What do you think will be the U.S. response if a nuclear device is used in a attack on U.S. soil?

Question

If a nuclear device (even a dirty bomb) is used in a major U.S. city by terrorists that kills hundreds of thousands (possibly millions), what do you think the U.S. will do militarily and politically? How do you think U.S. citizens will react and feel about any aggression taken after? (NOTE: Only serious, honest and educated answers, please. Short, irrelevant answers will be reported.)

Answer 1

There would be a tremendous outcry for action, but how do you prove who built it and set it off? Do we just start launching ICBMs, nuclear-armed cruise missiles and B2 bombers at the 'usual suspects'? Or do we do some analysis and figure out what the proportion of isotopes, who might have created them, and then point the finger and go after those people?

I think the US will need to have some hard facts before we pull the trigger. It's not like WW2 where we knew where Hitler and Tojo lived. The terrorists don't exactly leave return address info laying around. We still have not found OBL in nearly 5 years.

I think that Kim Il Jung and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad know that there will be an extraordinary response if something like you suggest happens. In some ways, they face a dilemna - it they provide material to terrorists and it goes off in the US, then the source will be identified and they will be SOL.

But you raise an extremely important issue - IMO our seaports are the weakest link to entry in the US and I don't think enough is being done to screen cargo, either at the source, or in the US ports. Something like 95% of the cargo containers are not screened.

Thanks for asking an important question. A knee-jerk reaction is not appropriate. But once the facts are known as to where the material originated, the US response will be swift and terrible. I pray that it never happens.

Answer 2

We can blow away entire nations, without Nuclear weapons, we have MOABs. 22,000lb conventional smart bombs with nuke blast power but NO radiation.

M…..Mother
O…..of
A…..all
B…..bombs

WE have Tomahawks with fuel-air explosive war heads. The big Tomahawks can carry 10 war heads. They can burn entire cities with fuel-air explosive.

First the MOAB, when the shock wave clears, in comes the Tomahawk. The entire city is flattened and then burned with fuel-air explosive. The fuel-air explosive burns everything left and it burns off all the oxygen. There is no way to survive!

With our satellites we can target every Arab city in any terrorist nation, and then lock them all into a firing solution. Then at 3am any morning the order was given, every Arab city targeted could be blown clean off the face of the Earth, all at the same time.

We would land our troops 30 minutes later and own that nation. There would be no one left to back at our sodiers. The only thing that would be left, would be giant smoking holes in the sand. Maybe then the warring nations would say : " What ever you do, don't piss off the Americans! They will away our entire nation, just like they did to those stupid Arabs!"

Answer 3

First we might must verify in which he obtained the nuke, now not as difficult as you would consider. Every centrifuge that produces the fabric for a bomb leaves a precise signature that's detectable so it would not take lengthy to determine in which the fabric for the bomb got here from. If it used to be Iran or North Korea........I'd make a robust wager there might be an ubelievable retaliation in opposition to the ones international locations. If it used to be Pakistan.....they would higher have an excessively well clarification and if it used to be China or Russia........ This is why we're so involved approximately Iran constructing nukes. Their tale of simplest short of to supply electrical power does not upload up nonetheless. Nuclear fabric for a reactor simplest needs to be enriched to three-four% while the fabric for a bomb needs to be enriched to ninety nine%. The nuclear watchdog inspectors discovered strains of uranium enriched to round forty%. That is what has every person so concerned and refusing to think the Iranians.

Answer 4

What was the response to Pearl Harbour?
Two Nuclear weapons (the entire arsenal at the time)

What was the response to 9/11? Invasion of two countries, one guilty, the other not.

To answer the question, : the respose would be harsher than the vengeance wreaked on japan

Answer 5

I think we'd expend every resource to find where the bomb came from and remove that place from the face of the earth with a vengeance. I also think that this is the reason we are safe from that sort of thing unless it's a full scale attack, noone wants to see our response. We have a bit of a reputation in the world community as over-reacting, violence prone psychos.

Answer 6

Well it depends on who did it, If its a country like say N.Korea the US would not hesitate.But if its say some terrorist group,whos lives in some mountain region,we would go after them ,but its not much we can do .The reaction would be aggressive .Well just look what happened after 9/11,we made a lot of mistakes.

Answer 7

The government response or the response of the people. Even a dirty bomb would change our lives in the United States as we know it. The hysteria would be incredible.

Answer 8

The Us is the only country in the world that actually did use the atomic bomb.The dropped two on Japan in 1945 killing 300000 and wounding thousnds others in an instant.

Answer 9

Depends if we can pin it on some one. If it is some one that hides behind skirts and children the left & the press will not allow the US to do anything. If a Republican is president (s)he should have been obnipotent & provented it. If a democrat (s)he will get a pass.

Answer 10

well if bush is in office he will go after an innocent country. after
all he went after saddam instead of osama.