ABSTRACT
Interterrorist cooperation vastly increases terrorist opportunities for acquiring nuclear weapons. To manufacture their own nuclear weapons, terrorists would require both strategic special nuclear materials and the expertise to convert them into a bomb or radiological weapon. By demonstrating the "comparative ease with which an atomic bomb can be made," the course hoped to demonstrate the dangers of nuclear terrorism. The unwillingness to create boundaries in the threat and use of violence—an unwillingness that suggests a serious likelihood of nuclear terrorism should access to nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants be afforded insurgent groups—is the essence of terrorism. Understood in terms of the problem of nuclear terrorism, Luigi Pirandello's wisdom suggests the irrelevance of conventional deterrence "logic" as an effective preventive strategy. Instead of the usual threats of physically punishing retaliation, deterrence of nuclear terrorism must be based upon threats to obstruct circumstances that terrorists value even more than personal safety.
