If the US was attacked

If a major city in the US got nuked not by a ICBM or a plane, but by a nuclear warhead in a truck and no groups claimed responsibility and there was no firm evidence of anyone involved, what would the US Government do?

Would they work really hard to find out who was responsible?

Would they start a conventional war with a country or countries they thought were responsible?

or

Would they very quickly go nuclear on a country/countries they thought were responsible?

Sorry if this doesn't fit the Website-Related Discussion board but I didn't think it was appropriate in one of the Current Events forums because it isn't real.

I'm no expert on nuclear physics but from reading both historical books on the making of the "atomic" bomb and the "hydrogen" bomb it appears that not all uranium or plutonium is created equal, each "batch is slightly different in the isotopes contained. It should be possible to collect samples from the ground zero area and match them to certain reactors and or processing equipment.

If a match is made the next question becomes was it stolen from or given by the source country to a third party.

If we have someone with physics knowledge they probably could flesh this out better.

The one inherent problem I see with this is that 'someone' would claim responsibility. What would the US do? Hmm, I dunno, thats kind of like asking what would the UK, France, Russia, Germany, etc. do if the same scenerio was imposed upon them?



seekerof

This reminds me of the film Sum Of All Fears. I think they just hunted down the perpetrators and killed them. Im not American but I don�t think they would just start nuking away at will. I think they would investigate.

Originally posted by Seekerof
Germany

I can't imagine what Germany would do. No army to attack anybody and all in all we would be speechless.."why?"

As for the original post I agree with Phoenix. The origion of the atomic material can be traced back, that's what I know from the movies AND from physics in school

But okay, let's think about 2 sample scenarios:
1) material from Israel
2) material from Africa, one country that sold to France, Russia, USA, Israel and Pakistan

I can't imagine what would happen and that's a good sign for me. So, hopefully this will never happen.

Originally posted by Hyperen
If a major city in the US got nuked not by a ICBM or a plane, but by a nuclear warhead in a truck and no groups claimed responsibility and there was no firm evidence of anyone involved, what would the US Government do?

They would just blame Saudi Arabia and use the bombing as an excuse to wage more war against Islamic countries.

GOOD QUESTION!!!

i saw this on tv once...

a nuke went off and the people investigating the radiation of the explosion (because they wanted to find out who nuked who) were able to find out what country did the nuking by examining the elements/chemicals (im no expert) in the radiation. they said that the elements/chemicals found in the radiation were ONLY availible in that specific country so i GUESS that is how america would be able to find out there problem IF that ever occured...

Originally posted by Illmatic67
They would just blame Saudi Arabia and use the bombing as an excuse to wage more war against Islamic countries.

Yes we would blame one of our few part time allies in the region, and bomb the core country of Islam.

Yes we would bomb one of the few countries in the middle east who makes meager attempts at cleaning up islamic fundamentalist terror.

Yes we would bomb one of the few countries in the region who we give so much financial backing.

What a joke.

Are you lifting your lines from Al-jazeera or the fiery words of a crackpot cleric? Its that type of attitude that wont help the rift between the US and Islam.

Its that type of response that just clutters an otherwise meaningful discussion. Go back to preaching about how old school you are.