5.1 earthquake at the test site. might not be a fizzle this time.
Holy unspeakable Moses. Despite all of the obvious protestations that this could be a feint, an exaggeration, a bluff... A nuclear holocaust somewhere in South or North Korea would be the most defining foreign development in our lifetimes. Not to mention the cascading effects a nuclear strike would entail. Question to Hubski, and particularly kleinbl00 : what recourse or solace does an average person have? I can't imagine anything besides faith in an international, cohesive response. Will that adequate? Is there a discussion somewhere else that we've had about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction Just 'cuz they say they've fused hydrogen doesn't mean they've fused hydrogen. I have no doubts that they've got a handle on fissile material but it's a long walk from fission to fusion. And if they've got it, why go with something so obviously the same size as their previous tests? The world's first thermonuclear test was Ivy Mike, at 10.4MT: That's three full orders of magnitude over what we know they're capable of, based on seismograph tests from 2013. ____________________________________________________________________________________ None of which speaks to the real issue - nuclear weapons are weapons of policy, not of the battlefield. They're used exclusively to state "we don't have to engage you on the battlefield if we don't want to; we have the ability to flip the table and spill the chess pieces onto the floor." If war "represents a failure of diplomacy" then nuclear weapons represent that failure is not an option. The more likely North Korea is to use a nuke, the less likely they are to deal with North Korean or American aggression, which has pretty much been off the table since 1954 or so anyway. At some point in the first Bush presidency, an Iranian foreign minister said something like (badly paraphrasing) "of course we're developing nuclear weapons, they're the difference between being invaded by the US or not." That was Iran, pointing out that of the three "axis of evil" countries, one has nukes, one is a quagmire and the third is Iran. This is not a thing. This is a tragedy of misappropriation of resources, of failed diplomacy, of a hermit kingdom that perpetuates hardship and oppression more than any other of modern times. Whatever they're spending on nukes, they aren't spending on food, and that is a human rights crisis... but in no way will it ever end up with you doing a Day After impression. We lived through the 50s, the 60s, the 70s and the 80s. L'il Kim and the Taepodongs are a 3rd rate coverband compared to the greats, and the greats barely killed anybody, despite our fervent beliefs to the contrary.On February 11, 2013, the U.S. Geological Survey detected a magnitude 5.1 seismic disturbance,[13] reported to be a third underground nuclear test.[14] North Korea has officially reported it as a successful nuclear test with a lighter warhead that delivers more force than before, but has not revealed the exact yield. Multiple South Korean sources estimate the yield at 6–9 kilotons, while the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources estimates the yield at 40 kilotons.
I remember that post now. I feel a little silly for feeling profoundly shaken and afraid, for two hours, of that which everyone older than me (born in 1991) must have lived in fear of for years and years. And not that I'm eased, appeased, and japanesed now. I still deeply resent near-psychopaths trying to develop nuclear weapons. But this sentence of yours gives me some solace:We lived through the 50s, the 60s, the 70s and the 80s. L'il Kim and the Taepodongs are a 3rd rate coverband compared to the greats, and the greats barely killed anybody, despite our fervent beliefs to the contrary.
I grew up in SoCal. If there was ever going to be an exchange the targets were Washington, DC, the Virginia naval yards, NORAD and all of Southern California. We had duck and cover drills three times a year when I was in grade school. My dad used to tell me to not worry as we were in the blast radius and were going to be ash in any war. Nukes exist to not be used. kleinbl00 said it way better than I.I remember that post now. I feel a little silly for feeling profoundly shaken and afraid, for two hours, of that which everyone older than me (born in 1991) must have lived in fear of for years and years.
My parents grew up in Los Alamos, NM (just like me - it's like they didn't learn). At one point, they were evacuated as a drill - probably '54, '55. It was an utter and total failure, but what annoyed the scientists the most was that the evacuation drill emphasized that Los Alamos wasn't considered a first strike target, or even close enough to a first strike target to be obliterated. My uncle loves to tell the story. All these scientists, fresh from the triumph of the hydrogen bomb, and Khrushchev won't even do them the honor of dropping a bomb on them. Such pique.
I grew up within eyesight of the low frequency sub radio towers. Yea, we were fucked. Sadly, these towers, once the highest points above sea level in the city of San Diego, are no more. They've been replaced by satellites.
Damn. Probably good they got taken down before BASE jumping really became a thing. Those things look like epic idiot killers. Up here we got SUBASE Bangor. Once you've watched a Trident cruise silently and with no wake out to stand watch for a few months, you recognize that you'd have a front row seat to any potential nuclear conflict.
I remember my uncle spreading out a map of Michigan on my grandmother's kitchen table. I was about 7 years old. He pointed to Detroit, and said something like, if war starts, we'll be killed in the initial blast here in Allen Park. In Sterling Heights, you'll survive the blast, but die from the radiation.
Oakland Community College was built on land graciously donated by the Federal Government after they decided to give up their Nike missile base that was previously located there. Not that that was a welcome development, because the point of the Nikes was to shoot down those invading Soviet nuclear bombers who were coming to kill grandpa. The missiles were obsolete as a nuclear defense when ICBMs became a thing. At least I salvaged an education out of it.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., said Wednesday’s explosion looked very similar to past tests and was not enormous, suggesting it was not a hydrogen bomb. South Korean lawmakers told local reporters that the explosion had a yield of about six kilotons — making it about the same size as North Korea’s 2013 atomic test.