ABSTRACT
This paper does not deal with nuclear terrorism as Thomas Schelling once defined it - namely being the 'balance of nuclear terror' between the major nuclear weapon states1 - but rather refers to terrorist groups going nuclear. One might have the following situation in mind: a terrorist organisation has been successful in hijacking two tactical nuclear weapons from a NATO aircraft and blackmails the British and US governments to pay $500,000 within seven days or-if not-either a city in the United Kingdom or in the United States will be bombed. This scenario is drawn from the James Bond movie Thunderball released in 1964 and to that time and even now seems far-fetched (although in 1992 the movie Under Siege touched on the same possible threat). Yet an
operation like that can never be excluded, although the possibility of successful results is not very likely. However, nuclear blackmail can manifest itself in other forms, for example in the way that terrorists achieve nuclear weapon technology from nuclear weapon states or by theft and in consequence put pressure on specific target groups or states. Slightly different, but similar in concept, is the threat posed by terrorists with biological and chemical warfare capability. As they stand they are - with similar devastating consequences - the 'nuclear weapons of the poor'. As the paper in the first place discusses the nuclear aspect of terrorism, biological and chemical weapons will be observed briefly in a later section.
