One man's Idea of why we are doomed.

Why Were Doomed 9/15/96 - Captain Thylacine (Full permission to reprint this essay in any form, for non-profit purposes, is hereby granted)

Introduction

In five years it is likely that the United States, as we know it today, will no longer exist. This conclusion is not driven not by superstition, political left-wing or right-wing radicalism, or emotional reaction to daily politics. It is the coldly calculated result of analyzing world trends and driving them to their ultimate conclusion.

In this short essay Iād like to convince you that this conclusion is a sound one, not the ranting of a superstitious doomsayer. It is obvious and logical ending of the game we are now playing. I'd like to lead you, step-by-step through the reasoning behind this view, and show that it is an eminently reasonable result. I would then like to demonstrate that there is effectively no way to avoid this catastrophe, that it is simply built into the fabric of the world order as it currently exists.

And then, if you find my argument compelling, I would like to offer some (faint) personal hope for the coming global crisis.

Summary

The greatest danger facing the US and the world is nuclear terrorism. This is not a topic that gets much press, but it is one that the US government now treats as the number one threat to its survival (see below).

A major nuclear terrorist assault on the US is probable over the next few years, and this assault will likely annihilate the country as we know it, profoundly altering our way of life. In the process the world financial, military and governmental orders will either be destroyed or profoundly altered. Millions - perhaps billions - of people will die. Only those who were very prepared, and very lucky, will have any hope of surviving this new dark age.

Obviously, these are rather sweeping statements and thus they should arouse healthy skepticism.. How do I arrive at this conclusion? The reasoning proceeds in several steps. First, we have to establish motive. Who would be crazy enough to want to destroy our country?

Who are these people and what could possibly be their motive? Second, we have to establish means. Given that such lunatics exist, how could they get the means to carry out their tasks? Would it not be impossible for them to gain access to the right materials?

Third, we have to establish target. Given motives and means, how does his translate to the dire predictions outlined above?

Let us take these steps, one by one.

Motive

Some random snapshots of recent history.

A truck loaded with explosives crashed into a marine barracks in Beirut. 241 marines died. Another casualty was the truck driver himself - he purposively road the truck to his own destruction.

A witness reported that the suicide bomber was smiling as he plowed into his target.

A group of fundamentalist Muslims parked a van underneath the World Trade Center. The van was loaded with explosives - and cyanide. The resulting detonation caused over a 1,000 casualties.

However, the cyanide was destroyed by the heat and never had the desired effect of chemically exterminating the 40,000 people in the towers.

When captured, the terrorists were busy plotting another wave of bombings throughout New York City.

The Aum cult in Japan launched a chemical gas attack on the Tokyo subway system. Their method of choice was sarin, an extremely deadly nerve toxin that is stockpiled by a number of countries. According to their own documentation, the cult expected to kill thousands of people in the attack.

Because of luck and a faulty delivery mechanism the gas did not spread as intended and only a handful of people died. Nonetheless, the attack was a chilling sign of things to come: the first time a terrorist group had successfully used a weapon of mass destruction.

There have been many such examples in recent years. Letās take a look at their common threads.

First, the terrorists wished to inflict the most massive casualties possible. They were not troubled by ethical or moral considerations.

They did not worry about the deaths of innocents or non-combatants.

Motivated by religious and ethnic hatred, they only wished to kill as many people as possible, in the quickest and most direct way.

Second, they chose the largest and deadliest weapons they could obtain. They were not concerned about negative publicity, nor did they feel bound by international conventions regarding "illegal" weapons.,p> They cared only for expediency, and the terror and chaos that such weapons would spread.

Third, they were irrational, in the sense that there was no way to negotiate them from their chosen course. The World Trade bombers believed that the US is a den of Satan, deserving complete extermination.

Perhaps innocents would regrettably get killed, but Allah would sort them out in the end. Similarly, the Aum cultists believed that by helping along the end of the world, they would create a heaven for themselves in the ruins of the aftermath.

The goals and motives of these terrorists were, in short, other-worldly. This marks them as being fundamentally different from a standard political terrorist, who no matter what his fanaticism, remains grounded in reality.

Thus, the IRA bomber or left-wing guerrilla is unlikely to employ such techniques, as they are inherently repugnant and at cross-purposes with his goals. But the religious terrorist is another beast entirely.

For him mass extermination is both the ends and the means.

Such terrorism, and the people who commit it, is growing exponentially around the globe. In Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, Somalia and Sudan - to name just a few - Islamic fundamentalists are seizing control.

In the dismantled Soviet Union, Islamic groups are vying for power in the lost southern republics, such as Chehnya and Tajikistan. In the process they are driving out Russians and seizing control of vacated military facilities (the Chechen rebels put a headquarters in a vacated Soviet ICBM base!).

Added to this mix, overpopulation, wars and famines are shifting populations across national borders, creating havoc and increasing the loathing that many feel for the rich and "exploitative" west.

Fundamentalist religious and cult leaders thus find an easy market for spreading a doctrine of hatred, recruiting millions to their cause. Increasingly, in a world of porous borders, many of these recruits end up in the US itself.

In addition, at the national level, many countries have made no secret of their hatred of the U.S. The Iranian government routinely calls for the dismantlement of America, while the Sudanese drop hints about what lies in store in our future.

Similarly, I doubt anyone needs reminding about the attitudes of other countries, such as Iraq and North Korea, or question their innate hostility.

Finally, as the year 2000 approaches, millennial Aum-like cults are popping up like mushrooms after a hard rain, each awaiting or plotting the end of the world.

In short, it should be abundantly clear that there is no shortage of fanatics who wish to destroy the west in general, and the US in particular. They do not need a motive beyond the fact that we exist - it is our simple existence that is offensive and must be remedied.

However, in the past, such terrorists have been limited by their weapons. Truck bombs can accomplish only so much, no matter how many are willing to die for the cause. But how long will this situation last? Does anyone doubt that such terrorists want the largest and most destructive weapon, or that they will use them once obtained?

Means

There are many paths to mass-destruction. However, a nuclear or radiological bombing is the likeliest event in our immediate future.

Nuclear materials (U-235 and Plutonium) are spreading across the globe like a chain-reaction, falling into the hands of third-world governments and sub-national groups. This is driven largely by the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Quite possibly, the world will come to rue the day that communism was overthrown, as it has opened up the nuclear Pandora's box. When history is written, the fall of the Soviets will be remembered less for the demise of communism, than the demise of the planet as well.

In the old days, weapons-grade materials were tightly controlled in a totalitarian USSR. This is no longer the case. The country is a shambles and the nuclear materials are distributed over thousands of sites. There is no accurate accounting of these materials. The Russians have already admitted that they have lost tons of reactor uranium through "probable bookkeeping errors". Further, despite assurance to the contrary, the nuclear sites are ill-guarded.

The Russians rely on people rather than technology for their security. Today, this security consists of unpaid, ill-fed conscripts, many of whom are fatalistic drunks. No less a personage than Alexander Lebed has warned that the situation has all the makings of a disaster.

The U.S government agrees with him and is suitably panicked, but this panic has yet to seep into the public mind (prediction: it will take a nuclear bomb to accomplish this difficult feat).

As far as the uranium and plutonium goes, there are no lack of buyers. Persistent rumor has it that a number of third-world and middle eastern countries are now in the midst of historyās greatest shopping spree.

For a hungry and demoralized Russian scientist or military man, with access to these materials, the temptation must be great to achieve instant riches by satisfying market demand. And if history records nothing else, it teaches that market demands invariably get met.

By all accounts this is exactly what is happening. To date, there have been scores of public interceptions of materials being smuggled inside Russia, and at least six known instances where smuggled nuclear materials were intercepted *outside* of Russia.

The Russian and western governments cite these statistics as evidence that there is no problem - since these smuggling cases were thwarted, this means that no material was stolen.

Obviously, by this logic, the US does not have a drug smuggling problem, since tons of illegal drugs are seized at our border each year.

Indeed, the only open questions are how much material is being stolen and who, exactly, is receiving it.

Ominously, the number of reported cases of nuclear smuggling has declined in the past year. Appearances are deceiving. The first smuggling cases were marked by their lack of sophistication.

Typically, amateur bunglers were caught by Russian or German police after doing something stupid or being set up (although it is still scary to reflect that these "amateurs" had somehow succeeded in getting a hold of the worldās deadliest material in the first place).

Obviously, given the lucrative nature of the smuggling and the nature of the buyers, more professional smugglers have entered the field. In all likelihood, the raw materials for nuclear Armageddon are now wending their way around the world, escaping the tight control that has kept it confined for fifty years.

It is worthwhile to get a feel for magnitude here. The amount of plutonium necessary to create a Nagasaki-style bomb fits inside a grapefruit.

The equivalent amount of U-235 fits easily inside a basketball. In the world today, there are *thousands* of tons of these materials, growing each day, dispersed in thousands of locations.

Anyone who trusts that all this material will be correctly accounted for and guarded till the end of time is, shall we say, on the optimistic side.

Once weapons-grade materials are procured (particularly U-235), creating a simple low-yield atomic bomb is trivial. The difficulty is in getting the materials - after that the rest follows easily. A gun-mounted bomb like the one used at Hiroshima could be easily constructed by any modern machine shop.

In fact, simply dropping one sub-critical piece of U-235 on top of another with sufficient velocity (say from the top a of three story building) is enough to cause a change reaction and explosion.

Such an explosion would be a misfire (only worth a few hundred tons of TNT), but obviously quite sufficient to vaporize a downtown area and spread radiation for miles.

Finally, note that a terrorist group need not even go to the trouble of building a bomb. A conventional core with minor nuclear dressing is enough to create a "radiological bomb", one that is conventional in magnitude but sprays deadly radiation.

For instance, if the World Trade Center bombers had places a 100g of plutonium in their van, the resulting explosion would have completely vaporized the plutonium.

The towers would then have acted as huge chimneys, venting deadly plutonium into the buildings and surrounding city.

Many tens of thousands of people would have died horribly from acute radiation poisoning.

Of course, in addition to all these factors, other ominous trends are at work. For one thing, countries are busy producing their own nuclear weapons in addition to the gifts from the Russians. Nuclear weapons technology is well understood - it is only a question of time and money.

That is how a fourth-rate country such as Iraq came to within a few months of producing its own atomic bomb, until the Gulf War interrupted its plans. Should those bombs been completed a bit earlier, the course of the Gulf War would no doubt have been quite different. Similarly, Iran has embarked on a massive program to have nuclear weapons within the next couple years.

And, as is well known, backwaters such as Pakistan and North Korea already have a nuclear capability. In short, the nuclear genie is well outside the bottle.

It is only a matter of time before weapons material or a fully completed nuclear weapon falls into the hands of someone willing to use it.

Execution

But is the picture really that bleak? How could such a bomb be brought into the U.S in the first place?. And even supposing a terrorist got his hands on a couple small (Hiroshima-size) fission bombs, how could that lead to the destruction of the U.S.? After all, Japan survived two such atomic bombings, and we were ostensibly prepared for much worse during the height of the Cold War.

Letās first take the problem of smuggling the bomb into the country. This is a non-issue. Consider: we are a country where thousands of tons of illegal drugs are smuggled in every year, along with approximately a million illegal aliens.

Compared to this, smuggling in something the size of a refrigerator (it could be much smaller, even fit into a briefcase) is not a challenge.

In fact, one way to ensure almost a 100% success rate is to simply smuggle the weapon within a bale of marijuana. There is no way to secure borders against such attempts.

As to the result of the attack, that depends entirely on target. It is very likely that an attack by one or two atomic bombs would - if suitably targeted - destroy the U.S. as it is now constituted.

A few scenarios (there are others) should make this clear. Suppose two bombs. One is secreted in a van near Capital Hill during a joint session of Congress. The second bomb is placed in a hotel room on Wall Street. They detonate simultaneously with individual yields of 25kt.

The first bomb would virtually wipe out the federal leadership of this country, along with a good part of the military leadership as well. The president, vice-president, cabinet and the congress itself could be obliterated in one stroke, along with most of the supporting governmental agencies. The U.S. would be left headless, with no governmental apparatus or leadership.

The attack on Wall Street might be even more devastating. It would annihilate part of the financial leadership of the country, but far more importantly, would also destroy most of the computers and records on which our financial system is built.

In one nuclear flash, approximately a trillion dollars of wealth would evaporate, plus much of the electronic financial infrastructure upon which the economy is based.

People who have grown acculturated that the little numbers in their stock portfolios mean something would suddenly find that this world has collapsed.

Perhaps most alarming, no one would know when the next bomb would strike. Is one planted in my city? When will it go off? Where do I run?

There would be no reason to assume that the attack was a one-time event, and there would no longer be a president or well-known congressmen to assure the public otherwise. The psychological security of America would be ripped away, with nothing to replace it.

So, in addition to governmental and financial collapse, we could anticipate mass panic and flight from the cites, massively exacerbating the situation. This would lead to riots, breakdown in social order and probable famine in some locales, leading to a downward spiral with no obvious termination (especially if there were indeed further attacks).

There would be surviving leaders, especially in the military. Revenge would be contemplated, one way or another. The challenge, obviously, would be to find who to attack. With no clear national target, our vaunted military might strike out blindly.

Where this might lead is anyoneās guess, but one could easily imagine scenarios where the situation could escalate to world war, intentional or otherwise, involving nuclear, chemical and even biological releases.

At this point all bets would be off, and it is impossible to estimate what types of horrors might be visited on the U.S. and the world at large.

(Meanwhile, perhaps in some isolated valley in Afghanistan, the initiator of all this terror watches with delight).

This might seem like a fantasy, however our own government takes this fantasy extremely seriously. In fact, over the last few years numerous programs have been launched to deal with exactly these eventualities.

For example, it is public knowledge that the U.S. has massively aided the ex-Soviets in trying to secure their weapon stockpiles, to the point of giving them security technology and even buying up unused weapon stores (in one case, outbidding the Iranians).

More to the point, funding for N.E.S.T (Nuclear Emergency Search Team) has increased heavily. NEST is a semi-secret organization dedicated to locating and dismantling atomic bombs.

It is always ready, on immediate notice, to be called into service when there is suspicion that a nuclear terrorist attack is imminent.

To date, this has happened over twenty times.

Each of these turned out to be a false alarm, but no one doubts that the future holds the real thing.

However, our government is not convinced that these and other measures will save it. It expects the worse and is therefore taking steps to preserve itself. This is why it is heavily investing in nuclear-safe bunkers for top leaders to hide during a nuclear emergency.

One such facility is Mount Weather, in Virginia. This is a massive underground base designed to house all three branches of government during an emergency.

This base was first constructed in the fifties, but is now completing a major renovation. Interestingly, this base is useless for a "classic" nuclear war with a country like Russia.

The Russians, obviously, know all about Mount Weather and have heavily targeted it. No base, no matter how deep inside a mountain, could survive a full assault of their ICBMs.

The fact that the U.S. still thinks the base has great value, therefore, tells us something about where they think the true danger lies.

It lies not with a Russian or Chinese ICBM attack, but from a low-yield terrorist bomb sitting in the back of a truck. For such a threat Mount Weather is ideal - given that there is suitable warning.

To their credit, many governmental leaders have not been coy about the dangers of nuclear terrorism. In recent speeches, both the directors of the CIA and the FBI have identified this as the "number one security threat to the United States".

What To Do

So we see that a nuclear terrorist attack is not something out of science fiction, but a real probability given the current world situation. Unfortunately, there is little likelihood that this "world situation" is going to change anytime soon.

Nonetheless, I do recommend that you write your congressmen about these issues, as well as check in to supporting some of the organizations trying to bring sanity to the planet. However, while these efforts are worthy, history shows that we rarely succeed in preventing catastrophes such as this.

The dynamics are implacable, fueled by historic forces well outside any person's or government's control. Therefore, I see little hope that we can avoid the apocalypse outline above.

What to do? At a personal level, I can suggest a few concrete things. First, make sure part of your wealth is in gold coins.

I don't suggest you translate everything you own into gold, but a 10% investment would certainly be a good conservative hedge.

Second, try to obtain a farm (no matter how small) in the country. Perhaps as a second house, perhaps as a first, it doesn't matter.

The point is to have a plot of land away from the urban areas, where you could conceivably supply part or all of your own food supply. Third, make sure you have one year of food stored away, one way or another, as well as a private supply of water. This may seem trivial now, but should our world crumble, such foresight will be amply rewarded.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are not the views and opinions of alt world0