Let's go through a little wargaming exercise together, to make a point about what options for America are effective and valid in this era of New Age Nukes, and what options that appear viable are actually houses of cards -- if not downright suicidal.

Let's look at a worst-case scenario, and try to visualize how we'd react and what we'd do. Suppose, suddenly, an atom bomb went off in a city somewhere in the United States.

The toll of dead and wounded would be horrendous, dwarfing that of 9/11/01 by hundreds or thousands of times. Shock, horror, and grief would spread across our nation with seismic force. Financial markets would implode catastrophically. And a terrible panic would grip every one of us still left alive: What if there was another bomb, also about to go off? (Remember, Al Qaeda struck two cities on that infamous day in '01.)

Anger and rage would quickly come to the fore in our country. Some of it would be aimed at the perpetrators. And some of it, almost certainly, would be directed at our national leadership, for allowing something like this to ever happen after so much warning. Craving for revenge against the enemy would burn white hot in many Americans' hearts and souls.

But whom would we take revenge against, and how? What if no party took credit for the attack? What if every terrorist group and rogue state on the planet did? Where would we strike back, and in what way? Would confusion and ambiguity leave us paralyzed, wide open to a frenzy of follow-on and copycat WMD assaults of every description?

These questions are posed here to make a specific point: a profound level of accurate intelligence on every threatening nuclear weapons program, and its possible users, is absolutely vital. Deterrence will only work if those terrorist leaders who wish to slaughter Americans are certain that they will be identified decisively -- and promptly -- and personally punished wherever they cower.

To put it differently, it's crucial that we know right away exactly who did the crime, and make sure quickly that they "do the time."

It's fundamental physics, going back to the earliest nuclear weapons tests, that the fallout isotope mix from an atomic explosion gives telling information on details of that weapon's design, and on the origin of the materials (including plutonium and uranium) used in making the bomb. But without good data in advance on different rogue factions' ore sources, reactors, processing plants, and detonation gear, achieving an irrefutable "DNA match" between a mushroom cloud and a particular enemy is impossible.

The way to gather such data -- and this is no secret -- is by snatching air, water, and soil samples near the A-bomb factories, and by gaining as many insights as possible into the blueprints and procedures used by the bomb builders themselves. Human espionage is a critical link in this "chain of evidence."

Some such intelligence-gathering efforts, of course, are already underway. They need to be stepped up, both overtly and covertly. Without this equivalent of a thorough fingerprint file, we'd lack the ability to know for sure who hit us. But building the file, presumably, will take years more and cost a fortune -- and the project might not be completed thoroughly enough before a rogue A-bomb is weaponized and deployed and allowed to explode. If we lose this strange new arms race over weapon fingerprinting, that loss in turn would leave us completely vulnerable after any first atomic attack . . . and for the various reasons cited above would also make us look a laughingstock to those around the globe who hate our guts.

Besides this intelligence on bomb design and manufacture, we need diligent monitoring of every rogue faction leader who might want to drop an atomic device on our heads.

That last point is intentionally rhetorical. Right now, after months or even years of searching, we still can't find Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. How much do we know about Kim Jong Il's or Ayatollah Khameini's whereabouts and movements? My guess is, not enough.

This whole line of reasoning seems to leave us only one alternative: prevention/pre-emption, before rogue atomic bombs can become operational. To think that we could contain the problem after the fact, in a destabilized and chaotic post-attack political/military global environment, is just fooling ourselves. The odds are simply too high that we would never know enough about bad-guy bombs and bad-guy hiding places to guarantee our security, or even assure our chance to retaliate.

Prevention/pre-emption can take one of several forms. The best approach is diplomacy backed by armed force. Both the diplomacy and the armed force must be focused and tough, yet flexible. And there are gaps on both fronts that require urgent attention. For instance, a free-for-all is shaping up fast over holding meaningful talks with North Korea: The North Koreans insist they'll only deal with America, one on one. Many Pacific Rim countries want multi-lateral talks, at a minimum involving South Korea, Japan, and China. Then there are the more geographically distant players demanding a role, such as Russia and France. This attempt at negotiation goes around and around in circles, and all the while that telltale krypton gas keeps leaking from the plutonium processing plant.

Our flexible spectrum of armed force also suffers from some gaps. A Congressional subcommittee recently blocked funds for next-generation ground penetrator nukes, and a tough fight looms soon on the House floor. Some people call for research instead on better conventional, high-explosive bunker busters. But the inescapable science is that any penetrator package can only penetrate so deep, and our enemies can tunnel much deeper, and the punch of an underground tactical nuke is the only way to bust a very deep bunker. In any case, it will be at least a couple of years before nuclear bunker busters could be ready in America's arsenal. And within a couple of years, those 8,000 North Korean fuel rods will probably all be processed, and small but powerful A-bombs will be mounted on Long Dong II missiles that can hit Tokyo and beyond. Within a couple of years, who knows how much weapons-grade uranium Iran will be able to purify in their labs?

We need to take a lesson from the Israeli precision air-strike at Iran's Osiraq reactor in 1981 -- it did the job and bought Israel more than two decades of protection. We need to keep working on calling North Korea's bluff as well. The Pentagon's new Ops Plan 5030, though frightening, is necessary. The plan should be rather frightening to Kim Jong Il, too -- credible reports from defectors say that like most bullies he's also a coward.

These rogue state nuclear weapons programs must be halted soon, one way or another. This isn't pretty and it isn't the least bit fun. But we have no other recourse, because once that first pariah-group A-bomb goes off in one of our cities or one of our friends', the memorials and the funerals without end will mark our ruin.

This concludes my "New Age Nukes" miniseries, but the real-world problems from these weapons has barely begun.

JoeBuff.Com / Joe Buff Inc. Joe Buff, President Dutchess County, New York E-Mail readermail@JoeBuff.Com