Bomb Book Bombshell: Chilling Novel About A Superbomb

It happened during the height of the Cold War. On October 23,1961 the Soviet Union detonated a device dubbed the "Tsar Bombs"-King of Bombs. This was no ordinary explosive device. It was, in fact, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever designed and tested. When detonated over a remote region, it produced the largest man-made explosion ever recorded. It was estimated to have exploded with a yield of 58 megatons, equivalent to 58 million tons of TNT.

Flash forward to the present, nearly a half-century after the test detonation of the Tsar Bomba device. In "King of Bombs," Sheldon Filger's terrifying new novel about nuclear terrorism, Al-Qaeda obtains the design blueprints for the King of Bombs device. His plot provides for the most chilling scenario for nuclear terrorism. With the covert aid of Iran and North Korea, and a nuclear materials black market sympathetic to radical Islamist terrorism, Al-Qaeda seeks to build and smuggle copies of the most powerful weapon created during the Cold War, and detonate them in America's largest cities. The result could conceivably be the destruction of the American way of life for decades.

In writing "King of Bombs," Filger not only has created a chilling novel. His book focuses attention on the real threat of nuclear terrorism. Many experts believe that Al-Qaeda is working feverishly on acquiring nuclear weapons. Should they be successful, it may only be a matter of time before we witness an American Hiroshima.

One reason Mr. Filger believes the threat of nuclear terrorism is very real is the increasing level of nuclear proliferation in the world. Recently, President Bush agreed to provide India with advanced nuclear technology and materials, despite that country's refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. Another area of concern is the poor level of security at American ports, a point brought home during the recent controversy over the sail of management rights at 6 U.S. ports to a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates. In his novel, "King of Bombs," lax port security is exploited by Al-Qaeda in its efforts to smuggle a nuclear device into the United States. "Out of 8 million shipping containers that enter American ports each year, only about 4% undergo inspection," Filger said. "In essence, there is virtually no way of preventing a terrorist group from shipping a high-yield nuclear weapon into an America port, with the resulting nightmare consequences," he warned.