"William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
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In <19970909130000.60003@sequent.com>, on 09/09/97 at 01:00 PM, Unicorn <hvdl@sequent.com> said:
Destruction by a nuclear blast is most likely not even the issue here. Using a relatively small amount of plutonium (ie. not even enough to produce a critical mass) and enough explosives to blast this into the atmosphere you can kill a (very) large number of people over a relatively small amount of time due to plutonium toxication. These devices are the real "dirty gadgets", not really expensive and therefor perfectly suitable for terrorist organisations.
But what a dreadfull way to die...
The US military during WWII had plans of doing just that in Europe to poison the crops and aid in the defeat of Germany.
Luck for Europe this was never followed through.
Actually, the Germans were aware of the plans and indicated that they'd kill the about 500K U.S. and British POWs if this happened. (They treated the latter much better than they treated Polish and Russian POWs, who were often summarily gassed.) For the same reason the Germans and the Allies didn't use poison gas in Europe during WW2, although both sides used it liberally in WW1, and the Japanese used it a lot against the Chinese. Game theory and stuff. :-) --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps