Originally Posted by superbad
My real fear, personally, is that while we are x-raying everybody's Chuck Taylors, someone is going to stick an improvised nuclear device onto a shipping container, and set it off in the port of New York.
Fortunately, that would be an extremely inefficient method of delivering a nuclear payload - and the weapon itself would likely be of shoddy quality. My guess is that such a bomb would do serious damage... to the container itself and dock surrounding it. But it certainly wouldn't come close to leveling a city of any size. The reason being that the optimal detonation point of a "basic" a-bomb is about 5000 feet in the air above the target. Don't get me wrong, it would suck for anybody working the dock that day, but the majority of the city should be safe in such a scenario.