- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

re: Monkeywrenching airport security
by citizenq＠hushmail.com 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

How useful. That'll really, I mean REALLY show 'em who's boss, as they shut the airport down and strand thousands of hapless travelers who I am sure will really understand your idiotic point. Which is ... ? Shit, all it takes is for you to put on some sneakers, run rapidly past the security checkpoint(s), perhaps open an alarmed door on your way out to the tarmac. Do it at a hub, shut down everything. Doesn't take anything as stupidly exotic as powdered explosive in your pantyhose, idiot. >Walk into an airport in baggy pants with powdered expolosives in a leg bag >which can slowly be dispersed as you walk (perhaps controlled by some sort of >string control like POWs scattered excavated soil in "The Great Escape"). >After walking around in the lobby it should soon be tracked to the security >checkpoints and interfere with any current swab or automated detection methods.

1 0

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

17 Nov '01

On Friday, November 16, 2001, at 10:43 PM, 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. Uranium is not malleable in the same way either gold or silver are. 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! A chart of the rigidity moduli for the elements gives a good idea of why U is not normally considered very malleable: http://www.webelements.com/webelements/properties/text/image- intensity/rigidity-modulus.html Also, I don't get what you mean by saying it has a luster when polished. Yeah, all metals do..until they oxidize/tarnish/anodize. The chunks of uranium I used to work with were pure metallic...and dark grey/black. > --Tim May "Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity." --Robert A. Heinlein

4 4

HOWTO Build a Nuclear Device
by !Dr. Joe Baptista 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

One thing that is bothering me these days are all the reports coming out of Afganistan that nuclear bomb making plans were found. Big deal. 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. If however death is not an issue then the process itself becomes easy to accomplish. 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. Assembly -------- 10 pounds of U-235 is required to achive critical mass. 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. 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. Keep the two bowls apart - you don't want an accident to cause your project to go critical. 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. 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. 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. And thats it. Conclusion ---------- 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. regards joe baptista -- Joe Baptista http://www.dot-god.com/ The dot.GOD Registry, Limited The Executive Plaza, Suite 908 150 West 51st Street Tel: 1 (208) 330-4173 Manhattan Island NYC 10019 USA Fax: 1 (208) 293-9773

5 6

You Have Been Sent A Halloween Card!
by Wallstreet Universe 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

+>+>+> BURN OFF FAT NOW!!! How? With our proven NEW fat burning breakthrough product. Fast! Easy! Safe! Take it off and keep it off. NO Ma Huang, Ephedra, or guarana. Only valid for United States residents over 18+ <A HREF=" http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R23683_burn_fat "> http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R23683_burn_fat </A> +>+>+> Get 1 Free CD now and 11 later from BMG Music Service with Membership! Twelve for the price of one - 100% RISK FREE! CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS! <A HREF=" http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R23683_free_cd "> http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R23683_free_cd </A> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> THE WALLSTREET UNIVERSE REPORT - OCTOBER 30, 2001 Special Halloween Edition! <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> +>+>+> CLICK HERE FOR YOUR HALLOWEEN GREETING CARD! <A HREF=" http://cards-n-things.com/platinum/magiccard.cgi?1029184238261061 "> http://cards-n-things.com/platinum/magiccard.cgi?1029184238261061 </A> +>+>+> HALLOWEEN TRIVIA SIGNS OF A WEREWOLF: > Hairy palms >> Claw for left thumbnail >>> Tattoos >>>> Unibrow >>>>> Long middle finger >>>>>> Lazy and tired during the day >>>>>>> Sleeps with mouth open ANCIENT LORE: > A spider rolled in butter and swallowed to cure plague and leprosy. >> To cure a toothache, spit into the mouth of a frog and asked it to carry away the pain. >>> To release a person possessed by a ghost, throw dust from your footprint at them. >>>> The middle finger is poisonous and if you touch an open wound with it, it will never heal. >>>> If a candle flame suddenly turns blue, there's a ghost nearby. >>>>> Pennsylvania did not have a werewolf problem; rather it had a problem with wererats. >>>>>> Black cats caused the plague. >>>>>>> If cat jumps over a coffin during burial, the deceased will become a vampire. FRIGHTENING FACTS: > Dracula is the most filmed story of all time. >> The biggest pumpkin to date weighed 1,092 lbs. at the 1998 Pumkinfest. >>> Vincent Price almost became a gourmet cook instead of an actor. >>>> Halloween candy sales average around 2 billion in the U.S. >>>>> Months that start on a Sunday always have a Friday the 13th. >>>>>> A dentist invented the Electric Chair. >>>>>>> In France over 30,000 werewolf cases were tried between 1520 and 1630. WATCH OUT & BE CAREFUL OF WHAT LURKS BENEATH??? Steven Schwartz and Staff mailto:support@wallstreetuniverse.com <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> * To remove yourself from this mailing list, point your browser to: http://inbound.postmastergeneral.com/remove?Wallstreet * Enter your email address (cypherpunks(a)toad.com) in the field provided and click "Unsubscribe". The mailing list ID is "Wallstreet". OR... * Reply to this message with the word "remove" in the subject line. This message was sent to address cypherpunks(a)toad.com X-PMG-Recipient: cypherpunks(a)toad.com <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> <<<>>> pmguid:rd.pfg.37kh

3 2

Slashdot | The Return of Eric Weisstein's World Of Mathematics
by Jim Choate 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/11/06/2028252.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 --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

6 7

Stasi files
by Anonymous 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

from http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/amerithrax/amerithrax.htm : "is likely an adult male." "strong interest in science" "may not be comfortable or practiced in writing in lower case lettering" "has exhibited an organized, rational thought process in furtherance of his criminal behavior." "AGAIN, IF YOU HAVE CREDIBLE INFORMATION THAT MIGHT HELP IDENTIFY THIS PERSON, PLEASE CONTACT THE FBI IMMEDIATELY AT 1-800-CRIMETV" THIS IS TIM MAY !!! MUST BE !

1 0

Re: RBL turf wars (was: ABOVE.NET BLOCKING ORBZ!) (fwd)
by measl＠mfn.org 17 Nov '01

17 Nov '01

Oh the irony! People are pissed off that someone is censoring the censors! Go above.net! Go!!! They get my vote 100% J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org On Fri, 16 Nov 2001, Roger Marquis wrote: > > >Check this out, I can't get to Orbz's website anymore (and I suspect you > > >can't either): > > We can't either. Attached is a letter from a customer forwarded > to our upstream (another above.net victim/ISP). If Above.Net wants > to shed customers like a duck sheds water these filters will surely > have that effect. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they should give serious consideration towards setting a better example: Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate... This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place... --------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

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 --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

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

2 1

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

2 1