WMDisruption!

Well, there's always the "on the cheap" method that's spelled out in "Curve of Binding Energy"...wait for a temperature inversion over NYC, and light 8 ounces of plutonium chips with a railroad flare atop the Empire State Building.

Why do people always seem to think that theres going to be some box sitting somewhere with (written in arabic of course) ACME company dirty bomb. Just add water.

Now I admit I don't know all the intricacies of smuggling in weapons, but you would think that if you wanted to smuggle in a "one off" item like a bomb for later use in some place other than the port, you'd ship it piece by piece and also in quantities that are below the suspicion threshold.

now how big of a bomb are we talking about here? not yield but physical size.
Bigger than a breadbox?
Heavier than a buick?

If the completed device is about the size of say.. a dell tower computer, then a shipping container is the perfect place for it, one would think. its like finding a needle in a haystack, especially if its shipped in a similiar product box on a shipment of similiar products.

or is my logic totally off here?

It really depends on what you're talking about - the thread has sort of been waffling on that.

A "dirty bomb" is typically going to emit gammas like mad, it's going to be fairly easy to detect unless you use a ton of very obvious shielding. You probably DON'T want to put that in a shipping container, because they're looking for that sort of thing at the port authority.

A nuke is going to be really hard to spot, doesn't emit much, and you won't WANT to use shielding, because it would only make it obvious. Not only that, they're fairly compact. So it would be easier to smuggle in a shipping container.

A "dirty bomb" is less technical, you just need "martyrs" who are willing to die smuggling and assembling it (it's a real radiation hazard). So you could do it in bits, but the punch line is that it's radioactive as all get out, so I'm not sure that will save you anything.

A nuke is something you don't want Joe Achmed assembling. Which is balanced by the thought that they're hard to spot anyway, so there's not much need to disassemble it.

Either way, breaking it into pieces seems either unnecessary or pointless.

Originally posted by Melbourne_Militia
I agree, I think theres more chance of the US government detonating a nuke or radioactive device themselves within the US and with falsified evidence blaming someone else.

Ditto! All I see at the moment whenever I close my eyes is a black helicopter, really high tech black helicopter and it fires a laser or something like it into this huge metal thing. I was at the physio yesterday and reading a magazine in there and saw in there something that looked like I keep seeing:

www.chernobyl.info...

Afterwards I thought, black op... ?

I am seeing it so much now and everywhere I go when I am out doing my own crap I keep sensing explosions. I am off out today to stock up on food/water etc. I haven't ever gone out and done that...I am even checking out the survival thread at ats.

I also keep seeing a wind and then when I look outside, all the trees are gone..the wind has blown everything away. The winds from a nuclear explosion do that. So I am stocking up, at the same time, I think 'why bother' but whatever is going to happen, it will severly disrupt the globe so I suggest to anyone, get some supplies and be prepared.