November 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

Slashdot | Australian Censorship Legislation
by Jim Choate 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/11/17/0546218.shtml -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ Day by day the Penguins are making me lose my mind. Bumper Sticker The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
by Tim May 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

On Saturday, November 17, 2001, at 12:37 AM, baptista(a)pccf.net wrote: > > > On Sat, 17 Nov 2001, Tim May wrote: > >> I'd guess that the "tall pipe" version is the most buildable of the >> basement nukes. (In a nutshell: a tall drainpipe, perhaps 40 feet tall. >> Set up in an apartment building, warehouse, etc. At the base the pipe >> is >> reinforced with copious amounts of concrete. The subcritical masses are >> at opposite ends of the pipe. The mass on top is piled on with several >> hundred pounds of ballast, to "tamp" the early critical mass action. To >> explode the bomb, drop the mass from the top of the pipe. The critical >> mass is briefly contained by the concrete collar around the pipe and >> the >> inertial mass above. Is it enough to produce a real chain reaction? >> Well, it's all relative. Still, not very efficient.) > > I very much doubt terrorist would build an efficient bomb. Non of what > we > discussed is effcient. Your pipe idea is a very interesting example. > But > I think the point is made that harm can be done. Even if the mass does > not go critical - it still means a few city blocks that will be > inconvenienced from the resulting radiation. You pipe certainly would > not > go boom - but it would leave a mess of radioactivity in the area. The idea _is_ for it to detonate, not just have a severe thermal excursion! The total "radioactivity" in a critical mass of fissionables is actually not all that great. (Not something I'd want in my backyard, and sure to produce panic, but not all that significant.) The point of a bomb is to get a _lot_ of those radioisotopes fissioning in a much shorter amount of time than usual. Without that chain reaction, the radioisotopes are just decaying at their normal very, very slow rate. (The reason uranium is so radioactively benign is that it's half life is several billion years for the most common isotope and pretty close to that for the U-235 form...the reason we still find both in nature, of course.) For the oft-discussed "radiological bomb" there is no need for U-235. In fact, shorter half-lived stuff like cesium-137 and even spent fuel rods would be better. Personally, this is much _less_ worrisome than biological weapons. If radioisotopes are spread over a few city blocks, for example, they can be cleaned up in various ways. Easy to detect with a Geiger counter (or scintillation counter), easy to vacuum up with HEPA filter units, all sorts of foaming agents and hoses and the whole decontamination apparatus. And if the Geiger counter is silent, it's all gone. A radiological bomb would result in an evacuation, and the usual panic by the sheeple who are afraid of atoms, but the cleanup would be straightforward. (Chernobyl was what it was because many tons, even hundreds of tons, of fuel rods were vaporized and/or burned. Not many terrorists could arrange for the vaporization/combustion of this much material.) --Tim May "As my father told me long ago, the objective is not to convince someone with your arguments but to provide the arguments with which he later convinces himself." -- David Friedman

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Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
by Tim May 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

On Saturday, November 17, 2001, at 12:18 AM, baptista(a)pccf.net wrote: > > Now - i've replied to you below - but I think were missing the point of > the post. So i'll repeat - it's easy to do harm when you have the will > to > die to rally your cause - as we have seen on sept 11. and i find it > regrettable that conditions exist in which people use extreme methods > to focus the people of this planet on the fact that western governments > are basically evil. Look, people respond to points they are interested in responding to. That I didn't comment on your political point about "will to die to rally our cause" point does not mean I didn't "miss the point." It just is such an obvious point as to be unexceptionable. More interesting to me was picking apart your "stainless steel bowls bomb." > >> Nearly all metals are malleable to some extent (in that they don't >> shatter when subjected to shear forces), but I was responding to your >> "beat the metal in a stainless steel bowl" idea. Good luck on beat U >> this way! > > Possible - never build one myself. I would assume that if it is harder > to > work then gold - then just get very thick stanless steel bowls. I'm > sure > you'd need a few trials to figure it out. A true understatement. Try beating a piece of uranium! (From the rigidity modulus tables, and Young's modulus tables, you can find comparable metals to experiment with.) This is why most such hemispheres and hemispherical sections are made with molds and slurries of fissionables. Getting uniformity by "beating" a fairly hard metal is not easy. > >> The chunks of uranium I used to work with were pure metallic...and dark >> grey/black. > > sounds unrefined or badly oxidized. I've never seen chunks of > uranium. Was this in it's unrefined state. What was it > exactly. Pitchblende? Pure metallic uranium, both in the natural abundances and in the pure U-238 (DU) form. --Tim May "The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat

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by Wallstreet Universe 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

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Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
by baptista＠pccf.net 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

Here's a reference which should give you a good but brief outline of Uranium and it associated properties and uses. http://pearl1.lanl.gov/periodic/elements/92.html Incendentally this reference is taken from the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics a great reference manual. I still have my old copy in storage - great paper weight ;) Now one thing I've forgotten is that uranium is also pyrophoric when finely divided. I wonder if that property can be capitalized on to cause harm. Not only could one use Uranium (235, 238 whatever) as an incendiary device but both types of U will leave a radioactive hazard. Of course it's more logical to use U-238 for that. regards joe On Sat, 17 Nov 2001 baptista(a)pccf.net wrote: > On Fri, 16 Nov 2001, Tim May wrote: > > > Gold is malleable AND is denser than steel. > > > > Uranium is NOT malleable AND is denser than steel. > > Incorrect. Uranium is an actinide series element. It is a hard silver > almost white substance which is both malleable and ductile. Of course > this does not imply you should use it as a replacement for duck > tape. Also like gold it has a luster when polished. > > > The main reason for using DU in armor-piercing shells is the sheer > > density. > > correct > > > The bomb instructions Joe provided are as accurate as most recipes in > > "The Anarchist Cookbook." > > > > (A book my local Sheriff's Department banned in 1970.) > > not surprised. > > regards > joe > > -- The dot.GOD Registry, Limited http://www.dot-god.com/

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Important Requested Business Information
by BioChoice Products 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

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FW: [EMED-L] anthrax clinical description (fwd)
by measl＠mfn.org 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

I believe some of you will have an interest in this. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 22:08:48 +0000 From: axel ellrodt <axel.ellrodt(a)WANADOO.FR> Reply-To: EMED-L -- a list for emergency medicine practitioners. <EMED-L(a)ITSSRV1.UCSF.EDU> To: EMED-L(a)ITSSRV1.UCSF.EDU Subject: Re: [EMED-L] anthrax clinical description http://www.sfmu.org/documents/biotox/jernigan.pdf http://www.sfmu.org/documents/biotox/jernigan.pdf 26 pages about the first ten USA cases

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business opportunity
by DeMinEm15＠aol.com 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

is the 34,95 for your book, or is it to start making money sending envelopes. Or do we get the book then follow instructions?

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Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Devicet
by Eric Cordian 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

Dr. Joe Baptista writes: > Anyone on the planet can make a nuclear device if they have the > appropriate materials. The hard part is staying alive due to exposure > while manufacturing the device. Why? Neither U-235 nor Pu-239 is particularly radioactive. Vitrified plutonium disks have been used as poker chips by workers in fuel fabrication facilities. Most of these materials are only dangerous when ingested, radiating your tissues with alpha particles directly. They also have very low rates of spontaneous fission, so neutrons aren't generally a big deal. As long as you stay clear of criticality, you aren't going to get radiated at all. > Materials > 4 stainless steal salad bowls (5 - 8 inch diameter) > 10 pounds of U-235 (Plutonium) > 1 containment cylinder in which to fit the salad bowls > ? some explosives - C4 platic works best - but TNT or gun powder is > acceptable. My bullshit detector is starting to go off. > 10 pounds of U-235 is required to achive critical mass. Well, that depends on your moderator, doesn't it? The "bare sphere" critical mass of U-235 is over 50 kilograms, if you don't mix it with a moderator, or surround it with a neutron reflector. Fast neutron fission cross-sections aren't particularly large. Plutonium is somewhat better, but you'll need at least 11 kilograms, even with a nice tamper to bounce the neutrons back. > However less will work but you will get a sub critical mass on > detonation. The difference is taking out an entire city as opposed to a > few city blocks. A sub-critical mass won't do squat. A criticality accident will kill you, and require a hazmat crew to clean up your lab, but it won't blow anything up. Generally, what you make critical will just melt and splatter into a non-critical shape, if no effort is made to confine it. > Divide the U-235 into two five pound masses. Beat it evenly into the > inside of one of your salad bowls. U-235 is malleable like gold so you > should have no problem shaping it. Do the same with the other U-235 mass > and shape it into the other salad bowl. This is silly. Nuclear weapons can be made to work by compressing a solid sphere to double density with explosives, or by removing an "apple core" third of a supercritical sphere, and shooting it back in with a gun. The hollow sphere myth remains pervasive because scientists had the idea of imploding a hollow sphere with explosives when the Manhattan project begun, and because the government has been less than forthcoming with what methods actually turned out to work. While a generous hollow sphere with a small void might work, something made by beating nuclear material into a salad bowl certainly wouldn't, even if you managed to time the explosives perfectly. I suggest you look uranium up in your materials handbook before you start whacking it into your salad bowl. Pure uranium is only slightly softer than steel, and with a little molybdenum added, is harder than the finest tool steel. Malleable means the material doesn't break when you work it. It is not a measure of how much force is required to work it. Gold is soft. Uranium isn't. > Keep the two bowls apart - you don't want an accident to cause your > project to go critical. Did Jack Lemmon write this laughable tract back during his "China Syndrome" days? > C4 explosives work best. You simply mold the C4 into the other two salad > bowls. This is the most dangerous part of the project. Improper handling > of C4 can cause an explosion. But gun powder is just as effective. I think you need to look up "velocity of detonation" as it pertains to gun powder. > Now fit the U-235 salad bowls into the C4 salad bowls and place them at > each end of the cylindrical containment. Connect your explosives to a > detonator and close off the ends of the cylynder. Make sure the detonator > sets off both explosives at the same time. > The trick is to bring the U-235 masses together at the same time. Uh huh. > And thats it. I would recommend some form of protection while building > the project. The aprons worn by dentists will work. They will protect > you to some degree from radioactive poisoning. However - your life is > only being prolonged by taking such measures - you still will end up dead > due to the U-235 radiation regardless of what you do. U-235 radiation? This person would flunk even the elementary school course in nuclear engineering. Clad unirradiated nuclear fuel can be safely handled without protective clothing, and isn't particularly radioactive. > Anyone on this planet can build a nuclear device. So the only issue in > building the device is the will to die for a cause. And the only thing I > find unfortunate in all of this is that there are so many causes that > people are willing to die for. And war will not make those reasons go > away - it will only encourage them. Well, anyone with a few minor mechanical engineering clues, a calculator, and the ability to calculate fission cross-sections. Dying isn't required, unless you stand near the bomb when it goes off. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Re: HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
by Steve Schear 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

At 11:20 PM 11/16/2001 -0500, you wrote: >\Divide the U-235 into two five pound masses. Beat it evenly into the >inside of one of your salad bowls. U-235 is malleable like gold so you >should have no problem shaping it. Do the same with the other U-235 mass >and shape it into the other salad bowl. My recollection is that all Uranium metal isotopes are much harder and denser than steel. That's why depleted uranium 238 its used for armor piercing ammunition. steve

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