> Are all those tales of suitcase bombs on the black market just fictions?
As far as I know, no state gives away its nuclear bombs and there is no reason to think any one ever will. The initial fears were based on Russia after 1991, but their bomb control system was one part of the old soviet system that worked pretty well, and everyone now seems certain that nothing got lost then and everything is locked down going forward.
They still worry about scientists getting bought, or a fissile material getting loose. But we worry about those things going to states, not free-lancers. Because even with those components, it takes lot of visible, palpable, power, in every sense of that term, to build a bomb.
And that goes double for miniaturized bombs which require a lot more sophistication.
Michael