Freaks Macintosh Archive/Freaks Macintosh Archive.bin/Freaks Macintosh Archives/Textfiles/zines/DNA/DNAV1I3.sit/DNAV1I3/ARTICLE.011

Text File | 1993-06-20 | 10KB | 150 lines

                         Written: 4/09/92
                            By: Arclight

                    Los Angeles/Holocaust '93
          Present and unnoticed by the jovial dinnertime Los Angeles
     crowds gathered below, it wisped by as a gnat does above a field.
     The Friday evening scene--the couples strolling along the Boulevard
     the queues of anxious people waiting outside the choicest
     restaurants, and the occasional passerby out for a casual walk in
     the lively, subtly  expressive evening atmosphere--the scene that
     had taken place there on so many Friday nights before and,
     presumably, would continue to be acted out there for an eternity to
     come--was so far removed from what was  about to take place that
     one scarcely could have guessed that this picture belonged to the
     same Los Angeles of just a short while later.   The object slowly
     grew closer, closer yet. It is doubtful, also that anyone noticed
     the small, dark object falling from the Cessna 210 Twin Engine
     wafting by at extreme altitude. The Cessna, still visible, could
     have been seen making a high G-force turn and bank, departing with
     greater expedience than it had arrived with. Some seconds later,
     the intermingling sights and sound of the street melted into a
     single blinding, penetrating, searing pulse of light and
     heat,followed shortly by a mind pulverizing shockwave of shear
     force and brutality, reducing the pleasant Los Angeles of a
     thousand Friday evenings to ashes and blistering, boiling asphalt.
     There remained shadows, lingering long after their owners had
     deserted them, still clinging to the sidewalks where they had been
     forever fixed by the force of the atom. The colorful Boulevard had
     become an ash strewn inferno:the instant crematory for those who
     had not even had the chance to scream. As one travelled further
     from the Downtown, the level of carnage gradually decreased; some
     areas appeared nearly untouched, save for their lack of occupants,
     most of whom had attempted to flee the city along the decimated
     highways. In the streets, there could be seen packs of dogs
     feasting on what remained of the slaughter-their masters having
     long since departed them. The living, bustling, metropolis had been
     silenced. The heart had ceased to beat and the blood had all run
     out along those highways littered with the dead and the dying. The
     city had ceased to be.
          This holocaust was not, however, the result of some world leader's
     over-eagerness to push the button, or some accidental initiation of
     Armageddon due to human error. Quite to the contrary, it was the
     result of a carefully planned and executed action carried out by a
     group of people intent on showing the world a lesson about the
     dangers of stockpiling nuclear weapons. The damage done by the
     single Uranium fission bomb was comparatively minor when compared
     to the existing potential for global catastrophe. Thus, the action
     of these individuals was carried out in an effort to avoid a future
     calamity rather than out of antisocial prejudice.
         In the Spring of 1993, the individuals ultimately responsible for
     the bombing began to meet clandestinely to discuss what it would
     take to convince humanity to give up the vast stockpiling of
     nuclear weapons. All agreed that it would take drastic measures to
     convince people of the danger present in the system, and to force
     them to listen to reason, rather than the assurances of government
     leaders. It was during this period that they began to go over
     possible options.
         Various ideas were presented. Most ended up being rejected on the
     basis of being too costly, impractical, or not yielding
     satisfactory results. The option of staging a nuclear accident at
     a Plutonium production facility, such as Savannah River or Hanford,
     Washington was ruled out as being too difficult and not leaving
     people sufficiently disgusted with the authorities. Even if a
     sabotage effort could carried out effectively enough to cause a
     massive fission product release into the atmosphere, would this
     really shock the public? The D.O.D. could gloss over it and make it
     look like a minor event. Also, reactors and their associated
     equipment are housed behind several layers of shields and barriers.
     Complete penetration would be difficult or perhaps impossible under
     normal circumstances. Hijacking a truck carrying spent fuel rods
     from a commercial reactor would demonstrate nothing and would,
     likewise, be risky. But, to build a simple fission bomb would be
     relatively simple. The Uranium type can assembled with relative
     ease, as the critical elements can be brought together into a
     supercritical assembly by simply pushing one element, a subcritical
     mass,into a hole bored into another, also a subcritical mass.
          When a large enough amount of a readily fissile material, such as
     Uranium in its (235) isotope, or plutonium in its natural state, a
     release of a Neutron which hits another atom of the material will
     cause Fission, or splitting apart of the nucleus, releasing more
     Neutrons which collide with more nuclei which continue to propagate
     the reaction until the material is totally consumed. When the
     number of Neutrons being released exceeds the number of Neutrons
     being absorbed by inert molecules, or otherwise lost, the assembly
     is said to be Supercritical, that is, it is releasing more Neutrons
     than are needed to sustain the reaction. A critical mass is the
     mass of fissile (splittable) material required to achieve this
     state. In a Plutonium bomb, the two halves of the critical mass are
     usually brought together as hemispheres under an implosion force
     with explosives.More force is required to bring the halves together
     than is required to assemble a Uranium bomb. As mentioned, the
     parts are machined so that one fits inside another and one is
     pushed into the other with a small explosive charge. This type is
     much simpler to construct. The only difficulties in building this
     device are in obtaining Uranium that contains at least 25% of the
     (235) isotope, which is normally found in a 2% concentration mixed
     with its more common isotope (238). As the two are chemically
     identical, they can only be separated through slight differences in
     mass. In the U.S., this has always been done through gasseous
     diffusion, where the Uranium is made into Uranium hexaFluoride and
     then pushed throuh porous tubes. The lighter (235) diffuses faster
     and is thus collected. For a small scale operation, it would be
     much easier to steal it, ready made, than to separate it. Once
     obtained, the Uranium can be cast into the desired shape ina vacuum
     furnace and then machined to final size. A quantity of 10 pounds
     would be sufficient to produce a working bomb.
          The necessary Uranium was ultimately obtained a terrorist raid on
     Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. Security is dependant on human
     factors and weak spots are always present. A minimum number of
     people were killed and the government chose to cover up the
     incident,not fully realizing what had been taken until the bomb was
     already assembled. Sensitive research data was extensively tampered
     with and served as a bluff to draw attention away from the bomb
     material.
           The bomb casing was assembled from high quality pipe conduit and
     was fabricated at a well equipped machine shop that the group was
    able to use. The Uranium was cast in a vacuum furnace at a local
    university metallurgy lab and was machined under water cooling, to
    avoid fire. The conventional explosive used was a .50lb charge of
    RDX (Cyclonite) high explosive. Commercial No8 blasting caps were
    used, in a set of two to insure reliability. The fuze consisted of
    an analog altimeter connected as a switch. Two were used, again,
    for reliability. The fissile material weighed a total of 47lbs,
    2.3oz. with the bomb weighing in at 335lbs, 8.2oz. The entire
    payload was fitted into the cabin of Cessna 210 light plane.
         On April 14,1993, 5:02pm, the bomb was dropped over downtown Los
    Angeles. It exploded at an altitude of 8000 feet. The plane
    carrying the perpetrators landed safely some distance across the
    Mexican border. The perpetrators were captured by the Mexican
    Federal Police some months later and are still awaiting extradition
    to the United States.
          By dropping the bomb, several thousand people were killed and
    countless were wounded. As people perhaps it was necssary to
    witness the horror of atomic warfare firsthand in order to avoid
    it. It is impossible to say whether it was the right decision for
    the betterment of mankind, but it reached everyone in a way that
    said "This problem can no longer be ignored!" Perhaps with that
    goal accomplished, humanity has been served by this.
                                The End?

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