Re: Never understood the obsession with ICBMs
"Why not just put it into a s. korean shipping container - or a chinese one - or a vietmanese one etc"
Shipping containers are monitored for gamma/x-ray emissions prior to entering the country:
https://www3.epa.gov/radtown/shipping-port-security.html
Given that a fission warhead, based on Plutonium-239 has a fairly high spontaneous fission rate (both from the Pu-239 itself, and from higher order enrichment products), and that the criticality of a bomb core is awfully close to 1.00 to begin with (such that it just needs a slight bit of compression to push the criticality above 1.00), it's going to be sitting there fissioning like crazy (so much so that the core of a fission weapon feels noticeably warm to the touch). And, all of those spontaneous fissions, and the secondary fissions they induce, are going to be spewing gamma rays like crazy. Thus, all one has to do is to look for gamma rays of the energy of those fissions. And, as hot as those gammas are, they're going to be awfully difficult to shield.
Dave
Biting the hand that feeds IT
