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Mushroom Cloud Reported Over North Korea
cbrocious writes "Yahoo! News is reporting a mushroom cloud over North Korea that occured on Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. 'The explosion in Kim Hyong Jik county blasted a crater big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said.'"
"there was no immediate indication that Thursday's reported explosion was linked to Pyongyang's efforts to develop nuclear weapons."
What was it then? Car crash? Natural gas explosion? Hmm..."no immediate indication." Bah!
I'm actually kind of surprised it took this long to hit the wires though....I mean, shouldn't we have picked it up and there been at least, a news report? Or some sort of acknowledgement of the situation by those in power........
I bet most of the Pacific Rim's probably up in arms over this-Especially the Chinese, TFA states it hit somewhere close to the China-North Korean border..... You'd think with something like that, either the Chinese would strike or raise hell along the diplomatic channels.....
Reminds me of those WWII era Civil Defense movies I saw once in a history class...You
know, the one with the turtle...
"Ok kids, what do we do when the bomb hits?"
"DUCK! AND COVER!"
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
How long can we ignore this crazy bastard, Kim Jong-il I mean? Are we gonna have to wait until he strikes oil?
-dameron
If is it nuclear then yes, the U.S. military would likely know about it, but I highly doubt they would make this information available to the public so quickly.
It would be highly embarassing to the current administration to have to N. Korea's insane nuclear ambitions (which is a back burner issue for them) dominate the news during the 9/11 observance.
Behind one these curtains is an weird, probably psychotic dictator with weapons of mass destruction? Can you guess which one?
Wrong again George.
-dameron
wondering why this isn't all over the news? Where are the pictures, reports, I mean if there is a chance this was nuclear in origin than it is A BIG DEAL. I certainly want to know what the hell is going on over there.
Something interesting to note. This took place on Thursday, 09 September. Two days ago. The news is only getting out now.
Anyone else think it quite remarkable that we live in an age where information travels at incredible speeds all over the world... but it took two days for the (at least mainstream) media to report this? Think about it. There are still places in the world where something equivalent to a small nuke can go off -- mushroom cloud and all -- and we don't NOTICE it right away.
It's kind of humbling.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Here
Nowhere near "all of our troops" are in Iraq. We've got about 125,000 troops in Iraq. That includes Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, and significant numbers of National Guard troops.
That's about two Canadian Armed Forces' worth of troops, but only a fraction of our total force strength.
And here's a big, big question for everyone who's going to bleat "Well why'd we send those troops to Iraq instead of North Korea?":
The city of Seoul is home to eleven million people. The city of Seoul is also within artillery range of North Korea. Artillery is cheap and ubiquitous, and as North Korea's army is arrayed along Soviet lines, they have scads of it. Until it fires, it's damned hard to spot camoflaged artillery from the air, and even if you could spot all of it, the sheer number of artillery pieces they have is quite staggering.
If you have a plan for military intervention in North Korea that doesn't lead to the virtual annihilation of Seoul within hours of the start of the war, please, we're all ears.
Yes, but here's the fundamental issue:
What do you DO about North Korea?
You can invade Iraq and dismantle their government with relatively few casualties.
But if you even START to THINK about invading North Korea, Seoul gets hit by 50,000 missiles before our troops can even step across the border. Sure, North Korea would fall in a matter of days, but not until after they'd done tons of damage.
The ONLY way to deal with North Korea is diplomacy. Any other dealing will reduce Seoul to rubble in a matter of minutes. THAT is why nobody has done anything about that particular psychotic dictator, except met with him diplomatically.
Comment of the year
The doomsday threat doesn't work if the attacking party thinks they can take down the entire nuclear capacity of the state before the victim can respond. However, given that North Korea alreay claims to have nukes, demonstrating that they do does not make them any more likely to come under attack.
However, if this is a first weapons test, then they probably don't have very well developed nuclear weapons yet, and some governments might take a "its now or never" approach.
X-Has-Sig: yes
134,000: Number of US troops sent to Iraq, to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, which had nothing to do with September 11th.
17,900: Number of US troops sent to Afghanistan, to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the people responsible for September 11th and other terrorist attacks against the US.
That give you an indication of what the Bush adminstrations priorities have been?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
and i'm sure he'll become more sane, have less weapons, and become less desperate as time goes on.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Oh, for crying out loud! Everyone and his mom are speculating about "teh bomb". Consider the options in a rational manner, for once, please. Even if this is the /dot:
Possibility number 1: A nuclear explosion. If it was a nuclear explosion, remember that it happened close North Koreas's north eastern border with China. If that is the case, remember that the prevailing winds will blow the fallout either north or west, in which case the fallout will cross over into China, and you can bet your sweet apple pie that China will not take lightly to radioactive fallout from a neighbouring country, or the winds blow the fallout east in which case both Japan and Russia (Yes, George, Russia is just across the way over there) will raise living hell, or the winds blow the fallout south in which case South Korea gets to crap their collective pants. Either way, the international media will find out really fast about it.
2. It was an accident such as the one a few months ago, when a train laden with chemicals went up into the air. Given that NK is poor as hell and workplace safety not a major concern, this is the most likely cause. If this is the case, it is possible that it will take a long while until the media discover it.
3. It was a military accident at a missile site, where one exploding missile set off the rest, a la Chinese firecrackers. If this is the case, the NK's will probably try to keep it as secret as possible as it would be hugely embarrassing to the fuckers who routinely make huge boasts about their military and have this obsession with saving face.
From the BBC article: "A crater caused by the blast could be seen from a satellite, an unnamed official in Beijing was quoted by Yonhap as saying."
;)
Forest fires cause lots of damage, but generally they don't make huge craters visible from space.
That you have NO idea what the fuck happened over there. You are sitting in front of your computer, relying on third or fourth hand stories of the event. So trying to declare that you know which is true and false, at this point, is pretty stupid. I would also note that CNN is a considerable more credible news source than Yahoo news.
So, what really happened? Well, I dunno, but neither do you. If you assume that it was a nuclear blast, you are taking that on faith. There is little in the way of second hand confirmation and you sure as hell have NO first hand information.
So while I'm not saying that CNN isn't wrong, please let's lay off the bashing until there is more information.
It would suck, but it would only destroy two countries, not the entire world.
Yeah, it'd only be 150 million people dead if those two countries are leveled; just your average day. Not a doomsday scenario at all...
I think you underestimate the situation. Remember 9/11? Remember the US economy taking a royal crap over the loss of one building and a few thousand worker bees?
What do you think would happen if Japan, one of the world's most powerful economic engines, were destroyed or knocked out of play for a while?
"Suck" doesn't even begin to cover it. This isn't 1945. There are more ways to destroy a country than to blow stuff up. If Japan goes, I think you'll see lots of awfully bad stuff happen in the US and elsewhere.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you have to deal with them diplomatically it would have really helped if the president did not includ them into the axis of evil when giving a puplic speech. Not very diplomatic now, is it?
As a counter-weight to the continual cries of "diplomacy is useless!", consider the Cold War. The USA and the USSR didn't fight each other; all of their contact was (essentially) diplomacy. Yet the situation remained (relatively) peaceful, and eventually the danger went away.
During the so-called "Cold War" millions died in places like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, Guatemala, Nicauragua, Cuba, etc. over the course of decades as the "Superpowers" engaged in bloody and terrible warfare by proxy. You clearly need to re-read your history of the period.
Thank you. Happy for every American slashdot reader who has not gone bloodthirsty crazy. Helps me to maintain my believe in humanity.
Ya, let's provoke a nation that is under the leadership of a crazy guy who probably wouldn't bat an eye at killing all this citizens by launching a nuke at a bunch of US carriers or at Seoul. When the crazy guy has a gun you don't point your gun at him and start yelling at him. You talk very nicely and don't make any sudden moves until you are sure you can get the gun away from him before he shots you, himself, or any of the innocent people who happen to be nearby. We can't use the same tactics against NK that we did with USSR; at least they weren't crazy. Power hungry and a little mean, but not crazy like the leader of NK.
Space for rent, inquire within
They don't have the technology to hit a ship, much less a battleship in the open sea. All they can do is blackmail us by threatening Japan and South Korea.
We can keep waiting for them to build longer range missiles capable of hitting North America too (while we and others supply them with food and fuel) or tell South Korea and Japan to deploy a lot of Patriot missiles, pray to various deities and kick the crap out of North Korea.
Very good analogy -- while you "talk very nicely", you better have the snipers deployed around... The nuclear armed submarines suggested by the grandparent article are the "snipers"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Someone else already pointed out that NK has not signed the non proliferation treaty, but that I think is the least of your problems.
Simply put: pre-emption is a euphamism for aggression.
First of all you're right about them selling nuclear material, but blowing them up isn't the right answer. What is? I don't know for sure, I'm not an expert, but economic incentives and disincentives would be a good start. When GWB came into office all he offered was the stick. Remember that? No carrot. He doesn't deal with evil. (Well, until reality intruded and he had to). In addition to that inspections would seem to be viable.
They seemed to be working in Iraq, unless of course you've got some other agenda.
As for Reagan, I don't by the Fox Wisdom stating that Reagon spending this country to death brought down the soviet union. It's not that simple. It seems to me that it was a combination of corruption and social pressure and inept government that brought down the soviet union. There's probably a lesson there for us as well.
But lets translate the behavior you propose into everyday life:Let's say your walking down a street and see some thug looking at you in a menacing way. Let's even say you notice he's packing. Do you pull out a gun and shoot him before he does anything? You probably don't because it's illegal, antisocial and brings you to the same level of the person you're afraid of.
A better quesstion for you and all the warmongers in this country is do you wish you could? Is it your greatest fantasy to just blow everything up, to kill it all and stand above the mess?
My direct message to GWB: Fear and hatred are not viable foreign policies. The number of people who wish to kill americans will only increase if we continue to behave like scared bullies.
But the rest of the worlds opinion is not the most important reason to change our foreign policy. The most important reason is because it is wrong, immoral and counterproductive. But then again I don't expect the foreign policy of GWB to be much different than his domestic policy or anything else in his life.
Most fundamentally the problem with pre-emptive action is that you simply don't know what can happen. And killing thousands of other people, both your own citizenry and those of another countries, is too expensive of a price to pay.
As you say, it seems to have been forgotten, especially by the US, but the real meaning of 'terrorist' is someone who uses violence to achieve a political end; who favours intimidating methods of coercing a government or community.
By that definition, a man walking into a restaurant with an Uzi and shooting everyone inside for no good reason is not a terrorist. A man walking into a restaurant with an Uzi and threatening to shoot everyone inside unless he's given a million pounds is not a terrorist. A man walking into a restaurant with an Uzi and threatening to shoot everyone inside unless the US pulls all its troops out of Iraq is a terrorist.
Of course, 'political' need not be concerned with international military policy; it could be anything from demanding better wages for employees of BigEvilCorp, to protesting about planning regulations in LittleTown. But it usually takes some basic level of lucidity and intent, so the 'lone madman' probably doesn't count.
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