I realize that, contrary to all common sense, people do get bored of football, so I'll shift my monologue - at least temporarily - to another subject, brought to my attention by a recent TV documentary about psychological analysis of career crinimals. This got me to thinking about whether criminals (or other, less persecuted/prosecuted societal malcontents, including but not limited to performance artists, taxi drivers, lawyers, end democrats) arise as a result problems with themselves, or as a result of the society in which they move. And I refer to career malcontents, here. Not to the antics that all of us occasionally get up to, ranging from my own acts of breaking and entering and associated vandalism, to other people's desires to strip completely naked in the front seats of Cadillac SUVs. (I'll talk about those kinds of behavior later.) Those things are not where I'm going with this. Instead, I'm referring to people who either cannot function as upstanding individuals, or who simply choose not to. Where do they come from?
For the most part, I believe that the whole Nature vs. Nurture debate amounts to so much intellectual masturbation, in that it serves no purpose except the for the loving handling of choice ideas and concepts, devoid of any positive results or forward progress. For the most part, we are who we are, and while greater understanding of our origins is certainly fun to theorize on, we remain who we are. If we have children, we should do the best we can, strive to be better parents than we had, and accept that our children are going to become who they are, perhaps because of what we do, and perhaps in spite of what we do. Nature vs. Nurture is analysis without application; just as Freud could observe the behavior of a subject and proclaim from on-high how the behavior reflected the subject’s thoughts, a modern student of this subject can attribute modern social dysfunction to problems with the subject’s birth, upbringing, or both. But just as Freud was limited in his ability to project a subject’s behavior or divine their thoughts from their actions, modern disciples cannot reliably predict a person’s future or character by the circumstances of their birth or upbringing.
This is not to say that I consider the subject unworthy of consideration. Indeed, I am a firm proponent of masturbation of all varieties. Unending entertainment, victimless in the rare circumstances where it is a crime, and much more sanitary and risk-free than actual intercourse: masturbation is a quality pastime. And sometimes grows into more, as it may with Nature vs. Nurture. Just as social Darwinism drove the advancement of medical science to adapt manual masturbation into techniques of artificial insemination, the same Darwinistic process might eventually parlay this particular form of intellectual masturbation into some means to raise better kids. In the meantime, and even in the absence of direct applications for the research, intellectuals will continue to fondle and play with the subject matter, for no other reason than because it’s fun to do so.
All that having been said, things do look somewhat promising.
From the “Nurture” perspective, the issue is related to ingrained (learned) behavioral patterns, and the effect of external stimulus on the early development of the human mind and psyche. Even besides clear examples of learned behavior, there is a demonstrable statistical correlation between development of analytical intelligence and exposure to classical music at early ages. Likewise, children who receive positive reinforcement and who are continually told that they are intelligent and capable of solving problems show statistically higher levels of intelligence and problem solving ability than children who do not receive such encouragement. John Douglas, an expert on habitual violent behavior in humans if ever there was one, observes that virtually all violent serial criminals come from abusive or severely dysfunctional backgrounds. Is there more to this than these scientifically demonstrable examples of programmed-in-childhood levels of self-esteem among children who are encouraged, and a child’s learned reliance on behavioral models (abusive or otherwise)? Even if there is no more to this theory than what studies already indicate, how large a quotient of our adult lives is forged on that anvil? How much of one’s total adult intelligence is based on what one believes one can accomplish, based on mom’s encouragement? How much of one’s adult behavior is based on early-life observations of dad managing household affairs?
Rationally, the answer is quite a bit, particularly in the negative aspects. As above, John Douglas is a believer in the “Nurture” camp, at least insofar as it applies to the violent personalities he has spent his life hunting. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who has completed an excellent study of the history and psychology of killing, likewise gives great weight to the vast majority of killers’ need to be programmed to be able to take human life. Douglas and Grossman, scholars who focus on the darker nature of homo sapiens, generally agree that killers – in almost all cases – are made, rather than born. On the flip side from the dark half, no statistical analysis seems necessary to support the point that good families with successful heads tend to raise good kids with successful lives. By the by, if you’re a fan of written fiction, Michael Crighton’s Lost World explores the issue of the importance of learned behavior (Nurture) just as the predecessor novel explored genetic manipulation (Nature). Good read; you’ll like it.
Parents take note: poor upbringings can produce shaky or even dangerous adults. Quality parenting tends to produce positive results in kids. Water is wet. The sky is blue. Isn’t nice when theoretical science supports obvious factual realities? But let’s stroke this idea a bit longer, just to see what happens.
If intelligence, personality, and interpersonal behavior are based on learned factors, is it possible to reprogram individuals who have reached adulthood? The obvious application for such techniques – aside from, for example, the already highly-effective means used by the USMC to turn upstanding, well-adjusted members of the American youth into killers – is the possibility of turning programmed killers and other social malcontents into productive, or at least harmless members of society. Can a career violent criminal be turned into a home-body accountant through some form of reprogramming? The answer is: probably not, as the programming in question exists on levels that we are only beginning to understand.
If the issue involved only something as simple as human memories, we’d be home free. Memory itself does not pose a terribly great challenge, as human memory is amazingly flexible and remarkably subject to modification. Brainwashing as a technique is centuries old, and if you tell someone something often enough, they will ultimately believe it’s true, and conform their lives to such programmed memory. Memory modification is a fairly simple (albeit time and effort-intensive) feat, which can be performed even without the benefit of modern techniques such as – for example – direct electrochemical manipulation of the brain with exotic medications. In fact, one of the problems that the psychological community has to grapple with is that of therapist-implanted memories. Patients, vulnerable, trusting, and eager to please (read: susceptible to suggestion), are treated by well-meaning therapists who are so confident of what they will find, that they unintentionally brainwash the patient into giving the answers and relating “memories” which support the therapists’ in-hand expectations and diagnosis. So be careful about what it is that you really remember, especially if you’ve discussed those memories with any sort of therapist.
But the human Nurture issue encompasses far more than memory. It is highly notable that brain conditions which affect memory do not generally affect behavior. Patients suffering from severe dissociative disorders, including those rarest of bright-plumage birds, true multiple personality patients, relate entire histories and memory sets (of unknown origin) – including childhood recollections – between the disparate personalities. However, such divergent memories manifest as only token variances in behavior between personalities. While there will typically be a dominant and subservient personality, behavioral variances are seldom terribly drastic, notwithstanding differences in the memories of each personality.
Additionally, and perhaps more tellingly, traumatic amnesiacs with little or no recall of any factual memories nonetheless retain behavioral patterns, and also retain such abilities as reading, writing, setting up a chess board, or knowing how long they can run flat-out at a given altitude before their hands start shaking. Behavioral patterns (and functional skills) exist in the human brain independent of memories that can be medically or traumatically altered. Thus, we are back at the original Nature vs. Nurture question: are those underlying patterns and skills a result of neural patterns intrinsic in the human brain (Nature), or are they just a different and/or deeper level of learned behavior. What’s the next step? At this point, psychology is still grasping for semantic definitions for behavioral underpinnings, much less delving the actual realties.
But just as man discovered plastics through practical experimentation long before he understood nuances of hydrocarbon chemistry, the science of hands-on behavioral modification is stumbling forward (largely in the dark) through practical experimentation, mostly without the guiding light of clear understanding of the involved neurological and psychological factors. Realistically, it’s unlikely that we will be reprogramming serial killers anytime soon: the entire field of “criminal rehabilitation” presumes that the criminal personalities in question had some point in their history (to which they can be restored or “rehabilitated”) where they were capable of functioning as normal, well-adjusted human beings. Unfortunately, this is generally wishful thinking. Most criminals and malcontents lack prior, pre-criminal-career skills to fall back on, which creates problems in “restoring” them to a point in their past where they were well-adjusted individuals. As we lack the ability and/or inclination to reduce adults back to an early childhood mental state – assuming of course, that they’ve actually progressed beyond that intellectual state – and build them entirely new, well adjusted personalities, we’re still just wanking so far as “rehabilitating” habitual criminals is concerned.
But there has been progress, and we have the pharmaceutical industry to thank: results are being gained through trial and error, much as a blindfolded man running around a race-track will discover hurdles and obstacles as he falls over them. But as the process has been underway for a while, some behavior-altering medications are getting past the point of being an overused trend (“take your soma and be happy”); the attached body of science and chemistry has reached the critical mass necessary for reliable real-world application. Ask anyone who has suffered from ADD about their levels of functionality with and without their medication, and you’ll become a believer. While it is probably true that if Tom Sawyer were alive today, he would be diagnosed as a chronic problem child, medicated, and probably institutionalized, the science of behavioral adjustment appears to be moving in the right direction, by which I mean that the treatments are resulting in people who are better, healthier, and happier, and not just resulting in people (kids) who are easier (for parents) to control. Which is not to say that we have no need for treatments which render problem people (including kids) easier to control, but that’s neither here nor there. But while the medication can be a huge help, is it changing their nature, or is it making them easier to nuture?
I might have mentioned that the whole debate really has no end in sight.
But the next time that you’re getting your head shrunk, consider not just your answers, but where in your past those answers come from. I realize that this is an easy comment to make for one with a memory like mine, but still: the only point of Nature vs. Nurture worth taking seriously is considering not just the WHAT of who your are, but also the WHYs that formed the What. Also ask yourself if you’re telling your therapist the truth, of if you’re regurgitating responses and information that your therapist has programmed into you over the course of your treatment. While one of the functions of a therapist is, undoubtedly, the alteration of ingrained behavioral patterns (be they nurtured or natural) into “healthier” patterns, what should the limits of such reprogramming be, and are you the one who is setting the parameters? Just something to keep in mind.
You’re welcome.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
Told You So
Let me preface by saying that I am not a New England fan. Nor really a fan of any other team. During the off-season, I follow San Francisco (hoping they do something get better), Dallas (hoping they do something to get worse), and SD, PIT, and NE to further my education as to how to do things right. During the season itself, I have no interest in even watching (much less cheering for) the 49ers, because - more than anything else - I'm a fan of good football, and you don't generally see much of it during 'Niners games.
I admit that I am cheering for NE this season, for two reasons. First, if ever there was a bunch of arrogant pretentous fucks who deserve to get knocked off their pedestal, it's the '72 Dolphins. The Dolphins won 12 regular season games, and their opponents' combined records was 70-108-4; they spend the season whipping on losing teams. The Pats this season went 16-0 against teams that were 94-89, including wins against SIX playoff teams. They won more games against better opponents, in the age of parity. Please Jesus, let the Pats win in all, so we never need to hear another word from the '72 Dolphins. Second, I'm cheering for the Pats because I'm a fan of good football, and right now, the Patriots are playing the best football that anyone has ever seen.
Moving along: I let the title of this post stand for itself, and only add as afterthoughts that NE's "weak" running game gained more yards against JAX's "excellent" run defense that JAX's "excellent" run against NE's "weak" defense. NE also led in time of possession. Bottom line: NE would have won that game even if the two teams had the same number of possessions, and was helped by winning the turnover battle.
On the other games, my heart is doing a little dance that the Cowboys lost, but I fell asleep during the game, so I'm not qualified to comment on how the game actually went.
In SD at IND, anyone going back to the old saw about Peyton being unable to win the big game needs to watch the game tape, because he wasn't the reason they lost. They lost because their highly rated defense couldn't shut down SD, even with Gates hurt and Tomlinson on the sidelines. The problem with the offense wasn't Manning, it was the receivers. Yes, balls were tipped and defelected a few times, but even so, they were still ctachable. The IND receivers (especially sans Marvin Harrison) looked soft: they are so used to the ball hitting them in the chest that they're not very good at fighting to make a big catch, which they needed to do in a hard-fought game. And they're so used to all the blame falling on Manning (justifiably or not) that they didn't come through for him when he needed them to.
The SEA at GB game was a snooze-fest after the first quarter, and hammers home the point that - as good as they are at home - SEA is not a threat to the elite teams in the league. GB spotted them 14 fucking points! The SEA defense, especially their astronomically hyped LB corps, should be embarrassed for the way things turned out. Also, Shaun Alexander will be cut in the off-season, and rightly so.
Turning to the upcoming games: last weak, I would have said that SD is a tougher opponent for NE than JAX: better overall defense that's mcuh less predictable (lots of blitz packages in SD's 3-4 set than in JAX's plain-vanilla 4-3), a more explosive ground game, and - most importantly - SD generates a lot of turnovers.
But there are recent developments: Gates, Rivers, and Tomlinson are all injured. While all of them are expected to play, none will be at 100%. Per my last post, winning games is simple: you either need to outscore the other team on an equal number of possessions, or else you need to find some way to get more possessions. Even with LT, PR, and AG intact, San Diego is not going to outscore New England given equal possessions. Banged-up, it will be even less close. But SD leads the league this season in having more possessions than its opponents: they led the league in turnover ratio, at +24. (NE is third, at +16.)
Here's how I see it shaking out: San Diego will be able to get some pressure on Brady, which is something not a lot of teams have been able to do. But it won't matter. Lots of people compare Brady to Montanna, for various reasons. I agree, and the biggest parallel I see is their demeanor. Joe never got tight, he never got tense. No matter if he got hit, sacked, or knocked down, he went right back out and ran the next play utterly unfazed. It was just simply impossible to rattle him. Brady is the same way. SD might knock him down, but they won't be able to get to him, and he will continue to do what he's done all season, and score touchdowns instead of field goals.
On the other side of the ball, SD will score points as well. Their offensive line is excellent, and will be able to create room for LT (or Turner) to run. But it won't matter. The NE defense will continue to do what it has all season: bend but not break. They will stop a few drives in the red zone, force SD to settle for field-goals instead of touchdowns, and that will be it.
The only things that might change the outcome are if SD can significantly win the turnover battle (+2 or +3) or else get some "free" points on special teams (a punt or kick-return for a TD). I don't think either is very likely against NE in NE.
As for the NFC championship, I wouldn't bet either way. Both teams can play in bad weather with their running games. Both teams have up-and-down QBs. Both teams are solid in their front-7 defensively. These are two pretty well-matched teams. So, barring either team getting two or three turnovers, my gut tells me this game is going to be decided by who melts down. I don't think it's going to be Brett Farve; he's been good all season, and has enough talent around him that he hasn't had to force it this season the way he had to the last few seasons. He's enjoying himself and looking good. So the melt-down will either be Eli Manning, or the GB secondary. Eli can be flustered pretty easily, and does some dumb things with the ball that lead to turnovers, both fumbles and INTs. But if Eli can get a few seconds in the pocket, the GB corners and safeties are not going to be able to keep up with big, fast receivers (see: Burress, Plaxico), and will take penalties, just like they have all season (see: Harris, Al). They will simply grab on to the receiver, and get flagged for it. The result will be a couple interference or illegal contact penalties that revive Giants drives, or else put them in scoring position.
To protect the secondary, the GB defense will need to put pressure on Manning to get him to throw early in the pattern, before Burress and Toomer can get downfield. Getting that pressure will be tough to do and still play solid against the Giants' running game, but will be a bit easier since they won't need to worry about Shockey in the flat. All in all, if the Pack can get to Eli and shake him up, they will win. If it were me, I call some big blitzes early, to try to get into Eli's head, even if it means giving up some yards and/or scores. Some Green Dog assignments, or blitzes from the corners or secondary (Harris and Bigby are good tacklers who'd love a run at Eli). Might get burned early, but I'd rather play from behind against a battered Eli than with a lead against a comfortable Eli.
On the flip side, if I were running things for the Giants, I spend the week polishing plays to keep the Pack defense honest. Some max-protect schemes, since if Eli can stay upright for long enough to throw downfield, it probably won't matter if Plax catches it or not, since a flag will fly. I also dust off the screen-pass and end-around sections of play-book, to take advantage of a possibly over-agressive rush from the Pack LBs. Slow down the rush, keep Eli calm, and take what they give you.
Should be fun to watch either way.
I admit that I am cheering for NE this season, for two reasons. First, if ever there was a bunch of arrogant pretentous fucks who deserve to get knocked off their pedestal, it's the '72 Dolphins. The Dolphins won 12 regular season games, and their opponents' combined records was 70-108-4; they spend the season whipping on losing teams. The Pats this season went 16-0 against teams that were 94-89, including wins against SIX playoff teams. They won more games against better opponents, in the age of parity. Please Jesus, let the Pats win in all, so we never need to hear another word from the '72 Dolphins. Second, I'm cheering for the Pats because I'm a fan of good football, and right now, the Patriots are playing the best football that anyone has ever seen.
Moving along: I let the title of this post stand for itself, and only add as afterthoughts that NE's "weak" running game gained more yards against JAX's "excellent" run defense that JAX's "excellent" run against NE's "weak" defense. NE also led in time of possession. Bottom line: NE would have won that game even if the two teams had the same number of possessions, and was helped by winning the turnover battle.
On the other games, my heart is doing a little dance that the Cowboys lost, but I fell asleep during the game, so I'm not qualified to comment on how the game actually went.
In SD at IND, anyone going back to the old saw about Peyton being unable to win the big game needs to watch the game tape, because he wasn't the reason they lost. They lost because their highly rated defense couldn't shut down SD, even with Gates hurt and Tomlinson on the sidelines. The problem with the offense wasn't Manning, it was the receivers. Yes, balls were tipped and defelected a few times, but even so, they were still ctachable. The IND receivers (especially sans Marvin Harrison) looked soft: they are so used to the ball hitting them in the chest that they're not very good at fighting to make a big catch, which they needed to do in a hard-fought game. And they're so used to all the blame falling on Manning (justifiably or not) that they didn't come through for him when he needed them to.
The SEA at GB game was a snooze-fest after the first quarter, and hammers home the point that - as good as they are at home - SEA is not a threat to the elite teams in the league. GB spotted them 14 fucking points! The SEA defense, especially their astronomically hyped LB corps, should be embarrassed for the way things turned out. Also, Shaun Alexander will be cut in the off-season, and rightly so.
Turning to the upcoming games: last weak, I would have said that SD is a tougher opponent for NE than JAX: better overall defense that's mcuh less predictable (lots of blitz packages in SD's 3-4 set than in JAX's plain-vanilla 4-3), a more explosive ground game, and - most importantly - SD generates a lot of turnovers.
But there are recent developments: Gates, Rivers, and Tomlinson are all injured. While all of them are expected to play, none will be at 100%. Per my last post, winning games is simple: you either need to outscore the other team on an equal number of possessions, or else you need to find some way to get more possessions. Even with LT, PR, and AG intact, San Diego is not going to outscore New England given equal possessions. Banged-up, it will be even less close. But SD leads the league this season in having more possessions than its opponents: they led the league in turnover ratio, at +24. (NE is third, at +16.)
Here's how I see it shaking out: San Diego will be able to get some pressure on Brady, which is something not a lot of teams have been able to do. But it won't matter. Lots of people compare Brady to Montanna, for various reasons. I agree, and the biggest parallel I see is their demeanor. Joe never got tight, he never got tense. No matter if he got hit, sacked, or knocked down, he went right back out and ran the next play utterly unfazed. It was just simply impossible to rattle him. Brady is the same way. SD might knock him down, but they won't be able to get to him, and he will continue to do what he's done all season, and score touchdowns instead of field goals.
On the other side of the ball, SD will score points as well. Their offensive line is excellent, and will be able to create room for LT (or Turner) to run. But it won't matter. The NE defense will continue to do what it has all season: bend but not break. They will stop a few drives in the red zone, force SD to settle for field-goals instead of touchdowns, and that will be it.
The only things that might change the outcome are if SD can significantly win the turnover battle (+2 or +3) or else get some "free" points on special teams (a punt or kick-return for a TD). I don't think either is very likely against NE in NE.
As for the NFC championship, I wouldn't bet either way. Both teams can play in bad weather with their running games. Both teams have up-and-down QBs. Both teams are solid in their front-7 defensively. These are two pretty well-matched teams. So, barring either team getting two or three turnovers, my gut tells me this game is going to be decided by who melts down. I don't think it's going to be Brett Farve; he's been good all season, and has enough talent around him that he hasn't had to force it this season the way he had to the last few seasons. He's enjoying himself and looking good. So the melt-down will either be Eli Manning, or the GB secondary. Eli can be flustered pretty easily, and does some dumb things with the ball that lead to turnovers, both fumbles and INTs. But if Eli can get a few seconds in the pocket, the GB corners and safeties are not going to be able to keep up with big, fast receivers (see: Burress, Plaxico), and will take penalties, just like they have all season (see: Harris, Al). They will simply grab on to the receiver, and get flagged for it. The result will be a couple interference or illegal contact penalties that revive Giants drives, or else put them in scoring position.
To protect the secondary, the GB defense will need to put pressure on Manning to get him to throw early in the pattern, before Burress and Toomer can get downfield. Getting that pressure will be tough to do and still play solid against the Giants' running game, but will be a bit easier since they won't need to worry about Shockey in the flat. All in all, if the Pack can get to Eli and shake him up, they will win. If it were me, I call some big blitzes early, to try to get into Eli's head, even if it means giving up some yards and/or scores. Some Green Dog assignments, or blitzes from the corners or secondary (Harris and Bigby are good tacklers who'd love a run at Eli). Might get burned early, but I'd rather play from behind against a battered Eli than with a lead against a comfortable Eli.
On the flip side, if I were running things for the Giants, I spend the week polishing plays to keep the Pack defense honest. Some max-protect schemes, since if Eli can stay upright for long enough to throw downfield, it probably won't matter if Plax catches it or not, since a flag will fly. I also dust off the screen-pass and end-around sections of play-book, to take advantage of a possibly over-agressive rush from the Pack LBs. Slow down the rush, keep Eli calm, and take what they give you.
Should be fun to watch either way.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Divisional/Delusional Playoffs
I continue to be amazed at the human mind's ability to delude itself with wishful thinking, notwithstanding overwhelming factual evidence to the contrary.
This week's example is - once again - a NE Patriots reference. Notable professional commentators are arguing in the public forum that, not only CAN Jacksonville win, but that Jacksonville WILL win. ( http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs07/columns/story?columnist=green_jeremy&id=3187786 ) I admit that the former is possible. But to make the latter assertion is fucking crazy: nothing short of divine intervention by the football gods or else catestrophic meltdown by NE will result in a JAX win this week. Lets do some debunking, just for kicks.
First of all, the points that NE is overhyped:
People point out that NE might not be as good as its 16-0 record. "They played in the AFC east, and had an easy schedule." Bullshit. First of all, in addition to playing in the AFC East (which is soft), NE got wins at DAL, at IND, at NYG, and also wins against SD, PIT, and WAS. NE's perfect season included wins against SIX PLAYOFF TEAMS! Besides which, anyone who remembers the beatings that NE was handing out (notably in DAL and against PIT) should know better than to suggest that this team is somehow not as good as the numbers indicate.
People point out that the NE run defense is suspect, and not as good as the numbers indicate. Although 4th statistically, this number is inflated, since NE spent a lot of time with leads, and other teams were forced to throw. Response: So? I agree that if NE has a weakness, it's run defense, but don't see how this means anything is going to be different this weekend. The Patriots are going to score points, and JAX is going to have to score some as well. There's no doubt at all about the NE offense, and JAX is going to have to keep up, which means they're going to have the same problem everyone else does, which means they're going to have to throw the ball. The NE run defense will do exactly what it has all season: hold other teams down just enough for the NE offense to get a lead. At which point JAX will have to start throwing, same as everyone else has.
People point out that this NE team, with its pass-happy offense, is not built for January cold-weather games. This will be a game in NE in January. I find it amazing that people use the fact that NE has a playoff game IN NEW ENGLAND as a point against the Patriots. Belichick is 14-2 in playoff home games. Brady is 6-0. You think the NE defense is going to be flat in front of a home crowd? Don't split hairs to find reasons why a home playoff game somehow works against NE. You're smoking crack.
Now lets look at the arguments that JAX is under-rated.
People point out that JAX has a great running game and will be able to control the clock against NE. This is true, but "contolling the clock" is always a relative issue. No matter how good JAX's possession game, the NE offense IS going to get on the field: the dynamics of the game indicate that both teams are probably going to have about the same number of possessions (both these teams are pretty good about turnovers; that should be a wash). The NE offense is going to get possessions and score points. Raise your hand if you think that JAX can score more points than NE given an equal number of possessions. That's what I thought. JAX might be able to keep in from being a blowout by limiting the number of possessions each team has, but that is the best results you can hope for from the "ball-control" theory. Turnovers aside, you cannot limit the number of the other team's possession except by limiting the number of your own possessions!
People point out that JAX has a great run defense, and will force NE to throw the ball. NE has been throwing the ball all season, whether they were "forced" to or not. The goal of forcing the QB to throw is based on the ideas that every incompletion is a lost play with no gain, and you might force a QB mistake that results in an interception. Brady is completing 69% of his passes. He's averaged 11.7 yards per completion, and 8.3 yards per attempt. Don't bet on NE drives stalling because Brady can't connect. As for mistakes, his touchdown to INT ration is over 5 to 1, and he's thrown just over one interception for every two games. Don't count on forcing him into turning the ball over. Weather might make it tough on Tom. But he's 12-2 in the playoffs for his career, and 84-1 carrer when the Pats have a lead in the forth. If you're plan to win depends on Tom Brady making mistakes that give you the game, you've got some re-thinking to do.
None of running the ball, controlling the clock, or forcing the pass did JAX much good against IND; they got beat by 22 points in IND in week 7. (Two weeks later, NE beat IND in IND.) IND beat JAX again in JAX in week 13. How exactly are things supposed to be better when JAX is facing the league's best offense (NE) instead of the fifth best offense (IND)?
Here are the simple facts of the game. New England is winning by an average margin of almost 20 points. They kicked the hell out of a PIT team that was better than JAX on defense, and almost as good running the ball. They are playing at home, and coming off a season in which they set single-season records for points, touchdowns, TD passes, and TD receptions. JAX is 0-7 this season when an opponent has a lead of 7 or greater.
There is a reason they play the games, and I might be the one who's wrong (it happens) but the way I see it, and barring divine intervetion, the Pats win this one handily.
This week's example is - once again - a NE Patriots reference. Notable professional commentators are arguing in the public forum that, not only CAN Jacksonville win, but that Jacksonville WILL win. ( http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs07/columns/story?columnist=green_jeremy&id=3187786 ) I admit that the former is possible. But to make the latter assertion is fucking crazy: nothing short of divine intervention by the football gods or else catestrophic meltdown by NE will result in a JAX win this week. Lets do some debunking, just for kicks.
First of all, the points that NE is overhyped:
People point out that NE might not be as good as its 16-0 record. "They played in the AFC east, and had an easy schedule." Bullshit. First of all, in addition to playing in the AFC East (which is soft), NE got wins at DAL, at IND, at NYG, and also wins against SD, PIT, and WAS. NE's perfect season included wins against SIX PLAYOFF TEAMS! Besides which, anyone who remembers the beatings that NE was handing out (notably in DAL and against PIT) should know better than to suggest that this team is somehow not as good as the numbers indicate.
People point out that the NE run defense is suspect, and not as good as the numbers indicate. Although 4th statistically, this number is inflated, since NE spent a lot of time with leads, and other teams were forced to throw. Response: So? I agree that if NE has a weakness, it's run defense, but don't see how this means anything is going to be different this weekend. The Patriots are going to score points, and JAX is going to have to score some as well. There's no doubt at all about the NE offense, and JAX is going to have to keep up, which means they're going to have the same problem everyone else does, which means they're going to have to throw the ball. The NE run defense will do exactly what it has all season: hold other teams down just enough for the NE offense to get a lead. At which point JAX will have to start throwing, same as everyone else has.
People point out that this NE team, with its pass-happy offense, is not built for January cold-weather games. This will be a game in NE in January. I find it amazing that people use the fact that NE has a playoff game IN NEW ENGLAND as a point against the Patriots. Belichick is 14-2 in playoff home games. Brady is 6-0. You think the NE defense is going to be flat in front of a home crowd? Don't split hairs to find reasons why a home playoff game somehow works against NE. You're smoking crack.
Now lets look at the arguments that JAX is under-rated.
People point out that JAX has a great running game and will be able to control the clock against NE. This is true, but "contolling the clock" is always a relative issue. No matter how good JAX's possession game, the NE offense IS going to get on the field: the dynamics of the game indicate that both teams are probably going to have about the same number of possessions (both these teams are pretty good about turnovers; that should be a wash). The NE offense is going to get possessions and score points. Raise your hand if you think that JAX can score more points than NE given an equal number of possessions. That's what I thought. JAX might be able to keep in from being a blowout by limiting the number of possessions each team has, but that is the best results you can hope for from the "ball-control" theory. Turnovers aside, you cannot limit the number of the other team's possession except by limiting the number of your own possessions!
People point out that JAX has a great run defense, and will force NE to throw the ball. NE has been throwing the ball all season, whether they were "forced" to or not. The goal of forcing the QB to throw is based on the ideas that every incompletion is a lost play with no gain, and you might force a QB mistake that results in an interception. Brady is completing 69% of his passes. He's averaged 11.7 yards per completion, and 8.3 yards per attempt. Don't bet on NE drives stalling because Brady can't connect. As for mistakes, his touchdown to INT ration is over 5 to 1, and he's thrown just over one interception for every two games. Don't count on forcing him into turning the ball over. Weather might make it tough on Tom. But he's 12-2 in the playoffs for his career, and 84-1 carrer when the Pats have a lead in the forth. If you're plan to win depends on Tom Brady making mistakes that give you the game, you've got some re-thinking to do.
None of running the ball, controlling the clock, or forcing the pass did JAX much good against IND; they got beat by 22 points in IND in week 7. (Two weeks later, NE beat IND in IND.) IND beat JAX again in JAX in week 13. How exactly are things supposed to be better when JAX is facing the league's best offense (NE) instead of the fifth best offense (IND)?
Here are the simple facts of the game. New England is winning by an average margin of almost 20 points. They kicked the hell out of a PIT team that was better than JAX on defense, and almost as good running the ball. They are playing at home, and coming off a season in which they set single-season records for points, touchdowns, TD passes, and TD receptions. JAX is 0-7 this season when an opponent has a lead of 7 or greater.
There is a reason they play the games, and I might be the one who's wrong (it happens) but the way I see it, and barring divine intervetion, the Pats win this one handily.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Crystallized Bullshit
My good friend DOTJ, who is probably the only person on the planet who reads this blog, inquires: what - other than nuclear conspiracy and anti-terrorism theory - is filed in the "MISC. INFO." part of my brain. Sorry, girl; no easy answer to that.
Except possibly to state that I have no such file in my head, because I don't believe there's any such thing as "miscellaneous information." Information doesn't exists in categories, we just assign them to categories because doing so is a way to compartmentalize data into blocks that we can deal with, and that we can use to tell ourselves that we are "experts" in certain "subjects." In short, it's a way for us to delude ourselves that we have a clue, never mind the fact that our lives are too short and our minds too narrow for us to have more than the delusion. Once again, we like the pretty pictures the Puppet Masters are showing on the cave wall, and - much like people who devote any time to "reality" TV - we think we know enough about the subject to say that we know something about something.
Information is does not exist in compartmentalized structures, but in crystalline structures, where every bit of information relates directly to a large number of adjoining concepts, and indirectly to every other bit of information. If you can simply take a step back and look at the broader structure of knowledge (or just watch a show like Discovery Channel's "Connections 2") you find that knowledge, math, history, philosophy, and politics are all the same thing, developing simultaneously (not parallel) over time. Just bear in mind a remarkably few general principles, and a whole lot of things become fairly simple.
This, actually, is the primary way by which I seem much smarter than I really am: my mind (as a result of slightly unusual neurotransmitter chemistry) naturally spots the crystalline structure of ideas. In high school, for example, I was studying calculus and physics at the same time, which made both classes easier. I slept through a great many physics lessons, but the math was so similar between the two that they were essentially the same subject. Physics was just a review lesson of calculus, except with ephemeral mathematical variables being replaced by "solid" values like the gravitational constant of the universe. But all the same thing. I got the same lessons as everyone else, I just learned them in different ways: somewhere along the line, I gained enough information about enough subjects to obtain the critical mass necessary for them all to stop being separate subjects.
So, with regard to my last few posts. I learned about the Rhyolite program from a book called "Deep Black" that my dad had on his bookshelf. My dad himself was an electrical engineer involved in the space program, so he also taught me the basis of optical and electromagnetic physics from a practical (as compared to mathematical) perspective. I can't tell you the math about propagation and transmission of radio waves, but I have a passing knowledge of the hardware and implications of propagation and transmission. When I learned about things like long-baseline interferometry and synthetic apertures, that knowledge fit into my mind's crystalline structure at a point adjacent to my knowledge of radio telescopy (the commonly known use for aperture synthesis and interferometry), which was only one step removed from my knowledge of radio telescope use by the NRO as a political/military tool (as ex amplified in the Rhyolite program).
So, late one post-9/11 night when I was suffering from insomnia and wondering if there was any need to be afraid of a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States, I started wondering if there were any possible way that a well-funded nation might be able to keep track of the location of nuclear weapons from orbit.
First step, consider what you want to track. What is it about them that makes them distinct from other things on earth and thus, differentiable (track able) from everything else. Realization that nuclear weapons, because they're necessarily made of radioactive components, necessarily emit radiation consistent with ongoing radioactive decay. Gamma rays and x-rays, which are just certain precisely defined parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Next step: consider whether the United States has the capability of monitoring bands of the electromagnetic spectrum on a global scale. Realization that the United States has had that capability since the 70's as exemplified by the Rhyoliteprogram. Next step, consider whether that technology could be used to listen for gamma and x-rays. Realization that, at least in theory: yes. Might take some different hardware to listen for x- and gamma-waves instead of the radio- and microwaves used for communication, but with smarter people than me at the helm of any such theoretical project, no reason why not. NASA launched an orbital gamma-ray telescope in 1991. The NRO (which refers to the National Reconnaissance Office, it such a thing officially existed, and - if it did exist - would have funding orders of magnitude greater than NASA) could theoretically launch some similar satellites looking downward to earth instead of outward to the Van Allen belt. The NRO was looking at the earth through optical telescopes (the Keyhole Program, again from "Deep Black") a hell of a long time before NASA was looking at the heavens through the Hubble Program. Draw your own conclusions about other parts of the electro-optical spectrum.
Next step, consider whether the hardware would make it work, given the fairly low radioactive emissions of even a nuclear critical mass. Can you build sensitive enough gear to hear the transmissions from orbital distances? Realization that, in theory, that's pretty simple. Based on aperture synthesis and long-baseline interferometry, all you need is an atomic clock on board each of several listening satellites, and a system (probably laser-based) to know the precise - and I do mean precise - location of each listening satellite in relation to each other satellite, and in relation to any point on the earth. If you can manage that, the fact that there's a lot of distance between the satellites offsets the fact that there's a lot of distance between the satellites and the transmitters, thanks to aperture synthesis. All you need is some massively powerful computers (which we've got) to crunch the numbers, and you can set up a system of satellites that can function like a single electromagnetic antenna with a diameter TEN TIMES GREATER THAN THE DIAMETER OF THE PLANET EARTH (which is only about 6,400 km). With the same information and some different (amazingly complex but very doable computer calculations) you can use different parts of that same satellite system to synthesize several antennas of smaller size (say 30,000 miles in diameter) in different orbital locations, with which you could triangulate to location of electromagnetic transmitters (nukes) on the surface of the earth.
Next, consider whether it would be accurate enough to be practical. Realization that it should be pretty good. Radio astronomers use the VLA to listen to radio waves from other solar systems, and the VLA can only synthesize an antenna about 22 miles in diameter, at a resolution of 0.05 arc-seconds. Even at that resolution, two or three such antennas in geostationary orbit (about 22,240 miles from earth) would be able to locate a transmitter on earth to within a few hundred yards. VLA-scale resolution is good enough to send in some Special Forces guys on an errand to fetch it or destroy any nukes located, and our theoretical array would be much more accurate than the VLA, since our theoretical synthetic aperture could be over 48,000 miles in diameter.
Next, consider whether it would be worth building. Realize that the system would theoretically reveal the location of every nuclear weapon on the planet. Yeah, that's the sort of capability that the United States would pay billions (or hundreds of billions) to get. Besides, the same array could also be used replace older birds (like Rhyolite) in the traditional tasks of listening in on radio transmissions, which is a nice fringe benefit.
I admit that this is all purely theoretical, and unsupported by any hard facts. But it's all supported by the underlying science, and can be thought up in the space of just a few minutes by an insomniac non-engineer law student with only passing knowledge of physics, astronomy, or nuclear chemistry. Suffice to say that much smarter people than I with much better knowledge of the available (but classified) technologies have been working night and day for decades on the same dilemma of tracking nukes, and have probably come up with answers to the problem much more clever than mine. That line of thinking, married to the overwhelming need for the United States to keep aware of threats, leads me to assert with absolute confidence that the United States military is aware of the exact location of every nuclear weapon on the face of the planet at every moment of every day. Barring some need to sink the Maine, no terrorist will ever succeed in exploding a nuclear weapon within the bounds of the United States. Hell, they haven't even managed success with SAMs against airliners; they got a long way to go before they're gonna bring the Big Fire.
This is how my mind works. Hold the problem in your mind, and keep an open mind about possible solutions. Almost always, your knowledge of the basic parameters of the problem will crystallize with other information in your mind, and lead you to a solution. Like, for example, the fact the nuclear weapons are made of fissile materials means that - theoretically at least - they can be tracked from afar using currently available technologies.
Which leads me back to my original point: there is no such thing as "miscellaneous information." Nor any other type of information the lies neatly encapsulated within the clear bounds of a subject heading. There's just information, which relates directly or indirectly to every other bit of information. So next time you're faced with some sort of technical or intellectual problem, try this: instead of narrowing your mind to focus on a possible solution, try opening up your mind to all possible solutions, and see what happens. Great thoughts generally won't fit through a narrow mind. And big problems generally require pretty impressive solutions.
Give it a try. It works for me.
The only problem is when you want to try and Turn It Off. Like, for example, when you haven't slept for 30 hours because of the endless chain thoughts bouncing around inside your head. From a peace of mind perspective, ignorance really is bliss. But that discussion for another time...
Except possibly to state that I have no such file in my head, because I don't believe there's any such thing as "miscellaneous information." Information doesn't exists in categories, we just assign them to categories because doing so is a way to compartmentalize data into blocks that we can deal with, and that we can use to tell ourselves that we are "experts" in certain "subjects." In short, it's a way for us to delude ourselves that we have a clue, never mind the fact that our lives are too short and our minds too narrow for us to have more than the delusion. Once again, we like the pretty pictures the Puppet Masters are showing on the cave wall, and - much like people who devote any time to "reality" TV - we think we know enough about the subject to say that we know something about something.
Information is does not exist in compartmentalized structures, but in crystalline structures, where every bit of information relates directly to a large number of adjoining concepts, and indirectly to every other bit of information. If you can simply take a step back and look at the broader structure of knowledge (or just watch a show like Discovery Channel's "Connections 2") you find that knowledge, math, history, philosophy, and politics are all the same thing, developing simultaneously (not parallel) over time. Just bear in mind a remarkably few general principles, and a whole lot of things become fairly simple.
This, actually, is the primary way by which I seem much smarter than I really am: my mind (as a result of slightly unusual neurotransmitter chemistry) naturally spots the crystalline structure of ideas. In high school, for example, I was studying calculus and physics at the same time, which made both classes easier. I slept through a great many physics lessons, but the math was so similar between the two that they were essentially the same subject. Physics was just a review lesson of calculus, except with ephemeral mathematical variables being replaced by "solid" values like the gravitational constant of the universe. But all the same thing. I got the same lessons as everyone else, I just learned them in different ways: somewhere along the line, I gained enough information about enough subjects to obtain the critical mass necessary for them all to stop being separate subjects.
So, with regard to my last few posts. I learned about the Rhyolite program from a book called "Deep Black" that my dad had on his bookshelf. My dad himself was an electrical engineer involved in the space program, so he also taught me the basis of optical and electromagnetic physics from a practical (as compared to mathematical) perspective. I can't tell you the math about propagation and transmission of radio waves, but I have a passing knowledge of the hardware and implications of propagation and transmission. When I learned about things like long-baseline interferometry and synthetic apertures, that knowledge fit into my mind's crystalline structure at a point adjacent to my knowledge of radio telescopy (the commonly known use for aperture synthesis and interferometry), which was only one step removed from my knowledge of radio telescope use by the NRO as a political/military tool (as ex amplified in the Rhyolite program).
So, late one post-9/11 night when I was suffering from insomnia and wondering if there was any need to be afraid of a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States, I started wondering if there were any possible way that a well-funded nation might be able to keep track of the location of nuclear weapons from orbit.
First step, consider what you want to track. What is it about them that makes them distinct from other things on earth and thus, differentiable (track able) from everything else. Realization that nuclear weapons, because they're necessarily made of radioactive components, necessarily emit radiation consistent with ongoing radioactive decay. Gamma rays and x-rays, which are just certain precisely defined parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Next step: consider whether the United States has the capability of monitoring bands of the electromagnetic spectrum on a global scale. Realization that the United States has had that capability since the 70's as exemplified by the Rhyoliteprogram. Next step, consider whether that technology could be used to listen for gamma and x-rays. Realization that, at least in theory: yes. Might take some different hardware to listen for x- and gamma-waves instead of the radio- and microwaves used for communication, but with smarter people than me at the helm of any such theoretical project, no reason why not. NASA launched an orbital gamma-ray telescope in 1991. The NRO (which refers to the National Reconnaissance Office, it such a thing officially existed, and - if it did exist - would have funding orders of magnitude greater than NASA) could theoretically launch some similar satellites looking downward to earth instead of outward to the Van Allen belt. The NRO was looking at the earth through optical telescopes (the Keyhole Program, again from "Deep Black") a hell of a long time before NASA was looking at the heavens through the Hubble Program. Draw your own conclusions about other parts of the electro-optical spectrum.
Next step, consider whether the hardware would make it work, given the fairly low radioactive emissions of even a nuclear critical mass. Can you build sensitive enough gear to hear the transmissions from orbital distances? Realization that, in theory, that's pretty simple. Based on aperture synthesis and long-baseline interferometry, all you need is an atomic clock on board each of several listening satellites, and a system (probably laser-based) to know the precise - and I do mean precise - location of each listening satellite in relation to each other satellite, and in relation to any point on the earth. If you can manage that, the fact that there's a lot of distance between the satellites offsets the fact that there's a lot of distance between the satellites and the transmitters, thanks to aperture synthesis. All you need is some massively powerful computers (which we've got) to crunch the numbers, and you can set up a system of satellites that can function like a single electromagnetic antenna with a diameter TEN TIMES GREATER THAN THE DIAMETER OF THE PLANET EARTH (which is only about 6,400 km). With the same information and some different (amazingly complex but very doable computer calculations) you can use different parts of that same satellite system to synthesize several antennas of smaller size (say 30,000 miles in diameter) in different orbital locations, with which you could triangulate to location of electromagnetic transmitters (nukes) on the surface of the earth.
Next, consider whether it would be accurate enough to be practical. Realization that it should be pretty good. Radio astronomers use the VLA to listen to radio waves from other solar systems, and the VLA can only synthesize an antenna about 22 miles in diameter, at a resolution of 0.05 arc-seconds. Even at that resolution, two or three such antennas in geostationary orbit (about 22,240 miles from earth) would be able to locate a transmitter on earth to within a few hundred yards. VLA-scale resolution is good enough to send in some Special Forces guys on an errand to fetch it or destroy any nukes located, and our theoretical array would be much more accurate than the VLA, since our theoretical synthetic aperture could be over 48,000 miles in diameter.
Next, consider whether it would be worth building. Realize that the system would theoretically reveal the location of every nuclear weapon on the planet. Yeah, that's the sort of capability that the United States would pay billions (or hundreds of billions) to get. Besides, the same array could also be used replace older birds (like Rhyolite) in the traditional tasks of listening in on radio transmissions, which is a nice fringe benefit.
I admit that this is all purely theoretical, and unsupported by any hard facts. But it's all supported by the underlying science, and can be thought up in the space of just a few minutes by an insomniac non-engineer law student with only passing knowledge of physics, astronomy, or nuclear chemistry. Suffice to say that much smarter people than I with much better knowledge of the available (but classified) technologies have been working night and day for decades on the same dilemma of tracking nukes, and have probably come up with answers to the problem much more clever than mine. That line of thinking, married to the overwhelming need for the United States to keep aware of threats, leads me to assert with absolute confidence that the United States military is aware of the exact location of every nuclear weapon on the face of the planet at every moment of every day. Barring some need to sink the Maine, no terrorist will ever succeed in exploding a nuclear weapon within the bounds of the United States. Hell, they haven't even managed success with SAMs against airliners; they got a long way to go before they're gonna bring the Big Fire.
This is how my mind works. Hold the problem in your mind, and keep an open mind about possible solutions. Almost always, your knowledge of the basic parameters of the problem will crystallize with other information in your mind, and lead you to a solution. Like, for example, the fact the nuclear weapons are made of fissile materials means that - theoretically at least - they can be tracked from afar using currently available technologies.
Which leads me back to my original point: there is no such thing as "miscellaneous information." Nor any other type of information the lies neatly encapsulated within the clear bounds of a subject heading. There's just information, which relates directly or indirectly to every other bit of information. So next time you're faced with some sort of technical or intellectual problem, try this: instead of narrowing your mind to focus on a possible solution, try opening up your mind to all possible solutions, and see what happens. Great thoughts generally won't fit through a narrow mind. And big problems generally require pretty impressive solutions.
Give it a try. It works for me.
The only problem is when you want to try and Turn It Off. Like, for example, when you haven't slept for 30 hours because of the endless chain thoughts bouncing around inside your head. From a peace of mind perspective, ignorance really is bliss. But that discussion for another time...
Monday, December 31, 2007
Black Ops
(Read the last post first; this one follows up on it.)
Okay. Lets put all reason and reality aside, and say - just for the sake of discussion - that you're a terrorist that has somehow managed to get a hold of a nuclear weapon. Since there's no possible way you've built it yourself (most countries can't manage that, much less your jihad focused ass), you've stolen from someone, or somehow managed to outbid the Americans (or their agents) on the black market, or else some other miracle. You have somehow manages to beg, buy, or steal of the most valuable, dangerous, and heavily guarded objects on the planet. There it is, sitting right in front of you on the table in your fortified bunker somewhere in the Hindu Kush.
Now what do you do?
You have come across the problem that all nuclear powers face: you have to get the bomb to the target area, so you can set it off. Otherwise, it's just a billion-dollar paperweight that will give you cancer if you stand too close. Does no good sitting in the bunker. How are you supposed to get it to the target?
Probably can't carry it. American nukes are very small, and even the Soviets managed man-portable backpack-bombs, but they had the benefit of plutonium. Critical mass (the amount needed to light up a nuclear chain-reaction) for plutonium is only about 22 lbs. But your bomb is almost certainly uranium, and even if it's made of pure U235, it's gotta have over 100 lbs of just uranium (52 kg.) for a critical mass, and that's not including the secondary materials that make your atomic weapon into a thermonuclear weapon. Incidentally, 52 kilos of uranium is only about the size of a softball; your nuke is really not all that big, but it's REALLY heavy.
You're not going to be able to get a missile system that can hit the US, so don't even think about it. Even among the nations that have built nukes, only the US, China, and Russia have a missile delivery system that can hit, say, New York from central asia. N. Korea is getting there, but their last ICBM test (July 5, 2006) failed just after launch, and landed in the ocean. Where it was probably visited by a ship like the Glomar Explorer (google it) within a matter of hours. But that's another story. Unlike the bombs, which require only exotic materials to build a fairly simple structure, missiles are built with the best computer guidance systems and engineered to the tightest mechanical tolerances you'll find on the planet earth. MUCH more difficult to build than the nukes. Besides, your nuke can be carted around in a pickup truck, but you need at least a train car to haul around an ICBM. Hardly practical, since you're necessarily operating in secret, lest you need to start dodging bombs and bullets from people who don't approve of you being a nuclear power.
All in all, your only realistic option is to somehow get your nuke onto a plane, and fly it to the target. But don't feel bad about this; air-mail has historically been the preferred method of delivery, even among the Superpowers. Quick history lesson. Delivery of nukes was the great military challenge of the late 20th century, and the technology never kept up with the fear and paranoia. There were historical fears that the soviets led the world in the "rocket race," but the truth is that the Americans have generally led the way. The soviets did make good rockets, but lacked the economy to build many of them; through the 1950s and early 1960s, a nuclear war would have seen most Soviet bombs being delivered by - get this - B-29 bombers. Four American B-29s landed in Soviet territory in 1944, and the Soviets not only never gave them back, but made thousands of exact copies, although with different engines. (Goolge "Tu-4.") Even after they retired the B-29/Tu-4, their main delivery system was still a propeller-driver bomber (Tu-95) through the 1980s. The reason that the Soviets tried to put nukes on Cuba was that they didn't have many missiles that could reach America from Russia. Technology has come along since then, but still: Despite all the missile development that's gone on, the cheapest way to deliver nukes remains loading them onto a plan and flying them to the target.
American nuclear defense knows this; the commonly perceived top American military base is the NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. NORAD stands for North American Air Defense. It is the nerve center of radar and satellite system that monitor every single object in the air surrounding the planet earth, from small planes taking off from dirt airstrips in Kamchaka to the tiniest bits of orbital trash in the near-earth skies. We know where the bombers are.
Still, it might work for you. Might be able to sneak a nuke in on a civilian flight. All you need to do it to get your nuke to an airport, find a plane, and take a ride. Should be simple, right?
The big problem you have now is doing it in secret, which is the biggest problem you'll face yet, even though you already have the nuke. The simple fact is that - although they can be taken by surprise - the Americans, spurred by the degree of threat, are REALLY good at finding nukes, and have spent truly staggering amounts of money on projects that don't exist to keep them appraised of the location of every single nuclear weapon on the face of the earth.
We'll put aside the political treaties and connections (reciprocal inspections, security agreements, and so forth) that probably informed the Americans that a nuke was missing from somebody's arsenal. We'll ignore that they were aware that a nuke was in unknown hands probably before your purchase check cleared. We'll focus on the practical, technological ends.
Stealth has always been a priority with nuclear weapons, even in wars between nations. A nuclear sneak-attack could knock out the Bad Guys, leaving them unable to retaliate. If the enemy's leadership disappear in a flash, you're well on the way to winning unscathed. So nations tried to develop that sneak-attack capability, at the expenditure of amounts that put the Manhattan project to shame, and even approached the amounts spent on ICBM projects. With all that expenditure, the best thing people could think of to hide nuclear weapons until delivered was missile submarines. Those subs are the consensus hardest-to-locate pieces of military technology on the planet. They hide in vast oceans, and with current technologies, the only times they come to the surface is when they're in port. They can, in fact, go months without air striking their acoustic-tile clad skins. As technologies continued to develop, the traditional way to find them - by the noise they make - has been complicated by the fact that the most recent models make less noise than the ambient ocean around them. Keeping track of them is like keeping track of holes in the water.
Doesn't matter. It is generally conceded that the United States knows the location of every single submarine in the world, at all times. As much money (or more) has been spent trying to defeat stealth technology as has been spent developing it, and between SOSUS networks, P-3 sonobouy drops, patrolling ships and submarines, and other things (like the fact that seawater is transparent to certain blue-green wavelengths that are visible from space to American spy satellites), nary a nuclear-armed submarine anywhere the world over gets into international waters without an American 688-class boat on its tail. We know where they are, and we can hit them in a matter of minutes or seconds, should the need arise. The stealthiest things on the planet cannot hide from the determined (and well-funded) efforts of clever Americans.
"Yeah but," you say: bombers and subs are military hardware that operate from fixed bases. Of course the Americans can track them coming and going. Radars (and other things) watch military flights. Sonars (and other things) watch the sea for military ships. But we can sneak in on a civilian flight! We can load the bomb onto a civilian ship (or even a boat) and sail into New York of San Francisco harbor! We can sail into Brazil and drive it up the pan-American highway! Only a handful of people will even know the plan, much less the exact location at any time! They'll never know, much less find us!
The problem is that American tracking of nuclear bombers and subs is exemplary of the sensory technology, not definitive. Really now. Uncle Sam has decades of experience working to defend itself from any possible means of nuclear attack, and routinely tracks the best technologies and methods that the world's developed nations are able to produce, despite their expenditures of billions trying to escape scrutiny. You really think he's going to get bamboozled by your AK-47 toting ass? Lets have a reality check, and take a look at some other, lesser known fields of sensory technology.
Signal intelligence is an American specialty, and has a long history. Intercepting the other guy's radio traffic can tell you all sorts of stuff, especially if you can break his cryptography, and listen to what he's actually saying. But even if you can't, his radio traffic can tell you things, like where his command staff is based: they spend a lot of time on radios giving orders. Track the signals, and you find him. Signal intelligence took off as an orbital technology in mid-1970, with the Cape Canaveral launch of the Rhylolite Program, which was designed to listen in on electromagnetic traffic the world over. It was a series of satellites with extremely large, extremely sensitive antennae pointed towards earth, listening 24 hours a day for electromagnetic radiation, primarily radio traffic. Even at that early stage, using 1970s technology, the Rhylolite birds were able to pick up the transmissions of Chinese hand-held radios during Chi-Com military exercises in Mongolia. The biggest problem with Rhyolite was that they could hear EVERYTHING, and there weren't enough resources to sift through the vast amounts of data being brought in for bits of information that was relevant. Given the vast volume of electromagnetic waves passing over the surface of the earth, how do you pick out what to listen to, and what can be ignored?
Now consider two things. First, America's ability to monitor traffic and transmission of electromagnetic radiation has improved, probably by several orders of magnitude over the last 35 years. Do some google searches on "very large array," "aperture synthesis," and "long baseline interferometry." Keeping those technological tidbits in mind, imagine America's ability - using a constellation of listening satellites working in concert - to listen to and locate anything on the face of the earth which is emitting any sort of measurable radiation. Even using widely known technology you can look up on wikipedia (and ignoring the cool stuff that hasn't yet reached the public eye) America is theoretically able to listen for electromagnetic signals using antenna that are SEVERAL MILES IN DIAMETER. It's not much of a stretch to assume that if ANY OBJECT is broadcasting ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, the United States can find it. If it's emitting, Uncle Sam is hearing it.
Second: consider that your nuke is - by very nature of being nuclear - continually broadcasting radiation on wavelengths that are precisely known to the United States.
If your bunker is deep enough, there is the possibility that Uncle Sam can't hear it broadcasting from where it sits on the table in front of you. The stone and earth over your head might be thick enough to stop all the rays before they reach open sky. But what about when it left the arsenal where it was supposed to be, and rode by plane, train, or automobile, to get where it sits now? Don't kid yourself about their abilities to track it, and - since they saw it arrive - they know where it is, and probably have a pretty good idea who you are, since they keep track of who is using what bunker in your part of the world. There are probably bombers on their way towards you now.
How are you going to move it away from where it sits without them see it, especially given the your fairly short life-expectancy with a rogue nuke in your possession? First, you might be able to shield it in enough lead and nickle for them to not be able to hear it. Probably not, and you don't even know how heavy the shielding needs to be, since the limits of American SIGINT capabilities are highly classified. But to be on the safe side, you probably need to stop every single bit of radiation from reaching air. This can be done. For example, crews of nuclear submarines spend all day around radioactive materials, but get less radiation exposure than people walking on the surface of the earth. The reactors are shielded, and being under water, crew members don't catch the harmful rays being thrown out by the sun. You can shield the emissions of your nuke. But then you have the same problems that non-American nuclear subs have: you have to transport a shielded nuclear source to withing striking distance without anyone noticing. How exactly do you plan to do that? People (reads: Americans and their agents) are going to notice several tons of shielding material being transported away from the site where a nuclear warhead suddenly disappeared from view. They're going to find you, and they're going to kill you.
Next option, and really the last option, it to take the nuke apart, in the hopes that you can break the nuclear components into pieces small enough that they can be shielded to the point where they're not emitting enough rads to be tracked. But then you have another problem: you don't have a nuclear weapon anymore, you have the parts to nuclear weapon. Which parts you have to transport from where they are to the detonation site by different means of transport, where they can then be re-assembled, all under the watchful eyes of people who know what you have, where you're coming from, and probably who you are. You have to move these parts (which are still emitting rads to one degree or another) right under the nose of people who are trying to kill you, and who will go to literally any ends to stop you. You're going to have to use several means of transport, and different routes for different parts. That means that more people are going to know about the operation, and it's that much more likely that someone will either slip up, or sell out to the millions that the Americans would pay either for the heads of you and you pals, or to simply buy the parts from you and your "trusted" minions.
All they have to do is catch one of your attempts at transportation of the components, since if they get any of your materials, you no longer have a critical mass of uranium. They're going to get you.
Once again, I've written myself out, and I'm boring of this subject. Hope fully this has been informative. Don't hesitate with any questions.
Okay. Lets put all reason and reality aside, and say - just for the sake of discussion - that you're a terrorist that has somehow managed to get a hold of a nuclear weapon. Since there's no possible way you've built it yourself (most countries can't manage that, much less your jihad focused ass), you've stolen from someone, or somehow managed to outbid the Americans (or their agents) on the black market, or else some other miracle. You have somehow manages to beg, buy, or steal of the most valuable, dangerous, and heavily guarded objects on the planet. There it is, sitting right in front of you on the table in your fortified bunker somewhere in the Hindu Kush.
Now what do you do?
You have come across the problem that all nuclear powers face: you have to get the bomb to the target area, so you can set it off. Otherwise, it's just a billion-dollar paperweight that will give you cancer if you stand too close. Does no good sitting in the bunker. How are you supposed to get it to the target?
Probably can't carry it. American nukes are very small, and even the Soviets managed man-portable backpack-bombs, but they had the benefit of plutonium. Critical mass (the amount needed to light up a nuclear chain-reaction) for plutonium is only about 22 lbs. But your bomb is almost certainly uranium, and even if it's made of pure U235, it's gotta have over 100 lbs of just uranium (52 kg.) for a critical mass, and that's not including the secondary materials that make your atomic weapon into a thermonuclear weapon. Incidentally, 52 kilos of uranium is only about the size of a softball; your nuke is really not all that big, but it's REALLY heavy.
You're not going to be able to get a missile system that can hit the US, so don't even think about it. Even among the nations that have built nukes, only the US, China, and Russia have a missile delivery system that can hit, say, New York from central asia. N. Korea is getting there, but their last ICBM test (July 5, 2006) failed just after launch, and landed in the ocean. Where it was probably visited by a ship like the Glomar Explorer (google it) within a matter of hours. But that's another story. Unlike the bombs, which require only exotic materials to build a fairly simple structure, missiles are built with the best computer guidance systems and engineered to the tightest mechanical tolerances you'll find on the planet earth. MUCH more difficult to build than the nukes. Besides, your nuke can be carted around in a pickup truck, but you need at least a train car to haul around an ICBM. Hardly practical, since you're necessarily operating in secret, lest you need to start dodging bombs and bullets from people who don't approve of you being a nuclear power.
All in all, your only realistic option is to somehow get your nuke onto a plane, and fly it to the target. But don't feel bad about this; air-mail has historically been the preferred method of delivery, even among the Superpowers. Quick history lesson. Delivery of nukes was the great military challenge of the late 20th century, and the technology never kept up with the fear and paranoia. There were historical fears that the soviets led the world in the "rocket race," but the truth is that the Americans have generally led the way. The soviets did make good rockets, but lacked the economy to build many of them; through the 1950s and early 1960s, a nuclear war would have seen most Soviet bombs being delivered by - get this - B-29 bombers. Four American B-29s landed in Soviet territory in 1944, and the Soviets not only never gave them back, but made thousands of exact copies, although with different engines. (Goolge "Tu-4.") Even after they retired the B-29/Tu-4, their main delivery system was still a propeller-driver bomber (Tu-95) through the 1980s. The reason that the Soviets tried to put nukes on Cuba was that they didn't have many missiles that could reach America from Russia. Technology has come along since then, but still: Despite all the missile development that's gone on, the cheapest way to deliver nukes remains loading them onto a plan and flying them to the target.
American nuclear defense knows this; the commonly perceived top American military base is the NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. NORAD stands for North American Air Defense. It is the nerve center of radar and satellite system that monitor every single object in the air surrounding the planet earth, from small planes taking off from dirt airstrips in Kamchaka to the tiniest bits of orbital trash in the near-earth skies. We know where the bombers are.
Still, it might work for you. Might be able to sneak a nuke in on a civilian flight. All you need to do it to get your nuke to an airport, find a plane, and take a ride. Should be simple, right?
The big problem you have now is doing it in secret, which is the biggest problem you'll face yet, even though you already have the nuke. The simple fact is that - although they can be taken by surprise - the Americans, spurred by the degree of threat, are REALLY good at finding nukes, and have spent truly staggering amounts of money on projects that don't exist to keep them appraised of the location of every single nuclear weapon on the face of the earth.
We'll put aside the political treaties and connections (reciprocal inspections, security agreements, and so forth) that probably informed the Americans that a nuke was missing from somebody's arsenal. We'll ignore that they were aware that a nuke was in unknown hands probably before your purchase check cleared. We'll focus on the practical, technological ends.
Stealth has always been a priority with nuclear weapons, even in wars between nations. A nuclear sneak-attack could knock out the Bad Guys, leaving them unable to retaliate. If the enemy's leadership disappear in a flash, you're well on the way to winning unscathed. So nations tried to develop that sneak-attack capability, at the expenditure of amounts that put the Manhattan project to shame, and even approached the amounts spent on ICBM projects. With all that expenditure, the best thing people could think of to hide nuclear weapons until delivered was missile submarines. Those subs are the consensus hardest-to-locate pieces of military technology on the planet. They hide in vast oceans, and with current technologies, the only times they come to the surface is when they're in port. They can, in fact, go months without air striking their acoustic-tile clad skins. As technologies continued to develop, the traditional way to find them - by the noise they make - has been complicated by the fact that the most recent models make less noise than the ambient ocean around them. Keeping track of them is like keeping track of holes in the water.
Doesn't matter. It is generally conceded that the United States knows the location of every single submarine in the world, at all times. As much money (or more) has been spent trying to defeat stealth technology as has been spent developing it, and between SOSUS networks, P-3 sonobouy drops, patrolling ships and submarines, and other things (like the fact that seawater is transparent to certain blue-green wavelengths that are visible from space to American spy satellites), nary a nuclear-armed submarine anywhere the world over gets into international waters without an American 688-class boat on its tail. We know where they are, and we can hit them in a matter of minutes or seconds, should the need arise. The stealthiest things on the planet cannot hide from the determined (and well-funded) efforts of clever Americans.
"Yeah but," you say: bombers and subs are military hardware that operate from fixed bases. Of course the Americans can track them coming and going. Radars (and other things) watch military flights. Sonars (and other things) watch the sea for military ships. But we can sneak in on a civilian flight! We can load the bomb onto a civilian ship (or even a boat) and sail into New York of San Francisco harbor! We can sail into Brazil and drive it up the pan-American highway! Only a handful of people will even know the plan, much less the exact location at any time! They'll never know, much less find us!
The problem is that American tracking of nuclear bombers and subs is exemplary of the sensory technology, not definitive. Really now. Uncle Sam has decades of experience working to defend itself from any possible means of nuclear attack, and routinely tracks the best technologies and methods that the world's developed nations are able to produce, despite their expenditures of billions trying to escape scrutiny. You really think he's going to get bamboozled by your AK-47 toting ass? Lets have a reality check, and take a look at some other, lesser known fields of sensory technology.
Signal intelligence is an American specialty, and has a long history. Intercepting the other guy's radio traffic can tell you all sorts of stuff, especially if you can break his cryptography, and listen to what he's actually saying. But even if you can't, his radio traffic can tell you things, like where his command staff is based: they spend a lot of time on radios giving orders. Track the signals, and you find him. Signal intelligence took off as an orbital technology in mid-1970, with the Cape Canaveral launch of the Rhylolite Program, which was designed to listen in on electromagnetic traffic the world over. It was a series of satellites with extremely large, extremely sensitive antennae pointed towards earth, listening 24 hours a day for electromagnetic radiation, primarily radio traffic. Even at that early stage, using 1970s technology, the Rhylolite birds were able to pick up the transmissions of Chinese hand-held radios during Chi-Com military exercises in Mongolia. The biggest problem with Rhyolite was that they could hear EVERYTHING, and there weren't enough resources to sift through the vast amounts of data being brought in for bits of information that was relevant. Given the vast volume of electromagnetic waves passing over the surface of the earth, how do you pick out what to listen to, and what can be ignored?
Now consider two things. First, America's ability to monitor traffic and transmission of electromagnetic radiation has improved, probably by several orders of magnitude over the last 35 years. Do some google searches on "very large array," "aperture synthesis," and "long baseline interferometry." Keeping those technological tidbits in mind, imagine America's ability - using a constellation of listening satellites working in concert - to listen to and locate anything on the face of the earth which is emitting any sort of measurable radiation. Even using widely known technology you can look up on wikipedia (and ignoring the cool stuff that hasn't yet reached the public eye) America is theoretically able to listen for electromagnetic signals using antenna that are SEVERAL MILES IN DIAMETER. It's not much of a stretch to assume that if ANY OBJECT is broadcasting ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, the United States can find it. If it's emitting, Uncle Sam is hearing it.
Second: consider that your nuke is - by very nature of being nuclear - continually broadcasting radiation on wavelengths that are precisely known to the United States.
If your bunker is deep enough, there is the possibility that Uncle Sam can't hear it broadcasting from where it sits on the table in front of you. The stone and earth over your head might be thick enough to stop all the rays before they reach open sky. But what about when it left the arsenal where it was supposed to be, and rode by plane, train, or automobile, to get where it sits now? Don't kid yourself about their abilities to track it, and - since they saw it arrive - they know where it is, and probably have a pretty good idea who you are, since they keep track of who is using what bunker in your part of the world. There are probably bombers on their way towards you now.
How are you going to move it away from where it sits without them see it, especially given the your fairly short life-expectancy with a rogue nuke in your possession? First, you might be able to shield it in enough lead and nickle for them to not be able to hear it. Probably not, and you don't even know how heavy the shielding needs to be, since the limits of American SIGINT capabilities are highly classified. But to be on the safe side, you probably need to stop every single bit of radiation from reaching air. This can be done. For example, crews of nuclear submarines spend all day around radioactive materials, but get less radiation exposure than people walking on the surface of the earth. The reactors are shielded, and being under water, crew members don't catch the harmful rays being thrown out by the sun. You can shield the emissions of your nuke. But then you have the same problems that non-American nuclear subs have: you have to transport a shielded nuclear source to withing striking distance without anyone noticing. How exactly do you plan to do that? People (reads: Americans and their agents) are going to notice several tons of shielding material being transported away from the site where a nuclear warhead suddenly disappeared from view. They're going to find you, and they're going to kill you.
Next option, and really the last option, it to take the nuke apart, in the hopes that you can break the nuclear components into pieces small enough that they can be shielded to the point where they're not emitting enough rads to be tracked. But then you have another problem: you don't have a nuclear weapon anymore, you have the parts to nuclear weapon. Which parts you have to transport from where they are to the detonation site by different means of transport, where they can then be re-assembled, all under the watchful eyes of people who know what you have, where you're coming from, and probably who you are. You have to move these parts (which are still emitting rads to one degree or another) right under the nose of people who are trying to kill you, and who will go to literally any ends to stop you. You're going to have to use several means of transport, and different routes for different parts. That means that more people are going to know about the operation, and it's that much more likely that someone will either slip up, or sell out to the millions that the Americans would pay either for the heads of you and you pals, or to simply buy the parts from you and your "trusted" minions.
All they have to do is catch one of your attempts at transportation of the components, since if they get any of your materials, you no longer have a critical mass of uranium. They're going to get you.
Once again, I've written myself out, and I'm boring of this subject. Hope fully this has been informative. Don't hesitate with any questions.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Weapons of Mass Sensationalism
The last time that a "Weapon of Mass Destruction" was used on any significantly effective scale was August 9th of 1945, when a little Japanese town mostly ceased to exist. It is a little know fact that that instance was not the most destructive bombing of the Home Islands that year. Neither was the bombing of Hiroshima a few days earlier. The most telling bombing was of Tokyo over March 9-10, when over 100,000 thousand people were killed by America's creative use of incendiary weapons against a city where the primary building materials were wood and paper. But there's no denying that the nukes were more dramatic, and were an excellent use of a terror weapon.
Imagine being the ruling military junta of Japan. It's August 10, 1945. Hiroshima was a bustling city four days ago. Nagasaki was a bustling city yesterday. It's been a while since you even pretended to be able to stop the B-29s from dropping shit on you. How long will the Americans be able to continue obliterating entire cities at 3-day intervals? Do you wait until the 12th, just to see what happens? Incidentally, they didn't. They decided to tender unconditional surrender THAT DAY, although it took a few weeks to overcome a minor coup d'etat and work out the various formalities.
We have seen minor uses of chemical weapons since then - sometimes every against military targets - and there has always been widespread paranoia about biological warfare, notwithstanding the lack of any effective track record. The simple fact is that weapons of mass destruction are either very hard to make, very hard to use, or both.
Lets go alphabetically, shall we? The formation of extremely virulent biological weapons is actual directly contrary to evolution. Germs are organisms, and thus naturally predisposed towards evolution which results in them living longer. A germ that instantly kills the host would never last; a host needs to live long enough to carry the germ to another host. The pressures of natural selection dictate that, over time, germs reach symbiosis with hosts, rather than becoming more and more deadly to the host. E. coli, for example, is a germ that most people fear. Never mind the fact that every human on the planet has E. coli resident in their digestive tract, where the bugs provide good service to humanity in turning food into energy. It has been co-existing with humanity for so long that - a few quirks aside - we actually help each other survive.
Any effort to create a supervirus goes against this trend, and this - to be blunt - is the reason that pandemics happen so rarely. Pandemics are no better for the germs than they are for the host, as the death of the host leaves the germs no place to live. This is a tough hurdle to overcome, since nature already has cornered the market on the most effective ways for germs to damage people, but not so badly that the germs are left without a home. Google "AIDS" and "influenza."
So biological threats, either natural or man-made, are not the great looming spectre that the media and governments try to portray them as. If you have good personal hygiene and enough sense to thing thoughts like "Gee, I'm not feeling very well. I should probably take it easy until my body fights it off," you're evolved enough to get through most biological problems.
Chemical warfare is not much greater a threat. There are certainly substances that are amazingly lethal, and a chemistry grad-student can make them in a home lab. But even organophosphates (nerve agents like Tabun, Sarin or VX) have a certain minimum dose that must be reached, and all have clear symptoms before you reach deadly levels. Also, there's only so much of the chemical to be delivered agent in any given delivery system (be the delivery system a bomb or a spray can or whatever). Thus, there is a built-in dilemma: to kill people, you have to concentrate your finite amount of poison against the targets, to heighten the chance of each target receiving a lethal dose. But to kill A LOT of people, you have to spread your finite amount of poison as broadly as you can. The compromise that is reached is that weapon designers try to fill an area with enough agent to give a lethal dose to a normal person, within space of the period that the weapon designer expects such normal person to linger in the area being targeted. People tend to move quickly along streets and sidewalks, so you need a very high concentration of chemical agent to area in order to affect them during the short time they're within the area. For the most part, chemical attacks only work in confined places, where people spend time standing around in the same spot, and (ideally) where they are unable to move into clean areas to get to fresh air. Subway trains and stations, for example.
But almost always, the time period required to receive a lethal dose is measured in minutes and seconds, rather than simply in seconds. (Adjusted for health, of course; takes less to kill an ailing sexagenarian than a 22 year old triathlete.) In general, if you're smart enough to think thoughts like "Gee, the air around here is a bit strange and making me nauseous; I should probably go find some fresh air," you're evolved enough to survive most chemical attacks.
Interestingly, the chemical agent that will cause the most damage from very short-term exposure is not a high-tech organophosphate nerve gas, but is mustard agents much like those being used back in 1918. 10 seconds of a less-than lethal-dose sarin gas will leave you cranky, irritable, and having bad dreams, from the lingering effect of miss-behaving neural connections. But 10 seconds of a less than lethal dose of mustard gas might leave you with open chemical burns, massively damaged eyes and mucus membranes, and severe respiration problems from chemical burns inside your lungs. Nasty shit, in many ways worse than anything developed since. But its not something that's going to wipe out a city. Chemical weapons just don't work that way.
Which brings us to nukes, the holy grail of the WMD topic. Lets put aside for now the idea of a nuclear military strike, and focus instead on a terrorist strike, perhaps inside the United States. Accept at the outset that such an event is extremely unlikely to EVER happen, both because of the nature of the weapon, and efforts to prevent such events from happening.
First, the weapon. As said previously, nukes are REALLY not all that complicated. You build a sphere (or cylinder) of low-grade, non-fissile uranium, containing a mixture of deuterium and tritium, and cored with a sphere (or tube) of fissile uranium. Then, right next to that sphere or tube, you put an atomic bomb. Which is really just a sphere of plutonium or high-grade (fissile) uranium inside another sphere of high-grade conventional explosives (C4 will work in a pinch). When you set of the conventional explosives of the atomic bomb, it squeezes down the plutonium or fissile uranium into a volume so small that randomly released subatomic particles of the compressed material cannot help but strike the nuclei of nearby heavy atoms, creating a chain reaction, which turns into an atomic explosion: Nuclear fission, a la Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Under the heat and pressure and bombardment of subatomic particles from the nearby fission blast, the deuterium and tritium in the other (secondary) assembly will undergo nuclear FUSION, sparked by the high-grade uranium core of the deuterium/tritium assembly (which responds instantaneously to the bombardment of sub-atomic particles the moment the fission blast goes off). The result is a miniature sun, which induces further fission into the normally non-fissile uranium casing of the deuterium/tritium assembly (which induced fission actually accounts for about half of the explosive yield). The results that are truly spectacular. So spectacular, in fact, that you don't want to observe them from a distance measured in anything less than round miles.
Like I said, there aren't even any moving parts! Yet in the last 50 years, only a handful of countries have been able to build these things.
The reason is the materials. Deuterium and tritium ("heavy water") are not so rare in the industrial world. But you need to have the right stuff. You also need a lot more heavy water than just the bomb components, since you'll use quite a bit processing your uranium, which is the real pain in the ass part of the process. Plutonium is exceedingly rare, dangerous, and difficult to work with, so most non-American bombs are made from uranium.
"Weapon grade" uranium is uranium that is at least 85% U235, although your uranium is usable in a bomb (becomes fissile) at about 20% U235. The problem is that less than 1% of naturally-occurring uranium is U235, the remainder being a different, slightly heavier isotope, U238. To get 65 or so kilos of fissile uranium for your bomb, you should expect to process over a ton of pure uranium. Since you're almost certainly going to have to start with some form of uranium other than the pure stuff, odds are you're going to have to separate the choice atoms you need from uranium ore: several hundred tons of mostly useless, slightly radioactive dirt. When you're done getting the U235, you'll also have U238 to build the components of your secondary casing, so don't worry about that. In fact, you'll have enough U238 left over for other things too, like improving the armor on your tanks and the lethality of your bullets, both of which applications are served well by the great mass of uranium.
So. You've got your mountain of uranium ore. Now you need a bunch of centrifuges. These are just machines with containers on the end of spinning arms. You fill the containers with material, and then start them spinning. Inside the containers, heavy particles get forced by centrifugal force away from the center of the spin. Because uranium is heavier than pretty much anything else that might be in your ore, it gets forced to the outside, and lighter materials settle towards the center of the spin. Keep spinning your ore and harvesting the outer layers, and eventually it's not ore anymore, it's uranium.
But then you have to start over again, because you need more than just uranium, you need U235. So you repeat the process, this time skimming off not the heavy stuff furthest from the center of the spin, but the light stuff closest to the spin axis. Because the U238 atoms are just over 1% heavier than U235 atoms, the spinning will tend to force the U238 to the outside of the spinning centrifuge, and any U235 atoms (remember, it's less than 1% of all uranium) will settle towards the center. Do this in a thousand or so centrifuges, repeating the process over and over again on the material from the center areas of other centrifuges, and you will eventually you will have enough U235 to build your bomb.
But once you've got the materials, you're home free. At least until you want to set your bomb off, but we'll get to that later.
Even considering that this is a huge oversimplification of the process, I hope you see what's involved in obtaining nukes, and understand why the Manhattan project was, up to that time, the most expensive research project ever undertaken by mankind. And I hope you also appreciate how difficult and expensive it is to build nuclear weapons, notwithstanding how simple the design is. People who have nukes rightfully value them far too highly to be giving them away, because every time you want another one, you have to come up with more materials. Another three thousand centrifuges spinning for three thousand hours. Sorry. Not for sale.
Even backed by Saudi Princes and oil money, Pakistan (for example) LITERALLY could not be offered enough money to give one over. They might sell a few centrifuges, or their excess ore, and perhaps even their unrefined uranium, but an actual Bomb? No way.
There are also the additional political reasons. Besides world reaction if word ever got out that terrorists had one of your bombs (it's not like there are a lot of people making them, after all), and besides the risk of one of your own billion-dollar weapons being turned against you, there is the political value you yield by losing a nuke. As said in the prior post, nuclear weapons are the ONLY reason that Pakistan is taken seriously, as comparted to places like Sudan, Liberia, or Venezuela. They are guarded accordingly, and I doubt sale is even contemplated. A man does not sell his bullets when he only has a handfull of them in the face of a hostile world.
Nuclear weapons, for both political reasons and for economic reasons, are, in fact, priceless, they cannot realistically be bought from the nations that build them. Further, people who are not allowed to have them but who are trying to get them can be prevented from building them, either by denying them access to the ore and other exotic materials, or by periodically blowing up some or all of the thousands of centrifuges needed for the process, thereby sending the nuclear aspirant back to square one.
Now, I've written quite a lot, and I'm going to go drink beer. Which means that the second part of the lesson (why - in addition to the problems of getting a nuke - human efforts make a terrorist nuclear attack pretty much fiction) will have to wait until next time. I hope this was interesting nonetheless.
Imagine being the ruling military junta of Japan. It's August 10, 1945. Hiroshima was a bustling city four days ago. Nagasaki was a bustling city yesterday. It's been a while since you even pretended to be able to stop the B-29s from dropping shit on you. How long will the Americans be able to continue obliterating entire cities at 3-day intervals? Do you wait until the 12th, just to see what happens? Incidentally, they didn't. They decided to tender unconditional surrender THAT DAY, although it took a few weeks to overcome a minor coup d'etat and work out the various formalities.
We have seen minor uses of chemical weapons since then - sometimes every against military targets - and there has always been widespread paranoia about biological warfare, notwithstanding the lack of any effective track record. The simple fact is that weapons of mass destruction are either very hard to make, very hard to use, or both.
Lets go alphabetically, shall we? The formation of extremely virulent biological weapons is actual directly contrary to evolution. Germs are organisms, and thus naturally predisposed towards evolution which results in them living longer. A germ that instantly kills the host would never last; a host needs to live long enough to carry the germ to another host. The pressures of natural selection dictate that, over time, germs reach symbiosis with hosts, rather than becoming more and more deadly to the host. E. coli, for example, is a germ that most people fear. Never mind the fact that every human on the planet has E. coli resident in their digestive tract, where the bugs provide good service to humanity in turning food into energy. It has been co-existing with humanity for so long that - a few quirks aside - we actually help each other survive.
Any effort to create a supervirus goes against this trend, and this - to be blunt - is the reason that pandemics happen so rarely. Pandemics are no better for the germs than they are for the host, as the death of the host leaves the germs no place to live. This is a tough hurdle to overcome, since nature already has cornered the market on the most effective ways for germs to damage people, but not so badly that the germs are left without a home. Google "AIDS" and "influenza."
So biological threats, either natural or man-made, are not the great looming spectre that the media and governments try to portray them as. If you have good personal hygiene and enough sense to thing thoughts like "Gee, I'm not feeling very well. I should probably take it easy until my body fights it off," you're evolved enough to get through most biological problems.
Chemical warfare is not much greater a threat. There are certainly substances that are amazingly lethal, and a chemistry grad-student can make them in a home lab. But even organophosphates (nerve agents like Tabun, Sarin or VX) have a certain minimum dose that must be reached, and all have clear symptoms before you reach deadly levels. Also, there's only so much of the chemical to be delivered agent in any given delivery system (be the delivery system a bomb or a spray can or whatever). Thus, there is a built-in dilemma: to kill people, you have to concentrate your finite amount of poison against the targets, to heighten the chance of each target receiving a lethal dose. But to kill A LOT of people, you have to spread your finite amount of poison as broadly as you can. The compromise that is reached is that weapon designers try to fill an area with enough agent to give a lethal dose to a normal person, within space of the period that the weapon designer expects such normal person to linger in the area being targeted. People tend to move quickly along streets and sidewalks, so you need a very high concentration of chemical agent to area in order to affect them during the short time they're within the area. For the most part, chemical attacks only work in confined places, where people spend time standing around in the same spot, and (ideally) where they are unable to move into clean areas to get to fresh air. Subway trains and stations, for example.
But almost always, the time period required to receive a lethal dose is measured in minutes and seconds, rather than simply in seconds. (Adjusted for health, of course; takes less to kill an ailing sexagenarian than a 22 year old triathlete.) In general, if you're smart enough to think thoughts like "Gee, the air around here is a bit strange and making me nauseous; I should probably go find some fresh air," you're evolved enough to survive most chemical attacks.
Interestingly, the chemical agent that will cause the most damage from very short-term exposure is not a high-tech organophosphate nerve gas, but is mustard agents much like those being used back in 1918. 10 seconds of a less-than lethal-dose sarin gas will leave you cranky, irritable, and having bad dreams, from the lingering effect of miss-behaving neural connections. But 10 seconds of a less than lethal dose of mustard gas might leave you with open chemical burns, massively damaged eyes and mucus membranes, and severe respiration problems from chemical burns inside your lungs. Nasty shit, in many ways worse than anything developed since. But its not something that's going to wipe out a city. Chemical weapons just don't work that way.
Which brings us to nukes, the holy grail of the WMD topic. Lets put aside for now the idea of a nuclear military strike, and focus instead on a terrorist strike, perhaps inside the United States. Accept at the outset that such an event is extremely unlikely to EVER happen, both because of the nature of the weapon, and efforts to prevent such events from happening.
First, the weapon. As said previously, nukes are REALLY not all that complicated. You build a sphere (or cylinder) of low-grade, non-fissile uranium, containing a mixture of deuterium and tritium, and cored with a sphere (or tube) of fissile uranium. Then, right next to that sphere or tube, you put an atomic bomb. Which is really just a sphere of plutonium or high-grade (fissile) uranium inside another sphere of high-grade conventional explosives (C4 will work in a pinch). When you set of the conventional explosives of the atomic bomb, it squeezes down the plutonium or fissile uranium into a volume so small that randomly released subatomic particles of the compressed material cannot help but strike the nuclei of nearby heavy atoms, creating a chain reaction, which turns into an atomic explosion: Nuclear fission, a la Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Under the heat and pressure and bombardment of subatomic particles from the nearby fission blast, the deuterium and tritium in the other (secondary) assembly will undergo nuclear FUSION, sparked by the high-grade uranium core of the deuterium/tritium assembly (which responds instantaneously to the bombardment of sub-atomic particles the moment the fission blast goes off). The result is a miniature sun, which induces further fission into the normally non-fissile uranium casing of the deuterium/tritium assembly (which induced fission actually accounts for about half of the explosive yield). The results that are truly spectacular. So spectacular, in fact, that you don't want to observe them from a distance measured in anything less than round miles.
Like I said, there aren't even any moving parts! Yet in the last 50 years, only a handful of countries have been able to build these things.
The reason is the materials. Deuterium and tritium ("heavy water") are not so rare in the industrial world. But you need to have the right stuff. You also need a lot more heavy water than just the bomb components, since you'll use quite a bit processing your uranium, which is the real pain in the ass part of the process. Plutonium is exceedingly rare, dangerous, and difficult to work with, so most non-American bombs are made from uranium.
"Weapon grade" uranium is uranium that is at least 85% U235, although your uranium is usable in a bomb (becomes fissile) at about 20% U235. The problem is that less than 1% of naturally-occurring uranium is U235, the remainder being a different, slightly heavier isotope, U238. To get 65 or so kilos of fissile uranium for your bomb, you should expect to process over a ton of pure uranium. Since you're almost certainly going to have to start with some form of uranium other than the pure stuff, odds are you're going to have to separate the choice atoms you need from uranium ore: several hundred tons of mostly useless, slightly radioactive dirt. When you're done getting the U235, you'll also have U238 to build the components of your secondary casing, so don't worry about that. In fact, you'll have enough U238 left over for other things too, like improving the armor on your tanks and the lethality of your bullets, both of which applications are served well by the great mass of uranium.
So. You've got your mountain of uranium ore. Now you need a bunch of centrifuges. These are just machines with containers on the end of spinning arms. You fill the containers with material, and then start them spinning. Inside the containers, heavy particles get forced by centrifugal force away from the center of the spin. Because uranium is heavier than pretty much anything else that might be in your ore, it gets forced to the outside, and lighter materials settle towards the center of the spin. Keep spinning your ore and harvesting the outer layers, and eventually it's not ore anymore, it's uranium.
But then you have to start over again, because you need more than just uranium, you need U235. So you repeat the process, this time skimming off not the heavy stuff furthest from the center of the spin, but the light stuff closest to the spin axis. Because the U238 atoms are just over 1% heavier than U235 atoms, the spinning will tend to force the U238 to the outside of the spinning centrifuge, and any U235 atoms (remember, it's less than 1% of all uranium) will settle towards the center. Do this in a thousand or so centrifuges, repeating the process over and over again on the material from the center areas of other centrifuges, and you will eventually you will have enough U235 to build your bomb.
But once you've got the materials, you're home free. At least until you want to set your bomb off, but we'll get to that later.
Even considering that this is a huge oversimplification of the process, I hope you see what's involved in obtaining nukes, and understand why the Manhattan project was, up to that time, the most expensive research project ever undertaken by mankind. And I hope you also appreciate how difficult and expensive it is to build nuclear weapons, notwithstanding how simple the design is. People who have nukes rightfully value them far too highly to be giving them away, because every time you want another one, you have to come up with more materials. Another three thousand centrifuges spinning for three thousand hours. Sorry. Not for sale.
Even backed by Saudi Princes and oil money, Pakistan (for example) LITERALLY could not be offered enough money to give one over. They might sell a few centrifuges, or their excess ore, and perhaps even their unrefined uranium, but an actual Bomb? No way.
There are also the additional political reasons. Besides world reaction if word ever got out that terrorists had one of your bombs (it's not like there are a lot of people making them, after all), and besides the risk of one of your own billion-dollar weapons being turned against you, there is the political value you yield by losing a nuke. As said in the prior post, nuclear weapons are the ONLY reason that Pakistan is taken seriously, as comparted to places like Sudan, Liberia, or Venezuela. They are guarded accordingly, and I doubt sale is even contemplated. A man does not sell his bullets when he only has a handfull of them in the face of a hostile world.
Nuclear weapons, for both political reasons and for economic reasons, are, in fact, priceless, they cannot realistically be bought from the nations that build them. Further, people who are not allowed to have them but who are trying to get them can be prevented from building them, either by denying them access to the ore and other exotic materials, or by periodically blowing up some or all of the thousands of centrifuges needed for the process, thereby sending the nuclear aspirant back to square one.
Now, I've written quite a lot, and I'm going to go drink beer. Which means that the second part of the lesson (why - in addition to the problems of getting a nuke - human efforts make a terrorist nuclear attack pretty much fiction) will have to wait until next time. I hope this was interesting nonetheless.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
The World Turns
World politics took a decided downturn this Thursday, December 27, with the martyring of Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan - the only woman ever elected head of a Muslim state - recently returned to her nation following eight years of exile in Dubai, and was in good position to again be elected to Pakistan's highest available republican position. Given the political climate, such post ("Prime Minister") would theoretically have been co-equal with that of Army Chief of Staff and Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in 1999 through a coup d'etat. Musharraf seized headlines this fall by suspending Pakistan's constitution in the name of addressing civil unrest. The reality was that other branches of the constitutional government (the Supreme Court) were about to rule on Musharraf's ability to legally run for another term in office. Such political abuses have never been smiled upon by other countries, particularly where they involve placing the local (Pakistani) Supreme Court Justices under house arrest.
It was into this picture that Bhutto returned to pick up the reigns of her left-of-center political party, in hopes of getting the nation back onto the right track after many years of civic violence, economic insolvency, and perpetual border conflicts with India, all of which Pakistan had gotten the worse of. Bhutto's return was marked with a variety of bombings intended to take her life, including a series of bombs going off at a rally on October 19, which killed over 140 people, an impressive tally by any terrorist's standards.
Benazir Bhutto was shot several times by a gunman, who then set off the explosive harness he was wearing, killing an additional 20 people. This also is an impressive figure for a human bomb, as the laws of physics generally play against mass mayhem from a device that can be easily concealed on a person. Moment of silence for a truly remarkable woman.
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Naturally, there is rife speculation as to who is to blame, with the usual suspects coming to bear. The first, and - candidly - most likely, is the existing regime, or some faction thereof, which would have had to share power with Bhutto's camp following election. In the prior election - before Bhutto's return as a candidate, and before Musharraf suspended the constitution - Musharraf had won over 95% of the relevant vote. His camp cannot have been pleased about being upstaged by, of all people, a woman. The other usual suspect is - wait for it - al Queda, who really didn't like Bhutto based on their traditionalist Muslim opinions, further exacerbated by Bhutto's historic and ongoing efforts to work with The West. Both those suspects had motive, means, and know how (as above, bomb-making is not easy, since in many ways the laws of physics work against you).
Anyone who claims to be surprised by the sudden death of Bhutto doesn't know much about the Muslim world, or about Pakistani history and politics. Bhutto's own father - a former Prime Minister in his own right - was tried and executed himself by the Pakistani government that deposed him. This event led to Benazir's first stint in exile (that time in England), before her own reign as PM. Add in the general strife intrinsic to both that part of the world, and in any state trying to accommodate fundamentalist virtues into a 21st century economy, and SOMEBODY was going to die. Unfortunately, that's often the way of things. And not surprisingly, the one who died was someone other than the reigning King, who had full control of the national military.
Which brings us to the point of the issue. Pakistan, but for One Thing, is generally a pimple on the ass of the world. No major economic hubs. No great natural resources to take advantage of. Historically a re-headed stepchild of a parent nation (India) that openly hates it. Pakistan regularly made things worse by pretending to be significant, and by pissing in everyone's international soup by maintaining ties with pariah nations like, for example, Afghanistan's former Taliban government-in-exile. Notwithstanding the fact that the current decedent was extremely charismatic (and spoke excellent English), Pakistan is hardly a country worth writing headlines about, any more than headlines are written about political strife and changes in other insignificant nations. Raise your hand if you know who Charles Ghankay Taylor is? Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev? How about Mohamed Farrah Aidid? Omar al-Bahir? Yeah. Little power-plays make great opportunities for the world media to leach onto as humanitarian studies, but in the grand scheme of things, nobody really gives a shit.
But for that One Thing. On May 28, 1998, Pakistan conducted tests in which it detonated several nuclear weapons, which were home-grown, with assistance (most likely) from China. Plutonium-based weapons, in the hands of a state with a government not far removed from a warlord autocracy, and which could most politely be called "in transition."
Realistically speaking, this poses no direct threat to the United States. First, there is the fact that Pakistan's best nuclear shot would do only moderate damage to the United States (vaporizing a few cities) whereas the American counterstrike would turn the entire nation of Pakistan into a plain of scorched glass. Second, there is the fact that Pakistan has nations other than the U.S. high on its shit-list, and there are only so many Nukes to go around. And Third, a nuclear attack against the United States poses a daunting logistical challenge, which Pakistan can't (yet) overcome. Nukes have been around for over 50 years; other items of cutting-edge technology from the WWII period can be bought at the dollar store (digital calculators) or built in your garage (jet engines). Nukes aren't even all that complicated, except for the difficulties in procuring the components. They don't even have any moving parts. So setting off a nuke is really not so important as setting off a nuke where you want it to go off. Having a nuke inside your borders, as coveted as that position is, is useless: you can't set them off until they're inside your enemies' borders.
In reality, the vast majority of expenditures towards nuclear warfare are not for the bombs themselves, but for the delivery systems. Which is a common trend. After all, a bullet, for example, costs only pennies: the gun that fires the bullet will typically be more valuable than the bullet by several orders of magnitude. A nuke is by far the most expensive bullet imaginable, and the delivery systems are the most complex and expensive devices every built. After all, the challenge is to build a weapon that, when the trigger is pulled, can hit a spot - give or take 50 yards or so - SEVERAL THOUSAND MILES AWAY. It's not easy, and it's not cheap, even though the smartest people on the planet have been trying to solve the problem for sixty years. But the practical upshot is that Pakistan - like every Asian nation except Russia and (to a surprisingly limited degree) China, lacks the ability to conduct direct nuclear attacks against the United States. They've got good bullets, but their guns are too short ranged to hit so distant a target.
For all the fervor in the media, the risk of Pakistan selling nukes to someone else (e.g. a terrorist group) is also not so severe as you might imagine, for reasons beyond the scope of this writing. If you're interested in that subject, let me know; I'll write about it.
But notwithstanding the lack of a direct threat, the United States is and should be very interested in the instability created by the targets that Pakistan can hold at risk. Notably India, a close economic partner of the United States. Likewise China, with whom we have our ups and downs. And also a great many places where Americans (typically soldiers) are present, where Muslims don't want them present. Like the Middle East. As a nuclear nation, however constrained, Pakistan MUST be taken seriously. The White House can politely ignore events in Liberia, Nepal, Somalia, and/or Sudan. It can just roll its eyes at Argentina and Venezuela. But it is important that events in Islamabad Go Right.
Returning then to the death of Benazir Bhutto. The current ruling regime is in pretty good shape; it they can weather the storm of public outcry following the death of so beloved a figure as Bhutto, they will be sitting high on the hog, in full control, without meaningful challengers to their authority. Lets hope their deniability of the assassination (be such denial either true or merely plausible) weathers the storm, because the simple truth of the matter is that there's not a damn thing that anybody is going to do about this, save possible for Bhutto's followers. Everyone else is much more interested in preserving the status quo as it stands, including the United States. It is even possible that Musharraf receives aid from the United States, overtly or covertly, to prevent destabilization of a nuclear power. Hopefully we'll do it with enough tact to avoid another one of those Shah of Iran issues.
So, let us mourn the loss of a truly remarkable woman. And let us hope that more people will not need to die to keep things turning smoothly.
It was into this picture that Bhutto returned to pick up the reigns of her left-of-center political party, in hopes of getting the nation back onto the right track after many years of civic violence, economic insolvency, and perpetual border conflicts with India, all of which Pakistan had gotten the worse of. Bhutto's return was marked with a variety of bombings intended to take her life, including a series of bombs going off at a rally on October 19, which killed over 140 people, an impressive tally by any terrorist's standards.
Benazir Bhutto was shot several times by a gunman, who then set off the explosive harness he was wearing, killing an additional 20 people. This also is an impressive figure for a human bomb, as the laws of physics generally play against mass mayhem from a device that can be easily concealed on a person. Moment of silence for a truly remarkable woman.
...
...
...
Naturally, there is rife speculation as to who is to blame, with the usual suspects coming to bear. The first, and - candidly - most likely, is the existing regime, or some faction thereof, which would have had to share power with Bhutto's camp following election. In the prior election - before Bhutto's return as a candidate, and before Musharraf suspended the constitution - Musharraf had won over 95% of the relevant vote. His camp cannot have been pleased about being upstaged by, of all people, a woman. The other usual suspect is - wait for it - al Queda, who really didn't like Bhutto based on their traditionalist Muslim opinions, further exacerbated by Bhutto's historic and ongoing efforts to work with The West. Both those suspects had motive, means, and know how (as above, bomb-making is not easy, since in many ways the laws of physics work against you).
Anyone who claims to be surprised by the sudden death of Bhutto doesn't know much about the Muslim world, or about Pakistani history and politics. Bhutto's own father - a former Prime Minister in his own right - was tried and executed himself by the Pakistani government that deposed him. This event led to Benazir's first stint in exile (that time in England), before her own reign as PM. Add in the general strife intrinsic to both that part of the world, and in any state trying to accommodate fundamentalist virtues into a 21st century economy, and SOMEBODY was going to die. Unfortunately, that's often the way of things. And not surprisingly, the one who died was someone other than the reigning King, who had full control of the national military.
Which brings us to the point of the issue. Pakistan, but for One Thing, is generally a pimple on the ass of the world. No major economic hubs. No great natural resources to take advantage of. Historically a re-headed stepchild of a parent nation (India) that openly hates it. Pakistan regularly made things worse by pretending to be significant, and by pissing in everyone's international soup by maintaining ties with pariah nations like, for example, Afghanistan's former Taliban government-in-exile. Notwithstanding the fact that the current decedent was extremely charismatic (and spoke excellent English), Pakistan is hardly a country worth writing headlines about, any more than headlines are written about political strife and changes in other insignificant nations. Raise your hand if you know who Charles Ghankay Taylor is? Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev? How about Mohamed Farrah Aidid? Omar al-Bahir? Yeah. Little power-plays make great opportunities for the world media to leach onto as humanitarian studies, but in the grand scheme of things, nobody really gives a shit.
But for that One Thing. On May 28, 1998, Pakistan conducted tests in which it detonated several nuclear weapons, which were home-grown, with assistance (most likely) from China. Plutonium-based weapons, in the hands of a state with a government not far removed from a warlord autocracy, and which could most politely be called "in transition."
Realistically speaking, this poses no direct threat to the United States. First, there is the fact that Pakistan's best nuclear shot would do only moderate damage to the United States (vaporizing a few cities) whereas the American counterstrike would turn the entire nation of Pakistan into a plain of scorched glass. Second, there is the fact that Pakistan has nations other than the U.S. high on its shit-list, and there are only so many Nukes to go around. And Third, a nuclear attack against the United States poses a daunting logistical challenge, which Pakistan can't (yet) overcome. Nukes have been around for over 50 years; other items of cutting-edge technology from the WWII period can be bought at the dollar store (digital calculators) or built in your garage (jet engines). Nukes aren't even all that complicated, except for the difficulties in procuring the components. They don't even have any moving parts. So setting off a nuke is really not so important as setting off a nuke where you want it to go off. Having a nuke inside your borders, as coveted as that position is, is useless: you can't set them off until they're inside your enemies' borders.
In reality, the vast majority of expenditures towards nuclear warfare are not for the bombs themselves, but for the delivery systems. Which is a common trend. After all, a bullet, for example, costs only pennies: the gun that fires the bullet will typically be more valuable than the bullet by several orders of magnitude. A nuke is by far the most expensive bullet imaginable, and the delivery systems are the most complex and expensive devices every built. After all, the challenge is to build a weapon that, when the trigger is pulled, can hit a spot - give or take 50 yards or so - SEVERAL THOUSAND MILES AWAY. It's not easy, and it's not cheap, even though the smartest people on the planet have been trying to solve the problem for sixty years. But the practical upshot is that Pakistan - like every Asian nation except Russia and (to a surprisingly limited degree) China, lacks the ability to conduct direct nuclear attacks against the United States. They've got good bullets, but their guns are too short ranged to hit so distant a target.
For all the fervor in the media, the risk of Pakistan selling nukes to someone else (e.g. a terrorist group) is also not so severe as you might imagine, for reasons beyond the scope of this writing. If you're interested in that subject, let me know; I'll write about it.
But notwithstanding the lack of a direct threat, the United States is and should be very interested in the instability created by the targets that Pakistan can hold at risk. Notably India, a close economic partner of the United States. Likewise China, with whom we have our ups and downs. And also a great many places where Americans (typically soldiers) are present, where Muslims don't want them present. Like the Middle East. As a nuclear nation, however constrained, Pakistan MUST be taken seriously. The White House can politely ignore events in Liberia, Nepal, Somalia, and/or Sudan. It can just roll its eyes at Argentina and Venezuela. But it is important that events in Islamabad Go Right.
Returning then to the death of Benazir Bhutto. The current ruling regime is in pretty good shape; it they can weather the storm of public outcry following the death of so beloved a figure as Bhutto, they will be sitting high on the hog, in full control, without meaningful challengers to their authority. Lets hope their deniability of the assassination (be such denial either true or merely plausible) weathers the storm, because the simple truth of the matter is that there's not a damn thing that anybody is going to do about this, save possible for Bhutto's followers. Everyone else is much more interested in preserving the status quo as it stands, including the United States. It is even possible that Musharraf receives aid from the United States, overtly or covertly, to prevent destabilization of a nuclear power. Hopefully we'll do it with enough tact to avoid another one of those Shah of Iran issues.
So, let us mourn the loss of a truly remarkable woman. And let us hope that more people will not need to die to keep things turning smoothly.
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