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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.'"
since there are no photos, how about the possibility that some ignorant reporter only knows the adjective "mushroom-shaped" when talking about clouds from explosives?
like the way all bad experiences are always "harrowing".
Reminds me of those WWII era Civil Defense movies I saw once in a history class...
.are you ready for it?
Yeah, I saw that one in school too. Then we all went into the cloak room, got our coats, then marched into the school basement to practice ducking and protecting ourselves by holding our coats over our heads.
You weren't paying enough attention in class though, it wasn't a WWII era movie. It was. .
A Korean Conflict era movie.
KFG
Not really the news I wanted to hear. The last thing we need is that nutcase Kim Jong Il with nuclear-fucking-weapons! I was (and am) against the war in Iraq - Saddam never kept me up at night. Kim Jong Il, on the other hand, is a different story. This guy could be extremely dangerous. I can't really think of a good way to contain/eliminate him, but I'm thinking it would be a smart idea to do so before he starts LAUNCHING NUCLEAR FUCKING WEAPONS!
-=Memo to Bush=-
___________________
Wrong country, dude.
Electric Monkey Pants
A couple thoughts:
1. Lots of things can cause mushroom clouds. It may even be the case that NK is blowing up something (lots of TNT) to impress their own people and keep morale up while scaring everyone else. It may also be the case that they just detonated a nuke.
2. Why are we hearing about this today? Any large explosion can be detected through vibrations. You can't set off a nuke without the world knowing.
3. Clinton and the democrats safely contained these crazy dictators. I don't think the "war on terra" is going to scale up very well to nuclear war. That said I hope people would think twice before they vote for Bush again this year.
The U.S. official said the cloud could be the result of a forest fire.
Damn, we must look stupid to gov't officials.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Maybe they staged it. A large ordinance detonation used to make the world fear their nuclear power.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
This CNN story claims that a US official suggests that the mushroom cloud might be caused by a forest fire. A little bit of physics knowledge [layman/common-sense] makes this suggestion laughable: a mushroom cloud is caused by a large amount of superheated gasses, concentrated and hot enough to rise miles into the atmosphere before dissipating enough to break the cap. Unless they have had a multi-year drought and a forest dense enough to flash to many thousand degrees C in a very short period of time, there's no possible way the mushroom cloud was created that way.
Now, it's entirely possible that it is not a mushroom cloud, as it sounds like all the indications of its presence so far are satellite shots. AFAIK very few, if any, satellites can shoot pictures at a sufficiently low angle to actually get enough outline to confirm a mushroom cloud. Basic physics again: too low and angle, you get a massively distored image because there's a) more air in the way, and b) angle of incidence causes wild refraction.
If anyone can elaborate on (or correct) these two issues, please comment. I'd be glad to be proven wrong in some way, as a verified nuclear N.Korea is not a good thing. However, what we know so far is not promising.
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Could it have been a small meteorite strike?
So, if the US goes into NK, we are pretty much going to go mano-a-mano with the PRC for domination of the globe. Neither the US or the PRC really want that. ... yet.
And don't, for a second, think that the US or the PRC really want to do that... ever.
This ain't the cold war. Our economies are so intertwined that a war between us would result in huge economic depressions, job losses, people going hungry, cats and dogs living together, etc.
Put it this way, if you lived during the cold war, you'd never pick up a piece of merchandise you bought from the store and see "Made in USSR" on the bottom. "Made in China" is farily common, last I checked....
A large ordinance detonation used to make the world fear their nuclear power.
Not likely. If it was a real nuke, our sats would have picked up the gamma burst and we would have picked up the distinctive seismic signature. Those in power know as of right now whether or not it was a nuke, the question is - what will they tell us?
Mushroom clouds are an artifact of big explosions, not just atomic/hydrogen bombs.
One interesting ordinance is the fule-air explosive devices. Take two gases that are explosive when combined and ignigted and put them in two big tanks at a great presure then release it all at once and a split second later when the expaning mix covers a football field, but is still at very high (80+ atmospheres iirc) detonate them.
When first developed generals and such warned that thier use might be mistaken for an neuclear weapons.
If you've seen the movie outbreak the bomb they were going to drop to stop that plauge was a FAE munition.
The tell tale in this case of course would be the gamma radation signature as well as other factors, by itself a mushroom cloud just means a very big bang.
Mycroft
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
While I don't have a degree in geophysics, I wonder if the mushroom cloud was volcanic in nature? N. Korea *is* close enough to the ring of fire that it could, perhaps in a fluke, have experienced a volcanic eruption, resulting in both a crater, and a miles wide mushroom cloud.
If I remember correctly, Mt. St. Helens wasn't expected to erupt either, except by geophysicists, and in comparison was a relatively unprecedented event (being that the only volconoes to erupt in a US territory within recent history were in Hawaii).
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Don't you realize how advantageous it is to release this information on the anneversary of the twin towers attack?
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
the question is - what will they tell us?
The truth. There is more than one government in the world, and they can't seem to agree on any single thing. How could they keep a secret among themselves?
Besides that, there are plenty of civilian radiation detectors out there. A guy I know who worked at the Forsmark nuclear plant in Sweden told me that back in 1986, they found out about the Chernobyl accident way before anyone in the Swedish government. (And quite some time before the Soviet authorities admitted anything had happened)
Although they did have a few worried hours trying to figure out where the radiation was coming from, before they realized that it actually had come from outside the plant. The isotope composition told them pretty quickly that it was a reactor failure, and not a bomb. Calculating backwards from the prevailing winds then gave them a pretty good guess of which reactor it was.
I know this is probably too late to get modded up, but I spent a year in Osan, Make no mistake, we weren't there to to protect South Korean. In fact, after arriving at Osan, we were briefed that we were, literally, nothing more than speed bumps, preventing the North's troops from advancing too quickly through the South. We were there to hold off the North's attack until reinforcements could arrive from Japan.
To get an idea how large their army was, they gave us a rough estimate that we would be outnumbered 100 to 1. Needless to say, during exercises, we would be laden down with about 15 pounds of ammo; Not because we didn't need it, but because it made us aware of what we were up against.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
"One senior intelligence official noted that preparations the North knew could be detected by the United States might be a scare or a negotiating tactic by North Korea"
Which means that the "ho-hum" we're publicly seeing might simply be Washington's response. "Oh, that was supposed to be your bomb? It was kinda hard to tell. See, we thought you guys were working on nuclear weapons over there, and... well, shucks, we've seen bigger conventional explosions."
What is wrong with this world. Do the people reading this post and moderating it up understand what they are reading?
The PRK is covered with military installations. This JInterest states that we should use "strategic nuclear weapons against the PRK to destroy every military installation." Yes, because nuking a country of 22 million people is the right thing to do.
You think WWII was bad? I agree, it was. But if you start a nuclear war in this day and age things will be much, much worse.
"Never underestimate the instinct of most tyrants for self-preservation." Which is why North Korea would never use a nuclear weapon unless attacked to begin with. They would be utterly and completely wiped out. There wouldn't be half a dozen North Koreans left alive.
I still can't believe a post basicly promoting the genocide of a population of 22 million people has been modded up!
What is wrong with you people. I watched the movie the gray zone the other night and I was amazed at what people would go along with in those circumstances. I thought how did that happen.
But all JInterest had to do was say OMG there is a big scary guy over there and he's bad and might hurt us and people are willing to go nuke a country. WHAT THE FUCK!
Burn my Karma, I don't care. This needed to be said. Fucking Sheeple.
So I'm jump'n up and down screaming show me the money.
If you and yours lived only 50 miles from the DMZ, I don't think you'd be spouting such nonsense.
As the poster above suggested, any move by the US would be met with decimation of the South Korean capital.
The North Koreans have enough artillery and incendiary weapons to make Seoul look like post WWII Dresden. Neither the US nor the South Koreans have enough weapons to destroy all those artillery positions before they've done their work. Yes, the US would eventually win. But it would take at least 1 to 3 months to fight North Korea to a standstill. Perhaps longer, as most of our forces are committed elsewhere.
You may be able to accept a few hundred thousand South Korean civilian casualties and the reduction of their capital to rubble. But it shouldn't come as a surprise that the South Koreans are not so anxious to risk that possibility. And that's just the conventional weapon threat. If the North managed to lob a single nuclear device towards the south, the casualties could run to millions.
I suggest you do your tough talking when it's the lives of your family on the line. In this case, the South Korean's have every right to drive the direction of these negotiations. It's their families only 50 miles away from the DMZ, not yours or mine.
You know I just don't buy the whole "he is insane" bullshit. Why is it that every leader who does something we don't like is lables "insane"?
I suspect he is very wily but certainly not insane.
evil is as evil does
The logic behind the US's preemptive strike strategy boggles the mind
The logic is fairly obvious, actually. Governments create crises to remain in power, increase their power, and to quell protest against the amassing of that power. Crises are an excellent way to oppress your own citizenry while justifying your actions to the more gullible members of your nation.
There is no profit in a solved problem. Unsolved problems are the method by which politicians remain in power, along with those who support them. The worse the problem, the more one can profit on the fear and uncertainty of the citizenry.
If you want to create a problem, openly targeting three hostile nations as "the axis of evil" is a great way to do so. If they don't act quickly enough to fulfill their role as 'the enemy', invade and conquer one of them. That'll get the other two moving at double-time to present a credible threat, if only to prevent the invasion and conquest of their own countries. And by doing so, they become exactly what they've been labeled: dangerous enemies!
The logic is beautifully Machiavellian.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Why exactly? (Except for my stupid mistake of writing "2nd" instead of "cold").
I would think that correcting a post that misstates that my country doesn't have an army is very much on topic.
I wonder how much "noise" there is with all the natural seismic activity in Japan (3 large earthquakes in last week).
If anybody is interested there is a way to determine if the seismic activity is from an explosion or from an earthquake, or nuclear blast.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
This radiation monitoring station in Ishikawa Prefecture of Japan, due east of the Korean peninsula, shows elevated radiation levels on September 10th. http://atom.pref.ishikawa.jp/RS25000.htm
Supposedly the explosion took place very close to a weapons factory.
:-)
I'm just speculating, Tom Clancy style, about a joint American-Japanese-South Korean sortie, you know, James Bond-ish sort of thing. And on Kim Jong Il's grand celebration, to boot. Now THAT would be quite an embarassment to the Illuminated Leader.
Then, the well trained western media calls it something ludicrous, like a forest fire, a classic techno-thriller wrapup.
Now that I've read the end of the book, I'd like to go back and read a bit of character development, the romantic interest, etc.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I've actually worked there, and I remember that day. Now I really wish I hadn't spent a good part of that day outside in the rain. For years afterward there was a bit of a "hotspot" just north of Stockholm where that rainstorm had washed a bunch of stuff out of the cloud and onto the ground.
As for the possibility of civilians detecting a nuclear test - that depends on a lot of variables such as how the wind blows. Given the geography of the location, the cloud might go out over open ocean or over China, in which case you won't hear anything from civilians. Or it could blow over Japan, in which case some university scientists might notice something.
Certainly the U.S. knows if it was a nuke thanks to our satellite systems; but the current regime may not wish to publicise such a failure of their anti-proliferation policy just before an election.
In any case, I would have thought that the North Koreans would make an announcement if they had actually had a successful test. Why wouldn't they? I know they certainly trumpeted up their attempts at a space launch.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Could this cloud have been the result of a U.S. strike against a North Korean nuclear facility? Maybe we located the place where they keep all of their bombs and just took it out?
#end tinfoilmode
I know, I can think of a million reasons why we shouldn't do something like that, but maybe we did anyway. It's not like this administration is beyond acting like cowboys...
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Reading 'Mushroom Cloud Over North Korea' woke me up ;) but its abit of a dud. Move along everyone, nothing to see here. Firstly, if it was a nuke theres no way it would be hidden for 4 days - the US would certainly want the news out, hell even i would support a pre-emptive attack on that evidence, and even if the didnt, lots of people would want to know so a cover up would be hard. The radiation would be picked up, its not. Even that padded-cell case wouldnt do an above ground test in the small country, it would be below ground or over the sea (he himself would be at risk from the radiation!). Its not a US bombing raid on a nuke facility, nuclear weapons dont go off when you drop bombs on them, they do give off lots of radiation tho. Its unlikely to be a US mini-nuke (although that would explain a cover-up) again because of the radiation: if it leaves a crater, you're gonna get fall-out and even if not from that, you'd get if from the nukes they destroy! From the location its probably a missile test gone wrong or some explosives all stored in one place or fuel?
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Not impossible, just hard. To be fair, I'd call it impossible for N. Korea to construct a 5Kt weapon given their lack of experiance in the subject matter.
With sophisticated facilities, extensive work done in neutron reflectors and fission enhancing substances (Tritium for example), it would be possible to construct such a weapon.
Think of it this way, the Manhattan project wasn't interested in a target yeild, they just wanted to make the concept work. All three of their first generation nukes tipped the scales around 15-20 kt. For all intents and purposes, it's fair to assume that 15-20 kt is the default size of your average nuke unless you engineer it differently. If N. Korea is trying to build the "lets see if this works" nuke, it's likely going to fall into that range.
Killfile(TGK)
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