US, SKorea militaries gird for NKorean provocation

Originally posted by Adrifter
nukes equal atomic weapons, delivery systems include, bombs, and warheads. He don't need a missile to drop the bomb. Fact of the matter NoKo, has nuclear weapons folks, I am sure they can TRY, to deliver their payload where ever they wanted too. They do have bombers I am sure of. All their military technology is not publicly known.. Its a dangerous scenario folks, not a joke or laughing matter.. Its a threat to the entire world.

I hear what you're saying. But then I think about how the US was able to detect nuclear material (or radiation) from their nuclear facilities. Did we detct it from space via satellite?

I don't know. But I remember reading that a couple of years ago. That, plus whenever they prepare to do anything, we know about it. I suspect that we have a spy satellite in serious focus over there.

If they tried to load a nuke onto a plane, I bet we would know it as they are doing it, in real time. If they were preparing a missile with a nuke head to launch, we would know.

It's a real stalemate there. Their only hope is through China and Russia.

I hope in the coming days we start to hear more about China and Russia.

Originally posted by Jenna
reply to post by Electro38

 

Normally I would agree, but it just seems like a bad idea to take out a nuke with a bomb, missile, or by shooting at it.. If North Korea were preparing to launch one there would have to be ground forces to disable it. If we blow it up then it's just going to kill people in North Korea as opposed to where ever they were planning to launch it to.

Someone correct me of course if I'm wrong, but if you shoot at a nuke or drop a missile or bomb on it that nuke is going to blow right? Or am I completely off on how those things work?

It wouldn't actually trigger the nuclear explosion but it would expose the core radioactive fissionable material after it's shielding was destroyed.

It would do some radiation damage to the people in the immediate enviroment as well as any other animal and plant life, possibly contaminate nearby water sources such as streams and lakes etc as well too.

If a properly equpped Hazmat team got to the area quickly the damage would be minimal but there is no telling if the sight would be secure enough for the U.S. or the North Koreans to do that.

The fall out from a Nuclear Explosion itself can travel completely around the world in the jet stream so you have just as good a chance of the fall out hitting Seattle or Houston as you do Polyong or Tokyo.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Ahh, I see. Learned something new today. Thanks!

I was close at least. Even if it didn't explode, the radiation alone would be devastating.

I think in trying to figure out what is going to happen ther is something not being factored in sufficiently. The Fourth Dimension - Time.

It is well over half a century since the Korean War and a couple decades since the collapse of formal Communism. China is used to waiting. North Korea is a vexation but still manageable. There is no great benefit in changing the shaky but holding equilibrium.

One way or another, time will ultimately take care of the man in charge. We may be seeing the final death rattle of his defiant regime right now.
He is frustrated and lashing out in the few wats left to him. T.S. Eliot called it "an old man's frenzy"

The US is acting concerned, but is also in stall and delay mode. Nothing to gain in an intervention with NK. Much to lose - strategically, military costs and lives, reparations.

NK is a very hot potato. Maybe pariah is a better word. It will be used for manoeuvering politically, but it does not have much to offer itself. An underdeveloped country with a large intractable population and little in the way of good or resources.

The Chinese will probably find a compliant lregime replacement when the time comes. Watching the power jockeying when that vacuum occurs will be interesting.

The major players will fret and threaten, but in the end it's a big waiting game. For everyone except North Korea, time is on their side.


Mike

reply to post by Jenna


www.olive-drab.com...

here is some more info. the World has only seen air burst nuclear blast, a sub-surface or surface blast is much worse, as far as fall out.

scary stuff man..



[edit on 28-5-2009 by Adrifter]

Originally posted by Jenna
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Ahh, I see. Learned something new today. Thanks!

I was close at least. Even if it didn't explode, the radiation alone would be devastating.

It would be devestating, we will never know for instance how much damage occured in Chernobyl but the cancer rates locally are sky high there.

When I lived in Los Angeles when I was younger there were several citizens and ex-military people trying to mount a lawsuit against the government for possible radiation related illnesses caused by the original above ground Atomic Bomb testings in the Nevada dessert.

One of the plus sides of the Korean War is the DMZ between the two sides is a no mans land that for over 50 years now has been an amazingly diverse natural habitat for a lot of species of flaura and fauna and animals that are rarely seen anywhere else. It's an ecosystem a lot of naturalists, botanists and others would love to be able to study except that it is a no mans land. It would be a shame to see one of the rare totally natural and pristine ecosystems left on earth destroyed by radiation or a conventional war.

Sometimes it's not just humankind that suffers in these things but Bambi and Thumper too!

reply to post by Adrifter


Definitely some scary stuff. Thanks for the link.


reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Makes you wish that we'd never figured out how to make nuclear weapons doesn't it? Nuclear reactors may make for a good energy source, but I think that is one invention the world might have been better off not discovering.

Hopefully North Korea is just bluffing, but something tells me they're not...

Originally posted by Jenna
reply to post by Adrifter

 

Definitely some scary stuff. Thanks for the link.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Makes you wish that we'd never figured out how to make nuclear weapons doesn't it? Nuclear reactors may make for a good energy source, but I think that is one invention the world might have been better off not discovering.

Hopefully North Korea is just bluffing, but something tells me they're not...

The North Koreans are so dirt poor it does tend to make them dangerous. They have been isolated and been seen as a pariah nation for a long time.

Some of the films smuggled out of there are just unbelievable, people starve to death and die in the streets and their corpses just lay there for hours sometimes days before they are collected.

The people suffer a barrage of cult of personality propoganda, there is little contact with the outside world, executions of criminals and dissidents happen often at the spot of the crime or the apprehension in plain site of passerbys and their corpses are just left on the street.

It is without a doubt perhaps the worst place on the planet to live.

Like most weapons nuclear weapons are a double edged sword.

Mutual Assured Destruction has in many ways kept a physical war from transpiring on a grand scale, but the Nuclear arms race at first between Russia and America was a economic war in it's own right between the two nations that citizens of each country had to pay for in a lower standard of living to bear the economic cost of building them more powerful and more plentiful than the other nation.

There was a lot of fear involved to in the 50's, 60's and 70's. When I was a kid we practiced nuclear drills at Elementary School and Jr. High School (I never went to High School so I don't know about that) and had fallout shelters with the Nuclear Triangles on the special constructed buildings at school. They would show us black and white films on nuclear blasts and then sound an alarm and we would crawl under out desks and put our arms over our heads crouched down. That's scarey for a little kid who doesn't know much about the world yet except that it's spahgetti day at the cafeteria.

In more recent years we have seen Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea all go Nuclear. Nuclear weapons gone missing out of the old Soviet Arsenal, one even missing from a strange unauthorized airforce flight recently here in the United States with five live armed Nuclear Bombs aboard the plane as it flew from one U.S. City to another in violation of protocols.

There is no telling what Cuba might have, and what they might give to someone like Hugo Chavez who is frankly a lot less stable and lovable than North Korea and Iran's Leaders put together.

So far they have probably prevented some serious confrontations and saved a lot of lives.

It's been at a huge cost of dollars and fear though.

In the end one is likely one to many, and the temptation to use them is always going to be there.

Things like HAARP might make them virtually obsolete one day, but science has a fun way of coming up with more deadly and even scarier things not less deadly and friendlier things.

Welcome to planet earth, please observe all caution signs during your stay!

Interesting piece linked below for Bloomberg of all places. China providing practically all all their fuel and half their food they virtually decides life or death for North Koreans. Interesting anecdotally they could put Kim in disfavour with his elite supporters by "implementing a UN ban on luxury imports such as cognac, caviar and high-end sedans"

So it comes down to a real cat-and-mouse game with the cat being pissed off by the trouble-making mouse.

Why China has allowed this game to continue is a question. They can stop it but choose not to. Some fear of the chaos with millions of unwanted North Koreans streaming over their border for one.

Some similarities to South Africa refusing to cut off the lifeline to Mugabe and Zimbabwe.

One wonders with things becoming so tight if there will be a rash of totally imploding already failed states with millions desperately crossing borders to stay alive.

Mike

ex]

China May Test North Korea Sway After Nuclear Test

news.yahoo.com...


"China has the ability to cripple North Korea by cutting off shipments of food, fuel, and luxury goods that Kim Jong Il doles out to loyalists. Kim’s nuclear detonation may put that leverage in play and test its impact on the leadership.

China is increasingly frustrated by North Korea’s defiance of United Nations resolutions designed to curb its atomic and missile programs and is concerned that a nuclear-armed government in Pyongyang could spark a new arms race in Asia, analysts and a person familiar with the Obama administration’s policy said.

Until now, China has rebuffed U.S. and Japanese calls for more stringent economic penalties against North Korean leader Kim, agreeing only on narrow UN sanctions aimed at regime-run companies and arms imports.

“China may be reaching a point of understanding that Kim is going too far,” said Dennis Wilder, a former Asia director for the White House National Security Council.

The U.S. and Japan are seeking a UN Security Council resolution to cut North Korea’s financial ties to the world and forbid the regime from selling weapons to raise money, diplomats at the UN said. "


" China supplies 90 percent of North Korea’s oil demand, 80 percent of consumer goods and 45 percent of its food, Dong Yong Seung, a researcher on North Korean issues at the Samsung Economic Research Institute in Seoul, said.

China didn’t want to use stronger measures in the past out of fear of alienating possible successors to Kim or even sparking the collapse of North Korea, its ally of 60 years, and fomenting a refugee crisis along their 800-mile border.

An April 5 rocket launch, the May 25 nuclear detonation and subsequent short-range missile tests may lead China to work more closely with the U.S., the person familiar with U.S. policy said.

China’s foreign ministry said the country “resolutely opposes” North Korea’s nuclear test. On May 25 China agreed with the U.S., Japan and Russia to work toward a UN resolution censuring North Korea for its nuclear test and missile launches. "