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North Korea Claims It Detonated Its First Hydrogen Bomb (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes:
North Korea announced it has detonated its first hydrogen bomb, dramatically escalating the nuclear challenge from one of the world's most isolated and dangerous states. "This is the self-defensive measure we have to take to defend our right to live in the face of the nuclear threats and blackmail by the United States and to guarantee the security of the Korean Peninsula," said a North Korean announcer on the state-run network. "With this hydrogen bomb test, we have joined the major nuclear powers." The North's announcement came about an hour after detection devices around the world had picked up a 5.1 seismic event that South Korea said was 30 miles from the Punggye-ri site where the North has conducted nuclear tests in the past.
"North Korea's fourth test — in the context of repeated statements by U.S., Chinese, and South Korean leaders — throws down the gauntlet to the international community to go beyond paper resolutions and find a way to impose real costs on North Korea for pursuing this course of action," says Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. According to the NY Times, the test is bound to figure in the American presidential campaign, where several candidates have already cited the North's nuclear experimentation as evidence of American weakness — though they have not prescribed alternative strategies for choking off the program. The United States did not develop its first thermonuclear weapons — commonly known as hydrogen bombs — until 1952, seven years after the first and only use of nuclear weapons in wartime.
"North Korea's fourth test — in the context of repeated statements by U.S., Chinese, and South Korean leaders — throws down the gauntlet to the international community to go beyond paper resolutions and find a way to impose real costs on North Korea for pursuing this course of action," says Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. According to the NY Times, the test is bound to figure in the American presidential campaign, where several candidates have already cited the North's nuclear experimentation as evidence of American weakness — though they have not prescribed alternative strategies for choking off the program. The United States did not develop its first thermonuclear weapons — commonly known as hydrogen bombs — until 1952, seven years after the first and only use of nuclear weapons in wartime.
They popped a hydrogen filled balloon with a lit cigarette and declared success.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
By his divine power he created hydrogen from his bowel and light it setting the world alight in his glorious blaze. Praise the leader and death to the west.
We have sniffer/detector craft for just this reason.
I wait until we hear confirmation before believing anything NK says.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A nuclear armed world is a polite world.
They detonate a hydrogen bomb and explicitly say they are doing this because they consider the U.S. an enemy. Are you seriously suggesting that's not threatening enough?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Oh fuck off.
I'm sick of being told by people that I need to be scared because the North Koreans / Mozlems / Commies / Mexicans are $minor_hurdle away from raping my wife, blowing up my house, and stealing my bike.
I'm SICK of being told to be scared and I won't fucking do it any more.
If the NKs have a bomb, good on em.
How about we stop fucking with the world's people and then they'll have no reason to want to blow us up?
Does anyone actually believe that "they hate us fer aar freedoms" ? Coz I sure as fuck don't any more.
So, what would NK do with it? The military leaders aren't completely insane like some dictators here and there. Not even the front figures are that insane.
They have to keep playing war to keep the population timid. Any longer period of peace and the population will not be as willing to make sacrifices for the state.
The occasional bullet shot at South Korea is mostly symbolic. They do just what they can get away with and SK doesn't retaliate because they don't want to harm the North Korean civilians.
The real players are China, Russia and South Korea (backed by the US.) here. NK just abuses the situation to keep control of their population.
No one of them takes any strong stance regarding NK since that would piss off the others.
If North Korea does something so inconvenient that any one of its neighbors feels that a war might be better then North Korea would be obliterated in a matter of days.
Having a hydrogen bomb or two with delivery mechanism is not going to change that.
Do you really think the Chinese likes having a nuclear-armed, inscrutable wack-job on their doorstep? They put up with NK because they like having a buffer between themselves and SK. I just hope they have some sort of 'kill switch' to eliminate the threat (for their own sake) in case he gets too far out of hand.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
China does not want the refugees if the north goes down.
But they also don't want any fall out and the north can shell the shit out of seoul.
It won't be long before China or Russia sells them a delivery vehicle, if they haven't done so already.
They have Seoul with a population of almost 10 million only 35 miles from the border and that's as good a hostage as any. North Korea must have people who know about the outside world and that they'd be obliterated if they attacked anyone. Even China might just roll over them to avoid western forces on their borders if necessary. He's realized that if you only seem "half dangerous" like Iraq, Afghanistan etc. you get invaded. If you are armed to the teeth and batshit crazy maybe you're not. He would, as far as I can tell be the first nuclear force to be invaded.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
As soon as North Korea starts getting a little excited and starts sabre rattling and threatening other countries, China will tell them to shut the fuck up or they'll withdraw aid.
Summation 2
I guess I'm dumb, how is a pure fission warhead not thermonuclear?
Not dumb, but you could have looked it up on Wikipedia. Never the less:
- Fission works by splitting the nucleus of large atoms, such as Uranium or Plutonium. This works according to a surprisingly simply principle, called the chain reaction, which gets stronger, the more concentrated the active element is. This means that if you take a large enough mass of the right element and squeeze it together in a small enough volume (and quickly enough), then it will explode.
- Fusion works the opposite way, by fusing together light nuclei; the perhaps surprising thing is, fusion releases energy when you fuse light nuclei, but not when the nuclei are heavier - I think it is around iron that it changes. Fusion on ly happens at very high temperature and pressure, hence the name "thermonuclear". Incidentally, the process of fusion in a hydrogen bomb is set of by a fission device.
But look the subjects up - wikipedia is probably a good place to start.
+1.
North Korea doesn't want a war with America or South Korea. They know they would be wiped out in a matter of days. They (the Kim regime) want to keep living like kings, with all the food, women, drugs, and praise anyone could ever dream of.
Of course they want the status quo, and the only way to keep that is through duping the populace with this perpetual war. They are like a thug who acts badass, but not badass enough to have someone actually react (get arrested or his ass kicked).
Judging by his punctuation I'd say no, not yet.
Before the Norks went to the Great Leader in the Sky, a lot of Sorks would die first because it doesn't take long to light off the Norks missiles which are aimed and ready for screwing S. Korea.
And after the war, the winning combatants would have to put up with world condemnation for killing so many innocent Norks. Plus, they'd have to fund the rehab of N. Korea.
And any build up before a war would have to counter the help Putin would give to the Norks, because he would see it as a way of raising the cost. He'd could then argue to his own sheep that what happened to the Norks was being planned for the Russkies.
these West German youth knew they didn't have any real power, but they knew through song they could fight against their enemies.
The songs and protests were not directed against their "enemies". They were directed against the Atlanticist government of Helmut Schmidt, and the American deployment of Pershing Missiles in Germany. Rather than "fighting" their enemies, the protestors advocated unilateral disarmament and appeasement.
Why are South Korean youth so silent when facing a similar threat?
Perhaps they have more sense.
And if you want the US to stop fucking with the rest of the world, then maybe the rest of the world should stand up and fight for themselves and stop living the socialist dream where socialistic ideas strip necessary funding from programs such as National Defense apparatus. The rest of the world would be in hell had the US not entered World War 1 and 2. Also if you do feel like we need to stop fucking with the rest of the world then maybe you should petition NATO and the UN to expel the US so we wouldn't be called upon when there is a major issue taking place. Take up arms and defend your borders and stop relying on the US when you get your panties ruffled by terrorists.
Apparently, you believe we enjoy sending our children out to fight (and die) when in your ass is in a sling. The vast majority of us would prefer not to do so. When was the last time America actually saw any benefit from doing so? Did we steal the oil from Iraq, as many accused us of being motivated for? No, but because we screwed up with the Iraq II, nobody wanted to finish up what was started, and we've been left with the void that created ISIS.
Just another day in Paradise
A more accurate version of thermonuclear would be thermonuclear triggered. The military just likes to shorten things.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Does not explain why one is called thermonuclear and the other not.
No, I thought about that after I had clicked send - the crucial difference is that in a fission reaction, the explosive reaction starts with "cold" Uranium, plutonium, ..., but in a thermonuclear, the big explosion does not happen until a very high temperature has been reached, hence 'thermonuclear' instead of just 'nuclear'.
If true, it's quite frightening. H bombs currently require multiple small A bombs to triggter, and the bomb casing is also typically made out of non-weapons grade uranium which reflects and focuses the A-bomb blasts onto the tritium and deuterium core.
First, no, you don't need "multiple small A bombs to trigger" a fusion detonation. You need one. You can make multi-stage weapons like the Tsar Bomba, nobody seems to nowadays.
Second, you can supposedly make the tamper out of a lot of different materials (even lead) - but even if you decided to use uranium, any country with a big enough program to make an A-bomb would have a crapload of uranium metal sitting around.
Nuclear weapons create earthquakes, and you can roughly estimate the size of the bomb from the magnitude of the earthquake. In this case, we're looking at a 5.1 magnitude quake:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...
There's an empirical law for calculating the size of an underground nuclear blast from the magnitude of the earthquake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This law is a little sketchy (earthquake size depends on how tightly the bomb is packed into the ground), but taking it at face value I calculate a 45 kiloton blast. That's nowhere near a true fusion H-bomb (typically hundreds of kilotons up to megatons): it's consistent with a large fission bomb, a boosted fission weapon, or a failed fusion test, where the fusion secondary failed to ignite.
This April we are holding our annual war games with South Korea. We expect North Korea to rattle it's sabers and embarrass you again while this exercise is conducted. We propose the following: Approach the leadership of North Korea with helping them conduct a war game of their own. Get a couple hundred divisions of your army into Pyong Yang under those pretenses, then capture or kill Kim and destroy his regime before he even realizes what's happening. Allow the South Korean army to take over the north and in exchange we will completely withdraw all troops from the Korean peninsula.
It won't be long before China or Russia sells them a delivery vehicle, if they haven't done so already.
They have Seoul with a population of almost 10 million only 35 miles from the border and that's as good a hostage as any. North Korea must have people who know about the outside world and that they'd be obliterated if they attacked anyone. Even China might just roll over them to avoid western forces on their borders if necessary. He's realized that if you only seem "half dangerous" like Iraq, Afghanistan etc. you get invaded. If you are armed to the teeth and batshit crazy maybe you're not. He would, as far as I can tell be the first nuclear force to be invaded.
Having been to the DPRK, I don't think anyone can really understand it without visiting. 99% of what is written about the country is written by outsiders, and a substantial amount of that is written by South Korea, which is still at war with the North. So propaganda abounds.
Having said that, I don't completely understand the DPRK either, but many of the things they do make sense from their perspective. Many people there sincerely believe that South Korea and the USA plan to invade their country by force at some point. It isn't an unrealistic idea- the USA has a long history of invading and bombing places that we don't like. Every single year in April there are joint South Korea / USA exercises right off the coast of North Korea. These happen in disputed waters- Look at the Northern Limit Line and how it compares to the land border. If you look at it impartially, it is skewed in favor of the South. This is the part of the ocean where the USA and South Korea do combined exercises every single year in April. The USA and South Korea say these are defensive exercises to practice coordination of forces. I have no doubt that statement is both honest and true.
The problem is that North Korea sees that we are using landing craft in these exercises. There is one in the very first photo on the Foal Eagle wikipedia page. Hovercraft aren't generally classified as defensive vehicles. They are for making beach landings. I'm sure there are perfectly valid reasons (opening up additional fronts in a defensive war, etc) for having hovercraft in defensive military exercises. But North Korea doesn't see it that way. The US and South Korea escalate the situation every single year with the military exercises. They aren't stupid- they know they would lose a war, and they are quite understandably fearful of one. Paranoia isn't crazy when it has a solid basis in reality and history. Having nuclear weapons is the only card they can possibly play to ensure the survival of their way of life in the event of a real conflict. You may not agree with their way of life, but most people around the world are willing to defend their way of life to the death.
Poking North Korea annually with a stick hasn't worked. The only realistic action we can expect under the current circumstances is for them to continue sharpening their own sticks. It is time to stop believing that isolationism, military threats, embargoes, and sanctions can work on a country that has resisted for over 60 years. It is time for talk. Talking to them may go absolutely nowhere. I expect the first few talks will accomplish a whole lot of nothing. However, it is my opinion that so long as the US is spending billions propping up the South Korean military, making honest efforts to to end the conflict through discussions is the least we can do.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
That's the problem with "American Exceptionalism". Most Americans that know of it believe it; it was at the utter core of the Monroe Doctrine, and most American Foreign Policy since.
Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation" is just as bad. Was that time period also the "Greatest Generation" for the Brits? Possibly. For the Germans and Japanese?
Let's talk about the Brits. They had the World... and they let it go. Not easily and not without pain, largely for the Others. Great Britain has now turned largely Isolationist, since being the World's Policemen just wasn't worth the trouble. Export "Sherlock" instead.
All of the Russian Models have failed; Strongmen have _always_ run Russia, whatever ideology, and Putin will not die old and beloved. Russia expands and contracts, but it is always self-absorbed and xenophobic, and curiously, when Russia expands, Russian Culture doesn't.
Japan is _still_ pissed off about losing their last Big Territorial War. They just know well enough not to discuss it in Public.
The same goes for Germany. What wasn't achieved by the Kaiser, or Hitler, by Military means, is now being done by Merkel. Greece is supposed to be an _Example_- don't screw with German Profits, or their utter control of the EU. _Their_ EU.
There was supposed to be an "American Century"; about half of the run of normal Empires, but a Shining Beacon for the Future. This was supposed to be done through NATO and the UN, both controlled by wise Americans through the formative stages. Reagan blew that all to Hell. If the US doesn't get its way, it will just go Unilateral, and blow the shit out of some Cuban Airport workers in Grenada.
Vietnam was bad, but at least it had some International history; France, Japan, France again, then the US.
Grenada was indefensible. America as Bully. Speak Loudly and whack with a Big Stick.
Bush I in Kuwait regained credibility; Bush II, in Iraq of all places, utterly destroyed any concept that America knew what it was doing. The American Century: 1945-2002.
Empires don't usually start or end quickly, they just fade in and out, and new ones then take their place. Exceptionalism... isn't.
(BTW, I don't believe that the Norks have Nukes, for reasons that I don't, or can't, go in to.)
Captcha- astatine; how could Slashdot possibly know?
...and drove oil prices down. (Just pointing out the irony.)
While I am not interested in the US being the world's police force or moral compass, when looking at the alternatives I don't think it is the worst outcome. Other options are Russia, China, Japan, Germany, UK, India, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Regional power centers don't work very well-- and pretty much every government acts in their own self-interest. Even when you have governments that act in the common good like Sweden, you are still stuck with the issues of internal backlash and the situation eventually becoming abused.
The North Korean regime may seem batshit insane, but they're not. They want power, they want luxury, they want to have a good life, but that's it. Li'l Kim ain't no Hitler. He's not into creating a huge war and riding the bomb to hell.
He plays with the fears of those that actually have anything to lose. Call him bluff and realize that he is far more terrified of losing his power, money and hoes than you are of his bomb.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey, man, if they aren't releasing singles that top the pop charts then OBVIOUSLY they aren't doing anything at all because we all know that's the only way to speak out.
When was the last time America actually saw any benefit from doing so?
Uh, American Imperialism in the form of military bases in almost every country in the world is extremely effective in pursuing and forwarding American economic interests. Not sure if you are aware of that.
China doesn't have any border with a country that approaches 4,000 miles. The longest is 2,906 miles with Mongolia.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
There is such a thing as boosted fission weapons, which do have fusion fuel---deuterium and tritium, in the core of the fission primary. This is not an "H-Bomb". The fusion fuel provides comparatively insignificant energy output from fusion and contributes almost nothing to the yield---however, it does provide an extra boost of neutrons at close to the moment of maximum criticality, therefore substantially increasing the efficiency of the fission reaction. It is a physical 'neutron gun', and in practice, a key step towards significantly smaller and lighter fission weapons suitable for a mass-constrained ballistic missile warhead.
The transition from fission weapons to true multi-stage radiation coupled thermonuclear weapons (Teller-Ulam) is indeed quite challenging scientifically, there are far more uncertainties than with the fission weapons. It's all about energy transfer, exotic thermodynamics and fluid mechanics.
There are still significant undisclosed secrets in this stage as well. The fusion section is not just Li6-D, but a combined assembly of fusion and fission fuel & tampers. A major part of yield in modern thermonuclear weapons is in fission of the secondary, and it is very incorrect to say that they are "clean weapons". A big part of yield (60-80%) is from fission and the amount of fallout is proportional to total fission events & energy.
A boosted primary core is a practical prerequisite for multi-stage H-bombs, though as it provides a cleaner and more appropriately shapable radiation pulse to drive the secondary.
I believe it to be more likely that DPRK tested a boosted fission primary and the staff told His Supercritical Eminence that it was a H-bomb. Which is true, from a certain point of view.
Does Ghandi and company count?
No, it does not.
That all happened due to the British Empire being tired, broke, and open to change.
10 people who did exactly what Ghandi did in the several hundred years before, were all taken outside and shot.
In any case, it doesn't apply because the British Empire wasn't a despot, it wasn't disarmed, and it still exists today with the same chain of government.
North Korea is a very serious threat because their leaders have no real restraint and everything to lose if they aren't in control. To Kim Jong Un, the world begins and ends with himself, and he has complete control. If anything comes close to threatening his power externally, he has enough conventional artillery zeroed in on Seoul to demolish it and kill a significant portion of the population. And given his treatment of his uncle, I have no illusions that he would develop a conscience at the last minute about killing people in horrifying ways.
NK has a shitty, but real, nuclear weapon which they could smuggle somewhere which is enough to hurt a lot of people, and their country is shitty enough that a retaliatory strike of more than one missile at the capital would simply be making rubble bounce. There's really no point to nuking a bunch of huts that make up the rest of the country.
More to the point, I have serious doubts that we'd even retaliate with nuclear weapons on NK because it would really piss off China and affect SK and Japan to some degree and Kim probably knows that. That means that, effectively, we've probably already written off at least one city somewhere that their weapon could be used on without like and kind retaliation.
NK isn't going to end the world as we know it... at least with their current capabilities... but it doesn't have to do it alone. Serbia wasn't worth a World War either, but one happened anyway. If NK becomes a problem in the middle of a larger future crisis, there's going to be real trouble.
It is time to stop believing that isolationism, military threats, embargoes, and sanctions can work on a country that has resisted for over 60 years. It is time for talk. Talking to them may go absolutely nowhere. I expect the first few talks will accomplish a whole lot of nothing. However, it is my opinion that so long as the US is spending billions propping up the South Korean military, making honest efforts to to end the conflict through discussions is the least we can do.
South Korea tried engagement, an effort known as the Sunshine Policy which ultimately failed. They poured billions in development dollars into North Korea and held two summits, but in the end, there was no impact to the quality of life for the North Korean people, no softening of their stance (in fact, they provoked a naval battle with the South, resulting in the deaths of six South Korean sailors), and continued nuclear weapons development. True, there have been flaws in the implementation, and difficulties with the Bush administration, but given the effort over a nearly eight year period, one would have expected some movement. Outside a few photo ops however, there was nothing, and thus, the South Koreans abandoned the effort.
This is what people tend to forget. India was granted independence because the United Kingdom spent a good portion (most?) of its national wealth in WWII. There was also pressure from FDR to grant them independence. And without American loans after the war, Britain would have collapsed.