Could that “eradicate all life in a city”, though? Hiroshima was 16 kt, and that killed fewer than half the people in the city.
Well, if you insist on being a pedant about it, one would just have to choose a correctly-sized city.
I do. “One terrorist with a suitcase could destroy a whole city” is the sort of scaremongering nonsense that gets used to argue for the rollback of civil liberties.
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400m a radius in midtown Manhattan, for example, would have a death toll in the range of tens of thousands, once you account for daytime commuter numbers. Probably over 100,000. I guess that’s OK because it’s not “a whole city?”
You’ve picked a visceral description to get hung up on and are now demanding people adhere to it exactly, or you will dismiss the threat potential as unimportant. It would be nice if you acknowledged that there are other increments in the danger weapons of mass destruction pose than +/- 1 city.
But if you absolutely must get fixated on the “whole city” part, then Vatican City is 0.44 sq. km. and the Mk-54 has an effective kill area of 0.503 sq. km. Your requirement has been met.
Can you fit it in a suitcase?
Yes.
OK. I’ll accept that the contents of a suitcase can eradicate all the life in a city, as long as the suitcase is quite large and the city is very small.
ETA: I notice that the diameter of that nuke is 27cm while the suitcase has a depth of 26cm, so the terrorist is probably going to have to get a friend to sit on the bag while he does the straps up.
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I’m sorry that you were offended by my comment, Kimmo. My satirical arrow was only intended for the Australian government for its proposal. The government, whose members (one could assume) are part of the upper class.I’ll leave them alone if you want.
Another Aussie checking in.
It won’t fly. One thing people need to get used to in America is that we will publicize ‘thought bubbles’ and ‘brain farts’ of politicians.
So when a pollie says “what can we do here?” They’ll get an answer. It’ll invariable hit the news outlets and be publicized. (And knee jerks then happen about here). Often, the proposal doesn’t even get to the floor.
Even if it got to the floor, there is no way that this would get through upper house and become law.
It’ll be dropped if it hasn’t been dropped already.
Sure, quite a bit gets through. But we do have a lot more checks and balances than the US.
Mind you. We’re still absolutely livid about what is going on with Adani. (Forget Parody laws. What our government is doing to support this corrupt company coming in and destroying our environment… deep breath)
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Many others have provided you with information you should have had already, if you want to claim you’re a reasonably well-informed person. I won’t duplicate their efforts.
Your statement was still an exaggeration.
Good illustration of what I was referring to.
Your premises and conclusions are unrelated. “Border control” and “globally co-ordinated tracking of all movement between nations” are not the same thing, and the latter does literally nothing to prevent movement of the sorts of weapons you are referring to.
Nearly everyone I meet these days agrees with you, though. Most people take it for granted (except @One_Brown_Mouse 
of course ) that passports, implemented as a specifically temporary measure, are as necessary as the authoritarians have always claimed they are…
I haven’t, but I will. Thanks!
I am intensely jealous.
really?
I think we’d do quite a bit better at that if the effort spent on controlling the borders were spent on controlling or even, gasp, destroying the weapons.
You’re basically saying that we all have to live in fear under someones thumb because someone created something awful and they’re holding us all hostage with it. We can actually just destroy those weapons you know. We don’t have to live half a life because someone COULD be awful.
I don’t live in stockholm, so I don’t tend to identify with my captors, YMMV.
We could just take them away, the big scary weapons. They’re not easy to build or maintain.
But that wouldn’t be profitable fearmongering nor would it consolidate power into fewer hands - so why would anyone with a healthy GOD complex possibly help devolve power back to the people?
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This sounds very much like “begging the question”.
I like this bit! Starting with “in a world” practically demands that it be read in a dramatic movie announcer voice. Introducing Team America 2: The Wall!
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