Nuclear terrorism might be a thing, but I seriously doubt that the easiest way to do it is nuclear suicide vests. Miniaturizing nuclear warheads is a pain. If you were going to do something like that, you’d be better off doing something akin to a truck bomb.

Much more likely would be a dirty bomb. Just a regular bomb with some nuclear material that it spreads. The nuclear material isn’t the bomb itself, but used exclusively for the exposure effects.

I’m kind of skepitical of the “dirty bomb” idea. Frankly, it sounds like a load of bullshit, because of the πr2 thing. Namely, if you want to irradiate and area to a sufficient extent to cause immediate radiation sickness, then keeping it concentrated is your best bet. A very small bomb, at most.

The other extreme would be a huge bomb to spread radioactive material over, say, a city. At which point it barely raises the radioactivity above background levels. Or at least doesn’t cause immediately apparent effects. Imagine terrorists issuing a statement like, “Sure, it doesn’t seem so bad TODAY, but wait ‘til you see the slight bump in cancer rates in 20 years.”

Indeed, on looking it up, I see that the experts are skeptical, too, and tests conducted by Israel didn’t find much effectiveness. That could be why we haven’t seen one used.

Yeah, but destruction and loss of life isn’t the point. Terror is. If a dirty bomb was detonated I’m a city, and it contained enough nuclear material to say, cause a 10% jump in cancer outlooks over a 20 year period, that’s not the point.

The point is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs to come out, shut a city down, do all sorts of testing, clean the shit out of everything, and disrupt everyone’s lives. The fear is the point, and as a fear-causing weapon, radiation is in a unique class all its own.