Nuclear Hedge Funds

[William H. Geiger III]

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In <7k3Tce1w165w at bwalk.dm.com>, on 09/10/97 
   at 04:54 PM, dlv at bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) said:

>"William H. Geiger III" <whgiii at amaranth.com> writes:

>> 
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>> 
>> In <19970909130000.60003 at sequent.com>, on 09/09/97 
>>    at 01:00 PM, Unicorn <hvdl at 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. :-)

Well part of the problem with using chemical agents is they are not very
efficient. This is a lesson that was learned in WWI and most likely was
the largest factor in them not being used durring WWII (durring WWI one
was just as likely to be hit by one's own gas as the enemy was).

It is even questionable as a terror weapon against civilian targets due to
the quantities that would be needed to attack a large city like London.


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William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
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