Originally Posted by PatrickHenry1775
I just thought of a scenario that would accomplish many of the goals identified in the posts above. Two or three terrorists pilot a cigarette boat with a nuclear device and radioactive waste to a dock in New York harbor, then detonate the device. Lower Manhattan is devastated, Wall Street and our financial system takes a huge hit, fear runs rampant, many hostile groups and countries see the United States as an impotent giant, and if the government thinks that Iran was involved with this plot, war begins quickly.
Easier said than done. Getting ahold of a nuclear weapon is not exactly the easiest thing in the world -- I'm sure there are some terrorists somewhere who would love to do something like this, but buying a nuke ain't easy.
(I assume you're talking about a full-fledged nuclear detonation, and not just an improvised "dirty bomb".)
Second point: If terrorists have a nuclear weapon, there are even worse places they could detonate it. (I think I'll refrain from explaining further, even though the scenarios have been discussed in the open literature.)
Third point: I'm no expert on remote detection of nuclear weapons, so perhaps I'm off-base here, but policing the ports to prevent the kind of scenario you mention seems likely to me to be very hard. It seems better to focus on preventing terrorists from getting nukes in the first place.
But you're right that there are some nasty scenarios involving port security, even without using nukes.