From Grok:
Suitcase nuclear bombs, often depicted in fiction as portable, self-contained nuclear devices, raise interesting questions about practicality—both in terms of long-term storage and immediate deployment. Let’s break it down.
For a nuclear weapon to work, it relies on fissile material—like highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium-239—reaching critical mass to sustain a chain reaction. Over time, material degradation could indeed pose issues. HEU is relatively stable, with a half-life of about 700 million years, so radioactive decay isn’t a major concern on human timescales. However, plutonium-239, with a half-life of 24,110 years, undergoes alpha decay, which can damage surrounding components and produce heat. This heat could degrade the high explosives or electronics in a compact device if not properly managed. Additionally, tritium (used in some designs to boost yield) has a half-life of 12.32 years, meaning it would need regular replacement to maintain effectiveness in a stored weapon. Without maintenance, a decades-old suitcase nuke might fizzle rather than detonate fully.
Physical design adds further complications. A bare-bones device, like a gun-type bomb (think Little Boy), requires about 50-60 kg of HEU—far too heavy for a suitcase. More sophisticated implosion designs (like Fat Man) use less fissile material (around 6-10 kg of plutonium), but need precise explosives and electronics, which are sensitive to aging, corrosion, or radiation damage over time. Shielding to hide the weapon’s radiation signature (e.g., gamma rays from plutonium) would also add weight, pushing it beyond what’s easily portable. A realistic “suitcase” might weigh 100+ pounds and require a small team to move, not a lone operative.
Now, if newly built and planted just before use, many of these issues vanish. Fresh fissile material, properly assembled explosives, and modern electronics would sidestep degradation concerns. The challenge shifts to construction and delivery. Enriching uranium or producing plutonium requires industrial-scale facilities, not something you whip up in a garage. Even non-state actors would need significant resources—think state sponsorship or a rogue supply chain. Once built, sneaking it into place is tricky but not impossible; radiation detectors at borders aren’t foolproof, especially with shielding. The bomb could be practical in this scenario, assuming the maker solves the engineering hurdles (e.g., miniaturization, reliable detonation).
Historically, the Soviet Union allegedly explored small nuclear devices (like the RA-115) during the Cold War, with yields as low as 0.3 kilotons—suitcase-sized in theory, though evidence is shaky. Modern designs could plausibly achieve this, but no public, verified example exists. Weight, maintenance, and logistics remain the sticking points.
So, over time? Impractical without regular upkeep—materials and components degrade, and it’s bulky for covert storage. Newly planted? Feasible if you’ve got the resources and expertise, but it’s still a logistical nightmare. Either way, it’s less “James Bond” and more “team of engineers with a truck.”
Not a nuke. I've seen this before. It is clearly a chemical explosion. No overwhelming flash of nuclear detonation, no blast wave, and no rapidly rising fireball. It was an ammo dump that went off and the "sparkling" are small munitions that are second-order detonations. (Not to mention the fact that the sparkling is NOT on the center of the explosion, if they were actually radiation effects.)
Holy Moses! That's awful. I looked up what type of plasma would cause a red color. The answer is neon gas. Neon is an inert gas. So I'm thinking that maybe it isn't a plasma, but something else?
Investigative journalist John Burt Caylor was always looking for the missing nuke in a suitcase
called nuke in a suit.
Is investigation let him to a company in Oviedo Florida in 2001. The Yang Corp. It was there going through papers whistleblower Clint Curtis approached him. Flint was the man commissioned at the company to create the first prototype for the touchscreen voting machine, used to flip the two columns of numbers from winner to loser.
I would not be surprised if they were in every city now along with these goons, starting protest.
A suitcase nuke can be a traditional explosive like c4 with nuclear material inside. A dirty suitcase nuke. If it was to go off on a windy day or in a crowded area it could be very harmful.
These would be detectable. Nuclear material would put out small amounts of radiation. Although its possible if they are shielded by a large enough amount of water, radiation could be 100% blocked from nearly any scannable methods.
One completely unblockable nuclear emission is neutrinos. Those can't be blocked by anything - a neutrino can penetrate the entire planet. They pass through matter without interacting so easily they are also VERY difficult to detect.
I have been thinking about those drone swarms a few months ago with this in mind. Regular radiation sensors would work in planes. Satellites. Trucks. Drones wouldn't be needed. But neutrino detectors would have a very low chance of detecting anything so they would need to be deployed in large scale numbers. And if neutrinos are detected, capable of moving to zero in on the source to triangulate an unknown nuclear material source.
If I was searching for hidden nuclear weapons, I would build a swarm of large drones. Large size necessary for both neutrino detection - it can't reliably be shrunk much as they almost all need to be heavy and as big as possible - and for the longest loiter times possible because even the best neutrino detectors have a difficult time finding neutrinos. I would make swarms as large and wide as I could manage, as that helps increase detection through sheer numbers and area. And drones also make the whole detector array capable of moving wherever needed next, and adapting size/density when zeroing down on a suspect.
Also, I recall a story where one of those drones was shot down or crashed and first responders were told it was hazmat. Neutrino detectors at this size and distributed use would almost definitely include hazardous material, something like heavy water (hazard but mostly don't touch) to chlorine (very hazardous, don't be anywhere near). I never followed up on that story to see if evidence of what type of material they were worried about.
Several years ago, NYC and North Jersey put out public service announcements warning about what to do if there is a nuclear attack. I think that the NYC one can still be found on the internet. When I saw those warnings back then, I thought it was a com that you know who was threatening to set off a nuke in that area (near Trump's golf course in Bedminster, btw). Then there was the "earthquake" in north Jersey near Bedminster. Then, a year or so later, drone swarms in the same area. I'm thinking that the sum of all fears, if it takes place at all, will be there.
The drone swarms were nation wide too, they checked everywhere. I drove cross country for thanksgiving and saw them in the midwest chicago farm highways area. That was actual months before they were on TV so we had no idea what it was except it was a lot of them and they were stopping and going vertical. And looked closer than they were because as we kept driving they didn't go past as quickly as we expected. They were bigger and farther than drones should have been if they were normal size drones.
Fruitless. Neutrino detectors are huge and massive in order to detect anything. Unless you have exceedingly subtle data processing and lots of data, you would be mainly picking up the neutrinos emitted by the sun.
You can make a large distributed detector and put the individual nodes on drones
each node not such a great detector, a swarm of nodes multiplying effectiveness. Each drone would still need to be fairly large. And likely hazmat. Something like this could conceivably scale to the largest neutrino detector in existence easily.
And you would need to spend a large amount of time trying to find neutrinos. The odds of people noticing an operation like that are pretty big, I suspect it would make national news after a few months of flying under the radar
No, you can't. You have no idea how large these detectors are. As big as a school-bus might come close. Big as a small building, at least. You need to have it large in order to correctly correlate scintillations to determine if a neutrino has transited the detector.
If you are looking for nuclear materials, I doubt there will be much success. Both uranium and plutonium decay by alpha emission, and that can be totally shielded.
Think nuclear suitcase bombs hidden in cities around the world.
From Grok: Suitcase nuclear bombs, often depicted in fiction as portable, self-contained nuclear devices, raise interesting questions about practicality—both in terms of long-term storage and immediate deployment. Let’s break it down.
For a nuclear weapon to work, it relies on fissile material—like highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium-239—reaching critical mass to sustain a chain reaction. Over time, material degradation could indeed pose issues. HEU is relatively stable, with a half-life of about 700 million years, so radioactive decay isn’t a major concern on human timescales. However, plutonium-239, with a half-life of 24,110 years, undergoes alpha decay, which can damage surrounding components and produce heat. This heat could degrade the high explosives or electronics in a compact device if not properly managed. Additionally, tritium (used in some designs to boost yield) has a half-life of 12.32 years, meaning it would need regular replacement to maintain effectiveness in a stored weapon. Without maintenance, a decades-old suitcase nuke might fizzle rather than detonate fully.
Physical design adds further complications. A bare-bones device, like a gun-type bomb (think Little Boy), requires about 50-60 kg of HEU—far too heavy for a suitcase. More sophisticated implosion designs (like Fat Man) use less fissile material (around 6-10 kg of plutonium), but need precise explosives and electronics, which are sensitive to aging, corrosion, or radiation damage over time. Shielding to hide the weapon’s radiation signature (e.g., gamma rays from plutonium) would also add weight, pushing it beyond what’s easily portable. A realistic “suitcase” might weigh 100+ pounds and require a small team to move, not a lone operative.
Now, if newly built and planted just before use, many of these issues vanish. Fresh fissile material, properly assembled explosives, and modern electronics would sidestep degradation concerns. The challenge shifts to construction and delivery. Enriching uranium or producing plutonium requires industrial-scale facilities, not something you whip up in a garage. Even non-state actors would need significant resources—think state sponsorship or a rogue supply chain. Once built, sneaking it into place is tricky but not impossible; radiation detectors at borders aren’t foolproof, especially with shielding. The bomb could be practical in this scenario, assuming the maker solves the engineering hurdles (e.g., miniaturization, reliable detonation).
Historically, the Soviet Union allegedly explored small nuclear devices (like the RA-115) during the Cold War, with yields as low as 0.3 kilotons—suitcase-sized in theory, though evidence is shaky. Modern designs could plausibly achieve this, but no public, verified example exists. Weight, maintenance, and logistics remain the sticking points.
So, over time? Impractical without regular upkeep—materials and components degrade, and it’s bulky for covert storage. Newly planted? Feasible if you’ve got the resources and expertise, but it’s still a logistical nightmare. Either way, it’s less “James Bond” and more “team of engineers with a truck.”
A micronuke in Yemen. The sparkling you can see is radiation hitting the cameras sensors. https://files.catbox.moe/pxbjgv.mp4
Not a nuke. I've seen this before. It is clearly a chemical explosion. No overwhelming flash of nuclear detonation, no blast wave, and no rapidly rising fireball. It was an ammo dump that went off and the "sparkling" are small munitions that are second-order detonations. (Not to mention the fact that the sparkling is NOT on the center of the explosion, if they were actually radiation effects.)
Can you imagine living in a place like that?
I can't access catbox files.
Try again.
Holy Moses! That's awful. I looked up what type of plasma would cause a red color. The answer is neon gas. Neon is an inert gas. So I'm thinking that maybe it isn't a plasma, but something else?
It's called combustion of carbonaceous materials and the production of soot. Notice the dense black clouds.
https://scienceandnature.com/plasma-ball/#:~:text=The%20colour%20of%20the%20plasma,create%20a%20visually%20striking%20display.
The flowing red streams are the plasma produced.
Interesting, and cutting to the chase, doable.
Investigative journalist John Burt Caylor was always looking for the missing nuke in a suitcase called nuke in a suit.
Is investigation let him to a company in Oviedo Florida in 2001. The Yang Corp. It was there going through papers whistleblower Clint Curtis approached him. Flint was the man commissioned at the company to create the first prototype for the touchscreen voting machine, used to flip the two columns of numbers from winner to loser. I would not be surprised if they were in every city now along with these goons, starting protest.
A special forces parachutists container: https://files.catbox.moe/whbxki.jpg
A suitcase nuke can be a traditional explosive like c4 with nuclear material inside. A dirty suitcase nuke. If it was to go off on a windy day or in a crowded area it could be very harmful.
like demolition explosives in sky scrapers...
clearly, they are that evil.
possibly watch for new insurance policies covering terrorism being taken out.
Most property insurance already doesn’t cover terrorism, arson, or acts of war
These would be detectable. Nuclear material would put out small amounts of radiation. Although its possible if they are shielded by a large enough amount of water, radiation could be 100% blocked from nearly any scannable methods.
One completely unblockable nuclear emission is neutrinos. Those can't be blocked by anything - a neutrino can penetrate the entire planet. They pass through matter without interacting so easily they are also VERY difficult to detect.
I have been thinking about those drone swarms a few months ago with this in mind. Regular radiation sensors would work in planes. Satellites. Trucks. Drones wouldn't be needed. But neutrino detectors would have a very low chance of detecting anything so they would need to be deployed in large scale numbers. And if neutrinos are detected, capable of moving to zero in on the source to triangulate an unknown nuclear material source.
If I was searching for hidden nuclear weapons, I would build a swarm of large drones. Large size necessary for both neutrino detection - it can't reliably be shrunk much as they almost all need to be heavy and as big as possible - and for the longest loiter times possible because even the best neutrino detectors have a difficult time finding neutrinos. I would make swarms as large and wide as I could manage, as that helps increase detection through sheer numbers and area. And drones also make the whole detector array capable of moving wherever needed next, and adapting size/density when zeroing down on a suspect.
Also, I recall a story where one of those drones was shot down or crashed and first responders were told it was hazmat. Neutrino detectors at this size and distributed use would almost definitely include hazardous material, something like heavy water (hazard but mostly don't touch) to chlorine (very hazardous, don't be anywhere near). I never followed up on that story to see if evidence of what type of material they were worried about.
This is so interesting.
Several years ago, NYC and North Jersey put out public service announcements warning about what to do if there is a nuclear attack. I think that the NYC one can still be found on the internet. When I saw those warnings back then, I thought it was a com that you know who was threatening to set off a nuke in that area (near Trump's golf course in Bedminster, btw). Then there was the "earthquake" in north Jersey near Bedminster. Then, a year or so later, drone swarms in the same area. I'm thinking that the sum of all fears, if it takes place at all, will be there.
The drone swarms were nation wide too, they checked everywhere. I drove cross country for thanksgiving and saw them in the midwest chicago farm highways area. That was actual months before they were on TV so we had no idea what it was except it was a lot of them and they were stopping and going vertical. And looked closer than they were because as we kept driving they didn't go past as quickly as we expected. They were bigger and farther than drones should have been if they were normal size drones.
Fruitless. Neutrino detectors are huge and massive in order to detect anything. Unless you have exceedingly subtle data processing and lots of data, you would be mainly picking up the neutrinos emitted by the sun.
You can make a large distributed detector and put the individual nodes on drones each node not such a great detector, a swarm of nodes multiplying effectiveness. Each drone would still need to be fairly large. And likely hazmat. Something like this could conceivably scale to the largest neutrino detector in existence easily.
And you would need to spend a large amount of time trying to find neutrinos. The odds of people noticing an operation like that are pretty big, I suspect it would make national news after a few months of flying under the radar
No, you can't. You have no idea how large these detectors are. As big as a school-bus might come close. Big as a small building, at least. You need to have it large in order to correctly correlate scintillations to determine if a neutrino has transited the detector.
If you are looking for nuclear materials, I doubt there will be much success. Both uranium and plutonium decay by alpha emission, and that can be totally shielded.
The scenarios I have read about the Sampson option focused on the nuclear submarines that Israel has all over the world.
I think that is the more likely source of the threat than nuclear suitcases.
I suspected that is what those helicopters took out of the vacant building on Wilshire Blvd in L.A.