Amanda Ripley Quotes

Duck and Cover

There isn't a single American city, in my estimation, that has sufficient plans for a nuclear terrorist event.

Nuclear terrorism is possible - it may be probable - but is survivable.

During bomb drills, we students were told to crouch under our desks. Apparently the desks used in classrooms in the fifties were made of an exceptionally missile-resistant variety of wood. During the Cold War years I often wondered why it never occurred to our defense planners to protect the entire nation from nuclear attack by simply covering it, from sea to shining sea, with a huge Strategic Classroom Desk.

So the idea about how detonation of a nuclear weapon might happen vary, you know - some people are especially concerned about terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons and using them. Some people are worried that there might be a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Some think the Middle East, were Israel already has nuclear weapons and where other countries may be interested at some point and acquiring them, might be a flash point.

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.

And beyond that, the next issue is how do we guarantee one of these weapons, not necessarily this missile, but nuclear weapons ends up in the hands of Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group.

If the perpetrators of the World Trade Center plane crashes had a nuclear weapon, there's no doubt in my mind but that they would've detonated it in New York.

The Islamic State has apparently gained control of several dozen kilograms of radioactive material from research institutions in Mosul, Iraq. It cannot be made into a nuclear bomb, but it could be used in a 'dirty bomb' to contaminate a wide area with radioactivity.

The truth emerging from this scattered picture of nuclear proliferation is simple: there is a stronger chance of a nuclear bomb being used now than at almost any point in the Cold War.

What if someone hit us with an EMP, cyber-attack, and dirty bomb all at once? That would be pretty bad.

The probability of a fatal nuclear detonation is greater now than at any time during the Cold War. As the Russian military deteriorates, and as rogue governments and terrorists seek to acquire nuclear capabilities, the threat continues to grow.

As they were during the Cold War, urban population centers remain the most likely targets of a nuclear attack. Now, however, an attack may come without warning from an unknown enemy, to achieve unclear motives.

The era of nuclear terrorism has arrived.

We are always just one successful terrorist attack away from a nuclear disaster.

I think I did everything possible known to any mayor in the country as it relates to saving lives.

Young people in college were not even born when the Berlin Wall fell, and so they are not really cognizant of the Cold War and what that meant. Now, truly, the genie is out of the bottle and you have the possibility that terrorists ... could be stealing a bomb or buying a bomb

It's a little hard to avoid putting both war and politics in, in that they both come into the activity, but on their own. My basic idea is to do a great love film set in the hell of 1942. At that moment, hell was Leningrad. Underneath all this, of course, is a film about dissension between the two most important countries in the world, the United States and the Soviet Union. I think it is a must at this point to talk about cooperation instead of the rancor and hatred and competition between nations.

Nuclear terrorism is one of the most serious threats of our time. Even one such attack could inflict mass casualties and create immense suffering and unwanted change in the world forever. This prospect should compel all of us to act to prevent such a catastrophe.

In many places around the world, all over the U.S. and Europe there are active nuclear power plants. And for many years during the Cold War the threat of nuclear war was a permanent fear. There's always the concern that human kind is biting off more than they can chew in harnessing nuclear power.

The H-bomb rather favors small nations that doesn't as yet possess it; they feel slightly more free to jostle other nations, having discovered that a country can stick its tongue out quite far these days without provoking war, so horrible are war's consequences.

I think if someone else other than Reagan, someone less of a hardliner, had been in power then the breakthrough in ending the Cold War would not have happened.

I think that once you've produced a conformist, a totally conformist society, a society in which there were no critics, that would in fact be an exact equivalent of the totalitarian societies against which we are supposed to be fighting in a cold war.

America should be leading the world in green and clean solutions, and human rights. We shouldn't be leading the world in wars and incarceration rates and pollution. We can be a better country. I think we're going to be a better country.

That is potentially putting us all in the target hairs now is the reactivation of a new nuclear arms race. This arms race and this cold war is potentially hotter than it's been at any time in my lifetime.