UKC

Just a thought - we can probably all assume that this lot would quite like to have a nuclear weapon and the technology to deliver it to, say, London.

Given that the relevant technology has existed since 1945 and that scientific opinion already at that time was that more or less any country in the world had the scientists to build one if they put their minds to it, it's hard to think that actually building the thing is going to be an insuperable problem. And while I don't know much about aeroplanes, I don't suppose anything very sophisticated is needed, especially if you don't trouble much about the crew returning.

Of course the whole Iraq invasion rather discredited this line of thought, but still - if they're still around in say five years, what would we put the chances at? One hundredth of one per cent? One per cent? Less? More?

There was an interesting article in last night's Standard by Lebedev, referring to a recent speech by Putin in which he referred to a conversation he had supposedly had with 'my friend Barack Obama' about joint action by Russia and the USA to 'wipe out' ISIS. The ES website is rubbish and I can't find it, and I've not seen anything about such a speech elsewhere, so quite likely EL just made it up.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Have you tried The Independent?

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

Ah yes, thank you.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/an-alliance-of-western-leaders-...

Actually, rereading that, he says less about this speech than I'd remembered and more about what he'd like to happen. Oh well.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

IS developing their own nukes is not what we should be concerned of, Iran has been trying for years with little progress and they have vastly more resources than IS. More a concern is them getting hold of a device from Pakistan or else where.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

It takes a lot of industrial effort to produce a nuclear weapon from scratch. To make such a weapon you need either highly enriched uranium 235 or plutonium 239. To get the latter, you can make do with a small research reactor, but then on top of that you need a reprocessing plant to extract the Pu-239 from the waste. If you go for a uranium bomb, you need an enrichment plant. Either way you need a large scale industrial process that would take time to set up, be difficult to hide and vulnerable to attack.

Stealing a ready made weapon seems like a much more viable option for ISIS, and one that we should be afraid of, but we should also be afraid that they simply acquire sufficient nuclear material to make a dirty bomb. Blow up a load of radioactive stuff with ordinary TNT and cover the whole of London/Paris/New York in radioactive shit.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:


Minimal. Bloody expensive to acquire for very little gain. Money would be better spent elsewhere. So cant see them trying.
Even if they did manage to acquire one (as others have said Pakistan would be the obvious candidate) I cant see them using it first. Having it is as a deterrent to allow them to go about their unpleasant business yes but first strike nope.
Leaving aside the complete fruitcakes, who are unlikely to get into the position of power, the current bods are trying to build their new caliphate. Plans which would be slightly buggered by Vanguard or another sub carrying out some landscape work.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

You need a fcuk ton of infrastructure to produce the raw material for a nuclear bomb, that's the stopper.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Unlikely I'd have thought. As weapons of of terror there are fare easier and less expensive means open to them. Chemical weapons and conventional explosives to name but two.

In any case I don't think London would be a prime target until their caliphate was established in the middle east

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

whilst the means to gain one from Pakistan in the future clearly exist, apart from the infiltration and normal intelligence gathering giving away their secret, there will be many in their ranks who don't have a death wish, but are very good at recruiting and developing others too. I don't think it would be in their long term goals to use it.

The west obviously has a lot of eyes and ears, either close to or among them. How else could they know a certain boy from England would be in a specific vehicle, on a certain road at a given time.

Dirty bombs, chemical, biological and conventional weapons, pretty much targeted anywhere in the west, I'm sure they would not hesitate. If they did have just the one bomb, they'd probably rather hit Israelis, than Londoners.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Given the amount of "missing" plutonium, it's just possible that some has made it into very dodgy hands over the years...

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

If the Caliphate somehow succeeded and became established, I'm pretty confident that it would implode within a few years in a drug-fuelled orgy of debauchery, murder, petty rivalries and ill-discipline, since most of its current proponents seem to be driven by testosterone and are not of the intellectual calibre that can build a working nation.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Weren't al Qaida on the case with all this stuff a decade ago? Get on Twitter and ask them how it's going...

In reply to Rigid Raider:


without doubt, there are probably internal problems already etc.. we just don't notice it, as they all have the common hatred of us. There will only remain stable by having a ruthless dictator, which brings the ME full circle.

In reply to summo:


Not really. I'd argue that having some kind of theocratic society, rather than a secular-ish dictatorship is terrible in the short-term but quite good in the long-term. How else to get that yearning out of the system?

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I suspect chemical/biological weapons are more likely than nuclear only on the assumption (happy to be corrected) that they would be cheaper/easier to acquire and be just as devastating on the "terror" scale.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

Chemical weapons? Ticked that box already.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/08/german-intelligence-confirms-i...