North Korea claims nuclear test
POSTED: 5:58 a.m. EDT, October 9, 2006
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/1 ... index.html
Adios South Korea /wave bye
Scary stuff.
Whatever the response is could very well trigger a huge exchange between North and South Korea, pretty much ending the existence of Seoul.
The biggest threat to the U.S is North Korea's Subs. If/when N. Korea is able to place a nuke on one of their subs, U.S. security will be fucked (more than it already is).
The most logical response is a naval blockade of N. Korea where the U.S./Rest of the world inspect everything that leaves their country. China would be responsible for anything leaving by land.
Bad bad time to be in Seoul, Korea atm. Iran is watching. No response to N. Korea = Iran goes apeshit with their nuclear program...and a response to Korea could cause devastation to South Korea.
I anticipate a naval blockade but I can't see a long term solution to this atm.
Whatever the response is could very well trigger a huge exchange between North and South Korea, pretty much ending the existence of Seoul.
The biggest threat to the U.S is North Korea's Subs. If/when N. Korea is able to place a nuke on one of their subs, U.S. security will be fucked (more than it already is).
The most logical response is a naval blockade of N. Korea where the U.S./Rest of the world inspect everything that leaves their country. China would be responsible for anything leaving by land.
Bad bad time to be in Seoul, Korea atm. Iran is watching. No response to N. Korea = Iran goes apeshit with their nuclear program...and a response to Korea could cause devastation to South Korea.
I anticipate a naval blockade but I can't see a long term solution to this atm.
I don't think Iran has any intentions of "waiting to see what happens". They're pretty much balls to the wall heading towards nukes since evryone's too afraid to do anything to stop them, and you can hardly blame them. After all, no one has ever gotten "kicked out" of the "nuclear club" once in the doors.
- Ash
Well I'm about 1.5 hours north of Seoul that should be safe right?Winnow wrote: Bad bad time to be in Seoul, Korea atm.
So far from what I've heard (news stuff) NK isnt even in the ballpark of shrinking down their nukes to fit on missiles or any dependable delivery system. Add to that the miserable failure of the TPDII missile what 42 seconds is all it lasted?
It certainly increased tensions, moreso with NK and China than anything else and of course Japan is pretty pissed but given that there is no viable means to deploy or weaponize these nukes I dont think we'll se much happening b/c of this.
And if so...hopefully it'll wait til I'm the hell out of here.
Sendarie
When is your tour over Sendarie?Sendarie wrote:Well I'm about 1.5 hours north of Seoul that should be safe right?Winnow wrote: Bad bad time to be in Seoul, Korea atm.
It certainly increased tensions, moreso with NK and China than anything else and of course Japan is pretty pissed but given that there is no viable means to deploy or weaponize these nukes I dont think we'll se much happening b/c of this.
And if so...hopefully it'll wait til I'm the hell out of here.
I think the concern would be a non nuclear flare-up between N and S. Korea pending whatever the U.S./Other countries decide the "swift response" will be.
Something like an air strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities, etc...even a naval blockade could trigger something if North Korea comes out with guns blazing when a U.S/Other country ship attempts to board for an inspection.
I dont leave until May 07.
Given there are about 1 million troops 48 miles north of me with guns pointed/locked/loaded at each other, ANY overt acts of aggression directed at one or the other will end the cease fire and all hell will break loose.
Personally I'm not concerned much.
1. NK wont nuke SK b/c they want it. Never mind changing winds and fallout, although they would without a doubt make poor Japan glow in the dark with a quikness.
2. Again NK doesnt have the ability to weaponize these afaik.
3. This stuff is constantly happening. It was just what last week that they fired shots at each other? Just warning shots over a someone getting too close to the border but still. KJI is constantly swearing up and down on the warpath that he's coming south...he hasnt in the lasat 53 years I really dont think he will now. He is quikly loosing his support from China which is his bread (literally) and butter. Without them to come in an back him he knows that he can cause a lot of damage but a win is really out of the question.
You mentioned "non nuclear flare-up between N and S". I dont think the term "flare-up" would be possible. If it kicks off....it wont be small and given the number of US troops here like it or not we would be instantly drawn into it.
Given there are about 1 million troops 48 miles north of me with guns pointed/locked/loaded at each other, ANY overt acts of aggression directed at one or the other will end the cease fire and all hell will break loose.
Personally I'm not concerned much.
1. NK wont nuke SK b/c they want it. Never mind changing winds and fallout, although they would without a doubt make poor Japan glow in the dark with a quikness.
2. Again NK doesnt have the ability to weaponize these afaik.
3. This stuff is constantly happening. It was just what last week that they fired shots at each other? Just warning shots over a someone getting too close to the border but still. KJI is constantly swearing up and down on the warpath that he's coming south...he hasnt in the lasat 53 years I really dont think he will now. He is quikly loosing his support from China which is his bread (literally) and butter. Without them to come in an back him he knows that he can cause a lot of damage but a win is really out of the question.
You mentioned "non nuclear flare-up between N and S". I dont think the term "flare-up" would be possible. If it kicks off....it wont be small and given the number of US troops here like it or not we would be instantly drawn into it.
Sendarie
Weaponize, what an interesting verb.
Even if their initial nuke is train car size, it will fit in a semi-truck. Engineering it down in size is not that big a challenge, hell building a nuke is not really that tough with a really good machine shop and some 50's era tech, once you have the working model, you start the engineering. I am willing to bet even if this device had a 1000"square footprint that they can reduce it to fitting in some little fishing boat by middle next year at the latest. If you are willing to forgo safety factors ( aka fuck shielding that is not needed for the equipment, because you can write the device transport pople off) they can do it even sooner. I heard reports of it being 500kt, that is a decent sized nuke in the overall scheme of things, and def in strategic class.
When you talk about nukes this and that, you have to remember that the US developed a man portable KT plus device in the 60's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SADM talks about it, but I must clarify that I neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of this public source of information.
The problem is quite simply that with a working bomb, they can now destroy any coastal city easily, and with a bit of work but not much take out Denver, Chicago, St Louis etc ( never understood why the fixation on NY or LA, you really want to zap the american psyche, hit an internal city not a coastal one. ) Short of taking draconian steps there is no way to prevent it at this pont, and I doubt we coud even with a blockade. Not to mention which we lack the naval assets to maintain a Korean Blockade effectively AND counter Chinese moves against Taiwan.
No happy happy joy joy fixes here, the only real solutions would be to let the Israelis (Hell current estimates show Israel having the same warhead count as the Brits. ) take both Irans and North K's weaps out (without us holding Israel back they may already have hit Iran) without us calling a veto on the move or to declare a cordon sanitaire round NK, and enforce it by rapid and immediate nuclear strikes. Since neither WILL happen, we are left with no solutions. Since Truman, every American president has blown it in regards to NK, the last 2 have done the worst since and nothing other than force will work.
I would even bet dollars to donuts they already HAVE a device in Seoul, most likely the twin or the more advanced version of the one they detonated. Not being in a hurry to develop the bomb, there would be no reason not to make them, distribute them, THEN declare you have them by setting one off.
Should we freak out? Umm not running in the streets freak out no, but you should really consider what candidates SAY and DO before you vote, and if you do not vote, then FUCK YOU.
Even if their initial nuke is train car size, it will fit in a semi-truck. Engineering it down in size is not that big a challenge, hell building a nuke is not really that tough with a really good machine shop and some 50's era tech, once you have the working model, you start the engineering. I am willing to bet even if this device had a 1000"square footprint that they can reduce it to fitting in some little fishing boat by middle next year at the latest. If you are willing to forgo safety factors ( aka fuck shielding that is not needed for the equipment, because you can write the device transport pople off) they can do it even sooner. I heard reports of it being 500kt, that is a decent sized nuke in the overall scheme of things, and def in strategic class.
When you talk about nukes this and that, you have to remember that the US developed a man portable KT plus device in the 60's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SADM talks about it, but I must clarify that I neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of this public source of information.
The problem is quite simply that with a working bomb, they can now destroy any coastal city easily, and with a bit of work but not much take out Denver, Chicago, St Louis etc ( never understood why the fixation on NY or LA, you really want to zap the american psyche, hit an internal city not a coastal one. ) Short of taking draconian steps there is no way to prevent it at this pont, and I doubt we coud even with a blockade. Not to mention which we lack the naval assets to maintain a Korean Blockade effectively AND counter Chinese moves against Taiwan.
No happy happy joy joy fixes here, the only real solutions would be to let the Israelis (Hell current estimates show Israel having the same warhead count as the Brits. ) take both Irans and North K's weaps out (without us holding Israel back they may already have hit Iran) without us calling a veto on the move or to declare a cordon sanitaire round NK, and enforce it by rapid and immediate nuclear strikes. Since neither WILL happen, we are left with no solutions. Since Truman, every American president has blown it in regards to NK, the last 2 have done the worst since and nothing other than force will work.
I would even bet dollars to donuts they already HAVE a device in Seoul, most likely the twin or the more advanced version of the one they detonated. Not being in a hurry to develop the bomb, there would be no reason not to make them, distribute them, THEN declare you have them by setting one off.
Should we freak out? Umm not running in the streets freak out no, but you should really consider what candidates SAY and DO before you vote, and if you do not vote, then FUCK YOU.
She Dreams in Digital
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
I didnt coin the term.Kylere wrote:Weaponize, what an interesting verb.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/weaponize
What doesnt make sense here is that NK has never wanted to destroy SK. They want the land, they consider it a part of THEIR country they lost in the 50's.
Again never mind the fallout and the fact that they KNOW it would bring the entire world down on them in a hurry.
As for your semi-truck non shielded nukes there isnt a major city in the free world aka Seoul to NY that doesnt have some constant means of detecting the radiation this would be putting off.
Notice the distance between Seoul and NK border?
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshells/n ... _korea.htm
On to your engineering it down part, this is the same country that couldnt make a balistic missile with no payload at all last more than 42 seconds. Since then there have been no missile tests. Now given KJI's personality he know's he lost face during that and if he had the capability to show that, that was a fluke I'm pretty sure he would but hell who knows.
Sendarie
Sendarie,
Look, I was a 55G in the Army prior to it being turned into a hollow force by comparison. For the books, that is a Nuclear Weapons Specialist.
You can dream of every city having a data net but they do not exist. There are methods to detect weapons, but they can be guarded against and everyone involved with the project would be aware of the needed shielding. http://www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/over ... nical5.asp covers the concept of detection rather well, and points of the fallacies thinking that it is easy.
Okay now as to the location of Seoul, ever notice that NK ever has shown a humanitarian side? Heh. No need to reintegrate the PEOPLE of SK, unless under their control, and even then, the land would be fine without the people.
Now lets talk specifics, a ground burst 1MT wep has a crater depth of about 70 Meters, diameter of around a third of a Kand it will completely destroy brick buildings out to about 4K with a soft target (usually people, another interesting term) kill rate of 100% out to 10K. It would burn anyone exposed about 15k out but not necessarily cause death. These numbers are about 80% worse for a 10MT ground, and about 40% better for a 500kt weapon.
Which leads us to the device tested being claimed as 500k. So we have everything within 6k in all directions dead, all buildings within 2k or so gone, and a 30k zone east with a 50% rate of lethality ( another fun term ), then to the sea dropping off in rate of deaths. Let's see, Seoul is densely populated, sounds like 16-20 million dead within 6 months. So NK steps into a fractured south, runs peasant programs with their newly liberated southern cousins, they recover usuable machinery from the zone of contamination in paper suits at best because the north does not care about long term gamma damage. They will strip top soil, clear land etc. At this point, short of angering a new nuclear power there is nothing anyone is going to do. Certainly not the US, with our economy tanking, a long war already being fought and a President who probably cannot even get a bj from an intern in DC. Who else is gonna play hero? China may be the stopper, logically at least.
Now, I did not say I believe this all to be true, but it is entirely feasible, given that fact no one should be concerned about this unless they have not been paying attention to the world for the last 20 years because the time for concern has passed. Now we can choose action or acceptance. I bet I know which route we will take, and our inaction will mean the world will be a little scarier. Though to be honest, painting us as the hope of freedom is a little overrated and unlikely these days.
I did not accuse you of creating the word btw, just pointed out it is interesting. It is one of those buzzwordy words, ridiculous ones, like proactive, or friendly-fire.
Look, I was a 55G in the Army prior to it being turned into a hollow force by comparison. For the books, that is a Nuclear Weapons Specialist.
You can dream of every city having a data net but they do not exist. There are methods to detect weapons, but they can be guarded against and everyone involved with the project would be aware of the needed shielding. http://www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/over ... nical5.asp covers the concept of detection rather well, and points of the fallacies thinking that it is easy.
Okay now as to the location of Seoul, ever notice that NK ever has shown a humanitarian side? Heh. No need to reintegrate the PEOPLE of SK, unless under their control, and even then, the land would be fine without the people.
Now lets talk specifics, a ground burst 1MT wep has a crater depth of about 70 Meters, diameter of around a third of a Kand it will completely destroy brick buildings out to about 4K with a soft target (usually people, another interesting term) kill rate of 100% out to 10K. It would burn anyone exposed about 15k out but not necessarily cause death. These numbers are about 80% worse for a 10MT ground, and about 40% better for a 500kt weapon.
Which leads us to the device tested being claimed as 500k. So we have everything within 6k in all directions dead, all buildings within 2k or so gone, and a 30k zone east with a 50% rate of lethality ( another fun term ), then to the sea dropping off in rate of deaths. Let's see, Seoul is densely populated, sounds like 16-20 million dead within 6 months. So NK steps into a fractured south, runs peasant programs with their newly liberated southern cousins, they recover usuable machinery from the zone of contamination in paper suits at best because the north does not care about long term gamma damage. They will strip top soil, clear land etc. At this point, short of angering a new nuclear power there is nothing anyone is going to do. Certainly not the US, with our economy tanking, a long war already being fought and a President who probably cannot even get a bj from an intern in DC. Who else is gonna play hero? China may be the stopper, logically at least.
Now, I did not say I believe this all to be true, but it is entirely feasible, given that fact no one should be concerned about this unless they have not been paying attention to the world for the last 20 years because the time for concern has passed. Now we can choose action or acceptance. I bet I know which route we will take, and our inaction will mean the world will be a little scarier. Though to be honest, painting us as the hope of freedom is a little overrated and unlikely these days.
I did not accuse you of creating the word btw, just pointed out it is interesting. It is one of those buzzwordy words, ridiculous ones, like proactive, or friendly-fire.
She Dreams in Digital
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
Nice contribution, good to see you trying to use more than one sentence. Man you really wanted that Hate armor.
She Dreams in Digital
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
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Aardor
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500 metric tons(0.5 kt), not 500 kilotons, quite a difference there.U.S., French and South Korean experts estimated that the power of the explosion, about 240 miles northeast of Pyongyang, was equivalent to about 500 metric tons of TNT, which a senior U.S. intelligence community official said was unusually small for a nuclear blast.
500 kilotons is a very large fission weapon (assuming the weapon was fission, since it is an early test). In fact, I believe the record for the largest fission bomb ever set off is 500 kt.
I hope the reason the test was so small is because of lack of material (i would assume plutonium since it's easier to get than U235).
The largest nuclear test ever was the Soviet hydrogen bomb nicknamed the "Tsar Bomba", with an estimated yield of more than 50 megatons. The US tested numerous hydrogen bombs with yields FAR exceding the 500 kiloton range. While those are, in fact, fusion bombs, they utilize a fission bomb to initiate the chain reaction. While the US has entire arsenals of weapons that excede the 1 MT threshold, most of our missles are tipped with an aproximately 500 kiloton yield thermonuclear warhead, and as far as I know, the US no longer uses fission bombs for more than a detonator for a fusion bomb. (Note that the design for the Tsar Bomba could have actually yielded near 100 Mt, but at a cost of greatly increased fallout. This was averted by changing the final Uranium tamper with a lead tamper, subsequently making it one of the cleanest nuclear tests on record, in comparison to yield at least.)
As a reference, Little Boy had an estimated yield of 15 kilotons and Fat Man had an estimated yield of 21 kilotons. The US has tested nuclear detonations as low as several pounds of yield, so-called hydronuclear detonations, which intentionally fail to reach critical mass.
As a reference, Little Boy had an estimated yield of 15 kilotons and Fat Man had an estimated yield of 21 kilotons. The US has tested nuclear detonations as low as several pounds of yield, so-called hydronuclear detonations, which intentionally fail to reach critical mass.
Okay I misread the original explosive force, and at half a KT it is tactical not strategic. But the hard unchanged truth is that can see the NK leadership being crazy enough to use it. Not to mention which, I question that they tested their largest capability device. We basically used the bombs we had in WW2 as we made them, but NK is not fighting a global war against 2 major powers, so they have no reason to rush.
She Dreams in Digital
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
Yeah, but that was fusion, not fission. As I said:vn_Tanc wrote:Yeah but that was fusion not fission.The largest nuclear test ever was the Soviet hydrogen bomb nicknamed the "Tsar Bomba", with an estimated yield of more than 50 megatons
While those are, in fact, fusion bombs, they utilize a fission bomb to initiate the chain reaction.
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Fairweather Pure
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You dare correct a Nuclear Weapons Specialist ?!?!?Al wrote:Yeah, but that was fusion, not fission. As I said:vn_Tanc wrote:Yeah but that was fusion not fission.The largest nuclear test ever was the Soviet hydrogen bomb nicknamed the "Tsar Bomba", with an estimated yield of more than 50 megatons
While those are, in fact, fusion bombs, they utilize a fission bomb to initiate the chain reaction.
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miir
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55G - Nuclear Weapons Maintenance Specialist
Major duties: Supervises or performs organizational, direct support, and general support maintenance and surveillance of nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons trainers, and associated components.
I've got 99 problems and I'm not dealing with any of them - Lay-Z
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