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United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea
skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
Better way. Ignore them completely. Don't acknowledge them, don't respond. Act like you you don't even hear them.
Pretend they don't even exist.
That's bloody stupid. Has ignoring playground bullies ever worked? No, it just invites escalating provocations.
If I were North Korea and I just wanted to blow up some Yankees out of spite, I'd say "forget the missile" and try to work out how to get a nuke into a standard intermodal container on a ship bound to a busy port near a population center.
Slashdot, check me on this. As North Korea, are my nukes powerful enough to do damage to land-based civilians from a boat pulling into harbor in Oakland or New York or Los Angeles? I know detonating a nuke in the NYC harbor was among of the canonical cold-war-turns-hot scenarios.
Captcha: "terrors". you don't say.
they've gotta be getting to the point where even China isn't going to take their crap for much longer. They WERE trying to destabilize the region. NOW they're trying to destabilize the entire world.
I see NK like some punk little child that goes around trying to start trouble everywhere he can, that always runs back and stands next to his big brother whenever anyone gets fed up with his harassment. This makes him bold beyond common sense, kicking and spitting on the others around him that would otherwise break his face. And Big Brother has got to be getting sick of it by now.
And just like in the neighborhood, china's the hulk of a big brother that is the only reason any number of others in the neighborhood don't tackle the punk and give him the pounding he so badly needs and deserves.
So really the big brother is the only one that can effectively fix the problem, by finally picking him up by the hair, shaking vigorously, and screaming "ENOUGH!"
I just hope that china is even a fifth as annoyed with him as the rest of the world is. Seriously, even China-style communism would do that country a world of good. I'd just love to see Jinping make a trip over to Pyongyang and sit the little dictator/delusional-god in a small chair and discuss making some minor adjustments to how NK is run.
(contrary to some suggestions in earlier comments, this is not the sort of problem you can ignore till it goes away... the more you ignore little punks like this, the bolder they get. ignore them, and it will never end, it will only continue to escalate)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Depends. I'm not familiar with the geography of Oakland's or New York's harbors, but a low yield nuke in the LA-Long Beach port would probably have (relatively) few immediate casualties. The port itself is huge, and the surrounding area relatively under-populated (compared to other areas of the city). The Hiroshima blast radius was only about 1 mile with little direct structural damage outside that radius. Such a blast at the LA port would still probably kill thousands, but very likely far less than Hiroshima did. They ensuing chaos (we Angelenos LOVE a good riot) would probably kill as many people as the bomb.
My guess would be that Oakland would be even less severe, and New York would be worse.
You also have to consider a big difference between WW1 and WW2: fear of communism. While almost everyone in France was in a patriotic frenzy before WW1, there were a lot of people that did not want to fight Germany for WW2 because fascism was seen as a good protection against communism.
Germany, Italy, Spain had fascists regimes. France spared a fascist coup in 1934 just because different fascists leaders could not agree with each others. Some where hoping that a war defeat would bring to France what a coup missed to achieve.
NK is not Germany, though. And so far they're just shaking their fists in the air, not invading countries.
One does not "pull a boat" into Oalkand or LA without the US already knowing what is on it and where it came from.
In exchange for fast customs clearance the US clears the vast majority of containers before the ship departs from foreign ports.
Hahaha...only 8-10% of containers are inspected before departing foreign ports, and roughly the same when they're coming into port in North America, there's just too much of it to search and look it up. The majority of shipping relies on documentation and belief that the shipper is "following the regs and laws."
Om, nomnomnom...
There is a book where a supervillain delivers nukes into the US mainland inside of new cars. The A/C unit of the car is replaced with a nuke; then ships are filled with those cars and sent to US ports. The cars are perfectly functional, except that the A/C is not working - but who is going to test that? Not the dealerships; they are owned by the said supervillain.
There is a lot of large machinery that can contain a nuke, or parts of a nuke. You cannot even take that machinery apart. Consider a large electric motor, for example... that is 10' or 20' in diameter. How would customs agents even power it up? it is absolutely impossible. But that mountain of metal can have plenty of space inside to hold contraband. The shipper does not even need to damage the product. If the container is inspected, the agents see what they expect to see - a bulldozer, for example. How would they know that 90% of its fuel tank is already taken by a contraband? How would anyone know what is hermetically welded inside the steel chassis of that machine? You cannot X-ray it; you have to destroy the product - and the agents will do that only if they have specific information.
I do not know but could he commit the British people to that level of death and destruction without having tried?
If he had stood up to Hitler earlier, the level of death and destruction would have been far less, or perhaps zero. Germany was still very weak when the appeasement started. When Hitler sent soldiers into the Rhineland, they had no ammunition. If the Allies had put up even a token resistance, they could have stopped it. But by making concession after concession, they gave Germany time to build up forces. Even after the war started in September of 1939, Britain and France took little offensive action, and war settled into a "sitzkrieg". They gave the Krauts another nine months to finish off Poland, and mass their forces on the western front.
At the time, WWI was called "The Great War" and WWII had not yet been named. When Churchill, who had opposed appeasement, was asked what the war should be called, he answered "The Unnecessary War".
Attach the trigger to a simple magnetic door contact, and the thing goes off when the container is opened. An IR motion detector will pick up any movement in the container if they manage to bypass the DC. A normally-open switch under the device will trigger if the device is removed from the container. Including the cost of the battery you've spent under $100. Even North Korea can afford that.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
No, they don't test every ship with a geiger counter, and even if they did, a well shielded nuclear bomb (the regular kind) will not show unless the container containing it is opened.
Learn to love Alaska
That's a good summary, Japan was all but defeated in the Pacific and on the mainland, the nukes just drove the point home. It's often been said that Hitler fought the wrong war, he opened the East front first which prompted Stalin and Churchill to align against him (even though they detested each other). The history we (everyone, not just yanks) learned at school comes from a nationalistic POV, this is why many Chinese do not like Japan, the Japanese are not taught about the atrocities in Korea, Burma, China, etc, and many Japanese see the victims ( such as surviving "comfort women") as a bunch of liars denigrating their country. The same "winners history" can seen in every public school, here in Australia it was the abhorrent treatment of aboriginals that got swept under the carpet in history classes.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
China wants North Korea as a buffer zone. Having a reunified Korea lead by the democratic South is not what it wants - that's why it continues to prop up the Norks, despite the latter being insane.
China doesn't want to be an enemy. It is a competitor though, so in some sense it already feels as if it is in a shadow war with the US (and the rest of the World, in fact). Here's an article discussing the huge amount of espionage that the Chinese Government is organizing:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20130328.aspx
China knows it cannot win a kinetic war against the US and its allies. It is instead planning to set up all the pieces beforehand (eg. technology, modern arms and a knowledge of US military secrets) and have a strong regional force so that the US will hesitate to intervene in any dispute. The plan of China is already to enforce its ridiculous "9-line" claim, by force if necessary.
However, China is concerned about the supply lines to keep its industry going. It is contributing to global peacekeeping like the Somalia anti-piracy operation (which also helps train the PLA Navy for eventual power projection in the Indian Ocean). If China stops trampling on the Exclusive Economic Zone of its neighbours then its rise will be a positive thing. At the moment it is running around roughshod over its neighbours, so it is increasingly viewed negatively by its neighbours (who used to be neutral or friendly). That is why Vietnam asks US *military forces* to visit (no doubt a surprise for any readers with their mind still stuck in the paradigms of the 1970's), of course the US is still in Japan and Korea. Then we have Burma/Myanmar peeved with the Chinese (and their crap quality weaponry) so turning toward the Russians; then we have the Philippines who kicked the US out asking to have the US back. The funny thing was that China was afraid of a US-lead anti-China alliance even though none existed. By stupidly throwing its weight around it has in-fact got it's neighbours annoyed and they are asking the US to guarantee their protection (thereby starting to create such an anti-China alliance). I know that the Chinese feel that it is "their time to take their rightful place in the World", and this is somewhat true, but they are so terribly clumsy about it they don't realise they are acting as their own worst enemy.
Note to Chinese readers, we like you and don't want to fight you, so please chill a little. We know you don't want to be pushed around, please realise no-one else wants China to push them around either. Compete hard, but compete fair. :)
France and England stood by and LET Hitler take what he wanted
And so did the USA. We knew about the holocaust long before we got involved. Hell, the service contract for the IBM concentration camp management machines was handled straight out of Armonk, NY. Well after we knew what was going on we were still selling aluminum to Japan, and fuel and other resources straight to Germany. The Bush family fortune is based on deliberately channeling funds to Hitler's S.S. There's plenty of blame to go around.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"