The Alternate History of the Horrible Nuclear Terrorism That Never Was
- cepmurphywrites
- Jul 15
- 3 min read
By Colin Salt.
From the moment nuclear weapons were revealed, the fear of nuclear terrorism has been a massive Sword of Damocles, a threat of extreme horror. However, this is in contrast to the actual record of nuclear terrorist plots: which is to say, besides the obvious no successful strikes, there has been only one known serious attempt to make a nuclear device and it failed completely despite having more advantages than almost any other terror group would have.
I have always likened it to the Y2K dodge. It may have seemed like a nothingburger in hindsight, but the "00 will break computer programs" issue was actually a real and serious one that, thanks to a massive effort, was largely solved by the deadline. Similarly, the obvious threat of a nuclear terror strike has brought about equally obvious security measures. But could they have failed? Could the subject of so many cheap thrillers that an entire book was made cataloguing them have become actual history in something that would make 9/11 look like a drunk punching someone?
The answer is "probably not." Not in the least because there are gargantuan obstacles that go beyond the mere technical problems. Namely, conducting or even attempting a nuclear strike is going to make its perpetrators the world's Number One wanted enemies. Thus, almost anyone desiring a rational goal or with any degree of caution or restraint would veto such an attempt. It would have to be done by kooks. It would have to be done by kooks who had access to sophisticated resources and planning to get the materials, ready the device (be it an existing or scratch-built one), move it to its target, and set it off all without getting caught until it was too late.
With all that said, there's one inherent advantage would-be nuclear terrorists have. With the goal simply to create a bigger explosion than a comparable mass of "normal" charges, there's a gargantuan amount of slack in the design process. Designs that no military would touch could still "succeed" in the hands of people who just wanted a bang.
The only historical attempt with any degree of seriousness beyond napkin sketches was done by the legendary Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan. All the boxes were checked: they were apocalyptic kooks, they had piles of money, the early 1990s and post-Soviet chaos was the best time for nuclear proliferators, and they had an ability to operate semi-openly before their OTL chemical strike in ways that most other terror groups could not. The plans for nuclear weapons were serious and included plans to mine natural uranium in Australia as the basis for something (to build or get their own centrifuges?). In spite of this, it went nowhere and they ultimately went with poison gas.
Because of this lack of precedent, the thoughts of the 'ideal' nuclear terror strike have varied. The most expected yield jumped from one kiloton to ten, which seems arbitrary until you look at the contexts of the 70s and 90s. Earlier, reactors were belching out massive quantities of plutonium and the fear was of terrorists using that with a very crude implosion system. Later, it was fear of cold-war surplus highly enriched uranium combined with the very simple design of gun-types using said HEU. Ten kilotons is plausible for a somewhat reduced Little Boy.
So could a nuclear terror strike happen in a "plausible" alternate history?
Well, maybe. While highly unlikely, the possibility is not zero. And if it did, through whatever means, the belief in that timeline would be that a nuclear terror strike was simply inevitable from the moment the first atomic bomb was built.
I think the biggest window would be 1991-2001, and not just because of the collapse of the USSR. Terror strikes were getting bigger and more audacious every year, and there may have been a time in the post-Soviet, pre-9/11 lull when a perfect storm may have slipped through the cracks.
Colin Salt is an author who, among other works, wrote The Smithtown Unit and its sequel Box Press for Sea Lion, and runs the Fuldapocalypse Fiction review blog.
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