People Are 3D Printing Anti-Tank Rocket Launchers Now
vice.com
vice.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tI7ZaRk3sQ
Rocketry is fun. Those 3D printed munitions are for sure going to be a thing. Also as soon as the first serviceable spec design comes out at least one person is going to blow themselves up. That will be a weird day where the Republican Pro Gun folks will have to legislate or dig in for freedom to own everything up to DIY nukes or whatever, just swing the other direction. That seems more likely than anything. And then the Democrats are going to be frothy to push all sorts of gun control to address it but also get the things they've wanted related to regular guns and then they are going to get into what is involved and they are going to have a really, really hard time solving that problem because you know.... Regulate 3D printers, files anyone can have or transmit, or the material components to make it work which are as numerous as the stars in the sky.
Wow. What the internet did to/for us is so weird. We live in a very weird time.
The film advocates getting rid of all nuclear weapons, which may be naive, but they make a good point: all that you need to create an atomic bomb is a few million dollars, a talented engineer and physicist who would keep their mouths shut, and enough luck not to get caught.
The BoM is essentially:
* HEU: buy it on the black market, high-6/low-7 figures. A lot of fissile material went missing during the dissolution of the USSR, North Korea has productive uranium mines and enrichment capabilities, etc.
* Decommissioned artillery cannon: militaries sell these after rendering them inert, high-5/low-6 figures.
You could make a jury-rigged Bomb by re-commissioning the cannon, capping it with half of your HEU shaped into the end of the barrel, and then firing a slug made out of the other half. That's not as simple as it sounds, and it wouldn't be very efficient, but you would end up with a bang and a lot of fallout.
I think there was a cult that tried it at some point - maybe Aum Shinrikyo? Thankfully, they weren't lucky enough not to get caught.