• Privately-owned nuclear weapons are legal in 47 states, though they must be registered with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the State Department.

I would very much like to know how many privately owned nuclear weapons are registered with the nuclear regulatory comission, and which states do not allow you to privately own nuclear weapons.

We made a Freedom of Information Act request for that information a few months ago, because, frankly, we were wondering the same thing. However, our request was denied, but it wasn't clear if it was denied for security reasons or because the information didn't actually exist. We've since filed another, more clearly-worded request, and we'll post the results when they arrive.

As for the states where they're not allowed, that would be Alaska, Delaware, and South Dakota. They're also prohibited in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

I don't even trust most of my neighbors with shoveling the sidewalk, let alone weapons of mass destruction.

Guam is an interesting case. While Guam has no specific law against it, they did sign the Micronesian Atomic Protocols in 1969 (along with the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, et al, with the lone exception of the Republic of Kiribati) which essentially declared the Micronesian islands a nuclear-free zone from both weapons and power-generation. However, Guam is also a protectorate of the U.S. and thus cannot sign such treaties without the approval of the Senate (which was never even voted on), so it has no legal standing as far as the U.S. is concerned. Nixon made it clear that while the U.S. had no current plans to deploy nuclear weapons in Guam, it reserved the right to do so in the future. It's generally believed that the U.S. has never placed nuclear weapons there due to fear of antagonizing China. There are, however, plans in the works to build a small reactor for desalinization purposes, though since the M.A.P. has no "teeth", it's unclear if the other Micronesian islands will formally protest if plans proceed into actions.

Surprisingly, most of us *do* own nuclear weapons.

The department of Nuclear Physics at the University of South Dakota demonstrated (1979? I'll have to double-check the date) that an average household smoke alarm contains enough radioactive material to level 2 city blocks, if properly combined with a few items available at any drug store.

Oddly enough, today's smoke alarms contain 3 to 5 times more radioactive material than those produced in the late '70s, and the average household has more than one of them.

That's where the "if properly combined" part comes in. We're not talking about raw active radiation. We're talking about nuclear reactions *using* radioactive materials.

You're right about the radiation not escaping the alarm's plastic shell (to some extent). But along that same line, uranium, plutonium, and a myriad of other radioactive materials can't release radiation that escapes their confines either (by confines I mean the mass of earth and stone they're buried in) - otherwise, we'd all be poisoned. BUT, all of those things can be mined and used to manufacture nuclear weapons using the beauty of nuclear fission. You only need the radioactive material - be it from a smoke alarm or a mass of uranium ore - for the process.

Here's another explanation: Take any nuclear bomb - remove the "weapons grade" plutonium core (the fuel), and replace it with a household smoke alarm. You still have a bomb, albeit a much weaker one since the fuel grade and quantity are significantly lower.

Yes. Weak, but strong enough to destroy 2 city blocks (as mentioned earlier)

Posted By: Trance

From one fire alarm? I think maybe if you spent millions of pounds (or dollars) splitting the atoms, And had an extremely lucky day, it may be possible. I think the scientist forgot to mention that it would take the absolute biggest explosion possible by the alarm to destroy two city blocks.

It's not like if you drop your fire alarm, it'll explode.

Of course it wouldn't explode. you need all the other parts of the nuclear bomb to make it explode. The smoke alarm will explode under the proper circumstances, and just dropping it will do nothing, except mabey make it malfunction.

Posted By: Trance

From one fire alarm? I think maybe if you spent millions of pounds (or dollars) splitting the atoms, And had an extremely lucky day, it may be possible.

It's not like if you drop your fire alarm, it'll explode.

That's why I mentioned the whole build-a-nuclear-bomb,-replace-only-the-core-with-a-smoke-alarm" part. I don't think luck would have a lot of impact on the energy output, though.

Nah - you'd just need 1667 attempts to guarantee a 100% chance of success. No luck involved at all.

Posted By: Trance

What modern scientist is going to spend millions of dollars on splitting fire alarm particles 1667 times?

A very unlucky one?

i still don't think you can level 2 blocks using one fire alarm because it will take a very big bomb to do that anyway

lol yes, but i doubt you can get all of those out of a smoke detector

I read part of that one a while ago.

Posted By: Taed

He would go around to dumps until he gathered hundreds of smoke detectors (apparently old ones had a lot more of a radioactive element (iiridium?) than current smoke detectors), and also ordered some stuff in the guise of a college professor getting stuff for a chemistry lab.

Iridium is okay, but doesn't have the energy potential that Uranium does.