I recently bought a cheap DVD of Broken Arrow, the late 90's John Woo thriller that portrays an attempt to steal nuclear weapons. A earlier MeFI thread briefly brought up NEST, or the Nuclear Emergency Search Team who are supposed to find these things if smuggled into the United States.

I googled on it, and while I wasn't surprised to learn there have been a large number of hoaxes I was surprised find out there have been some thirty incidents not classified as a hoax. A large part of the Woo film deals with the idea of The Feds searching for nuclear weapons from oribit.

Well I might just be a country boy but even I know there is Physics and then there is Movie Physics so I was curious - can these nuclear weapons be spotted by satellites? Maybe we're getting all bothered over pretty much nuthin, if The Feds already know where they are. Rense has a interesting post about NEST in NYC.
posted by Mutant on Oct 4, 2002 - 15 comments

Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) We know about the US "elite" special ops - Delta Forces, Navy Seals, CDC (I would argue) - but had you heard of NEST, located inside a small, unobtrusive box under "Dept of Energy, Emergency Response" in the New York Times Office of Homeland Security Org Chart (reg required), "....The primary task of NEST is constantly to be on the lookout for potential nuclear or radiological weapons that might be smuggled onto the U.S. ....After the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, NEST was put on a state of high alert and operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the nation's capital and New York City monitoring for nuclear-related weapons... includes extensive use of deployed sensors and specially equipped vehicles patrolling the streets of both cities..." I can't decide if I feel safer or more paranoid thinking the windowless minivan parked for the last hour outside my window is sniffing for a nuke.
posted by Voyageman on Nov 6, 2001 - 12 comments