When I was a lad I knew a devout bible reader who talked about the end times as written in scripture.\u00a0 He said that the final battle between\u00a0 Good and Evil would be fought in a place called Armageddon.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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;\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
As a young man, I studied engineering physics about 10 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.\u00a0 Nuclear physics was a new subject,\u00a0 just then beginning to be taught to students.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In our classes, we actually calculated the critical masses necessary for an atomic bomb to explode, for both elements.\u00a0 As I recall, just off the top of my head, about 15 pounds for\u00a0 Uranium and 3 pounds for Plutonium.\u00a0 In order to understand those masses, I try to visualize them physically so I can know if —\u00a0 “can I see it?\u00a0 is it bigger than a bread box? ( to quote a very old TV show) or is it bigger than a house?”\u00a0 Another visualization came from my mother who used to say “a pint’s a pound the world around.”\u00a0 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. \u00a0 The amount of each metal to build an atomic bomb is not very heavy.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Let us agree then, for the sake of argument,\u00a0 that it doesn’t take much material to build a bomb and that it could be easily smuggled.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 These men, having been selected by their government for advanced study, were the cream of their universities and were impressively bright scholars.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
That was many years ago and times have changed.\u00a0 The country of Iran, unlike then, is now a theocracy and among other things has a massive nuclear energy project for “peaceful purposes.”\u00a0 Many people do not\u00a0 know that the fissionable material necessary for “peaceful purposes” is obtained in the same manner as that for weapons.\u00a0 It is just a matter of degree, the total amount of\u00a0 refinement.<\/p>\n
The Iranian’s leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has sworn to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth and continuously expresses his hatred for America. \u00a0 Ahmadinejad has also stated that it would be worth sacrificing his entire country to rid\u00a0 humanity of the “great Satans,” the countries of Israel and the United States of America.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 But we do nothing and the Iranians just keep the centrifuges spun up.\u00a0 Given that I know …\u00a0 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\u00a0 Uranium enrichment,\u00a0 isn’t it a likely cinch that they already have a substantial amount of highly refined, weapons grade nuclear material?<\/p>\n
Let’s just look at a little history:\u00a0 Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt warning of the possibility of an atomic bomb in September of 1939;\u00a0 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;\u00a0 the Trinty test at Alamagordo on July 15, 1945 was a success; the bombing of Hiroshima\u00a0 and Nagasaki, took place on August 6, 1945 and on August 9, 1945, respectively.\u00a0 This was a period of time\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We knew nothing about any of\u00a0 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,\u00a0 can’t do it in a decade?\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n
How could Ahmadinejad make good on his threat?\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 He would have made good on his threat;\u00a0 he wouldn’t have to have missiles or an air force, just jihadists.\u00a0 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<\/strong>, for that place is very near Jerusalem, the place likely to go first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was a lad I knew a devout bible reader who talked about the end times as written in scripture.\u00a0 He said that the final battle between\u00a0 Good and Evil would be fought in a place called Armageddon.\u00a0 I … Continue reading