There are gamma rays of a distinctive frequency, neutrons, and a light curve shaped by the ionization, absorption and re-emission of the atmosphere. It’s unmistakeable and it can’t be disguised.

Within minutes the President’s phone will be ringing, and all leaves will be canceled.

Iran, if it is building nukes, has a very real need for them. They are under attack by the US and Israel, both nations with WMDs. If nothing else they need nukes simply to prevent folks from messing with them. (However, I believe they have essentially the same capacity if they chose to make dirty bombs. They could devastate Tel Aviv, for instance.)

What made Cuba so dangerous was that the Russian troops has tactical nuclear weapons under local control and the US didn’t know that. Imagine if the US invaded. The Russian commander would have had to use nukes, the US would have had to respond, and so on.

I realize there are low-yield nukes designed for local use which are considered tactical weapons and I think that their existence has strategic considerations.

Even a perfectly harmless application serves as a test, it demonstrates a working system, or one that needs more work (like the N Korean squib). It’s not the pop, its the program that’s threatening.

The peaceful uses of nuclear explosions I believe are very limited, digging a sea level canal through the Central American rain forest was one I heard seriously considered. What could they have been thinking? People have talked about some fracking applications, but I think that idea is starting to look less appealing lately. The main problem with that type of application is that the harder we look, the more interconnected and interdependent the environment proves itself to be. It’s impossible to predict what will happen when we do something really big. Even if the system recovers and heals, it may not be the same, there will be unforeseen consequences.

Still, look at Antarctica. Some day, we may have to move a lot of ice in a hurry…

There is one more consideration. Most of the nukes tested during the Cold War weapons development tests were in remote locations: deep underground, barren deserts, out at sea. The negative effects were isolated, and collateral damage, such as fires, were kept to a minimum. We tried a few in deep space, with unforeseen consequences.
With nukes, consequences are usually unforeseen.

But Orion, yes, that was really something. I would sign up for that mission. The interplanetary environment is already saturated with radiation, a little more would not hurt.

They look pretty darn good as “bunker busters,” but trial balloons in this direction have been quickly popped.

Use of a tactical nuke would be, to put it a bit crudely, the user nation “losing its nuclear cherry” in the modern world, and it would immediately be on the moral defensive. This would be true even on purely military targets, and with little or no surface contamination.

We have been trained over decades to believe that exploding one nuke in the environment is a crime, even if you’re doing it to dig a mine or do something useful. Do it around people, and that’s pretty much it for your political career.

Kind of a shame we discarded ALL of the “peaceful nuke” ideas, really. The Orion spaceships – the real ones with the pusher plates – would have been fantastic.

The Falklands Whale makes his appearance:

(Thanks to the great Jack Kirby!)