Hacker Cinema
Countdown to Zero
2010 · Film · documentary · 91 min
Directed by Lucy Walker
Although the Cold War is behind us, the threat of nuclear disaster remains very real. Director Lucy Walker discusses the invention of the atomic bomb and brings the story into the present day, examining the possibility of nuclear calamity under the categories of "Madness," "Accident" and "Miscalculation." With narration by Gary Oldman, the film includes a hypothetical sequence of a nuclear explosion in New York City's Times Square, timed to coincide with the New Year's Eve countdown.
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A highly-enriched uranium fission bomb is conceptually and practically simple to construct. The hard part is getting enough HEU. That part isn't even hard to achieve (North Korea managed it after all), just moderately expensive and hard to conceal. This process and the bomb design is explained in detail in the nuclear non-proliferation documentary, "Countdown to Zero" (2010): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1572769
The amount of HEU needed for a device of this type with a yield comparable to Little Boy could fit in a shoebox. Seal it in some lead pipe, stick it in a shipping container and no one would know. The above documentary illustrates this powerfully with animations and expert testimony. Strongly recommended, especially as a companion to "Command and Control" (2016): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5598206/
There is a documentary called Countdown to Zero which makes this point about nuclear bombs.
The film advocates getting rid of all nuclear weapons, which may be naive, but they make a good point: all that you need to create an atomic bomb is a few million dollars, a talented engineer and physicist who would keep their mouths shut, and enough luck not to get caught.
The BoM is essentially:
* HEU: buy it on the black market, high-6/low-7 figures. A lot of fissile material went missing during the dissolution of the USSR, North Korea has productive uranium mines and enrichment capabilities, etc.
* Decommissioned artillery cannon: militaries sell these after rendering them inert, high-5/low-6 figures.
You could make a jury-rigged Bomb by re-commissioning the cannon, capping it with half of your HEU shaped into the end of the barrel, and then firing a slug made out of the other half. That's not as simple as it sounds, and it wouldn't be very efficient, but you would end up with a bang and a lot of fallout.
I think there was a cult that tried it at some point - maybe Aum Shinrikyo? Thankfully, they weren't lucky enough not to get caught.
The documentary "Countdown to Zero" (2010) convinced me it's only a matter of time before an improvised nuclear weapon is used in a city somewhere. Scary to hear how easy it is to buy nuclear material.
There was a really nice documentary on similar subject: Countdown to Zero http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1572769/