Slashdot Mirror
'Satan' Missile Now Launches Satellites
colonist writes "The Russian intercontinental ballistic missile known to NATO as SS-18 Satan was converted to a launch vehicle (called Dnepr) and is now launching American communications satellites for profit. 'The giant rocket boasted up to 10 Multiple Independently-Targeted Reentry Vehicles, or MIRVs, each of which would have a carried a hydrogen bomb thermonuclear warhead to incinerate a different North American or Western European city. Even more terrifying, some of them were believed to have been fitted with aerosol warheads to spray smallpox virus over their U.S. targets.' However: 'With the Space Shuttle still grounded, the new generation of American boosters still being developed, and demand for reliable launching rockets building up around the world, the prospect of having a huge already-constructed supply of giant boosters built by the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth has been embraced around the world.'"
Let's hope they load the right payload. Nothing like accidentally sending up a bunch of hydrogen bombs!
Sorry, am I the only one here who doesn't think a virus for which a vaccine exists is a worse threat than an H-bomb?
IIRC, the first NASA rockets were invented by the German scientist who invented rockets, so, it's just happening again decades later.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Ahhh, swords into plowshares....
It makes even this harden cynic smile a bit.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
If the SATAN missiles allow for organizations to get their satellites into orbit at a cheaper price, this is a very good idea.
-- Bryan
It was the Pentagon that called these missiles "SS-18 Satan" in an propaganda effort to demonize the Soviets; the Russian name for them was simply "R-36M".
...and detonating a hydrogen bomb was renamed Freedom Fusion.
Must every slashdot article mention MicroSoft in the headline ?!?
--LordPixie
Why must we have the cliche Russia jokes? No-one finds them funny. So just quit it. But this does sound great. Another case of people working together when it comes to space. Can there be any negative posts about this story?
I could be mistaken, but believe that NATO not the Pentagon, generates the name designations.
Highly recommended book specifically discussing the Soviet (and many many others') smallpox warfare plans. The Russians made smallpox by the tank-truck-load, and as late as the early 90's, had missle test programs where ICBMs launched, MIRVed, then little bomblets with parachutes descended. Where did it all go when the USSR broke up? How about places like North Korea, China, Iran? The US maintains stockpiles as well, don't let the glasses fool ya'.
Very good book.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is an interesting method to disarm rival countries - buy them out!!! Here's $10M - how 'bout you unscrew that nuclear warhead and attach our new On-Star sattelite? Would you turn that old T35 into a water fountain for $1000? $10k for a MiG crop-duster? This does extrapolate a little from Sun Tzu and Zhuge Liang's theories on conflicts. Get your enemies to see the benefits of working with you and the 'war' is won without firing a shot. A bit flamey, but if the billions used to 'pacify' Iraqi unrest were partially paid to the Iraqi citizens, would the current chaos be quelled? If only me magic 8-ball still worked!!.
Actually they wouldn't.
SS-## and the "S..." names are NATO shorthand from the cold-war era (for obvious reasons, the Soviet Union would rather not offer the specsheets for download at that time).
"Russian" designations for the same systems were R-## etc.
They do -- you just have to be given a 'weak' version of the bomb, and you build up immunity.
At least, nobody has ever complained of _not_ building up immunity.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
The SS-18 is now the cheapest ride into space. The AMSAT-NA (Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. - North America) OSCAR - Echo
(Oribiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) was launched June 29 by SS-18 (also the Italian Amateur UniSat-3) as secondary payloads.
http://www.amsat.org
73 de w0uhf
The USA does the same thing, Lockheed Martin converts old Titan missiles for satellite launching purposes. See this story for some pictures.
Michael Moore featured this plant in his movie, calling it a weapons factory that makes weapons of mass destruction. When someone challenged him about this, he said that such a rocket could launch a spy satellite that could be the one that starts a war, so he still thinks it's justified to call satellite-launching rockets "weapons of mass destruction".
Once you're dead, though, what do you care how it happened?
Aptal soru yoktur; sadece merakli aptallar vardir.
they didn't call it satan. NATO did.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Jeez, so now we are gonna outsource our sattelite launching...whats next??? (please be the lawyers, please be the lawyers) :P
I suppose these missiles were made in the USSR days, and as even missiles probably have a limited 'shelf life' and they must be 15+ years old
I think it's just common sense to use them while they still are in working order, and make some hard needed cash in the process. I suppose Russia will them build some new ones for they still remaining WMD with the cash they earned this way, or have a completely different delivery system altogether.
Isn't this the same reason the USA are/were using redstone's as launch vehicules?
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Is the first thing that comes to anyone else's mind when they see MIRV Scorched Earth? Man that was a fun game... now I'm going to have to dig it out & get it running again.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
Gotta love those NATO designations. Imagine what would happen if a bunch of Fundies found out their latest religious program was made possible via a satellite that was launched by Satan. And from the heart of the former [atheist] "Evil Empire" no less.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
The West often knew about and gave names to Soviet weaponry long before the Soviets acknowledged the weapon or identified it by name.
In any case. an enemy's nuclear missiles are worth demonizing. I'm sure the Soviet's would have done the same had the U.S. used a similar nomenclature scheme, even if they were on the wrong side.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
...the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth..
shouldn't this have the tag <sarcasm></sarcasm> around it?
(gotta learn to preview)
--- Bad news for America, good news for Democrats
Good news for America, bad news for Democrats
The Pentagon gave Soviet land-based missiles names starting with "S" For example, the SS-19 is the STILLETO, SS-20 is the SABRE, SS-21 is SCARAB, SS-17 is SPANKER, etc. etc. Similar patterns were used for other missiles. Air-launched missiles used names starting with "K" For example, AS-17 Krypton, AS-16 Kickback, AS-15 Kent, etc.
Don't kid yourself... they don't have vaccines for the super-bugs developed for use as weapons. Some of them were designed specifically to circumvent known vaccines; so, it wouldn't matter even if you got the vaccine. you'd still be dead.
Osama Bin Laden isn't actually hiding from America. He's got how many wives? I'd say he's using the time-tested technique of Hiding From the Inlaws. Man has perfected this technique over the millenia to an artform. No-one'll ever find him.
This is nothing new.
The russians have been launching small payloads on their submarine-launched Volna and Shtil for years.
More info on the R36 family of rockets is available here
Something I've been wondering for a while, who dreams up those oddball NATO designations? How the hell do we get from 'Flanker' (SU-27), 'Badger' (TU-16) and 'Fishbed' (Mig-21) to 'Satan' 'Havoc' and 'Foxbat'?!
Did the old guys get fired for not taking it seriously enough?
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Reagan didnt get any coverage other dead Presidents didnt enjoy. How about Kennedy? Also, its been a while we lost a President and a Republican one at that, during a Republican administration, at these times of turmoil.. Ofcourse, half the country would want to show their respect.
Now, I disagree about the part about him changing the world for the better. Rest of the world really doesnt care when he was alive, far less now that he is dead. The only time that I ever heard of him was his name associated with the infamous "Starwars" and Reagan-omics. Both really bad ideas (ofcourse can be disputed). But the fact of the matter is Gorbachev had more to do about putting things in order than Reagan purely because (1) Russia was already crumbling (2) Gorbachev was more far sighted than all the Russian presidents before him and (3) Gorbachev realized the world was changing and he had to lead his country to change with it.
The only smart thing Reagan did was he realized what Russia was up to and instead of thwarting their efforts (and making sure Cold war stayed the same), he realized his legacy would be remembered for ending it, and helped Gorbachev speed things up. Also like how Clinton is remembered for not screwing things up when the economy was in an upswing, Reagan will be remembered for not screwing things up. You cant measure a president and his legacy especially when he passed away recently, especially when his memories are fresh and emotions supercede reason and logic, but for definite, years from today, he will be known as a president who was sensible and farsighted enough to let Russia and Communism die a slow death and not for being a visionary neither a statesman.
Now your thoughts about W just plain out scares me. W is neither a statesman nor a visionary. He spoke of bipartisanship and pledged compassionate conservatism but showed neither. The country is more divided than ever and we are at war with different enemies and the army is stretched thinner than butter on whitebread. What were to happen if a new adversary emerges, taking advantage of this situation? How would the world respond? No Sir, these are troubled times and instead of being fortunate enough to be led by a president who were a true leader, a free thinker, an optimist and a realist, what we have here is a fragile humanbeing who is being manipulated by his cohorts, by the religious right, by the same people who should keep his course straight, but instead choose to lead him astray. No Sir, W will be known as a president who could have achieved far more, but fell far short of his goals and led the country through a path of gloom, down a road littered with the corpses of its own soldiers and its shattered dreams.
Rapid Nirvana
The military went away from liquid fuel for logistical reasons and the Minuteman missle series, using solid boosters, were deployed. The Minuteman 3 evolved into the MX Missile aka Peacekeeper, which required only a small crew and was portable making it a "mobile missle" in some deployments.
This logistical advantage was the basis of was the basis of E'Prime Aerospace's proposed launch vehicle series in the late 1980s. Through an effort with the Reagan Administration they acquired rights to acquire the existing assembly lines, 2 of which were still packed up in crates, and managed to cut preliminary deals with the contractors for the parts. The design mods included stripping off the radiation hardening, saving substantial weight, and replacing the kevlar fiber with graphite fiber in the tankage windings, something the Air Force had already funded at about the time the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty put an end to their further development. The launch site preferred was Ascention Island due to its location near the equator, ease of access from Florida (where the production lines were to exist) and a landing strip there that could receive the stages of the rockets in separate shipping containers via DC-3 transport, and launch from a cliff to the east. There was also a problem with the upper stage of the MX containing nitroglycerine, and that stage was eliminated or modified in E'Prime's designs.
It was a good idea. Something not quite as radical was, later, picked up by Orbital Sciences Corporation in their Taurus launcher, which used some surplus MX segments. E'Prime didn't want to do that due to quality control problems on stages that had been stored -- and indeed I was told that when O.S. procured their first MX stage, it had already been rejected by E'Prime due to a huge occlusion in the X-Ray image. They obviously could never have flown stage in any mission and it is unclear why they procured it.
The company had management as well as funding problems, and when I came on board in late 1991 as VP for Public Affairs, it was a few weeks from closing its doors. I really thought the idea of putting the MX into commercial production for satellite launches was a good one and hated to see it die, especially since I had just testified before Congress regarding commercialization of space technology on the day SALT was put into action. I was already broke due to the grassroots lobbying efforts but decided to go on my credit cards and take an unpaid job at E'Prime to help save the company. While there we managed to get the first Ka band license put through the FCC for one of E'Primes potential customers (Norris Communications' NORSTAR satellite), and as a result the stock, by then it was a pink sheet penny stock, had a rebound, going from a low of fractional cents per share to 30 cents a share. I had to leave E'Prime when after a few months they still were unable to pay a salary and I was at the end of my rope. The IRS had a lot of fun with me during a subsequent audit, and they're after me again subsequent to another effort of mine, but that's another story to be written. still being written. Suffice to say I'm getting really sick of the way the US government acts toward inventors and technologists -- most of whom need to be tax lawyers these days in order to avoid prisoner gang rape these days due to the incomprehensible statutes written by tax lawyers for the rest of us to follow.
PS: For more information you may be able to get the article I wrote for "Space Technology International" annual edition in 1992, from interlibrary loan.
Seastead this.
> Even more terrifying
Ok, I've got to ask this question. What exactly do you Americans think the rest of the world thinks when you announce a new form of destruction?
Seems you guys think it's ok if you have big guns, but it's not ok if others do. Here's a clue for you: this is why you're a terrorist target.
No, the Russians do have the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth. That's why NASA are working with them. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of Russian rocket engineers carried on perfecting the designs for extremely stable and powerfull rocket motors. This work has now been commercialised, and is used in both the Russian and American space industries. I'm sure a quick Google will turn up some suitable references.
Actually Robert Goddard was first in a number of these desiagns. Konstantin Eduordovich Tsiolkovsky has many ideas that in some cases predate Goddard's, for example the use of liquid fuels, or ideas that follow Goddard's, such as the use of multiple stages in a rocket, which Goddard received a U.S. patent for in 1914. Of the two, Tsiolovsky was more the theoretical scientist and Goddard more the technical specialist or engineer. I'll leave the Hermann Oberth research to somebody else.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
The issue of the names assigned by NATO to the Soviet missles/planes/tanks/whatever raises a question in my mind:
What were the names assigned by the Soviets to our stuff, specifically the SR-71? They had to know of its existance long before the name Blackbird (or Habu) was made public.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The same way you justify firebombing Dresden during WWII. If it brings the war to an end faster, demoralizes the enemy, helps your side, etc.
The US had more nukes aimed at Russia than they had aimed at us. And these weren't tactical nukes for the field. These were 'take out Moscow and Leningrad' nukes.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
"With the Space Shuttle still grounded"
The grounding of the space shuttle has nearly no effect on the demand for space launches. It was forbidden from carring commercial payloads after the Challenger disaster. Additionally, almost any payload that the Shuttle has to carry to the International Space Station for the next few years can *only* be carried by the shuttle.
However, space station material resupply is shuffled over to Soyuz launchers.
I say: Yeah right! The shuttle hasn't launched a satellite in years, let alone a commercial payload. And the 'new generation' of American boosters aren't 'still being developed', they exist right now: the Pegasus and Taurus (Orbital Sciences Corp) at the low end of the market, and the EELVs, i.e. Delta IV and Atlas V (Boeing and Lockheed respectively), at the high end of the market (NASA 'next-gen' launch vehicle will most likely be one of the EELVs). Yet Boeing and Lockheed both claimed they couldn't get sufficient commercial launch contracts for their EELVs, and thus jacked the price up on the DOD launches they were slated to do. Even Pegasus and Taurus launches are rare. Why? Because the cost a crapload! Launch costs can be a significant fraction (up to 50%) of the cost of a satellite. Commercial contractors are launching on Russian rockets because they can do it for 1/5 to 1/10 of the price of a US launch.
The only 'next-gen' launch vehicle likely to put a dent in that anytime soon is SpaceX's Falcon, which promises launch costs on the order of $6M. If they can actually pull it off, Falcon has the potential to be a game changer in the launch market. Until then, cheap Russian launches are the way to go.
Plus, you're probably going to get a launch at one of your cities for each of your launches before the target finds out that you aren't using nuclear warheads.
This isn't to say it's impossible--it sounds technically doable--but under what cases would it make any sense? The referenced article had as much techical detail as the Slashdot article--one sentence. A Google search for "aerosol warhead" suprisingly produces only a single reference. I didn't know there was and query that would produce a single response, unless you just copied the whole document into the search box . . . .
G.W. is just another fundamentalist, and just like Reagan, does not deserve recognition for what he's done.
That statement alone explains how it is you can have such a distorted view of history and of the United States. Your beliefs are nothing at all except reactionary. You define yourself as the political negative of those that are religious.
In short, you're not thinking for yourself.
So many religious skeptics (I'm an atheist, in fact) believe that they need to be on the political team opposite those that are religious. It's a mistake. There are plenty of fvcked up ideas on the political left as well as the right and plenty of stupid ahistorical hate-america-firsters. Don't get taken in. Take a more balanced view.
As far as Reagan goes, he was a genuinely good man. There was no smallness in him. Blowing him off because of his religious views is terribly unfair. He was a better man than most. Again, I'm an atheist, but after learning about him and his life, I would say he mostly represented what is best in men.
It is not because we have big guns that we are a terrorist target.
The US is a terrorist target because our way of life threatens their way of life. In other words, we seek freedom for ourselves and believe others should have the same choice. Most of these terrorist are from oppresive regimes that require terror and force to remain in power, hence we are a threat to them and they are using the only means they know how to react.
For your information all coutries are terrorist targets. The US just happens to have the highest profile because other that Israel and Russia very few countries are actively trying to combat terrorism.
What will your claim be when Terrorist bomb the summer olympics? You know its a target, I don't think athletes have guns.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If only people over 40 live, that's kinda it... if all children die and you are left with only women over 40, repopulating the species is a bit tough...
Note: I don't AGREE with the Slashdot crowd, I think that we would survive a Smallpox attack, and I also think that the bio-engineered smallpox would never launch... it's not a USEFUL weapon (the goal of a weapon is to defeat the otherside), it's a doomsday weapon... i.e. If a US First Strike annihilates EVERYTHING (cities, military bases, missile silos, etc), but the Russians could launch 2 of these, the US still loses. Doomsday weapons are part of the MAD game theory, but not something that would actually launch.
HOWEVER, if you wipe out everyone under 40, then yes, that's all she wrote... even if the adults get to go around without kids and party for 50 years, that's still it for civilization.
Alex
This is a great post and refers to a great book. I've OCR scanned Preston's 'The Demon in the Freezer' and try to keep it available on Kazaa.
Since smallpox is so dangerous, so contagious, and has been erraticated from the earth, anyone who generates stockpiles of the virus outside of a stongly supervised international research study is committing a crime against humanity. They should be standing trial in The Hague, regardless of their national or religious justification.
The difference between atomic weapons and genetically engineered super diseases is that that the atomics are limited in the damage that they can do and can be precisely focused on a certain place. They have literally solved the problem that mankind has faced since the beginning of the agrucultural age of how to provide for an effective defence against marauding neighbors.
Genetically-engineered super-disease is an 'omnicide' technology. This is a word that I made up from 'omni' (every) and '-cide' (death) to refer to a technology that will kill every human on earth if engaged. People who do omnicide research and development are committing crimes against humanity. They have declared war on every person in every country and every religion. They have no legal, national, or religious justification for their activity and must be stopped. To use national defence as a justification for developing omnicide technology is a form of madness that is left over from the Cold War and is the worst legacy of the 20th century, which left a string of really bad legacies.
Of course, all this gets secondary consideration to the seriously important news of the day, like Janet Jackson's titties. But its an issue now that will never go away.
In addition, Reagan was just continuing a policy initiated by Truman. If anyone in the US should get credit for aiding the collapse of the communist regime in the USSR it's Truman, not Reagan. As you point out, Reagan's main contribution was that he didn't change how things were already headed.
I find it amusing that if the missile is pointed at us we call it 'Satan'. If we point it at them, its called a 'Peacekeeper' whose role is 'Nuclear Deterence'.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
I fail to see what your point is or why you are dragging Moore's film into this.
So, yes, Russia converts weapons into civilian launch capacity because they desparately need money and because they know that they simply aren't the superpower they once were.
What does that have to do with the US? The US isn't giving up on being a superpower. I don't know why the US converts Titan missiles for satellite purposes, but it clearly isn't because of any serious attempt to reduce US military dominance.
The US continues to maintain and develop a large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, US politicians aren't apologetic about it, and the US military would probably use them if they believe it is in the best interests of the US, as they have before. The only reason the term "weapons of mass destruction" sounds vaguely terrorist and illegitimate is because the Bush administration has been using that terminology so indiscriminately and carelessly in their justification of the war with Iraq.
So, while the US may be converting missiles into launch vehicles, in a deeper sense, the US isn't "doing the same thing" at all: both the motivations and the consequences of the US actions are different.
All history builds on what has gone before, so I'm going to have to start this with a couple of statements that you'll have to accept as "givens" for the moment.
1) The Soviet Union did all the heavy lifting when it came to defeating the Nazis in WW2. That's not to say that the Western allies didn't contribute AT ALL, but the Soviets bore the brunt of it and did the lions share of destroying the German army. Accordingly, the Soviets got VERY good at large-scale land warfare, especially with tanks.
2) Communism had been on the US radar at least since 1917 and probably earlier. Pure-form Communism (the spontanious revolt of the working class against their opressors) had been the greatest fear of any US captain of industry since the first worker uprisings, and Soviet-style Communism was seen (by some) to be the fullest expression of the spirit of worker revolt as threat.
3) More than a few Western generals and intellectuals wanted to keep on going after the defeat of Germany and go after the USSR next. Patton in particular was a very vocal proponant of defeating the USSR NOW (in 1945) while they were weakened, and while the US Army was already there and fully equipped. After all, they were going to have to fight eventually, why not get it over with?
4) There was a certain amount of Soviet resentment over how long it took to get the Western allies into the fight, and I think (given the anti-Soviet statements that kept turning up) a lingering suspicion that the delay was purposeful, with the intent that the USSR should bleed its strength off against Germany so that the West could come in and finish the Soviets off. Certainly Stalin felt that way, at least for a little while.
So then, at the end of WW2 you've got a Soviet Union with a lot of waretime experience, that feels threatened by the West, and which paid a HORRIFIC cost in lives and is VERY much determined to never go through that experience again.
They may or may not have had expansionist goals as well. Certainly at the time we expected them to come pouring through the Fulda Gap at any second. I know *I* certainly expected them to attack first. Now I'm no longer sure.
But anyway, the Soviets know armoured warefare, right? And one of the tenets of fighting an armoured battle is the concept of "defense in depth". You cannot just line up all your soldiers along the border, WW1-style, because the enemy will mass his forces at a single point, punch through, and now he's running amok in your rear while all your soldiers are up on the border.
So instead, you put a screen on the border, and you keep massed maneouver units some distance behind the border. When the screen locates the centre of axis of the attack, you counterattack the main thrust with your own thrust.
But this caused a couple of problems for the West.
First, the Soviet army was VERY much larger and more powerful than the Western armies. Unit for unit, the West was better, but the Soviets made up for the quality gap with quantity in spades. "defense in depth" wasn't going to be enough - the West needed "force multipliers" like chemical weapons and nukes. Accordingly, it was NATO policy to "go nuclear" IMMEDIATELY.
Quick aside: In the late 80s, Canada bough CF18 fighters, which are really lovely aircraft, but it retained a couple of squadrons of CF104 Starfighters as "ground attack" planes. The F18 is a great ground attack plane, while the F104 is about the worst ground attack plane you could possibly imagine. The 104 goes really, really fast in a straight line, and not much else.
Canada is all about "do more with less", but this always struck me as being singularly unwise.
Well it turned out that the REAL mission of these planes was NUCLEAR ground attack. Load up an American nuke bomb, and then go like hell towards whatever massed formation got discovered and nuke it.
Anyway, the combination of "defense in depth" and "nuke first" did not sit too well with the West Germans, because, well, West Germany
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
For your information all coutries are terrorist targets. The US just happens to have the highest profile because other that Israel and Russia very few countries are actively trying to combat terrorism.
European nations have been the target of modern-day terrorism for decades. It's just that many Americans (you are an example) have been living in such ignorance that they never noticed that, either domestic or elsewhere. Only when terrorists struck a bunch of iconic buildings did the general US population finally notice, and the reaction has been paranoid and ineffective so far. It's been paranoid because, despite all the fear mongering by politicians, terrorism remains a negligible cause of death in the US.
As for why the US is the target of Islamic terrorism, that shouldn't be a mystery to anybody: it's because of US middle-east policies, foremost support of Israel. Those policies may or may not be justified, but whether they are doesn't change the fact that they are the cause of terrorism.
If other nations had done to the US what the US has done to a country like Iran, Americans like you would be literally up in arms: you'd be the terrorists. Those people are pretty much of the same mindset as you.
The US is a terrorist target because our way of life threatens their way of life.
That is true, but not in the way you intended. The US way of life threatens "their" way of life because of the voracious American appetite for natural resources and military influence. If the US stopped engaging in the Middle East, there would be no Middle Eastern terrorism against the US. Oh, sure, those people would still not like the US, but they wouldn't bother coming here to bomb us.
In other words, we seek freedom for ourselves and believe others should have the same choice.
Nations like Switzerland and Sweden are highly tolerant, open, and free societies, far more liberal socially and far less religious than the US. If terrorists acted because they felt threatened by political freedoms, sexuality, and godlessness, as you suggest, they'd pick Switzerland and Sweden as their primary targets. But, in reality, those countries are largely being left alone by terrorists.
The problem is that smallpox spreads, whereas H-bombs generally do not (ignoring such things as fallout, which do spread, but which greatly decrease in potency with distance).
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Actually my first thought was that I could see a Korean reunification being a good thing for the South Korean economy for a similar reason. S. Korea has little to no launcher technology, and the ballistic missile program in N. Korea could serve as a starting point for a commsat (or any other satalite) launcher program. Sure not quite the same, but close enough to make the problem much easier.
Of course, the conservative think-tanks here are generally opposed to Korean reunification (as they fear that it could lead to a standoff between China and Japan) but it will happen, and when it does, I hope that we in the US have helped the process along rather than stalled it (stalling it would alienate us and make a China/Japan standoff scenario more likely IMHO).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
See MOST : Canada's First Space Telescope
-- "Most people prefer a popular myth to an unpopular truth"
1) See Biohazard (1998 - Ken Alibek, I think now at Batelle Labs in OH) The Soviets had generated a variety of variants, including plague and smallpox strains that were immune to most antibiotics. The strains of smallpox used would circumvent vaccines made with previous strains - thus new vaccines would have to be produced very rapidly to stop them. In addition to smallpox, plague, and anthrax, they had a variety of other goodies, most of which have no treatments. They might not kill everything, but 90% is probably "good enough".
2) To toast lots of people with nukes, you have to hit lots of targets at once. Bioweapons don't require that - one shot in a high-population area is enough. Your targets spread the devastation for you, which lowers your requirements - instead of hundreds of warheads, you only need a few to have the same effect. Even if they warheads miss their targets, most of the payload agents are weaponized and will survive for long periods of time outside, so wherever they hit is going to be uninhabitable Bioweapons have the potential of widespread (worldwide, perhaps) damage because of their ability to be amplified, while nukes (with no such ability) will cause mainly localized damage.
3) Bioweapons are there to generate fear, just like city-buster nukes. They are intimidation weapons, rather than weapons to disable enemy soldiers. Most of the species on those warheads can't be stopped by anyone, so they don't make good weapons for anything but fear and mass murder.