From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 14:14:11 +0800
To: Eric Blossom <tcmay@got.net
Subject: Re: Nuclear Hedge Funds / Social Engineering in History / Wiretap DiFi
In-Reply-To: <v03102802b039df8e51d7@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19970908230135.006a94a4@popd.ix.netcom.com>
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At 12:23 PM 9/8/97 -0700, Eric Blossom wrote:
>On of my favorite analyses of a similar scenario is contained in "The
>Curve of Binding Energy" by John McPhee (available at your local
>Borders or Barnes and Noble). 

Definitely a worthwhile read.  Unless I'm mixing it up with another book,
it also is a good history of now political entrepreneur John Aristotle
Phillips,
the kid from Princeton who designed a nuclear bomb for his junior physics
project because he needed a good paper to pull his grades up.
Some of his work was actual physics; much was social engineering,
like asking the guy at duPont what explosives they'd used.
The Pakistani government, which at the time was lobbying Congress
for assistance with their purely peaceful electric-power nuclear reactors,
was also trying to buy a copy of Phillips's bomb design paper...

> He basically interviews a high energy physicist and works out the 
Ted Taylor?
>A key point was that a high efficiency device is not required.  
>A dirty 1.5 kiloton gadget placed on the 40th floor of the World Trade
>Center takes out one tower and kills a shit load of folks in the
>adjacent tower. 
On the other hand, 0.5 kt of ANFO in the basement wasn't quite enough
to take the towers out.


However, we need to get off this "Nuke Washington!" kick,
and on to something more realistic like "Wiretap DiFi!"