Update — Sensors Do Not Pick Up North Korean Radioactivity

Update: 02/19 20:49 GMT by S : The story below has been retracted upon further examination of the research. There has been no detection of radioactivity.
gbrumfiel writes "A global network of sensors has picked up faint traces of radioactive gas that probably seeped from last week's underground nuclear test by North Korea. The detection of xenon-133 in Japan and Russia provides further evidence of the nuclear nature of the test, but offers no hint as to the type of weapon used. Atmospheric modelling by the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna shows that the gas likely seeped from North Korea's test site on 15 February, three days after the original test. That indicates that the test was well sealed deep underground."

Comments

Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[eldavojohn]

I don't know, guys, after watching this video from KCNA news I'm kind of concerned. I mean the United States' air force is being overrun with cost and we've only built 63 F-35 aircraft. How can that stand up to the DPRK's 40 Chengdu F-7s?! And defending Pyongyang they have 40 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29s! 40 + 40 = 70 and 70 > 63!!!

In the video, you can see the pilot explain that they will reduce me to ash! TO ASH! And they only need six minutes! Look at how hard he must have studied to learn how to fly a jet fighter, clearly he knows what he's talking about. Apparently I'm guilty of state sponsored terrorism against the North Koreans and I didn't even know it! Welp, I'm withdrawing all my savings and spending it on hookers and blow, for in six minutes we all might be ash. Catchy tune at the end too, that's a real earworm, I'll be whistling that one all the way to the firestorm they are going to unleash on me.

Oh great and powerful Korean People's Army Air Force, please have mercy on my electricity having soul! I knew not what I was terrorizing!

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

How can that stand up to the DPRK's 40 Chengdu F-7s?

Indeed, a Chinese copy of a Soviet airplane that was good in the 1970's would scare a Hornet or Eagle pilot shitless.

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[CrimsonAvenger]

The Soviet T-34 was vastly inferior to the German panzers as well.

Umm, no.

The T34/76 was considerably superior to any panzer then extant in 1941, when they were first encountered.

It wasn't until 1944 that the Germans reached the point that the overwhelming majority of Panzers were better than the T34/76.

And at that point, the Russians were building the T34/85, which was rather better than the latest version of Pzkw-4 (which was about half the German panzer inventory), though somewhat inferior to Pzkw-5 (the other half).

The only real weakness the T34 series of tanks had was lack of proper communications equipment (only the company commander's tank had a radio, for instance, until late in the war).

Plus that gawdawful commander's hatch on the earliest T34s....

If you feel that technology assures victory where is the Roman empire today?

If you think that the Roman Empire dominated the Classical World due to superior technology, you know even less of history than your comments about T34 suggest.

Hint: the Legions' doctrine was far more important than the Legions' technology (which was basically the same as everyone else's (iron swords, spear, torso armor and helmet) and considerably inferior to that used by the Persian cavalry at the time (yes, I've always been rather fond of the Persian composite bows as weapons of war - it's really too bad the Romans worked out a counter to it).

Re:Retrieved Samples Without DPRK's AF Scrambling?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I think we've pretty clearly established throughout the history of the U.S. technology alone don't win wars.

Actually, we've established that US technology alone NEVER wins wars.

What we've established that wins wars is US production - we didn't win WW2 with superior technology, we won it because we could do things like build a military up from "small" to "fricking huge" while still having enough production surplus to provide weapons/supplies/whatever to everyone else in the world.

Note that one of the most interesting bits of trivia about WW2 is that the USA, during the war, built more aircraft carriers than existed in the entire world before the war.

And, more importantly, we built more transports (Liberty ships, anyone) than existed in the entire world before the war.

In the mid '30s, a German general, doing an analysis of mechanized warfare concepts noted that the USA had ~75% of the world's production capability in internal combustion engines. And quite properly concluded that that meant that going to war with America would be suicidal for Germany.

Too bad (for Hitler) that Hitler didn't read that sort of report.