The government must act to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism in a major U.S. city, senior government officials and top terrorism experts are scheduled to tell the Senate on Wednesday.
Testifying as part of a months-long Senate investigation into the government's ability to prevent a nuclear attack, the experts will paint a chilling picture of a post-nuclear America: hundreds of thousands of dead, $1 trillion in damage, and panic nationwide.
"The prospect of terrorists detonating a nuclear device on American soil sometime within the next quarter-century is real and growing," according to prepared testimony from Gary Anthony Ackerman, research director of the Homeland Security Department-funded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. "Such a calamitous attack would represent a game-changing event far exceeding the impact of 9/11 on the nation."