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U.S. Prepares to Get Nuked
There's an important story in the NYT about new efforts from the U.S. national laboratories to retain and improve their ability to identify nuclear fallout. In a nutshell, any fissionable materials turned into a nuclear weapon will be composed of a specific ratio of various radionuclides, which form a sort of signature, which can be used to identify the source of the fissionable material. The problem is, naturally, that you're probably doing this after the detonation.
The internet will survive it... right?
First strike!
Like the blinding flash, shockwave and mushroom cloud wouldn't give you a clue
I don't know if they can id specific weapons, but can't they already identify the reactor of origin for the nuclear materials used?
Doesn't worry me...I'm Ready
Someone set us up the bomb!
I think the US is more preparing for radioactive fallouts from "dirty" bombs, i.e. sacks full of radioactive crap with a conventional explosive in then to spread the crap.
I don't think any terrorist group has the expertise, materials or facilities to build a nuclear device, much less deliver it, unless Pakistan helps.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
www.kio3.com
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
nuke them first?
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/national/19NUKE. html?ex=1080277200&en=e0e70d58d50239e4&ei=5062&par tner=GOOGLE
I hope the fact that Clancy wrote a novel about airlines used as bombs before 9/11 doesn't mean that there is an entire US Gov division researching his books and making policy decisions based on things in them. Oh wait, I guess this could be better than SOME of the reality we live in.
Keep up your current foreign policy and you won't have long to wait.
What, the 3 eyed fish wont give away the fact weve been nuked? Or maybe the big mushroom cloud? Seriously, what good does this do? What does this tell us - where the bomb came from?
Here
as per ready.gov's instructions... i got my 25 miles of ductape... fuck those nukes!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Would being able to tell the country of origin for the fuel really mean anything? I mean, every nuclear power on the planet so far has let some bit of its nuclear program become 'lost'.
Seems to me this would just become a tool for blaming whomever our other intel is telling us is at fault - right or wrong, as we've seen recently.
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
Ever read Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" (no seeing the movie does not count). They used a similar method (I admit the science of it was over my head) to figure out that the fissionable material in the bomb that was detonated in Denver actually came from the US. They were also able to learn other interesting stuff about the bomb -- granted this is a work of fiction but if the science is more or less accurate (any nuclear physicists here who care to comment?) then I don't see any reason to assume we can't do this in the real world. I do know for a fact that you can learn an amazing amount of information about the type of bomb, material used, etc etc when a conventional bomb goes off. No reason to assume nukes are any different.
With the nuclear threat that we are currently facing I don't see why this should surprise anyone. Let's all pray like hell we never need to use any of these procedures.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
here
I spent the better part of three year implementing a fault tollerant programming environment and released it under GPL. Please visit Askemos to find it.
A couple items caught my attention.
This is actually done with PREVENTION in mind. Given an existing legitamite threat, this is well-spent money. This isn't just anti-terror, as nations like North Korea are perfectly capable of this level of threat, and wouldn't be without an excuse to excercise it (Bush's infamous "axis of evil" comment?).
I've not been a fan of how much or even how we've been spending to fight terror (see http://www.costofwar.com for what else we could have bought), but I would consider with what information and resources American enemies have that I'm not opposed to spending my tax dollars on such a program.
Yes, obviously we'd have to be nuked for this to pay off directly for us. However, in the case of such an incident, it'd be tremendous if we didn't run around like chickens with their heads detached. There were some lessons learned in 9/11 that are worth recalling.
But what makes you think that if we're going down, we're not taking everyone with us?
We've left instructions for the cockroaches once they evolve.
When will transmeta come out with a Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX board with ther CPU on it? VIA has done very well at that with its C3 processors. They sell a lot to end-users, and sell a ton to embedded systems vendors. Transmeta could get a piece of that market.
Those server/embedded devices are a lot less demanding of CPU power. Any device, like a laptop, which has direct user GUI interfacing will always need a lot of horsepower.
I seem to remember /. was down for a few hours last week... but somehow that story didn't make the front page.
-a
Shhhh. Please don't let us know what you're talking about!
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
ought to have better things to be doing than looking at bubbles in beer glasses dammit.
I agree. Web browsers were designed to be fault tolerant, and just look at all the horrendously broken crap that passes for HTML out there. Dangerous stuff.
Except that he has 19 comments from SELLERS, which means he was buying, not selling on Ebay.
You know you're living in a radioactive area if these are hopping around!
They have the Internet on computers now?
So they had the capability but abandoned it? Is it mostly a matter of tracking down sources of materials from new sources from Pakistan, India, etc.?
I suppose I'm the only one who read the title as "U.S. Prepares to Get Naked".
Which, of course, would have been a dupe of this article, right?
(And just when I'd gotten my karma back, too!)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
...people start pronouncing "ftsh" as "fetish". Actually, I've started already, just ask the girl sitting next to me.;-)
bakabaka/bakabaka
Information Wants To Be Free
"The European Commission draft requires Microsoft to share proprietary information with rival server makers"
That's always my sticking point. I'm not as much bothered that they support video playback in their default system (they also support image playback and text playback, after all) as to their generally incompatible and excessively proprietary methods.
You should have asked for a nuclear chemist.
But this indeed was one of the ways we learned about the soviet progress in their nuclear program, and of course Chernyoble.
But the labs could take samples from ANYWHERE in the world. An empty cargo container pegs a gieger counter? Take a few swabs, send them off to the lab and call Keifer Sutherland. And, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, call Elisha Cuthbert and send her over to my place. That last one would be REALLY appreciated.
"I Will"
Radiohead
***
I will
lay me down
in a bunker
underground
I won't let this happen to my children
meet the real world coming out of your shell
With white elephants
sitting ducks
I will
rise up
Little babies' eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes
Little babies' eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes
Little babies' eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes
Little babies' eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes
Found it here.
It's old:)
Some may call it flamebait. I call it realpolitik.
Something has to be done to save civilization.
Of course the US has been preparing to get nuked since before nukes. And before "atomics" before that, like the WWII atomic bombs on Japan). As the first to test, then (the only) to strike with fission weapons, we've been practicing defense since the early 1940s. And we're in one of the handful of countries that has steadily practiced defense. We are, in fact, the most nuked people on Earth, by our own hand in tests and industrial pollution.
Thinking through the unthinkable has always been our primary defense: first by preventing it, then by readiness for the aftermath, which minimizes the aftermath, inhibiting the event by reducing its damage. While others might not learn anything of how they might best prepare merely by applying what they see us do, they might at least learn to help prevent getting nuked by planning for it, without accepting it.
--
make install -not war
What i want is something where i can copy in a sheet of music or a few bars and hear what it would sound like. if you really want someting to teach music students with this would be it because you coul experiment and verifiy ideas or intent.
What information is being withheld that makes non-dealer repair impossible?
The issue is that ODBII is a pathetic subset of the real information avaible. In some cases it's useless (diagnosing climate controls, etc), in other cases it just a LOT less information than the dealer-specfic compter would provide.
Obviously not having it doesn't make non-dealer repair impossible, but it does make it a lot harder. If you knew nothing about cars you could just replace parts until you find the right thing but it this the right way to do it?
The point here is that independent shops are being put at a severe disadvantage by being provided only a minimal subset of the availible data.
What w/ the laziness and impatience remarks? Just can't help making a dig at anything not Debian?
Often, I find my network and servers I use for my small business come under attack by script kiddies. Sometimes it's a DDoS attack, but more often than not, it's just getting hammered by one machine. When I contact the ISP involved, generally one of the large US ISPs, I am told that they will look into it. Nothing ever happens, however, and ISPs are generally unwilling to provide assistance in tracking down attacks. This means my complaint ends up in the circular file. The ISPs are protecting criminals because they don't want to lose business, and I have no way of making sure my complaint doesn't end up lost in this black hole. As an individual representing a small business, what recourse do I have in dealing with ISPs to make sure my complaints are heard and taken seriously?
Um... no, that doesn't do the same thing. The whole point of ftsh is that the 'try' block encloses a set of statements which must all be executed or it fails. If the 'cd/tmp' fails, bash will blindly run the 'rm -f data' anyway, whereas ftsh will stop and jump to the start of the try block to have another go.
So civilization == {US + Europe}? retard
This is what "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" has to say int the January issue:
"Putting aside the controversy surrounding security at U.S. nuclear power plants, a would-be dirty bomber faces a Herculean task. A spent fuel rod weighs about 28 kilograms, with 36 rods weighing more than a metric ton. Heavy shielding and remote controls are required in their handling, because each rod exposes anyone standing nearby (within a meter) to a lethal dose within seconds.
There you go:
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/jf04/jf04k
This is more related to the Padilla case but never mind, to achieve the same impact one would have to deal with similar issues I guess.
I'm halfway through Len Deighton's "Blitzkrieg" in which he explains Hitler's rise to power and how it was used. I was going to attempt to write a humourous response to the parent, stating that Hitler took away many of the rights of his own citizens, wrongly imprisioned and tried citizens of other countries, manipulated England and France into supporting his attacking other countries when I realized that the parent wasn't all that fallacious.
We live in scary times,
myke
I think the subject, says it all!
nt
Mecca is not a civilization. It is a shrine.
Fair warning could be given first before it is poisoned forever.
Ford and GM don't have to innovate because the prices of Japanese cars are artifically high in the U.S. due to taxes on imports designed to "level the playing field."
We don't need to have all these tariffs on products imported from countries that have the same standard of living that we do. The Japanese work hard, yes, but they are paid first world salaries so if the prices of their automobiles is low, it is because they are damn good at building cars and if they want to work a little harder than us to do it, more power to them.
On the other hand cars imported from Mexico (like the VW I drive) are produced at the expense of some Mexican making 70 cents an hour. We can't have free trade in this scenerio or we'll all be living in cardboard lean-tos just like our counterparts south of the border.
Wouldnt it be better to design a system that could prevent nuclear detonation in the first place? If you've read "raise the Titanic" written by Clive Cusler, you will get some pretty good ideas about how to prevent nuclear attacks. Of course, the idea described in the book is impossible with the technology know today.
The idea is to send infra-sound (sound with very low frequency) up into the atmosphere at an extremly hih volume, so that the air will build up like some sort of sheild. If you combine this with calculations of when the missile will reach down to the optimal height, you could probably devastate the missile before it reaches its target. Well, of cource, this is highly hypothetical, so I have no idea of wether it works or not. Anyway, there has to be some sort of technology availile today that can be used in developing some kind of missile sheild?
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
If they need some samples of fallout, just go collect some from the down-wind areas of the above-ground nuke testing of days of yore. And underground testing isn't totally fallout-free either, so there's probably some fresh stuff to analyze too.
I have a delivery system that can reach from almost anywhere in the world to almost anywhere else.
It's called a shipping container. After that, call your favorite UPS, FedX, hell even the USPS will deliver a decent sized package.
Duh.
Even if the lowly customs officer scans the box and detects radiation upon receipt what does he do? What kind of damage would a 10KT warhead do at the dockside in Los Angeles?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
For those of you cracking jokes, I enclose just one of mnay testimonies after what happens when someone (read the good ol' US of A) drops a (*tiny* by today's standards), 12.5kT atom bomb on a city.
This is NYC or London or your hometown if things screw up. Whatever you need to do to get involved so this DOESN'T happen, I suggest you consider doing. When it's acceptable to laugh at 9/11 corpses (3% of death toll at hiroshima) in polite company, I'll laugh with you about nukes.
----
From a survivor of Hiroshima:
nday, August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima. A few seconds after 8:15 A.M., a flash of light, brighter than a thousand suns, shredded the space over the city's center. A gigantic sphere of fire, a prodigious blast, a formidable pillar of smoke and debris rose into the sky: an entire city annihilated as it was going to work, almost vaporized at the blast's point zero, irradiated to death, crushed and swept away. Its thousands of wooden houses were splintered and soon ablaze, its few stone and brick buildings smashed, its ancient temples destroyed, its schools and barracks incinerated just as classes and drills were beginning, its crowded streetcars upended, their passengers buried under the wreckage of streets and alleys crowded with people going about their daily business. A city of 300,000 inhabitants--more, if its large military population was counted, for Hiroshima was headquarters for the southern Japan command. In a flash, much of its population, especially in the center, was reduced to a mash of burned and bleeding bodies, crawling, writhing on the ground in their death agonies, expiring under the ruins of their houses or, soon, roasted in the fire that was spreading throughout the city--or fleeing, half-mad, with the sudden torrent of nightmare-haunted humanity staggering toward the hills, bodies naked and blackened, flayed alive, with charcoal faces and blind eyes.
Is there any way to describe the horror and the pity of that hell? Let a victim tell of it. Among the thousand accounts was this one by a Hiroshima housewife, Mrs. Futaba Kitayama, then aged thirty-three, who was struck down 1900 yards--just over a mile--from the point of impact. We should bear in mind that the horrors she described could be multiplied a hundredfold in the future.
t was in Hiroshima, that morning of August 6. I had joined a team of women who, like me, worked as volunteers in cutting firepaths against incendiary raids by demolishing whole rows of houses. My husband, because of a raid alert the previous night, had stayed at the Chunichi (Central Japan Journal), where he worked.
"Our group had passed the Tsurumi bridge, Indianfile, when there was an alert; an enemy plane appeared all alone, very high over our heads. Its silver wings shone brightly in the sun. A woman exclaimed, 'Oh, look--a parachute!' I turned toward where she was pointing, and just at that moment a shattering blast filled the whole sky.
"Was it the flash that came first, or the sound of the explosion, tearing up my insides? I don't remember. I was thrown to the ground, pinned to the earth, and immediately the world began to collapse around me, on my head, my shoulders. I couldn't see anything. It was completely dark. I thought my last hour had come. I thought of my three children, who had been evacuated to the country to be safe from the raids. I couldn't move; debris kept falling, beams and tiles piled up on top of me.
"Finally I did manage to crawl free. There was a terrible smell in the air. Thinking the bomb that hit us might have been a yellow phosphorus incendiary like those that had fallen on so many other cities, I rubbed my nose and mouth hard with a tenugui (a kind of towel) I had at my waist. To my horror, I found that the skin of my face had come off in the towel. Oh! The skin on my hands, on my arms, came off too. From elbow to fingertips, all the skin on my right arm had come loose and was hanging grotesquely. The skin of my
Am I a tinfoil hat wearer,
if I ask WHY this was started (secretly) five years ago...?
Hm.
The frog you linked to had six eyes, three heads. If two heads are better than one, it stands that three heads are even better yet.
Cool frog!
Like you haven't been paying any attention to this Dirty Bomb stuff.
Let me give you an example: What looks like a car bomb goes off on Wall Street. It turns out Al Qeada operatives have scraped together (from 10,000 smoke detectors or wherever) a bunch of radioactive material and included it in with their Tim McVeigh-style fertilizer and fuel oil bomb. Physical damage may be minor, but hundreds of people get exposed to the nuclear toxins and the grounds will take a major effort to clear.
Granted, one move like that and treaties with Pakistan or not, the US will be hell bent to exterminate Al Qeada.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Duck And Cover!
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
"So civilization == {US + Europe}?"
Yes
What the hell. We'll throw in Japan too.
The word "get" is so over and badly used in American English. It grates after a while. "The US prepares to be nuked"
What about press releases?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
There is no shield against a nuclear missile except perhaps pushing it out into space or stopping it from blowing in the first place.
Once it blows you have a huge mess that will kill people not just at the target but anywhere the wind carries the radiation.
This stuff isn't like dynamite that blows up and becomes inert. Radioactive material can take thousands of years to decay.
Umm problem is that ICBMs aren't a big threat to the US. The problem is some guy packing a oversize suitcase bomb that some country supplied him with. ICMBs its easy to track who launched it, we have Norad. We could even possibly shoot them out of the sky.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
It's about the suitcase bomb or car-carried bomb or something to that effect. A terrorist attack, not an ICBM.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
People saying things like this make me disappointed to be an american. The rest of the world has wonderful things to offer, the food, the culture, the foreign women (with their accents=). Geez.
Drop a nuke on Mecca first ... And make it clear their God is dead or never existed like everyone else's.
Bad idea. The destruction of Mecca by the Infidels is part of their armageddon scenario. Which continues, by the way, with the second coming of Jesus (whom they refer to as the prophet Issa, a particluarly holy man, whom they believe went bodily to heaven and will be back shortly before the end).
Playing into that scenario would essentially require the bulk of the Islamic world (most of which consider terrorism to be heresy) to go on a holy war against the bombers and their allies.
Given that (if I recall correctly) there's over a Billion of 'em last count, and they DO beileve that dying in a war to defend the faith is a ticket to paradise, this would be very very bad.
By the way, It's not "their" God. It's "our" God. Assuming you and I are both Christian and/or Jewish. (Of course that might be problematic, given your statment about the non-existence and/or death of God.)
"Allah" is just Arabic for "God" - specifically the Arabic pronounciation of the word that Hebrew pronounces "Yahweh", which became "Jehova" in English translations. It's the word that is used by Arabic-speaking Muslums, Jews, and Christians alike when referring to God.
You know, if you really believe there IS no God, or that God is dead, then you're playing into another part of the scenario. Their version of armageddon is the war between the UNfaithful and the "people of the book" - members of EVERY divinely-inspired religion, along with everybody who converts to any of 'em along the way (with Jesus back to give the last word on it all).
Drop that bomb and you're exactly what they've been waiting for.
Nip it in the bud.
You're about 1,500 years too late.
But maybe we can nip YOUR idea in the bud. Before you set off WW III in the form of the sixth Crusade.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Anyway, there has to be some sort of technology availile today that can be used in developing some kind of missile sheild?
My sources say: No.
except the most likely scenario for a US nuclear detonation on US soil has nothing to do with an ICBM, and everything to do with someone parking a van in a metropolitan area.
oops.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Golly, being protected and all, I think we should "Safely dispose of some of our aging nukes there"
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Am I the only one who read the headline as "U.S. Prepares to Get Naked" and instantly thought "Pan T. Hose, PhD, Prepares to Get Green Card"?
(And please don't tell me what Sigmund Freud would say...)
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
You obviously grew up in the cold war. You know what it's like to have a vast array of global-killer weapons pointed in your general direction.
Today's youth takes this fore granted. I saw a comment on here a few days back along the lines of "Well, let's throw a few nukes at one spot on Mars and see what happens." Today's youth read about Fat Boy and think "Wow, that's a cool bomb." But they should really be thinking "Wow, we did that? Could that happen to us?"
I'm frightened to see what happens when my generation doubles in age, and qualifies for positions of power over these kinds of weapons. They do not know better and unless something horrific happens, I doubt they will within the next 25 years.
The same thing goes for those countries just now joining the nuclear family. Some of these countries are lead by people who do know better and think that's all the more reason to use them.
May you live in interesting times? We're well beyond that now.
Nuking someone makes 8 squares of pollution and makes everyone else in the world hate you. And we don't have enough settlers right now to clean up all that pollution.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You can be as technologically advanced as you like. But the key to not getting nuked is to be friends with others. Or at least leave them alone, so they'll leave you alone.
Yeah,
Step 2) Armageddon doesn't come. No end of the world. The faithful will be left with a corrected view of reality.
Yeah everyone knows by now that Allah just means God. Allah is effectively the same god as that of Isreal and Christianity.
The atheist is not an idol worshiper which is what the unfaithful were when Mohammed received the message. Only a modern interpretation would have it that way. I doubt early Islam could have even conceived of someone who doesn't believe in anything divine at all.
Unlike Al Qaeda, we know where Iran, North Korea, and China live. If they were to ever be traced as the source of a nuclear weapons, we would annihilate them. Nukes are political weapons because no state can actually use them without essentially ending the game.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Bush has a slashdot account?
"U.S. Prepares to Get Nuked"
putting that as the title of an article is irresponsible and near criminal.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
This is actually done with PREVENTION in mind. Given an existing legitamite threat, this is well-spent money.
Interestingly, that was also the intent behind the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and the arms race.
Interestingly, it appears to have worked. Death rates from wars had been high and generally rising for most of recorded history. They took a nosedive right after WW II, and have been miniscule by comparison ever since.
(Yes I know a lot of people have been killed in wars since then. But you young whipper-snappers have NO idea what things like WW II were like. Or WW I, or the US Civil War, etc.)
Downside is that to make it work a President has to appear sane enough to be elected but just crazy enough that he might push the button. (The best example of that, IMHO, was probably Reagan - no doubt due to his acting experience. B-) But maybe Kennedy had him beat. He had to reestablish enough credibility to pull it off 18 months after backing out of the Bay of Pigs invasion.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Why not expand our NEST teams - drill them harder and update their detection equipment. And make Ed Zwick's "Special Bulletin" and Peter Watkins' "The War Game" mandatory viewing for new NEST team members (and for every sitting President, too). Oh yes, and remember this - the US and Russia still have thousands of nukes essentially still ready to go at one another.
If we don't know who supplied the bomb/bomb material too the terrorists, there is no way we can hold a country accountable. If we didn't finger print bombs, pakistan or any other nuclear capable country could supply a terrorist group with a bomb without any fear of retaliation.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
They ought to be monitoring the air right now, as they did in the cold war, for signs of radioactive material released during the CONSTRUCTION of bombs.
(Hmmm... Maybe they ARE, and saw some, which is why this is showing up now.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If the current policy of the American government continues, it is only a question of time when the first nuclear bomb explodes on American soil.
It is unfortunate that most of the world's citizen would think it served the Americans right.
M
And that's why, after decades of above-ground nuclear tests on our own soil, we're all dead, right? Oh, wait.
Global thermonuclear exchange between USA and USSR? Yeah, probably the end of civilization.
Moslems take out one US city, US takes out the Middle East? The only civilization that ends in that scenario is the one that believes in infibulation and worshipping a fucking meteorite fragment. I can live with that.
For what it's worth, I woke up on 9/11 to see the "live" pictures of 5-10-minutes after-both-towers-collapsed Manhattan, with entire island covered in smoke and ash, and the first thought that crossed my mind (after "WTF?") was that a low-yield tac-nuke had been used.
(Considering the kinetic energy released in the collapse of both towers, I was pretty close to the truth :)
Foreign Missile Developmentsand the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015
APS Study Group on Boost-Phase Intercept Systems for National Missile Defense
We can never build a foolproof system. The technical hurdles involved are immense and expensive, while the countermeasures are relatively simple and inexpensive.
How much money will it take to convince you that you're safe?
Why don't we buy North Korea if we're willing to spend billions of dollars a year on safety? Im sure the people in North Korea wouldn't mind not starving.
Step 2) Armageddon doesn't come. No end of the world. The faithful will be left with a corrected view of reality.
That would be about step 4). Step 2) is the whole Islamic population going on a Jihad. Step 3) is the destruction of most of humanity in the resulting world war.
That's close enough to armageddon for me even without any second-comings and heavenly hosts.
The atheist is not an idol worshiper which is what the unfaithful were when Mohammed received the message. Only a modern interpretation would have it that way. I doubt early Islam could have even conceived of someone who doesn't believe in anything divine at all.
Sorry, but that's wrong. There were plenty of agnositcs and athiests at the time. "Show me" predates Missouri by a bunch.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There was a Nova TV special on this - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/dirtybomb/ - you don't need a fuel rod, just a few kg of medical isotopes, which you can get practically anywhere. It won't kill millions, even anyone, from the immediate effects of radiation, but it will turn a large area (Trafalgar Square, in Nova's example) into a toxic cleanup site.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Better to start WWIII now when they only make up 1/8th the world population than 200 years from now when they make up 2/5. The growth rate in Muslim countries is higher than the rest of the world and MUCH higher than the west. By then they will probably have tons of nukes themselves as well.
/IF/ war is inevitable I would rather have it now while we are strongest. But that is a big /IF/, and I am not keen on killing a billion people because of what their descendants MIGHT do.
If there is a way to perpetually avoid the jihad then fine, but
It is something to consider though...
"Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."
By identifying the ratio of isotopes, they can determine the probable lab of origin (if it is one of the main labs and not someone's garage.)
The can also make some basic determinations as to the level of tech used to make the materials. They can also use it as evidence in any sort of tracking of the materials back to it's source.
It is a useful dataset, overall.
So there.
America hits N Korea with nuclear force:
China panics.
Its worth remembering that China has both a nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it anywhere in the world.
Now *that* is M.A.D.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
If you see a white flash, kiss the guy next to you. Doesn't matter who he/she is. Because you won't get to see them again.
:/
I doubt wether this thing will work...
People discover the meaning of life between getting piss drunk and the following hangover.
I can't believe this crap. These Slashdot editors are just outrageous with their exagerated headlines. This just gets more and more out of control every day.
If North Korea wants to hit us, they can smuggle a suitcase bomb. The problem with terrorism is the lack of nuclear deterance, they aren't afraid that we'll hit them back.
The entire THEORY behind Bush's War on Terror is to hold governments accountable, and therefore not be willing to support terrorism.
North Korea is less likely to give Islamists nuclear material if we could track it to them and respond by nuking the shit out of them.
It gives deterance back, will therefore hopefully never be used.
We never launched our Cold War nukes, but if you think that they didn't make us safer... well then we disagree on 50 years of global history.
Alex
I predict a 100% fallout in my pants if a bomb goes off.
I couldn't agree more. It was so bad that it was almost a parody of the worst book ever written.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
And if Kerry gets elected, we'll actually be able to test the skill of our scientists!!! oh, wait...
> Some may call it flamebait. I call it realpolitik.
I call it stupidity. Or perhaps prejudice so blind that you can't see where your own best interest lies.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Questions for you to research (you wouldn't believe my conclusions anyway, nor should you):
Was the attack really sneak, and intended to be so? Did the US also draw Japan into war using pressure around oil and rubber resources, as well as deception?
Did attacking a military base require revenge in the form of destroying cities? (Your suggestion is that it did.)
Given that Hirohito was actually offered a realistic opportunity to surrender, would it have been possible for him given internal politics? If not, did the US military know that?
Was it necessary to detonate over a city? Why not out past Tokyo harbour, in full view? Consider it a warning shot, factor in cultural elements.
Given that one is convinced that nuking a city was necessary, was it necessary to nuke a second city?
Was there intent and significant motivation to conduct these detonations as experiments?
I suggest that your research not focus on reportage coming out of the fog of war or patriotism, but on declassified documents and their analyses by scholars.
Good luck. (One might then apply the results of above questions to the people of Bikini, the Aleuts, the Navaho, etc., including those the French, English, and Russians experimented on, just for a bigger picture.)
Damn those pesky terrorists
Don't feed the conspiracy theorists.
We LOVE to wargame. The military planners think out every scenario they can come up with, from the likely to the outlandish, and try to come up with the best plans to prevent it, if that fails to contain it, if that failes to deal with it and if that fails to survive it.
This is a good strategy. It means in the event of a disaster, we aren't all running around with no idea what to do. There are plans in place, and those can be put into action. When a major disaster happens the MOST important thing is that SOMETHING be done. It doesn't have to be the 100% perfect, most efficent plan, just a plan, that gets people working towards a goal. This help eliminate fear and panic, and redirect energy to useful ends.
Same thing for war. You don't want to be drawing up new plans while the enemy continues to supprise and beat the crap out of you. You want to say "We thought of that" and respond, and then when they do something new say "We thought of that too" and respond again.
This is similar. It's quite unlikely that we'll face a nuclear threat but it is POSSIBLE. Well, best that we are prepared if that happens. Part of the preperation is to have a system for finding out who is responsable so that they can be dealt with.
Not true:
We could go into a long discussion of the opinions of Muslim jurists on suicide bombings and attacks on civilians, but the best you could hope to achieve would be to show that Islam does not condone such behavior, in which case I could say theat it's not Islam we should be afraid of, but Muslims, as they very certainly do condone such behavior.The problem with Islam is that it is not just a religion, it is a supremacism and an imperialism. Muslims always seek to dominate and impose their will on others, and most of the world's conflicts (in the Philiphines, Nigeria, Sudan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Israel) are the result of this.
I read somewhere that there was a similar system in place for legally-produced, conventional explosives. You added uniquely different ratios of multi-colored indestructible tiny beads to each batch of stuff, then after a blast you could sweep up the debris and count the colors to figure out where the stuff came from.
Maybe the NRA shot this proposal down, heck, they lobbied to make antitank weapons legal.
Muslims make good slaves; much better than Niggers.
Didn't we hear at one time that the suspected Soviet suitcase bombs had a limited viable lifespan and would not work after a specified date?
My dad was a nuclear chemist back in the day, he talks about going outside the lab, scaping settled dust off the hoods of cars in the parking lot and doing analysis, with exotic isotopes showing up whenever the soviets were doing atmospheric bomb tests.
That was back then, doing casual analysis. A nice comprehensive database of worldwide nuclear fissile material and a network of sensors around the world would yield alot of information - not that we wouldn't know it if a bomb went off anywhere around the world.
Also theres that network of infrasound detectors, which also picks up earthquakes, meteors, and other large scale events. (link below)
Low sounds detect meteor blast (BBC)
Science: The original open source.
Remember, no one thought that al Queda had cruise missile capability before 9/11.
Not strictly true. The basic idea of crashing airplaines into American skyscrapers had been around for at least twenty years -- Dean Ing used this premise in his 1979 novel Soft Targets.
-kgj
-kgj
From the FAQ:
If you've been moderating or posting, your karma will likely fluctuate a little as you are moderated or metamoderate. Don't worry about it; this is normal. Please remember that this is just a number in a database that helps us determine who gets selected as a moderator. It doesn't determine your IQ or your value as a human being. It's simply not a big deal.
In other words, stop worrying so much about getting your karma up.
If you continue to do this, expect to get modded down. Let's make a deal: .sig).
- You stop abusing the moderation system.
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- Extra point for stopping the arrogant boasting about your PhD (including
Deal?
For anyone who thinks I'm bullshitting: check his posting history and the AC replies to his posts.
Blame the [Japanese militarist] idiots that started the war to begin with so they could conquer Asia.
I agree with you. But I want to add that the Japanese had done quite a bit of conquering in Asia (Manchuria, Nanjing, etc.) prior to attacking America.
I recently read The Yamato Dynasty by Peggy and Sterling Seagraves -- very informative about Japanese internal political struggles.
-kgj
-kgj
I very doubt it will be Mexico or Canada launching nuclear attacks against United States. Perhaps next America's civil war will be more interesting than I thought... Or maybe People's Republic of California against coalition of Kingdom of Maine and Texas Empire?
There you are, staring at me again.
But you're correct, it does.
It's just another component of the MAD doctrine, which in spite of everything else at least has kept nukes from falling since the second nation aquired them.
The only thing is, some parties might think they can get around the rules of MAD. That's what the missle shield is for, for example, because it would prevent a first strike, or prevent a retaliatory strike. Then the USA would be unconstrained by the MAD doctrine. If they could convince anyone it worked, hardy har har. Which brings us to this article, because others might be thinking they can get around MAD by being sneaky, and say launching the nuke from another country, a sub, or what have you. So we develop forensics to track exploded nukes back to where they came from, make a press release, and try to assure our enemies that no sneakiness will escape the 'M' in 'MAD'.
I agree, this is money that is actually well-spent in making us safer. MAD is the best missle shield we've come up with yet.
The enemies of Democracy are
Recently I saw a movie "on the beach", not the old version but a newly made version. Anyone who is enthusiastic about nuclear weapons should really watch this movie. Its sure to change your mind. Yes, its about the consequences, but it really brings them home like no other movie i have ever seen.-i think its probably the sadest movie i have seen so be warned
Nuclear Launch Detected.
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
Ya, I JUST got home from "Dawn of the Dead". OK, just cannot beat the original.
And that's why, after decades of above-ground nuclear tests on our own soil, we're all dead, right? Oh, wait.
We won't be dead. OTOH, we won't be too happy with the tumors we'll be more likely to get as a result.
It's better to have a bomb blow up in the middle of a wasteland than to have long-term radioactivity scattered directly over a densely populated area.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
This article (South Asia Tribune) explains some of the motivation for 9/11, and possible future attacks. According to the article, the US has:
_ 02/opin ion_pervezhoodbhoy.htm
- Oppressed Palestinians by giving US$5bn per year to Sharon / Israel
- Failed to rebuild Afghanistan after helping to destroy it twice
- Spoken the language of Bin Laden (good vs evil, force as the method of choice)
- Supported dictatorial regimes in Phillipines, Indonesia and Algeria, all countries with significant Muslim populations, while singling out Iraq
- Acted with trumphalism
- Lacked respect for international law
- Bombed civilians such as the Afghanistan wedding party.
The writer of the article believes the above does NOT justify 9/11, although he says he knows some people that do. Here is the link:
Were We Too Hijacked On 9/11?
http://www.satribune.com/archives/sep09_15
if you've actually read the book. its substantially different (and better) than the movie.
The same goes for the book "Contact". Much better than the movie's lame avoidance of the whole religious debate the ensued in the book (presumably to avoid pissing off religious fundies)
-
The problem is, naturally, that you're probably doing this after the detonation.
it lets us know who we'll have to vaporize in retaliationAnd don't you forget it!
Crazy ol' Unka Sam is the only sumbitch to ever use nuclear weapons against human beanings. And he's not above doing it again.
So you better watch yer step!
YEEEEEHAW!!!!
I used to work in the Port of Houston - what a security nightmare. Entire ships full of containers loaded with god-knows-what checked by guys who really could not give a shit about what is in them.
I imagine it has gotten better since 9/11, but with the insane amount of goods that comes through on the average day, I still get pretty nervous.
I've heard a few times before that Russia was allegedly missing some of its suitcase nukes. If that's true and a terrorist detonated one in the US, then all signs would probably point towards a Russian device. Hopefully the US - Russian relations at the time would be good.
Are the Slashdot servers EMP protected?
For such an "expert" in strategic geopolitics you as many Americans fail to grasp that terrorism is a tactic, not a constituency. The harder you fight it the stronger it becomes. Ask Israel.
What if you find out the bomb was built on a farm in Kentucky? People still don't get the new parameters of conflict- there is no bogeyman nation. These people operate wherever they can find isolation.
Is just as horrific as what you described. War sucks, and it's been going on a lot longer than anyone has written down. The first books were about ways to effectively kill each other. Not much has changed since you gutted your enemy with a sword - a real innovation over the club and spear techniques. That is just as violent and gory - perhaps moreso. War is part of our very being. I find it interesting we debate so heavily what happened to the nethanderals.. heh. I can make an educated guess or two, and they all involve me making a better club and having a full tummy.
Nukes put it all out there - the only thing that has changed is there are more of us now, that we're all fooling ourselves about human nature - it's easy to be a pacifist when you have lots of food on the table without really knowing what makes our cities run (oil). So what if it was a war about oil.. oil runs the whole show my friend.
I caught the tail end of growing up in the cold war, and you mark my words: Nuclear weapons are going to be used again. They will be used to devastating effect, and the genie is indeed out of the bottle. If the western world does not demonstrate it has the willpower to use them, then someone else will - it is a dangerous game if nuclear weapons become a "paper tiger".
The sad fact is we are all headed to a very dramatic showdown over oil. People pretend there's an unlimited supply, but there's not. And we will do ANYTHING as a nation to insure the ready availablity of oil to fuel the economy.
Use nuclear power to find a way to get off the need for oil. If you care, don't rally government to stop wars and weapons development - I would perfer my side to be armed to the teeth with the beast weaponry known to man. "Green" technologies can NEVER come even close to replacing the energy quality of oil. Without that energy quality, "our" world just doesn't work.
Rally around a tax to fund nuclear physicists and other people who might figure a way to get energy out of the quantum vaccuum - but do something, and do it soon. Fooling ourselves helps nobody, and there's good reasons why the sun doesn't power your SUV - and none of them have to do with grand oil company conspiracies.
..don't panic
The danger level has been turned up and in a decade it will be even higher. Nuclear proliferation has not come home to roost as a key issue but it will because the material is out there and someone is going to use it.
The game now is as it always was: deterrence. The point of being able to back-trace nuclear material, whether it be fallout from a nuclear weapon or residue from a radiological (or "dirty") bomb, is to be able to determine who was behind the attack. Yes, terrorism is hard to fight on a battlefield, but it's not exactly a radical thought that if we find a country to have been complicit in any way with such an attack, we'll force them to face us on our own terms. We've bulldozed through two countries so far because of 9/11, and whether you agree with the reasons for doing that or not, there's no way we'd hesitate to do it again if a nuclear weapon of any form was detonated here. Our best bet at preventing this kind of attack is demonstrating that we can figure out who to destroy after the fact.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I am trying to parse your words carefully. Your concern is with "Bush supporters." You didn't actually say that Bush supporters are liars, so unlike Senator Kerry, you do have an out, but you did say that these Bush supporters made "an accusation ... inconsistent with the facts" and these same Bush supporters "never thought twice about lying in the past", which suggests that as a class, Bush supporters are habitual liars and are lying about the Spanish election results. Didn't actually accuse someone of being a Communist but described the habits and customs of water birds.
The terrorists out there keep their own counsel, so any discussion of how they interpret the Spanish election on my part is not in the realm of fact, it is speculation. And how can you accuse someone of lying when they are engaged in speculation and theorizing and being open about it? You have an opinion on what the Spanish election means, I have an opinion on that same topic, and if we differ, that means one of us is lying?
I gather you see something illegitimate in saying "vote for Kennedy, he will be tough on Communism" because by implication Nixon would be soft on Communism? Who was tougher on Communism was an issue in 1960, and the whole business about the Missile Gap (which proved to be non-existent from U-2 and Corona/Discoverer intelligence but Eisenhower couldn't talk about it but showed to Senator Kennedy) was arguing that the Democrats were going to be tougher on Communism than Eisenhower, who wasn't properly minding the store.
Or by your reasoning, you should be mad at the Democratic party for appeasing the sentiment that being against the Iraq war is appeasing the terrorists. The Democratic Party primary voters largely rejected Howard Dean and turned to John Kerry, who has "street cred" on matters of war as a war veteran and has positioned himself as critical of the handling of the war without being in favor of abandoning the war.
Ready.gov, reinterpretted.
Besides the horrific casualties the Kamikaze was inflicting on U.S. ships, at a stage where the war was for the most part lost for Japan, the notion that surrender was dishonorable, that suicide bombers would be used in large scale to defend the homeland suggested the normal pattern of surrender in the face of military defeat was not going to work.
The Trade Center bombing had both elements of suicide attack as well as mass casualties -- they were on the Pearl Harbor level, but they could have been on the Nagasaki level. My own Near Eastern paranoid-style thinking lead me to believe that taking President Bush to Omaha was no accident -- it was to signal that the attack rose to the level that could provoke a nuclear response. The only time we were provoked to use atomic weapons in the past was in response to suicide tactics.
The misuse of the words was a crucial part of the amusement.
...FOR GREAT JUSTICE!
Saying 'set up us' the bomb has an oddly funny ring to it. Saying 'set us up' -- a very subtle but critical difference -- is saying it how you would expect it to be said, correctly. That likely means you didn't pay close enough attention the first time. Perhaps you were too busy jumping on comedy bandwagon, because your friends were all laughing, and you didn't want to be left out.
This is what seperates a Zero Wing master, from a Zero Wing wannabe...
It was Debt of Honor, not The Sum of All Fears.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
The US has been prepared to be nuked for some time now.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Da-Boo Da-Boo!
Officials also hope that if terrorists know a bomb can be traced, they will be less likely to try to use one
- How ya doing, Mohammed Al-Shafeer ? Ready to do the sacrifice in the name of Allah ?
- Nah, I don't think I'll carry that nuke with me. They'd be able to trace me after it exploded. I prefer to be just a plain old-fashioned bomb-man with vanilla explosives. This way they won't trace me.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
What am I talking about? Ask a "suvivor" of a Vietnam-era napalming how their injuries feel. If they're still around - just because you survive the original splash doesn't mean you're going to live long, or well. Or, ask a survivor of stepping on a land mine how it feels to stump around on those splintered bones. Or, ask a vet with a good chunk of their brain blown away how they feel - if, of course, their hearing centers still function, and if they can communicate back.
Beginning to get my point? Being injured is horrible. Losing people is horrible. Neither is the exclusive domain of nukes.
There's more, though.
By now, some of you will be muttering darkly about the sheer numbers of deaths and injuries. That's not unique to nukes, either. Check your history. 1943 Hamburg firestorm: 40,000 killed. February 1945, Berlin: 25,000 killed. February 1945: Dresden: 30,000 killed. Total number killed by US bombings (in Germany) is generally accepted to be 800,000 to a million people, depending on your cites. I can absolutely promise you that not one of those people - or the people they left behind - give a rat's buttocks if fission was involved or not. Dead is dead. Burned is burned. Crippled is crippled.
Now we get to the fallout-fearing ranters. Well, this one's actually pretty simple to dispose of. So far (for the US testing only) we know of 911 nuclear weapons tests in Nevada, 106 in the Pacific, and 10 more in various other US locations (Alaska, New Mexico, Mississippi and Colorado.) These vary from airbursts to underground and varied in yield from fractions of a KT to 15 megatons. You'll notice that we're still here, Nevada in particular is doing pretty well, there are still edible fish and lots of other pretty healthy flora and fauna in the Pacific and generally speaking (considering 911 events) there is very little of interest going on related to all that activity. Of course, I've not mentioned the Soviet and Chinese and French and anyone else who has taken the liberty to pop off a nuclear device. Which I probably should do a little, because some of those were a lot larger than the US ones: The Soviets in particular hold the record as far as I know for the biggest bang, and they lit of about 715 weapons, not counting little guys, but counting "fizzles." And again, the world is still here, and people mostly think about Nagasaki and Hiroshima when they think about the effects of nuclear weapons.
Turns out, that's the right way to think, because nuclear weapons going off in populated centers are the really "annoying" thing. Lots and lots of dead and injured people at once, huge cleanup job, big risk of disease, injury to industrial and social infrastructure.
Think back. When those planes flew into the WTC, we lost 3,000 people, and a few buildings, and a few businesses got hammered. Now if you sit back and count people, and buildings, and businesses, you gain the perspective that this was in fact a tiny, tiny, tiny pinprick, albeit on a nerve - the NYC business district. But the social and business infrastructure damage was HUGE. President Bush mobilized, and used, the military, in several venues over a long period of time. The US economy took a shock which I maintain it has not recovered from to this day - though that's very much an IMHO - and the news, and the public, could talk of little else. Imagine the US public reaction to a firestorm (non-nuclear) that killed 25,000 people. It seems to me that we'd "melt down", socially and economically. A nuke would do the same.
That, /.'ers, is the real problem. America is one hell of a lot softer than its size, bellicose ranting, economic "might" and world police presence makes people think it is. I think if a nuke went off, the problem wouldn't be the direct effects. The problem would be the breakdown of everything else.
The thing that irritat
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Just call a Faction Council and repeal the U.N. Charter and it's all good..... wait a minute.... I'm confused....
That's right. All your base.
It's "The US prepares to achieve a state of nukedness."
That's right. All your base.
... to change/mutate their government.
Why should people be more scared? I mean, it can't be healthy going around being scared all the time thinking about getting a bomb dropped on your head (, or being shot on the next corner)? Really! Is it? It certainly does not help..
Humor helps some people cope with tragedy, death, and pretty much anything we're not comfortable with. If you don't like it, please ignore it.
Thank you.
This is not text.
Actually, Russia abandoned its No First Use (NFU) doctrine after the end of the Cold War. It no longer renounces the first use of nuclear weapons. As you pointed out, the US has never renounced first use. I know Pakistan and Israel have not. Britain recently stated it might reply to a non-nuclear WMD attack with nuclear weapons, and NATO (including Britain and France) reserves the option as well. Only two states still have NFU. China has always had an unconditional NFU doctrine. India has been under internal pressure to abandon its own NFU pledge.
A comprehensive summary of existing policies is available at this site.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Israel has yet to open a can of you-know-what on the terrorists. Military estimations said that Israel alone could've taken out Saddam, as well as all neighboring countries who support him. You don't think Israel has nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver all of them on a moments notice?
The US has been pleading with Israel for restraint from day one. We are still hypocritically encouraging them to be calm, promising them that an American response will be more effective than a Zionist one. Ariel Sharon -- the Churchill of Israel -- is preaching restraint, because he knows what is in store for the terrorists at the hands of the Americans. This is the same Ariel Sharon that single-handedly defeated Egypt! He knows Israel is in a far stronger position now, and his enemies are much weaker.
You do not understand the essence of terrorism. You think people flock to terrorists when they see their friends who engage in terrorist acts get mercilessly shredded to black bits of burning flesh by missiles. On the contrary, they run and hide when they hear the soldiers coming down the road. No promise of virgins in the afterlife is worth waking up to a helicopter at your balcony, or facing a squad of American soldiers sending their regards from President Bush. Remember why Saddam said he surrendered peacefully: "Would you want to fight these guys?" Why do you think Libya is coming clean all of a sudden? I am sure it has nothing to do with President Bush's Texas charm or cowboy hat.
Moscow cringed when President Reagan swore he would build up the arsenal and use it if necessary. Hitler squirmed when Churchill announced his resolve to fight at all costs and never surrender. Osama bin Laden is hiding in shame, worrying every day if some soldiers in desert camouflage are going to find him that day, and bring him out to answer for his crimes.
If being slaughtered by the Americans and Israelis is so helpful to terrorists, why aren't they out in the open, encouraging us to launch an all-out frontal assault on their HQ? After all, if we wipe them all out in one grand armaggedon style battle, won't their numbers swell with energetic youths who want to die fighting as well?
They fear retaliation. Their numbers are dropping, and those who are in want out. Look at what is happening in Baghdad and Tikrit. One by one, Saddam's supporters are either dying or promising to lay down their arms. One by one, they see their comrades get shot to pieces or tracked down mercilessly and hunted like rabbits. Soon, there will be no more of Saddam or Osama's supporters in Iraq. If there are, they will be hiding again, no longer setting off car bombs or laying ambushes for supply trucks carrying medicine and school supplies. And when they go back to hiding and stop blowing our children up, then we will have won the war on terror.
The best strategy in war is to avoid war is possible, but when that strategy fails, the next best thing is to win overwhelmingly. Bury the brave ones. Take out their captains and generals. Leave only the cowards who refused to fight. Send them back to repopulate their country, and raise a generation of cowards who won't dare oppose you again. And make certain that the country becomes your ally so that they don't plot against you again.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
What planet are you living on? We've had several terrorist attacks when we had a Clinton and Carter for presidents. I strongly doubt the first thoughts running through the 9/11 hijackers was, "That'll teach the infidels not to elect a president named George W. Bush!"
And you think you can communicate with a group of people that holler at the top of their lungs: "DEATH TO ALL AMERICANS! PRAISE ALLAH!"
They train endlessly: This is how you get on a bus with bombs strapped to your chest. This is how you blow yourself up so that you kill the maximum number of women and children. This is how you put on enemy uniforms and shoot their school-children. This is how you pilot and airplane into a skyscraper. This is how you put the nuclear materials into the bomb to make a dirty bomb.
And you want to talk with them? I'm sorry, Mr. Chamberlain, your strategy failed in the '40's, and it is what got us to where we are now. When the first terrorist struck against American interests, we should've responded the way we are now.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
...and that alone icked the economy in the nutz. What do you think losing an entire city will do??
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Funny you mentioned Pakistan. Remember that doctor they "caught" the helped Pakistan develop nukes? It turns out that he was either working for the CIA, or the CIA was using him without his knowledge. Thanks to him, we have uncovered the entire network of nuclear dealings. It all points to one country: North Korea. And yes, the nations in the Middle East were the buyers, and yes, Al Quaeda has been trying for some time to get a hold of something they can transport to the US. (Luckily, North Korea has been smart enough NOT to sell to them -- yet.)
I can't quote sources because there are no sources to quote yet.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
This is good comedy. Mark the parent +1 Funny.
I can just see Stalin saying, "If only America had adopted Communism, I wouldn't have had to murder so many millions of my people!"
But I agree. All these problems would just go away if we dropped this whole nationalist-capitalist thing and adopted God and Jesus as our one true master. If we all submitted ourselves to His will, then we wouldn't be fighting each other, we wouldn't be worrying about whose doing what, we would only be worried about our own salvation and living our lives in a way pleasing to God. We would all be living every moment, wondering how we can become more like Jesus.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Was the attack really sneak, and intended to be so?
No, the Americans announced the attack with fliers several days before the attack. They pleaded with everyone to leave the city to avoid the terrible destruction that was awaiting them.
The Japanese military confiscated all the flyers and ordered no one to read them. Unfourtunately, most did not get the message.
Did the US also draw Japan into war using pressure around oil and rubber resources, as well as deception?
The Japanese had begun an intense military campaign against its neighbors, including 2 of our allies: China and Korea. America responded by cutting off its supplies peacefully, and thus shutting down the war machine. Japan was in an oil-poor region, and rubber was all but impossible to get. They knew that we would have to be beaten before they could continue advancing their war machine.
The Japanese engaged in so-called peace talks up to the day of Pearl Harbor. They gave no signal that they had any other intention than to resolve the peace talks with an agreement. Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack.
Did attacking a military base require revenge in the form of destroying cities?
Who puts a military base in a city? Yes, attacking the HQ does justify attacking a city. The same goes for attacking factories and ammo depots in cities. You'll notice that the US has no military installation near a city. When it does, the city is usually filled with military personnel and their support and family. Notice that our nukes have always been put in out-of-the-way places, to avoid this kind of thing.
This is like Saddam putting huts around comm towers. When we go and blow up the comm towers, somehow we get blamed for killing the poor villages who were ordered to live right beside it. Luckily, in this last exercise, the collateral damage was few and far between.
Given that Hirohito was actually offered a realistic opportunity to surrender, would it have been possible for him given internal politics?
No, it wasn't possible for him to surrender. He didn't have control.
If not, did the US military know that?
Yes, they may have. But it didn't change the fact that in order to defeat the Japanese military, you had to kill the Japanese soldiers, destroy their bases, and shame their leaders to admit defeat.
Was it necessary to detonate over a city? Why not out past Tokyo harbour, in full view? Consider it a warning shot, factor in cultural elements.
If we gave a warning shot, they would know what to expect when we struck, thus lessening the blow if we had to strike. When we struck first, they had no idea the extent of our arsenal, their organization was thrown into chaos, and their will to fight melted. Wars are fought on emotion, not on intellect. The intellectual thing is not to fight at all, right?
Go read Sun Tzu's books on war again. The point is to break the enemies will and get him to go home and leave you alone. We had to break their will, not show them the odds of surviving and attack.
Given that one is convinced that nuking a city was necessary, was it necessary to nuke a second city?
"Well, garsh, we shot one soldier, why do they keep coming?" Yes, it was absolutely necessary. When they didn't immediately surrender, we had to convince them with some more. Nagasaki was another military installation. Taking out Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively disabled their navy. Even if they still had the will, they had lost the ability to fight at sea.
Was there intent and significant motivation to conduct these detonations as experiments?
Among scientists, probably. Scientists run in all flavors, and you'd be surprised how many have lost their moral bearings.
Among the military, no. Understand what the Americans were facing. My grandfather watched his entire unit get mowed down as they fought for Guadal Canal. He was a marine. All his war friends are dead. Don
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
in a form slashdotters will understand:
"The more you tighten your grip, the more will slip through your fingers"
The Muslims would want the Mosque rebuilt, and the Jews would want to rebuild *their* Temple of the Mount instead. I dunno what the Christians would want since I have never been religious. Maybe the History Channel will do a 'Mysteries of the Bible' episode on the subject someday - that being the source of most of my knowledge of Judeo-Christian religions, but Christians probably have armegeddon prophesies regarding that spot too.
If someone wanted to stir some shit up so they could 'watch the black ants fight the red ants' then blowing that mosque up might start some entertaining fights to watch on CNN...
DISCLAIMER: This post was a *JOKE*. Don't blow anything up. If you were actually considering it seriously - get a life.
Eat at Joe's.
How to win against anywhere using your strategy is to wipe out everyone. Absolulely everyone. Many of the traditional troublespots of the world can be traced to the few that escaped a massacre. It doesn't matter about however right you feel about a solution, unless they do - your descendents will be dodging trouble until the tenth generation.
Nuclear weapons are very effective at achieving this - particularly if you talk about multi-megaton MIRVs. Not many will survive that kind of cooking, but this really difficult to do, say, against Palastinians in the Gaza strip. Bit of an own goal, isn't it?
What Osama did was to introduce the (American) concept of the Franchise to terrorism. You should be Islamic, but otherwise Al Quaeda gives the training, helps a little with the finances but otherwise the groups get up to their murderous mischief fairly independently. It is extremely difficult to stop these peple. You take out one and another ten come along encouraged by the storied about the first.
They really don't need to all come at once, they know that a few attacks over time will do the job better. Never engage a numerically superior and better equipped force in the open. If the Israelis want to commit a few atrocities in return, even better as it will help get more recruits for the arab extremists.
The Israelis have survived for a long time living off "holocaust cred" - the moment they try the bomb, and then even the US will find it difficult to support them.
The US builds nuclear weapons and the world does nothing.
Some third world country is suspected of building nukes and the world screams for condemnation, and the US is ready to invade it.
Who is going to save the world from the US?
it's easier to steal 100 kilogram of dynamite from a mining warehouse like they just did in Spain.
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[quoting the Washington Post reporting on some poll or other]:
:-b
Ominously, the poll showed some increased support in Muslim countries for suicide bombings and other forms of violence; 82 percent of Jordanians, 40 percent of Moroccans, 41 percent of Pakistanis and 15 percent of Turks said such violence could be justified.
Yeah, right.
And I bet if you worded it correctly you could get a similar fraction of the US population to say that there might just be SOME scenario where it would be OK to nuke Russia or China.
Sorry, AC. I don't believe a word of the news reports on polling results. Even when the polls are in English. The characterizations the reporters make of them don't usually have much to do with the actual questions - even when the newsies didn't commission a poll to push the respondents into supporting the editors' position on the subject.
THIS one was no doubt in Aarbic, not English. Before I'd trust it to say ANYTHING about how Muslims feel about blasting or burning innocent civilians to death by the thousands I'd want the original wording - along with translations and commentary on the meaning of it by at least one prominent member of each of the major madabs in each area where the poll was taken who is also a native speaker of the local dialect.
There's ONE pollster I'd trust to run such a poll, get results that have any meaning, and report them honestly: Zogby. But even there I'd only give weight to HIS own interpretation of his results, not some reporter's.
Meanwhile, my handy Sufi says I'm right and they're wrong. So there.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
disclaimer: i appologise to anyone, except jgardn, who will read this rant. it's a rebuke to the parent post, and by definition "garbage in, a lot of messy cleaning out". if you are halfways informed about politics and history, you probably do not need to read it. flag this as flamebait, if you will.
================
i have many questions for you.
Israel has yet to open a can of you-know-what on the terrorists.
can of worms? i assume you mean using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against terrorist. please explain how. who would you target? terrorist are individuals hiding among the population. would you use WMD (emphasis on MASS) against them? wouldn't that be genocide?
Military estimations said that Israel alone could've taken out Saddam, as well as all neighboring countries who support him.
this thread was about terrorist, but you changed the topic to Saddam. was Saddam a convicted terrorist? or was he a national dictator, previously a CIA asset (assasin) ? which neighboring countries were supporting Saddam? Iran? no. S.Arabia? no. Turkey? no. Jordan? no. kuwait? no. egypt? no. Syria? probably yes, they made business deals with him. but you said COUNTRIES, and one hit does not make a plural.
You don't think Israel has nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver all of them on a moments notice?
what is your sabre-rattling good for? why would Israel want to use it's 200 warheads to turn 100 million Arabs, Turks or Persians into black glass craters? is that a solution to terrorism? is killing some potential 5.000 terrorist (my estimate) worth the 'colateral damage'? maybe you think that all those people do not deserve to live any longer?
The US has been pleading with Israel for restraint from day one. We are still hypocritically encouraging them to be calm, promising them that an American response will be more effective than a Zionist one.
you make something up. restraint from striking against whom? you are very cryptic. I know, that the US has been pleading Israel not to strike back at Iraq in case of SCUD attacks. Saddam would like to ignite a holy war against Jews, which would press other Muslim countries to support him. clearly not a positive outcome. OTOH, if you mean Palestinian terrorist, the US has NEVER promised Israel that it would strike against them. now that would be a stupid strategy.
Ariel Sharon -- the Churchill of Israel -- is preaching restraint, because he knows what is in store for the terrorists at the hands of the Americans.
Ariel Sharon has provoked the current intifada, after that he won the elections as the 'general-iron-fist' candidate. again, the US will not strike at Palestinian terrorist in Set Bank or Gaza. never. this would be symbolic for a judeo-christian crusade in the Holy Land against Muslims. You seem to be unaware of the global implications of such a situation.
This is the same Ariel Sharon that single-handedly defeated Egypt! He knows Israel is in a far stronger position now, and his enemies are much weaker.
Egypt was not a terrorist enemy to Israel. it was a nationalistic country. the reasons were also very different. military means are not effective against urban-based terrorist. you can send an army into Afghanistan, but you can not send them inside a city like Kair or Islamabad.
You do not understand the essence of terrorism. You think people flock to terrorists when they see their friends who engage in terrorist acts get mercilessly shredded to black bits of burning flesh by missiles.
no, you do not understand terrorism at all. there are different reasons why people become terrorist. there are also different types of terrorism.
1) revenge (like for losing your entire family to an rocket attack)(Palestine, Chechnia)
2) ideology (indoctrination, cultural hostility) (AL-Kaida, Rote Armee Front)
3) assymetric warfare (if your nation has no army, bombs are the only means of
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Why, the compassionate conservatives, of course!
Combine even the existance of such a trade with the known number of 'mules' with radiation poisoning and empty tucks with hot cargo beds and it's possible that a large volume of trade has been encouraged by the profits. Those were just the ones caught/detected.
Forget countries, it's possible that some corporation or wannabe corporate tyrant has gotten hold of one since even U.S. business men were getting in on the action. Again, just one is enough.It's too late to not make these weapons, but not too late to collect and disarm any materials or facilities for making such weapons. Nor is it too late for preventative measures: people that are healthy, well-fed, and gainfully employed don't go around blowing things up.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
To paraphrase "You should be scared of DEATH"
However valid of a concern it is, the real concern is in giving a bunch of hairless, pink, apes control over the life of every creature on earth...