For some reason this popped into my head last night. What do you suppose would happen if a terrorist WAS able to get a nuke off in an American city. Pick a city any city it doesn't matter. Naturally the American response would be swift, immediate and naturally equally as destrucive on the purpotrators. But would countries like North Korea or China take advantage of an obviously weakend America? Would that be there only chance? Just would like to hear some honest opinions.

Well that'd depend on what america decided to invade, most likely.
I seem to remember a statement by intelligence officers saying that in the event of a western presenve in north korea, china has plans to use the resulting commotion to expand their hegemony - primarilly into Taiwan.

If Kerry were President we would likely "strongly" condemn the attack and then beg the UN, France, and Germany to support us in also condemning the attack who would refuse. After a couple of years of begging we would moveon to raising taxes on everyone to pay for the cleanup and blame Republicans for the environmental disaster from the fallout.

These hypotheticals are fun.

The single biggest factor would be the identity of the perpetrator. For instance, if it was some group inside a nation we don't want or can't realistically go to war with, you'd likely see a relatively benign cooperative manhunt. On the other hand, if it was in some politically expendable country then whomever was in power would be "tough on terrorists" by invading and occupying. Whether either resulted in catching the principal people involved is up in the air in my mind, there is a lot of the world to run and hide in if you haven't led a notoriously public life. As Afghanistan showed up, simply having overwhelming local supremacy doesn't always bag your badguy.

As to whether or not China would "take advantage," that really depends on where the Western alliance ended up having to drop a lot of troops. They would be abrasive over anywhere in Asia, by nature, but aren't quite belligerent enough to ask for the nuclear sucker punch.

Naturally stateside you'd have volumes of kneejerk legislation to no good effect, getting every bakesale Fuhrer's idiotic porkbarreling through congress as fast as possible. (make downloading music illegal and punishable by jail time because terrorists profit from child pornography on the internet!)

For me the most interesting questions would be cultural. Firstly what would change ove time in people's minds if a major cultural city like New York got scraped off the planet by a 30 megaton bomb? And secondly, what happens when people get a real idea about how much damage a nuke does instead of the armageddon-like image we've been brought up with, and thus lose some of their socialized terror of them?

I like the standard stump-speeching though. It was after all Democratic presidents who got us involved in WW2, Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans and Somalia, and Republican war-mongering bastards like Eisenhower and Reagan that tried to leave lasting legacies of arms-reductions and detente.

Reading this made me think of Sum of all Fears. Interesting concept. I think it's impossible to guess what may happen....as others have said it would depend on many factors:

country of origin
was it state backed terroism or just a renegade group
which political party in the US holds office

Personally I don't know what I would or what I would want to see happen.

Not going to get into the moronic partisan bickering so many other threads have decended to.... to me, it doesn't matter what party is in power, the response should be the same.

The scariest thing about this scenario is who exactly do you target in the "swift, immediate and naturally equally as destrucive on the purpotrators" response. Let's say you find out that the nuke is Russian, rather "Soviet", in origin. It was stolen, or bought from Russian Mafia after it had been stolen from Russian silos, stores, or whatever. It was smuggled in inside a natural gas cannister from <insert almost any natural gas exporting country> where aome Al queda operatives had infiltrated the company many years ago.

Who do you Target?...Russia, Saudi Arabia...or Al Queida members (which we are already hunting as feverently as we can). If you can't find "State" cooperation for the attack, how can you justify invading anyone?

I would expect the chances to be high that the perp would take credit and issue demands, threatening a repeat. In such a case, you would know who to target. If it were Al Qaeda, certainly military incursion into the tribal areas of Pakistan by US forces would be a starting point. If it were tied to Iran, then they could expect retaliation equal or greater in magnitude on their country. The same with North Korea.

In the unlikely event no one takes credit/responsibility, then whatever country the bomb originated in will bear a very heavy burden, including Russia or China if it should prove to be them. It may not result in an attack, but certainly heavy repercussions would result. If Russia were the source and it appears to be a black market deal, that is a far different situation than a likely state sponsored deal from someone like North Korea or China.

I'm glad I will never have to be the one to make that kind of decision.

high that the perp would take credit and issue demands, threatening a repeat.
I was assuming it would be more like 9/11 in that the goal is just to kill infidels, not make demands.

You won't have a clear target to go after...no state is going to support such an act (overtly anyways) no matter how much they want to. They would know that the US would respond in kind if they were found to be behind it.

Even Al Qaeda issues demands. Their existence relies upon publicity to keep recruits and money coming in. It might take them a while, but they would likely spout off sooner or later.

If it were simply a case of muslim fanatics wanting to kill non-muslims, a nuclear attack on a US city would bode ill for certain theocracies. The cry for revenge would be pretty strong and I would not want to be a citizen of of the middle east if that happens. Unfortunate, but true.

A truly ruthless American government would say "look, if you destroy an American city with a nuclear device, Mecca and Medina will become radioactive craters for 10000 years and we will make sure the world knows that it is because of you!" Of course, we have no such ruthlessness....yet. Pop a nuke or two on us and that could change drastically.

I do not believe that nuking/destroying a city would weaken america. It would shake it up more than 9/11 but if you really want to weaken america. you need to explode a major militar base (i.e. Ft. Bragg, NC) as this is where the bulk of Army deployment is out of. This, Ft. Bragg, also represents JSOC (Joint special operations command) and USASOC (United States Army Special operations command), The John F Kennedy Special Warfare Training center, and Delta Force, oh and the entire 18th Airborne Corps which is the parent of the 82nd Airborne devision; blasting civilians will not do this. On second thought would even doing this really weaken us? we would have tones of taxpayers to support a wrecking force that none can stand against. We are the richist, fattest, nation on this planet.. bar none. Despite the minority of protestors that would probably be present in the event of GTNW their tax dollar would still support the mass destruction that we would unleash upon those that oppose our way of life and to those that we suspect as being indirectly involved (see Iraq). Even those countries that try to stay neutral (see France) are not safe, as I see they have a few heads on the Islamic chopping block today. They (militant, backassward countries) should be nuked and I'm down with that.

"When I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover this, and very dreadful, but i saw it to be quite a undeniable fact. . .
I found , in brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace; taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by peace; in a word , that they were born in war and expired in peace."
-- John Ruskin, "The Crown of Wild Olive"

After a couple of years of begging we would moveon to raising taxes on everyone to pay for the cleanup and blame Republicans for the environmental disaster from the fallout.
haha. This is so damn funny because it just may contain something that we, as a whole, have apparently forgotten as being a virtue of man, Truth.

What if it was a home grown terrorist, such as Timothy McVeigh?

There would be no retaliatory nuclear strike unless another country itself launched the nuclear attack on us.

We wouldn't nuke Iran if some terrorists who are there nuked us, but we would very likely reduce the country's ability to do..well much of anything..through conventional warfare - I would expect to see MOAB usage for example.

The best way for them to go after the US(and they are too dumb to realize this yet) is either diplomatically or through peaceful protest. Physically attacking is not going to hurt the country in a long term sense..it has the opposite effect.