Re: Washington on the verge of being nuked?

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 1:31 PM -0800 2/7/98, Declan McCullagh wrote:

>I live in Adams Morgan, perhaps a mile from downtown Washington. Of course
>I work in the heart of DC, in the lobbyist corridor, blocks from the White
>House and agencies like the FCC. (Note to terrorists: the Pentagon is miles
>away, on the other side of the Potomac. Take the blue or yellow Metro
>lines. You can lug your H-bomb through the handicapped turnstiles for no
>additional fee.)

(Tariq, make note of this!)

>I've tentatively decided against moving all the way to West Virginia, which
>is 60 miles away. I'm now thinking of moving around 40 miles out, close to
>the WV border tho still in Virginia. Main reason is the commute. But it'll
>still be in farm country.

Someplace like Leesburg? Horse country.

>Still, as I've said before, if terrorists are going to blow anything up, it
>makes more sense for them to go after Manhattan. Though it is on an island,
>which might make logistics and escape (?) difficult.

Depends on what the goal is. I would assume Iraq would be a lot more
interested in making a symbolically important statement by hitting the
capital of the Great Satan (Tariq, help me out here).

If the goal is simple disruption of finances, NYC is probably a better goal
(though a hit on D.C. would trigger lots of chaos, too). If the goal is
killing people, I'm not sure what the best target would be...it might be
some other city completely, depending on wind conditions, presence of
refineries and oil storage tanks, dams, etc.

But I would bet on D.C. being Ground Zero for all the various freedom
fighters the U.S. colonialist/paternalistic superpower actions have pissed
off.

Of course, hitting _both_ D.C. and NYC might make a lot of sense.
Especially in case one bomb fizzles. If they have several suitcase nukes,
it makes more sense to deploy them in several cities than to have the damge
zones overlap (or even have one blast affect the later bombs).

Timing could be within seconds easily enough, but even spaced hours apart
there would be virtually no chance for NEST to find them.

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