What do you need to cripple the United States of America?

Well, the New England bit of anyway ...

Well, according to Republican House of Representative member for Maryland Roscoe Barlett (great name, fella), you need a boat, $100,000 to buy a scud-missile launcher, and a crude nuclear weapon. Then you fire it into the sky and set it off.

The electro-magnetic pulse from such a weapon "might not paralyze the entire United States, Roscoe concedes, "But you could shut down all of New England. And if you missed by 100 miles, it’s as good as a bulls eye"."

Hardly a doomsday weapon by any stretch of the imagination, though surely if any rogue state or terrorist organisation actually HAD such a system they'd go for the wide-spread and altogether more attention-grabbing loss of life by firing it AT a major city, rather than wasting it inconveniencing a few New Englanders who find their TVs don't work no more?