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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
This probably isn't a nuclear detonation, since they would be instantly detected, due to the huge flash created. Back in the 80s, we had satellite technology to detect nuclear explosions. Don't you think we have it now?
got sig?
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
Nuclear Launch... Detected
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."
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/
Behind one these curtains is a weird, probably psychotic dictator with weapons of mass destruction? Can you guess which one?
A: Behind our curtain!
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
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.
All GPS satellites have detectors for a nuclear flash.
http://ares.redsword.com/GPS/old/sum_sat.htm
Are there any online seismometers that show this blast. A nuclear explosion would show one big spike, but large ordnance would show a series of smaller spikes.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
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....
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
Here's the article.k orea.blast/
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/09/11/n
To respond to myself
n -5 027-1.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/opla
"The DPRK will seek force ratios of 3-5 to 1 in armor, 6-8 to 1 in artillery, and 4-6 to 1 in infantry forces to mount an attack. In attempting to breach a well-prepared defensive position, the DPRK may be expected to seek even larger ratios. This undoubtedly would be the case in attempting to break through DMZ defenses.
Combined-arms operations constitute the foundation of tactical battle in DPRK doctrine. Utilization of the forward conventional corps, reinforced by the mechanized and armor corps, to fight from the DMZ to Pusan is called the Strike Force concept. This concept embodies how the DPRK is expected to fight, especially south of Seoul or in defense of the DPRK."
"Without moving any of its more than 12,000 artillery pieces, "Pyongyang could sustain up to 500,000 rounds per hour against Combined Forces Command defenses and Seoul for several hours" Gen. Thomas A. Schwartz said in testimony in March 2001 before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Schwartz heads the United Nations and ROK-US Combined Forces Commands and US Forces Korea.
Towards the end of the Korean War fighting in 1953, the Chinese were able to fire approximately 100,000 rounds per day against US forces, and the number of rounds per day was increasing. A 100,000 round day would be a light day in a new war.
In 1993 and 1994, when the North Korean nuclear question emerged as an international issue, the North deployed large numbers of improved 170mm self-propelled guns and 240mm multiple rocket launchers to forward positions close to the DMZ. This was apparently meant to threaten South Korea's security while calling for nuclear negotiations with the US."
"A major air campaign against northern forces would be required before the counteroffensive could begin. A US Marine Expeditionary Force (in division strength) and the 82nd Air Assault Division, along with ROK divisions, would launch an overland offensive north toward Wonsan from the east coast. Soon thereafter, a combined US-ROK force would likely stage an amphibious landing near Wonsan, and advance to Pyongyang. Subsequently, a combined US-ROK force would execute a major counteroffensive from north of Seoul aimed at seizing Pyongyang. This would be achieved either by linking up with the force at Wonsan, or meeting it at Pyongyang."
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!
Well, that's just great, but North Korea isn't in Southeast Asia.
Wars are Gods way of teaching Americans geography.
The spike is at 16:10 UTC which would be 2:10 AM in Korea. The article says the explosion happened at 11:00 AM.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course we have a choice:
Would you like to play a game?
>list games
Ball
Global Thermonuclear War
>play Global Thermonuclear War
How about a nice game of Ball?
>No, I would like to play Global Thermonuclear War.
Very well...
Seriously though, of course we have a choice. We didn't cave in to the USSR, I don't expect us to give a cowtow to N. Korea. Seriously, expect a carrier battle group in the Sea of Japan ASAP if there isn't one there already. Expect half of the U.S. Navy including a dozen submarines loaded with 60 ICBM's each sitting off the coast of North Korea very soon. Oh, we'll be playing "ball" all right.
My other first post is car post.
> I suggest you better check you facts before you post.
Yes, quite.
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.
pictures speak a 1000 words
ex 1
ex 2
you can find 100's of recountings of forest fires that have mushroom clouds
The US tested many sub-kiloton devices.
I suggest as a minimum reading a bool called the Curve of Binding Energy... I'm pretty sure its got a chapter talking about Ted Taylor's efforts to build micro-yield devices.
Either way, your comment is completely wrong. Its far more complicated to created small yield devices, but not even remotely impossible. Its extremely unlikely that North Korea did that, though. While creating a nuclear detonation is simple given enough raw fissionable material (US and Russia both had no failed tests with primitive technology until we started pushing the envelope for smaller and smaller explosions), creating micro-yield explosions is, and the details is one of the closest kept nuclear secrets in the US.
We've had smaller nukes than that since the late 1950's. Our AIM-26A and AIR-2A air to air missiles typically had 1.5 nuclear warheads. Some of these had the even smaller 0.25 KT warheads.
More Info:
http://www.milnet.com/aamtab.htm
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/arm/arm16.htm
http://www.hill.af.mil/museum/photos/coldwar/genie .htm
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too