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Seismic Data From North Korea Suggest a Repeat of 2013 Nuclear Test
Lasrick writes: Seismologist Jeffrey Park has done an initial analysis of the seismic data from North Korea's reported nuclear weapon test and found 'an uncanny resemblance to the signals recorded for the February 12, 2013 detonation.' Park's analysis pretty much destroy's the North Korean claim that they detonated a hydrogen bomb, and he postulates that P'yongyang is desperate for attention during the US presidential election cycle.
Siegfried Hecker, one of the world's top experts on the North Korea nuclear program, is nonetheless concerned that the DPRK has now completed its fourth test, and with it a greater sophistication in their bomb design. Hecker is also skeptical that the test was an H-bomb. However, as he says, "We know so little about North Korea's nuclear weapons design and test results that we cannot completely rule it out."
Siegfried Hecker, one of the world's top experts on the North Korea nuclear program, is nonetheless concerned that the DPRK has now completed its fourth test, and with it a greater sophistication in their bomb design. Hecker is also skeptical that the test was an H-bomb. However, as he says, "We know so little about North Korea's nuclear weapons design and test results that we cannot completely rule it out."
We also cannot rule out that NK has crated an earthquake machine, capable of producing any degree of tremors in the Earth they would like - the seismic data being so identical re-enforces this possibility since they would likely want to copy known seismic output for a test.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
P'yongyang is desperate for attention during the US presidential election cycle
When are we NOT in an election cycle? Is there any time ever that someone is not campaigning for public office?
Even if they aren't actively campaigning, they are positioning and posturing for future "election cycles"
Oh, and I believe I saw some aluminum tubes in a satellite photo of N. Korea... so....
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Building an atomic bomb is easy, the US did it with minimal use of computers from the 40's onwards. The problem is getting the materials required and so far neither Iran nor North Korea has been able to (legally) acquire the required material. Also, one bomb/missile is not a threat, they shoot one, you shoot back a hundred. IF the target hits you have some casualties ranging between 100 and 500k (nuclear bombs are scary but not movie-style, nation-wiping scary) but again, you kill them. What is scary is if after about a dozen tests they start building up an unchecked US/China/Russia arsenal, but for that they need LOTS of material, material that won't go unnoticed if they require stuff at that scale.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
He can't really be one of the top experts on the program if he admits "We know so little about North Korea's nuclear weapons design and test results", indeed the real top experts of the north korean nuclear program are all either in north korea and/or working for an intelligence agency...
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I know they are not a good government, but we are not going to fix them. We have not fixed them in the last 60 years of them being a bad government. Nobody else will fix them either. Every Government needs a bogeyman, and the DPRK still works as one.
Personally even if they had a H-Bomb what is the fright? That they are going to use it against their own population? Until they have something better than coal fired missiles from the old USSR the world is not under eminent threat.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Nation killers? That is a little hyperbolic, unless you think we are intending to bomb one of those tiny city sized nations.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Probably a fizzle. Didn't have their primary configured correctly to ignite the secondary or the secondary was configured or built incorrectly.
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
The US didn't need much int he way of computers in the 1940s, it had people who knew what they were doing. Not so much, now.
I don't know, if you put 768kT MIRVs in a single missile and targeted each separate warhead at a single city, you could theoretically do enough damage to a mid sized country to cause it to teeter close to collapse. In fact, if you shot those at say, the top 5 US cities, you wouldn't have enough to end the US, but you'd crater the US economy in short order. It's not necessary for those warheads to even annihilate those cities, which they probably wouldn't, but it would be enough to empty the cities out and cause complete chaos.
Yes, you can't kill everyone in a country that way, and it would actually take quite a lot of nukes to seriously depopulate a country by direct explosion effects or even residual radiation. But it could kick off the loss of order and infrastructure which would allow disease and disorder to complete the job. In that sense, radiation is much worse because it has a denial effect over areas that wouldn't be otherwise damaged by a blast.
Park's analysis pretty much destroy's the North Korean claim
Destroys.
Not that anyone will bother to fix it, I'm sure.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Unfounded speculation here but...Maybe this was a mistake where they really thought they had achieved H bomb detonation because in order to do so, you must first detonate a fission bomb. Except the H bomb, for whatever reason, didn't work.
I mean, let me ask you this, would you like to be the guy that tells Mr. Un that the H bomb fizzled?
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
They only have a stunted A-bomb that they don't have a delivery system for. So, they're still not really a serious threat.
However, they are much closer to taking that crappy payload and putting it on a missile that could hit Japan.
And they could probably already trundle that device into an underground tunnel that goes right into Seoul.
It's mostly a joke because they're waving around a BB gun and calling it an assault rifle. You could still put someone's eye out with that thing, though.
I am absolutely flabbergasted that anyone would insinuate that the honorable Kim Jong Ill would actually LIE about something like this!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Creating a nuclear yield, given having the materials to do the job handy really isn't that tough of an exercise now that it's been done, if you can do math.
Making a device that can do that small enough and rugged enough to attach it to a missile and deliver it somewhere (accurately), and still have it function when it reaches it's destination, is a completely different story.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Why would you want a nuclear weapon when you could have a machine to make earthquakes?
You can't stir a cup of tea with a nuke, whereas in theory the earthquake machine offers an infinite range of variability for custom uses; paint shaking, avalanche causement, or cleaning every camera sensor in the country all at the same time. Would you not be fanatically devoted to a country where your camera sensor was forever free of dust? An earthquake machine is plainly the most direct path to the love of the people under your rule, which would also explain why spending on such a project would take precedence over food or shelter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know, we all need to panic! North Korea finally has the bomb! Surely they have imminent plans to use it!
Also, I'm really looking forward to the debut of 30 Rock on NBC in a couple days, I really like that Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan.
And the World Series is coming! Who is going to represent the American League, will it be the Tigers or A's? What about the National League, are you thinking Cardinals or Mets? The Cardinals' rookie pitchers Anthony Reyes and Adam Wainwright are looking pretty good, right?
I hear the US is supposed to hit 300 million people this month!
It's scary (really really scary!) about the NK bomb, but I'm still sad about those 5 Amish schoolgirls that got shot in Pennsylvania.
Did I miss anything else from October 2006? Read that first article in TFS. You can shit your pants if you want to over this latest test, go ahead, that's exactly what the North Koreans want you to do. Like the article says, they don't have many cards to play at this point.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The fundamental problem, though, is that the only way to actually stop a country from doing what you don't want them to do is to successfully invade it. Otherwise -- since sanctions and negotiations are of limited effect -- if they're really motivated, they're going to do it.
Of course, invasions have their own set of problems; successful American invasions have a jillion more problems, and invading the DPRK has about a jillion squared problems (not the least of which that Seoul is within reach of DPRK rocket artillery.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
They only have a stunted A-bomb that they don't have a delivery system for. So, they're still not really a serious threat.
They tried the A-bomb three times:
- The first one had yield that was way low (about 1 kiloton). Probably a "fizzle" (extreme shortfall of output, typically from blowing apart too soon, though it may still be far more powerful than a conventional explosive). EVERY country developing nuclear explosives has had one or more fizzles.
- The second did considerably better (about 4 kilotons), though probably still below their design intent.
- The third was better yet (about 7 kilotons). This is right in the ballpark of other countries' first bomb models, a tad more than half the yeild of the "Little Boy" bomb (about 13 kilotons) dropped on Hiroshima.
So it looks to me like they've got a competent design crew and a working design. At this point they may have their A-bomb robust enough, as well, to fit onto a missile and survive the trip to a target.
This was allegedly their first try to test an H-bomb, and had a similar yeild to the third A bomb. Maybe they had an ignition failure on the second (H) stage on their first try. Any bets on whether they do on their second or third?
The Teller-Ulam configuration is a bit complicated. But it's not all that hard to understand or to build. (With the amount of secrecy and misdirection published on nuclear weapons I would expect that first try by a new player would, more likely than not, either fail to ignite or have significant shortfalls in yield. But I'd also expect an army of physicists and engineers to figure it out and get it right pretty quiclkly. People might try to keep secrets, but physics doesn't.)
Meanwhile: A Nagasaki-sized bomb might be small by Cold War standards, but it's quite adequate to ruin a city.
However, they are much closer to taking that crappy payload and putting it on a missile that could hit Japan.
They have been making, and selling, their successful knockoff of the SCUD for three decades now. They have tested a number of long-range missiles. That's apparently part of the same program, so I would expect it to have a payload weight and volume adequate to carry the bombs.
And they could probably already trundle that device into an underground tunnel that goes right into Seoul.
With those missiles no tunnel is required. But they could also put it in a container, put that on a cargo ship, and sail it into pretty much any seaport in the world. If the coast guard doesn't catch it far enough out, blammo!
It's mostly a joke because they're waving around a BB gun and calling it an assault rifle. You could still put someone's eye out with that thing, though.
7 kilotons of TNT equivalent is the energy of metric s**t load of BBs.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Not so hyperbolic. The Trident II can carry 14 independently targeted W88 weapons, each about 500 kTons. I don't think one of these could kill the United States, the targets are too big and spread out. I do think the US would be a long time recovering if you nuked the 14 biggest cities. Most European nations other than Russia I think you would kill. If you launched an entire submarine load, 24 missiles, from one of our Ohio class boats, I think you could pretty much kill any continent you choose.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
The fundamental problem, though, is that the only way to actually stop a country from doing what you don't want them to do is to successfully invade it. Otherwise -- since sanctions and negotiations are of limited effect -- if they're really motivated, they're going to do it.
Precisely this. Did 50 years of sanctions effect regime change in Cuba? No? Did all the international sanctions out the wazoo against North Korea prevent it from building nukes? No? So why would a continued regimen of sanctions on Iran, no matter how harsh, have made a difference? Arguably, only the US policy of "constructive engagement" with China has made any significant change in unfriendly regimes in the past half-century (and you would have to find it in your heart to thank Richard Nixon for that one). Seriously, I hear a lot of conservatives gripe about the Iran deal, but what would they have done differently that would show better results?
If you're still disappointed, at least you can see this as a bright side: Obama has at least bought you 10 years for neoconservatism to come back into fashion so the Cruz administration will have time to invade Iran before they have the ability to turn Tel Aviv into a big radioactive parking lot in retaliation.
"95% of all Slashdot
Agreed. NK leaders will only go down with a nasty fight and take a lot of people with them in the process, mostly South Koreans.
Any politician who claims there is an easy fix deserves being slapped with a wet pig.
If they claim they can solve it using "strong leadership", they deserve TWO wet pigs. I'm tired of that phrase.
Table-ized A.I.
If they have plutonium (and apparently they do), it's not that much harder to get the lithium-6 using the COLEX process and deuterium from many-staged distillation separations to make the lithium deuteride needed for the Teller-Ulam bomb. It only took the US a few years after Alamagordo.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
For this we can thank Madeline HalfBright and BJ Clinton. Thanks guys! In about ten years, we will be having the same conversation, except about Iran , Hillary, and BHO.
Here is the non-right-wing fantasy version (aka the "reality based version") of how North Korea went nuclear:
North Korea built its first graphite reactor, a prototype for its plutonium production reactors, during Ronald Reagan's first term of office, and it went critical in 1986 during his second term.
By that time work had begun in the plutonium reactors, and a plutonium extraction plant that was near completion in 1992, when Herbert George Walker Bush was in office.
The, in 1994, when Bill Clinton was President, and Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State the U.S. arranged the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework which halted all work on the Yongbyon site, both the reactors and the processing plant and North Korea made no further movement toward going nuclear. This lasted for eight years, the entire rest of the Clinton presidency.
The in 2002, during the George W. Bush Presidency, ham-handed confrontational 'diplomacy' ('cuz real men don't do subtlety?) caused the Framework to breakdown, and North Korea restarted all of its weapon program facilities. This resulted, four years later, in 2006, with George W. Bush still in office North Korea began its series of nuclear tests.
So all of the significant progress toward going nuclear occurred during 5 Republican presidencies, and the 8 years of Bill Clinton are marked by a remarkable freeze on that program.
Now go back to you Democrat-hating, Fox News is on.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The fundamental problem, though, is that the only way to actually stop a country from doing what you don't want them to do is to successfully invade it.
Well, there is one other method -- nuke (or otherwise destroy) Pyongyang until there is no more North Korean government left to annoy you with its pesky nuclear tests.
Not that I'm advocating such an approach, but I suspect that is what would happen if North Korea allowed any of its nuclear bombs to be used for anything other than an underground test / posturing exercise.
Furthermore, I suspect that North Korea's leaders know this, which is why they are unlikely to use a nuclear weapon on an enemy, or give a nuclear weapon away to outside groups -- to do so would likely mean then end of them.
If all of the above is correct, then North Korea isn't much more than an ongoing annoyance to anyone outside of North Korea (of course it is a nightmare to its own citizens, but it's not clear what can be done about that). All the rest of the world can do, short of invading or nuking North Korea, is wait for them to change from within.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
This isn't an assessment of "what they're capable of", it's an assessment of what they just did. "The west" has an international network of seismographs and satellite suites specifically designed for picking up nuclear explosions, both on the surface and underground, and assessing their strength and various properties about them. In fact, this capability was first introduced as far back as 1963, it's nothing new. You don't blow up an atomic bomb on Earth without it being detected and analyzed.
Shiny New Australia.
No one is going to do anything until it's too late...and by "too late" I mean after this crank dictator sets off a nuke in a city somewhere, or sells one to some other crank(s) who set it off in a city somewhere.
I'd not be against invading North Korea and freeing the people there. The overwhelming majority would be thanking us after a couple of months with plentiful food, clean water, and electricity that isn't rationed. Oh, and without being executed for shit like accidentally creasing a picture of Glorious Leader or complaining too loudly that they're hungry.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Cuba survived in large part thanks to support from the old USSR. NK survives in large part thanks to support from China.
I'm not sure Iran has that level of support behind them (though its also possible I'm just not fully up on international politics..)
Sanctions are basically the country-level equivalent of starving a castle out during a siege -- works great when you're successful but if they're getting supplied from somewhere else and you can't block that, you're not going to accomplish much other than waste everyone's time for a while.
If you launched an entire submarine load, 24 missiles, from one of our Ohio class boats, I think you could pretty much kill any continent you choose.
Do we get to count longer-term effects (e.g. mass starvations caused by nuclear winter) into our score?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Now you've done it!
Monaco is starting a nuclear program of it's own.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
destroy Pyongyang
Trouble is, Pyongyang is estimated to contain around 10% of the NK population (~2.3mill/24mill according to a quick Wikipedia scan.) That's a hell of a lot of civilian casualties, and the world in general is pretty set against civilian casualties these days -- al'Queda and ISIS and other bullshit groups like that would be easy to deal with if you had the option of "just blow up everything within 100miles of their known bases."
That level of civilian destruction is generally saved for comic book maniacs however. In the real world we've got to be more strategic about things or shit will hit the fan.
Not to mention the issue of "what now?" 24mill people under a brutal government is still a lot more predictable than 22mill people acting under pure anarchy. So somebody's going to have to go in and clean up the mess.. and then the question becomes whether they'll be any better than what you just took out. We certainly haven't had a good track record replacing regimes in the middle east over the past couple decades (though I'm not sure we've actually been giving it a solid attempt.)
But on the other hand, Japan was a pretty successful rebuild after we obliterated them in WW2 so it can be done if we try hard enough. That's a pretty big gamble though and I can't even imagine how much it cost to see that through. It would be a tough sell to convince people that its worth that risk for a "measly" 24mill people unless old KJIll actually does pull off something to make him a serious international security risk (ie: pulling off a Pearl Harbor equivalent.)
What does it changes if North Korea masters building hydrogen bomb?
Does that make the country more scary than if it just mastered fission nuclear bomb?
and that means the military Industrial Complex can shift out of low gear.
There's nothing magical or useful about the military industrial complex for economic purposes. Since you're making war tools and such, you're actually diverting resources from making your economy better. So nuking five US cities and then shifting the military industrial complex out of low gear is going to badly mess up the US economy.
I suspect (DPRK getting nuked) is what would happen if North Korea allowed any of its nuclear bombs to be used
Unfortunately, the DPRK is waaaay too close to too many other people that we aren't at war with.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Huh, the 1994-2002 gap corresponds to when North Korea was in the grip of a severe famine and lack of resources. I wonder if that had anything to do with their sudden willingness to negotiate. Let's not investigate this any further, and give all credit to the Clinton administration that was the author of so many successful international adventures such as Blackhawk Down.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Cuba survived in large part thanks to support from the old USSR. NK survives in large part thanks to support from China.
True but Cuba's gravy train dried up after 1991 and they have still limped on for 25 years under the same Communist government led by people with the same last name. You're right that North Korea, for all their "juche," does more or less completely rely on their Sugar Dragon to the North, although much of its foreign exchange is actually through illegal black market trade rather than the largesse of the Chinese government.
I'm not sure Iran has that level of support behind them (though its also possible I'm just not fully up on international politics..)
You're right that Iran doesn't have a sponsoring patron in quite the same way. But they have a strong pipeline in illicit technology with their neighbor Pakistan, and as long as somebody still needs oil, they are never going to lack for foreign exchange like Cuba or North Korea did, where all they have to export to the global market is cigars or Kim Jong Un bobbleheads, respectively.
"95% of all Slashdot
To be fair, a single 5g BB going about 36% the speed of light would also have the equivalent of 7 kT of TNT. Maybe they just invented the world's best Daisy Model 25...
If they've got that (and can get it high enough that they don't have to fire through the Earth's land masses or oceans), they don't need the (non-BB) missiles. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Iran wants to sell oil to the world and compete with Saudi Arabia for regional influence, and has an electorate pushing for economic growth over confrontation. North Korea has no electorate wants to stay isolated, it's the whole juche philosophy. Very different scenarios.
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Too many people are living in an alternate reality put in their heads by hate-radio, and other right-wing media. They're angry, totally-misinformed, and they're eager to tell you [...]
There may be no way to deprogram the people we've lost to media designed to drive the Conservatives mad. [...]
Cults used to be small, local dysfunction, but thanks to 24hr propaganda on TV and radio, a massive media-driven cult has been created, and these idiots vote for scoundrels like Trump and Cruz.
Sounds to me like the pot calling the kettle black.
Back in the '60s the "establishment" media was a very narrow bottleneck, (just 3 TV networks, for starters) and quite in the pockets of government and "the 1%". (I recall one Vietnam Conflict protest march in Cleveland OH: Solid people from curb to curb on the main drag, for several blocks. The national TV camera crews were on one sidewalk, in a tight half-circle around about a dozen members of a vocally communist splinter group, cameras facing away from the giant march. Watch the evening news and you'd think the whole protest WAS that tiny splinter group.)
Trying to get the word out was a major problem for a whole generation's anti-establishment contingent - which consisted of virtually all of the boomer generation, thanks to the draft and the Vietnam escalations, along with the start of the "drug war", the ("McCarthy Era") Cold War anti-communist oppressions, and a number of other government intrusions.
One reaction was "The Underground Press". But that was pretty niche. Another, far more effective, was self-organization among the students of the journalism school programs. They were (literally) planning to infiltrate the media and use it to get their (now solidly left-wing) message out.
Don't tell me that's a fantasy - because I was there. I (and some of my politically-active friends) hung out in places where such planning went on. As the decades passed, I watched as EXACTLY what was planned gradually took hold. The new generation of establishment media personnel were these students, some of whom who worked their way into positions of editorial control, and gradually changed the media culture. First they got some of their ideas out. Then they evolved the outlets into a NEW establishment media, becoming a pervasive left-wing propaganda operation. This operated for decades (and still does), becoming the "new normal".
Newspapers could do what they wanted. But in the electronic media the "Fairness Doctrine" blocked any attempt to bring a substantial amount of anti-establishment ideological challenge to the airwaves, by requiring giving "equal time" to its direct opposition. This hobbled explicitly political analysis shows. Meanwhile, the new establishment newsies got a pass on this - they were able to slant things as they wanted, and got very good at doing it without triggering effective equal-time demands.
Until 1987 - when (thanks to falling electronic prices leading to a glut of AM stations in search of something to broadcast) access to media became cheap enough that it wasn't a bottleneck, and the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated in the interest of promoting free speech.
So now explicitly and admittedly political shows could operate. There was a sucking demand for non-left-wing political analysis, which made such shows profitable. A former disk jockey named Limbaugh broke the ice, and soon the AM dial was full of (the now anti-establishment) "conservative talk radio".
Are some of the listeners "mindless robots"? Maybe so. But the left had this field to itself for decades, and had built an enormus mass of socially-pressured cultists. It amuses me no end to hear them squawk when someone outside their politically-correct groupthink cluster files the serial numbers off their machine. B-)
Meanwhile the rise of computer networking has given outlets to other reporting and fact-checking, so neither the establishment nor the anti-establishment media is a bottleneck to the free flow of idea
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Huh, the 1994-2002 gap corresponds to when North Korea was in the grip of a severe famine and lack of resources. I wonder if that had anything to do with their sudden willingness to negotiate. Let's not investigate this any further, and give all credit to the Clinton administration that was the author of so many successful international adventures such as Blackhawk Down.
This is a textbook example of selection-bias. Let's rewind and condense the conversation that happened.
OP: "Democrats caused this. Conclusion: Republicans good, Democrats bad."
Reply: "Here are some facts.. Republicans were always in power when NK did nuclear, Democrats never. Conclusion: Republicans bad, Democrats good."
You: "Only replying to one aspect of your post, ignoring unpleasant correlation between NK nukes and Republican presidency, dismissing correlation between lack-of-NK nukes and Democrat presidency. Conclusion: Republicans good, Democrats bad."
Me: "I'm not American and this is too complicated for trivial cause & effect analysis. Conclusion: Republicans, Democrats, NK government, OP, Reply, and You all bad, Me awesome."
"Oh no... he found the
Trouble is, Pyongyang is estimated to contain around 10% of the NK population
Yes, of course, which was why I was quick to point out in the very next sentence that I wasn't advocating that, and neither would anyone else except possibly if North Korea launched a nuclear first strike.
So somebody's going to have to go in and clean up the mess.. and then the question becomes whether they'll be any better than what you just took out.
That is a good question, but presumably no matter how bad the aftermath was, it would not include a North Korea with nuclear strike capability (unless they hid nuclear weapons somewhere else, and still had people willing and able to deploy them, I suppose -- which isn't inconceivable)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Your argument of me being an American and believing that America encompasses the world demonstrates that you have a poor and irrational belief. How about less emotional statements and some facts to back your position that DPRK is a threat.
Fact: North Korea does not have the ability to launch a nuclear weapon at either Japan or South Korea. The scuds they have are not capable of carrying that large of a warhead, tend to fall apart, and even if the glue holds they can't hit what they aim for so missiles end up in the Ocean. Do you believe that North Korea has bombers capable? Think again. The biggest "real" fear in South Korea is the amount of artillery rounds North Korea could fire into Seoul, and that it's possible to use chemical weapons in the artillery. Followed by a whole lot of people marching in behind the artillery of course. I'll give you that the threat of an invasion has a possibility, but not nuking any time soon.
The DPRK is a great bogeyman for Japan and South Korea. China is a much bigger threat and actually taking action in the Pacific. The world leaves them alone because the world can take advantage of the DPRK in many ways. It's worked pretty well since the end of the Korean War.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
What war can do, and has done in the past, is set up a nation for an economic boom. A pre-war nation might have a poor economy but during a war that nation is fighting for survival, it gives the nation a common enemy and a common goal. That pre-war nation might find itself held back by infighting, a lack of purpose, or whatever.
A nation at war needs everyone contributing. People that could not find work before will be compelled to work one way or another. People will be sought out to do whatever they can for that common goal of surviving and/or defeating the common enemy. People that are able to work, but choose not to, are likely to find themselves jailed for "aid and comfort to the enemy" or something. While in jail these people could be put to work sewing uniforms or something, or face further punishment. Any destruction of infrastructure from enemy attack clears an area for new and improved infrastructure to take its place. Those sent off to fight will have to be replaced, so people that were not skilled laborers before will find themselves being trained for skilled labor. Again this will be either by choice, due to many new job opportunities, or force.
After the war all those skilled laborers that survived the war can return to work with new skills. Those that were skilled laborers before were tasked in war with a similar job and/or placed in a leadership position, and can now return to work with more experience than if there was no war. Those tasked with a war time job different than what they did before will now have new skills to leverage in finding work. All that infrastructure to build weapons, uniforms, and so forth can now be redirected to peace time products. These products can now be produced at a cost lower than before the war because the capital expenses were paid for by the government or wiped clean by other means.
There is no doubt that a nation at war will find things difficult. A post-war nation can find itself in a position for an economic boom.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If you want a massive education program it's insane to go to war to get one. Just implement the training program. If you want the government to pay for infrastructure, just push for government-funded infrastructure programs, it's insane to create a war as an excuse. War is insane. Period,
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
North Korea is smart and they are still alive because of their nukes. I admire their honesty and steadfastness.
Meanwhile, Colonel Gaddhafi has been keel-hauled and ritually sacrificed by a french secret agent on live TV. His once prosperous country is now in a state of chaos and bloodshed due to islamist militia terror. Saddam Hussein was hanged on live TV and his once prosperous country is now in a state of chaos and bloodshed due to saudi funded ISIL-Daesh terror. Assad and his iranian, russian allies are fighting tooth and nail against a us-zionist-saudi funded ISIL-Daesh terrorist invasion and his once prosperous country is now in a state of bloodshed and massive destruction. In each of those countries, hundreds of thousands of people died violently in the past 5 years, scores of girls and ladies are being raped and sold as harem sex slaves, many millions of people have been displaced internally or became international refugees due to the hostilities.
In contrast, the DPRK is orderly. They were never prosperous, but their cities and villages are not being bombarded with US-supplied TOW guided missiles, their populace is not facing daily beheadings in public. Kids attend school, mothers receive medical care, people can go to work without fear of snipers. The dear leader Kim may as well receive the Nobel Peace Prize for such achievements of stability and preventing the imperialist vultures from ravaging his country.
Honestly said, every country should develop, test and stockpile nukes, because there is no other guarantee of your continued existance in face of CIA-backed invasions. The capitalis-imperialist "first world" that currently controls the planet's economy and politics is led by an outright satanist elite, who call themselves christian-zionists. I predict the shiia monotheistic Iran will soon be razed to the ground now that they foolishly agreed to quit pursuing nukes. They got a piece of paper in exchange and we saw how much such written guarantees are worth: exactly toilet tissue. Ukraine gave up her 2500 soviet-inherited nukes in 1994, in exchange for the "Budapest Memorandum of Understanding" but when Putin invaded and annexed in 2014, the underwriters (USA, Britain, France, China) just shrugged.
In fact, I think every nation (ethnicity) should obtain nukes, because countries sometimes purse internal genoicide to erase racial or religious minorities, e.g. the bahutu-watutsi massacre in Rwanda and the world is reluctant to help. A nuclearly armed global society is a polite society. Nukes are actually the gods of "ahisma", everyone should have one in the household shrine! There was a reason the first hindi nuke test of 1974 was codenamed the "Smiling Buddha".
Assuming there is a nation post-war. That is a hell of a gamble, not even considering the fact that countless people will die just to find out. Don't confuse the comfort the US experienced in the second world war with that experienced by other nations during wartime.
> Also, one bomb/missile is not a threat, they shoot one, you shoot back a hundred.
That's how you get Capone.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Yes, we developed them, yes we're the only ones to have used them, but since then we've been pretty devoted to making sure they never get used again. Though rather perversely, that meant building lots of them for a few decades, but now we and every other nation that has them are working to reduce stockpiles.
A rational nuclear power sits on its nukes, holding them in reserve as a deterrent against attack. No sane nation would use them offensively, as the cost is incalculably greater than any benefit. The DPRK is not sane. It's behavior is unswervingly irrational. The Kim family doesn't care if the people of the DPRK are vaporized in retaliation. The nuclear program is why the populace is already starving to death in slave labor camps. There isn't even a valid defensive use for them, as China provides more protection than a nuke ever could - and building nukes could easily turn China against them.
They'll shoot their eye out.
Creating an economy whose sole purpose is to destroy some other group of people with their own economy, is not and never will be a healthy economy.
A post-war nation can find itself in a position for an economic boom.
Which isn't saying a thing. No longer having a foe actively destroying your people, infrastructure, and trade, will create a tremendous economic boom all on its own.
There is actually a pretty decent historical example of a conventional explosion in a seaport with plenty of detail, an this was in what was likely a less populous city at the time than most would be. During WW1 two ships carrying explosives collided in Halifax harbour in Nova Scotia, Canada. The resulting blast was about 2.9 kilotons of TNT, which pretty much leveled the city, and was the largest conventional explosion prior to nuclear weapons. 7 kilotons would be more than twice that obviously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So yeah, not quite BB's. However the parent poster is right about the delivery system... They don't really have one that is any good. That doesn't really help South Korea being so close unfortunately. I recall a number of years ago, they did a missile test more less against Japan that got them all up in arms, but in the end it was a failure that went into the sea well out of range. While the cargo ship idea is plausible, the amount of time to deploy, and coordination to hit multiple targets, make it a pretty unreasonable option. However even one such instance of a 7 kiloton device in a modern, large populous seaport, would be pretty devastating. Not to mention the fact that after that the disruption to trade would obviously occur I think...
But for that you need 14 warheads + a sub or other delivery vehicle + another dozen or so to test with. That was my point, they're making 1 bomb, they haven't gotten anywhere near close with mass production, obtaining the tools, expertise or materials to put it all together and neither do they have a delivery vehicle nor long range missiles; they can perhaps only reach their immediate neighbors but that's too risky, maybe they could clear their own country and hit parts of Russia/India/China if they're lucky and don't get shot out of the air.
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Fission bombs detonate most of their material and don't have much long term effects. Neither Nagasaki nor Hiroshima are or ever were 'dead zones' like Tsjernobyl is (Tsjernobyl's dead zone is not caused by the explosion either but rather the unburnt fuel still in the sarcophagus).
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Well for crying out loud we have targeted nukes nowadays. So why haven't we anonymously nuked his palace and the government building so the citizens of DPRK can have a bloody meal with protein in it rescue dropped on the country? They're starving to death up there...
My reply was to Coren22, to say that a single MIRV ICBM can mostly kill all but the biggest countries. I am in no way suggesting that the North Koreans have anything approaching this capability, either in missiles or in warheads.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
it would not include a North Korea with nuclear strike capability
No, but it could end up worse if it gets boondoggled like when the USSR broke up and they just flat out lost track of a bunch of them. I mean nobody knows how NK's nuclear program is setup -- whether its spread across many sites or still packed into a single research facility or what.
In particular if they're distributed across the country to any great degree there's a good chance that any knowledge of the external sites would be lost in the attack and those weapons would be available for any unscrupulous reseller to push to the black market before they're found again.
Well, the Y'all Quaeda candidates for President are really setting up a welcome for more refugees.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
No, income tax evasion is how you get Capone. Don't you know your own history (as opposed to your movie history)?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Germany survived WW2, and almost every city/town/village in the whole country was reduced to rubble. A country will only disappear if some other country takes the land/people, and most countries have little interest in taking over radioactive debris.
Calling a country impotent because they can't get it up (missile into sub-orbital ballistic trajectory) is a foolish game. There are cargo ships from China every day of the year that could get it here. What keeps North Korea safe is China, standing behind them with a big club.
I wasn't concerned so much with the radioactivity as with the massive amount of black carbon that would be thrown up into the atmosphere, causing significantly diminished sunlight (potentially worldwide) for several years thereafter, with the resulting diminished crop production causing food shortages.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Someone got himself published after the 2009 test saying "we never had problems like this when George W. Bush was president".
Actually a bunch of them, like the German rocket scientists just after WWII, were kidnapped and brought to the USA.
At the time in the 1940s that the US didn't have much in the way of computers (because they basically didn't exist) and did have serious science to do which they didn't need to do in the 1930s, they were doing the atom bomb. Which was before the sweeping up of scientists from Germany at the end of the war.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Too true, I was thinking of the rocket program after the war.
That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s. At that time the rocket people were re-implementing the V-programmes, looking at novel propellants (if you can find a copy of "Ignition", invest a day in reading it. Any book where the frontispiece has a "before" and "after" photograph where you need to use distant trees to align "before" and "after" is about an exciting, dynamic field of study). Design of new rocket systems didn't really kick off until they proved that nuclear subs could hide under Arctic ice for months AND surface ...
They didn't invent this stuff for going to the stars - they invented it for blowing human beings into pieces.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
No doubt. It's called 'deterrence' and it does exist for a good reason.