What If: Easy nuclear weapons.

[Sky Captain]

Suppose once the physics are discovered building a basic WWII era nuclear device is fairly easy. By easy I mean that nearly every third world nation that can scrape together few dozen millions of $$$ can buy all the required materials and skilled people to make small arsenal of 30 - 50 nukes.
For this argument let's assume that some sort of easy uranium enrichment process exist that don't require super expensive facilities, but only suitable amount of natural uranium to start with and some industrial hardware that have too much other uses so restricting it is not an option.

What would happen to the world if nearly every every third world warlord could have his own small arsenal of nukes and more developed countries like Iran could have as much as they want? Would the world burn down in nuclear fire or some sort of common sense would prevent massed uses of nuclear weapons?

[Zor]

The end of civilization. Crazy fundamentalist nutjobs get ahold of them and blow stuff up.

Zor

[Solauren]

The United States would be in control of the world, as once they realised the ease of creating it, they would have developed the technology in secret, and assassinated anyone that even had a hint of developing in.

Once that had a large enough arsenal to glass anyone that was not their ally, then they end World War II with a Nuclear weapon demonstration, followed by 'And we have enough to make sure no one ever tries anything again'.

[Zaune]

The United States would be in control of the world, as once they realised the ease of creating it, they would have developed the technology in secret, and assassinated anyone that even had a hint of developing in.

Good luck doing that if the next group of physicists who happen to stumble upon the same process independently are behind the Iron Curtain, or somewhere else that can keep their work quiet until they test their first bomb.

[Darth Tedious]

You would hope that good old Mutually Assured Destruction would keep everybody from doing anything too rash (hey, it's worked so far).

But then fundies will be fundies, so chances are we'd be largely fucked.

[Sky Captain]

MAD should work between more or less stable countries. Assuming for example that North and South Koreas are armed to teeth with nukes chances are none of them would launch because even crazy dictator like to be in power instead of being waporized.
However as more and more unstable countries would develop their arsenals and later also rich terrorist/criminal organizations like drug cartels would buy or manufacture their own devices chances are high that acts of nuclear terrorism would eventually happen. Could our modern world economy tolerate that on average every few years despite all the security efforts there is a nuclear attack on major city with ~10 kt device?

[spaceviking]

I think you guys are forgetting about delivery systems. Even if every tin pot dictator has nukes, they will not all have a way to use them against countries far away from them.

[Darth Tedious]

I think you guys are forgetting about delivery systems. Even if every tin pot dictator has nukes, they will not all have a way to use them against countries far away from them.

As Sky Captain pointed out, it's not so much the tinpots you need to worry about- governments like to have a country to rule over.

It's extremist/terrorist groups and cartels and such would be the problem.

I would think that if nukes were that easy to build, they could be assembled in the target country and delivered by hand, so to speak.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The United States would be in control of the world, as once they realised the ease of creating it, they would have developed the technology in secret, and assassinated anyone that even had a hint of developing in.

Once that had a large enough arsenal to glass anyone that was not their ally, then they end World War II with a Nuclear weapon demonstration, followed by 'And we have enough to make sure no one ever tries anything again'.

This was actually an option suggested by a number of scientists in the Franck Report in July 45. However, they added an addendum saying that they could not expect to keep the details a secret for more than five or six years, less if a bomb was used.

[madd0ct0r]

If humans had evolved a few million years earlier much high concentrations of Uwhatever were available, making this a viable scenario.

The arms race prior to WWI might well have included nukes, and while terrorism suddenly got a bit more risky*, we might have been spared the horrors of two world wars.

*Expect Geiger counters to be used extensively at ports shortly after the arms race begins.

[Sky Captain]

How viable would be to enforce strict laws on uranium mining? Even with cheap enrichment process a crude nuke require ~50 kg U235. To get that amount one would have to mine around 10 tons of natural Uranium.
I would expect in this scenarion all known high grade uranium ore deposits would be strictly monitored and brutal mining rules enforced to reduce the chances of someone collecting large amounts of unaccounted Uranium. It may go so far that any detected illegal mining in some third world country is quickly shut down by military intervention if neccesary. Is this viable way how to prevent every other third world shithole from developing sizable arsenals which could later during civil war fall in hands of some terrorist organization.

[Eternal_Freedom]

How viable would be to enforce strict laws on uranium mining? Even with cheap enrichment process a crude nuke require ~50 kg U235. To get that amount one would have to mine around 10 tons of natural Uranium.
I would expect in this scenarion all known high grade uranium ore deposits would be strictly monitored and brutal mining rules enforced to reduce the chances of someone collecting large amounts of unaccounted Uranium. It may go so far that any detected illegal mining in some third world country is quickly shut down by military intervention if neccesary. Is this viable way how to prevent every other third world shithole from developing sizable arsenals which could later during civil war fall in hands of some terrorist organization.

This was another idea raised in the Franck report, the idea that Uranium mining shoudl be strictly and transparently controlled by an internaitonal body, with each nation allowed only a small amount for nuclear power and R&D. They concluded that any breach of such mining regulations must be met with immediate and deadly force lest a nation gain a devastating advantage. In their words "the organisation must not be a paper tiger." Any reticence in complying with the "nuclear bookkeeping" was to be deemed violation of regulations and met with force as well. As you can probably geuss, such a system would be unworkable.

[Sea Skimmer]

You can run into uranium ore looking for other stuff, you can also get uranium ore by drilling wells as opposed to mines, its a more then slight problem in PA now that a number of fracking wells have drilled through uranium deposits. Enforcement against mining is absurdly unworkable. Going after world wide uranium enrichment might work, if it went along with an open skies treaty so hoards of reconnaissance planes could buzz around looking for radioactive emissions at all times. Odds of this happening would be zero. I'd go with earth blows up.