From TIME Magazine, October 8, 2001

By David Bjerklie, Christine Gorman and Alice Park

Car, truck and backpack bombs
exotic weapons get a lot of attention, but conventional explosives and suicide bombers in pizza parlors, discothèques and shopping malls can spread terror with stunning effectiveness. Fertilizer bombs like the one that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., in 1995 could wreak havoc with bridges, tunnels and buildings. Nuclear-power and chemical-manufacturing plants make even more horrifying targets. The 1984 leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, may have killed 3,000. Estimates of the final death toll from the 1986 explosion in the Chernobyl nuclear plant run as high as 30,000.



Nuclear weapons
the ultimate nightmare would be terrorists in the U.S. wielding nuclear weapons. For this reason, the ability to create — or worse, steal or buy — weapons-grade plutonium has long been an issue of great concern and international intrigue. Fortunately, the practical difficulties in acquiring precisely the right materials, not to mention the engineering know-how to jerry-build a nuclear device successfully, makes this type of threat highly unlikely.


Top
Get the Magazine - Try 4 Issues Risk-Free! | Click here to return to TIME.com