Nuclear attack on D.C "Inevitable"

"A nuclear device detonated near the White House would kill roughly 100,000 people and flatten downtown federal buildings, while the radioactive plume from the explosion would likely spread toward the Capitol and into Southeast D.C., contaminating thousands more.

The blast from the 10-kiloton bomb — similar to the bomb dropped over Hiroshima during World War II — would kill up to one in 10 tourists visiting the Washington Monument and send shards of glass flying the length of the National Mall, in a scenario that has become increasingly likely to occur in a major U.S. city in recent years, panel members told a Senate committee yesterday.

"It's inevitable," said Cham E. Dallas, director of the Institute for Health Management and Mass Destruction Defense at the University of Georgia, who has charted the potential explosion's effect in the District and testified before a hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. "I think it's wistful to think that it won't happen by 20 years."

And we'd know from whence the fissionable material came within mere hours, and any President who isn't a yellow-bellied democrat would order an attack upon the country that spawned the device.

Which is why it hasn't happened yet and may never will.

Predicting such a catastrophe is thinking from inside the box, and one of the reasons we find ourselves unpleasantly surprised nowadays. Our enemies are first rate cowards who have no problem sending handfuls of rabid followers to do their dirty work, but would not want one of THEIR major sanctums irrevocably destroyed.

The thought of receiving a message giving Mecca 24 hours to evacuate before being turned to glowing rubble gives "them" pause, better believe it does.

Then again, aside from losing irreplaceable works of art and harming innocent women and children, re-starting D.C. from scratch might not be a bad idea.