How (Not) to Build a Thermonuclear Bomb
This morning, a piece has been making the rounds of the blogosphere claiming that a member on a terrorist forum has posted instructions for how to make a hydrogen bomb. This naturally piqued my interest, so I followed Michelle Malkin’s link to Internet Haganah, who linked to the actual forum post.
Five minutes later, I almost fell out of my chair laughing.
This forum post is priceless. It is one of the best pieces of scientific satire I have ever seen. I can only hope and pray that terrorist groups attempt to construct an atomic bomb using these instructions - if they survive the attempt, they’ll have at least wasted months of effort.
Perhaps the high point of this instructions is the author’s advice on enrichment of uranium hexaflouride:
First transform the gas into a liquid by subjecting it to pressure. You can use a bicycle pump for this. Then make a simple home centrifuge. Fill a standard-size bucket one-quarter full of liquid uranium hexafluoride. Attach a six-foot rope to the bucket handle. Now swing the rope (and attached bucket) around your head as fast as possible. Keep this up for about 45 minutes. Slow down gradually, and very gently put the bucket on the floor. The U-235, which is lighter, will have risen to the top, where it can be skimmed off like cream. Repeat this step until you have the required 10 pounds of uranium. (Safety note: Don’t put all your enriched uranium hexafluoride in one bucket. Use at least two or three buckets and keep them in separate corners of the room. This will prevent the premature build-up of a critical mass.)
There are two primary problems with these instructions:
- The difference in mass between an molecule of uranium hexaflouride with U-235 and a molecule of uranium hexaflouride with U-238 is precisely 3 neutrons. Since these substances are chemically identical, they will tend to mix with currents in the bucket, and not separate “like cream.” Thus, the force exerted by a spinning bucket will not even begin to produce enriched U-235. Real centrifuge enrichment processes use thousands of extremely high speed centrifuges, one feeding the next, to create highly enriched uranium.
- At room temperature and pressure, uranium hexaflouride is a solid.
The instructions also feature these gems, which are but a meager sample of the hilarities in this post:
- Michio Kaku, the noted string theorist, is a nuclear physicist.
- Edward Teller will be interested to know that, once you have an A-bomb, building an H-bomb is merely “frosting on the cake.”
- The difference between a gun-barrel and implosion bomb is not worth mentioning in the article.
The article then finishes up with a quiz on whether you, the reader, are “emotionally eligible to join the H-bomb club.”
Clearly, this article was written as a satire piece. But where did it come from? A little Googling on key phrases (try “casing of an old Hoover”) reveals that this set of “instructions” has been around for a long time - the oldest online appearance I can find is a 1994 posting to the USENET group rec.humor.funny. The introduction to that posting, along with the text of the article, suggest that these instructions were copied from the alternative national magazine Seven Days. Unfortunately, I can’t provide a link to Seven Days, as it was folded into The Nation in 1980. These “instructions” have been in circulation for at least 25 years.
The fact that this article is a satirical piece is not an indication that we don’t need to worry about nuclear terrorism. (Although we probably don’t need to worry about nuclear terrorism from the members of that particular forum.) It is a reminder that we ought to take “instructions” of this nature with a very large grain of salt. Building nuclear weapons is, to use an engineering euphemism, “non-trivial.” In the 1940s, it took the top physicists in the world years and a crash government program to pull it off. Today, atomic weapons are within the reach of most nations which can supply sufficient funding. However, we still have a long way to go before uranium enrichment becomes an afternoon kitchen chemistry project.
Today, we’re going to learn how to make plutonium from common household items. — Philo on Secrets of the Universe, UHF
Update: Welcome, Michelle Malkin readers! If you’re curious as to what else I’ve written, this post has a few good starting points.
H-BOMB PLANS POSTED ON WEB SITE
Internet Haganah, drawing on this Arab News article, reports that a member of a terrorist group has posted to the Internet a do-it-yourself plan to make a homemade hydrogen bomb. Internet Haganah found some interesting details about who may be…
Trackback by Michelle Malkin — 13 March 2005 @ 15:50
The could also use Laser Isotope Separation but for this they would need a cruicible, a vacuum chamber, the Uranium, an e-beams to fire at about 20,000 times per second, to vaporize the metal, pulse-tunable dye lasers driven by power lasers like copper vapor lasers from the 1980s or semiconductor lasers today, and then drive the very specific frequency blended light into the vapor, knocking off an electron on the isotope they need and then collect that particular isotope on a magnetic collector plate, cool down the process, and put it all away - not to bention the beam diagnostics, pointing and centering, and a powergrid like that of the western united states to drive the babe. Or maybe the could use a flash lamp and a strainer.
Comment by Richard Weddle — 13 March 2005 @ 17:28
You’ve got it right, Zach! If Michelle had a sense of humor and had read the introduction, it would have been clear to her that the piece was a satire.
Comment by CKR — 13 March 2005 @ 18:03
Thanks for clearing it up, having been sucked in by the original I will say that I did not go to the actual forum and stopped at the article on Arab News sourced by Internet Haganah. I relied on the description of the posting supplied at IH and Arab News since I did not want my IP logged at the actual forum. The news articles make no mention of the obviosuly satirical bookends or the outlandish portions of ‘the recipe’ in the original post. I might be guilty of not chasing the original all the way down, but I am not guilty of gullibility or a lack of a sense of humor, I suspect the same is true of Michelle Malkin.
Comment by GoldFalcon — 13 March 2005 @ 20:52
I wouldn’t say that anyone here lacks a sense of humor - this is mostly a case of the importance of fact checking. And, truth be told, I haven’t checked on the poison gas instructions that the Arab News article references. (I don’t read Arabic.)
For all I know, the poster could indeed be a diehard jihadist. (If so, we need more terrorists like him.) On the other hand, he could be a 13-year old kid determined to show off his 1337 nukl34r skills. The forum still bears watching, but this isn’t yet cause for alarm.
Comment by Zach Heaton — 13 March 2005 @ 21:28
Felony Stupid
Michelle Malkin, that brilliant nuclear scientist, has done it again.
Ever paranoid of those dangerous Muslims, she delivered an ostensibly chilling, jaw-dropping, yet-again breaking story about directions on the Internet on how to build an hydrogen…
Trackback by Blogosphere Out Of Control — 13 March 2005 @ 22:11
Hi,
I just kind of stumbled across your blog and thought this post was very good. The gullibility of the press never ceases to amaze me. I wonder if they would believe you can build your own aircraft carrier out of tin foil and plastic pipes.
Comment by Jason Poore — 19 April 2005 @ 13:18
Non-science people don’t know anything… The instruction is so bad, it won’t trick any real scientist trying to make a bomb.
Comment by niT — 10 September 2005 @ 4:48
Where is your average Kitchen Terrorist going to find Uranium Haxfluoride in the first place? K-Mart?
Mind you, could probably get it via the NRA, I’m sure there “right to home defence” idiocy could be extended to nukes….”Nuclear weapons don’t kill people, Genocidal maniacs with nuclear weapons kill people”!
Comment by Charles — 21 February 2009 @ 10:34