When I was a lad I knew a devout bible reader who talked about the end times as written in scripture. He said that the final battle between Good and Evil would be fought in a place called Armageddon. I had no idea that Armageddon was an actual place, an ancient town at a crossroads of the mid-east where many battles had been fought in biblical times. Further, in my youth, I was a little incredulous about the battle of the end times being fought in some desolate and arid backwater of modern civilization; I thought that the great battles for human dominion would be fought in central Europe or America or maybe central Asia … but now I am not so sure.
As a young man, I studied engineering physics about 10 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear physics was a new subject, just then beginning to be taught to students. I learned about the energy in matter from Einstein’s famous E=MC^2 and about how the isotopes of Uranium, U-235, U-238, and Pu-239 (Plutonium) had been used to make the atom bomb. In our classes, we actually calculated the critical masses necessary for an atomic bomb to explode, for both elements. As I recall, just off the top of my head, about 15 pounds for Uranium and 3 pounds for Plutonium. In order to understand those masses, I try to visualize them physically so I can know if — “can I see it? is it bigger than a bread box? ( to quote a very old TV show) or is it bigger than a house?” Another visualization came from my mother who used to say “a pint’s a pound the world around.” Since both of the elements, Uranium and Plutonium, are slightly more than 20 times as dense as water, they would easily fit into a pint jar. The amount of each metal to build an atomic bomb is not very heavy. I am no nuclear expert, maybe some of you reading this are, but I do know that since both elements are alpha particle emitters and since very little high energy radiation is given off by them until a nuclear blast takes place, it is probable that the nuclear material necessary for a bomb could be very easily shielded to prevent detection by ordinary methods, such as, for instance, a customs inspection. Let us agree then, for the sake of argument, that it doesn’t take much material to build a bomb and that it could be easily smuggled.
At the institution where I studied physics there were perhaps as many as fifty Iranians, mostly graduate students, many of whom were personal friends of mine. These men, having been selected by their government for advanced study, were the cream of their universities and were impressively bright scholars. They were as capable as any American student that I knew and we were all at an institution that then stood in the top five engineering schools in the nation.
That was many years ago and times have changed. The country of Iran, unlike then, is now a theocracy and among other things has a massive nuclear energy project for “peaceful purposes.” Many people do not know that the fissionable material necessary for “peaceful purposes” is obtained in the same manner as that for weapons. It is just a matter of degree, the total amount of refinement.
The Iranian’s leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has sworn to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth and continuously expresses his hatred for America. Ahmadinejad has also stated that it would be worth sacrificing his entire country to rid humanity of the “great Satans,” the countries of Israel and the United States of America. I think that given Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric and his country’s overt nuclear enrichment program that one could safely say that he is plotting us harm.
We have known of this nuclear program for over a decade and in spite of his protestations of “peaceful purposes” have warned him of “dire consequences” if he does not stop enrichment. But we do nothing and the Iranians just keep the centrifuges spun up. Given that I know … and I presume that those in high governmental places in our nation are even more aware than I, that Iran has the technical personnel capable of building bombs, and given their years of Uranium enrichment, isn’t it a likely cinch that they already have a substantial amount of highly refined, weapons grade nuclear material?
Let’s just look at a little history: Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt warning of the possibility of an atomic bomb in September of 1939; Fermi had a sustained chain reaction at the University of Chicago in December of 1942 proving the feasibility of a bomb; the facilities at Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos were activated in the spring of 1943; the Trinty test at Alamagordo on July 15, 1945 was a success; the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, took place on August 6, 1945 and on August 9, 1945, respectively. This was a period of time from the time that Einstein understood that it could be done until it happened of 6 years, but only about 2 1/2 years from the time that the project was undertaken. The methods of refining the metals were developed in that 6 year period and the designs of the bombs were done from scratch in 2 1/2 years. We knew nothing about any of the technology and did it in 6 years … are we arrogant enough to believe that today’s Iranians, knowing of their capabilities as we do, can’t do it in a decade? Isn’t it a fair bet that almost any competent engineer or scientist could build the bomb in a year or two if he or she had the fissionable material and the funds?
How could Ahmadinejad make good on his threat? I have a thought for you … suppose that he does in fact have a substantial amount of high grade fissionable material, say maybe 50 or 100 pounds of it. Would it be possible, maybe even plausible, for he and his minions to smuggle a dozen or two bombs into the Earth’s greatest metropolises and detonate them simultaneously? He would have made good on his threat; he wouldn’t have to have missiles or an air force, just jihadists. When it was over, he would have made his place in history, the jihadists would be in heaven with 72 virgins and we would have had our Armageddon, for that place is very near Jerusalem, the place likely to go first.