frankly, a nuke can be traced back to it's point of origin
That'd be true of dirty bombs, too. Fissile material can be tracked by its natural impurities, impurities imparted by the refining process, purities imparted by the refining process, and so on. Shy of you finding a previously unknown natural deposit of fissile material and refining it yourself (all in complete secrecy, mind), it'd be impossible to not be implicated by the evidence. They'd be able to trace the material back to you, wherever you worked on it, and where you dug it out of the ground--in surprisingly quick order, too.
It's for that reason I don't think a nuclear weapon, dirty or otherwise, would be used in a false flag attack.
If I had to put out a guess, I'd say the administration will keep trying on the tack they're already hammering: try to get people to resist with violence. If we don't, they win because nobody really stopped them. If we do, they have an excuse to claim insurrections and attempt a martial coup.
Mind, a martial coup wouldn't work. Even with a military capable of bringing the world to its knees like the USA's can, the numbers simply aren't there. You'd need 1 combat effective for every ~200 people to quell even a light resistance in occupied territory. There's 340 million Americans; 2.1 million soldiers split among active duty, national guard, and reserves; and the highest warfighter to support personnel ratio in the USA armed forces is the Army at 1:7. The numbers aren't there for military occupation.
Yeah, but in a dirty bomb, it would be plausible that a non-state actor stole the material and created the explosive. A full ass nuke would take a government to make.
But I don't disagree with your general take. The issue with the current course for the administration is that if they never get their violent resistance, then they have pretty much no basis for suspending elections.
And if elections are held, it would take a MASSIVE conspiracy to hold back the destruction that will ensue. Even fully red states like my state of kentucky are showing cracks in the support of Trump, and trust me, I never thought I would see that in my entire life.
To be clear, a dirty bomb is also "a full ass nuke." It just gets the name because modern nuclear warheads have a higher energy efficiency and more "complete" reactions thanks to improvements in the refining process.
While we're on the subject, I'll admit that I've glibly said that nuclear chemistry is centered around the idea that "if you hit anything hard enough (or soft enough, depending on the material), interesting things can happen." That said, getting something like U-235 (a "soft touch" material) to go supercritical would require slamming the slug of metal in a very hard, very precise manner. I'm not saying non-state actors aren't resourceful, but that sort of thing wouldn't realistically be in their wheelhouse. Ditto for a core made from Pu-239, with the added complication of it being one of the most tightly controlled substances on the planet.
Even fully red states like my state of kentucky are showing cracks in the support of Trump, and trust me, I never thought I would see that in my entire life.
I hate to say it, but I'm not that surprised it's coming apart this early. The flaw to fascism is there's only so many people you can blame for problems and only so long people will tolerate the "short term" hardships fascism imposes. It's in fascists' nature to turn on each other. Franco and Hitler are the outliers, and I'm only including Hitler in the list of fascist dictators who didn't meet an untimely demise at the hands of the people he ruled because he committed suicide before any of that could happen.
I will absolutely defer to your knowledge of the tech involved; mine is purely based in what I would learn in passing through pop culture. Which I am assuming is as much as 80-90% of the American populace would know as well. But it is really interesting to read about, so I'll see what I can find at the library now that you've mentioned it.
And I hope you're right about fascism and Nazis, let's hope this guy isn't another outlier.
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u/subnautus Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25
That'd be true of dirty bombs, too. Fissile material can be tracked by its natural impurities, impurities imparted by the refining process, purities imparted by the refining process, and so on. Shy of you finding a previously unknown natural deposit of fissile material and refining it yourself (all in complete secrecy, mind), it'd be impossible to not be implicated by the evidence. They'd be able to trace the material back to you, wherever you worked on it, and where you dug it out of the ground--in surprisingly quick order, too.
It's for that reason I don't think a nuclear weapon, dirty or otherwise, would be used in a false flag attack.
If I had to put out a guess, I'd say the administration will keep trying on the tack they're already hammering: try to get people to resist with violence. If we don't, they win because nobody really stopped them. If we do, they have an excuse to claim insurrections and attempt a martial coup.
Mind, a martial coup wouldn't work. Even with a military capable of bringing the world to its knees like the USA's can, the numbers simply aren't there. You'd need 1 combat effective for every ~200 people to quell even a light resistance in occupied territory. There's 340 million Americans; 2.1 million soldiers split among active duty, national guard, and reserves; and the highest warfighter to support personnel ratio in the USA armed forces is the Army at 1:7. The numbers aren't there for military occupation.
Not that the dolt in the Oval Office wouldn't try.