N Korea To Bolster Deterence Against US "Threat" (30 US nukes?)

[Gloria]

New World Media Watch http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com


3//The News International, Pakistan Monday November 22, 2004-- Shawal 09, 1425 A.H.

http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2004-daily/22-11-2004/world/w7.htm



N KOREA TO BOLSTER DETERENCE AGAINST US ‘THREAT’



SEOUL: North Korea on Sunday vowed to bolster its defences against what it called the threat of nuclear war from the United States.



Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper and official mouthpiece for the ruling communist party, made the pledge one day after US President George W Bush repeated a call for Pyongyang to drop its drive for nuclear weapons.



(SNIP)



Rodong claimed the United States has "worked out a nuclear war scenario against the DPRK in top secrecy and has regularly staged drills for dropping nuclear bombs."



Japanese media reported early this month Washington had studied and practiced a scenario of using up to 30 nuclear bombs to repel a possible North Korean invasion of South Korea.



North Korea has been locked in a standoff with the United States and its allies, including South Korea, which demand that the communist state give up its nuclear weapons programmes.

[htuttle]

1. Thirty nukes, even if small, would probably trigger a 'nuclear winter'

Or something very close to it. Not to mention a cloud of radioactive ash drifting around the Northern hemisphere. Everyone on the Korean peninsula would probably die as well.


" I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."
-- General "Buck" Turgidson:


For that cost, how about we just let them have it.

:shrug:

[PsychoDad]

2. 'nuclear winter'

Bush's way of countering global warming?

[htuttle]

3. A bit of overkill for that!

I imagine that they plan on using a lot of ground blasts to try to take out buried structures. That would throw a ton of dust into the atmosphere. Like 30 huge volcanos going off at once.

[Massacure]

5. 30 small nukes wouldn't be a nuclear winter.

Besides, the U.S. uses hydrogen bombs, not atmoic. Hydrogen has very little fallout. In fact, one big 100 megaton bomb would generate less fallout than 10 10 megaton bombs. This is because the first scenario only needs one fission trigger while the latter needs 10.

[daleo]

11. The biggest bomb ever tested was about 60 megatons

By the Russians. Just the test scared the hell out of them. They do say it was pretty clean though.

http://www.hfni.gsehd.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b4a13.htm

"one participant in the test saw a bright flash through dark goggles and felt the effects of a thermal pulse even at a distance of 270 km. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero, wooden houses were destroyed, and stone ones lost their roofs, windows and doors; and radio communications were interrupted for almost one hour."
...
"“The clouds beneath the aircraft and in the
distance were lit up by the powerful flash. The sea of light spread
under the hatch and even clouds began to glow and became
transparent. At that moment, our aircraft emerged from between
two cloud layers and down below in the gap a huge bright orange
ball was emerging. The ball was powerful and arrogant like Jupiter.
Slowly and silently it crept upwards.... Having broken through the
thick layer of clouds it kept growing. It seemed to suck the whole
earth into it. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural.”3
Another cameraman saw “a powerful white flash over the horizon
and after a long period of time he heard a remote, indistinct and
heavy blow, as if the earth has been killed!”"
...
"Thus, the test of the 50-MT bomb was in effect the
test of the design for a 100-MT weapon. If a blast of such horrific
magnitude had been conducted, it would have generated a gigantic,
fiery tornado, engulfing an area larger than Vladimirskaya Oblast in
Russia or the state of Maryland in the USA"
...
"The test of the 50-MT bomb was a watershed in the development
of nuclear weapons. This test demonstrated the global nature of the
effects of a powerful nuclear explosion on the Earth’s atmosphere."

[bhikkhu]

12. "Nuclear Winter" no longer expected

It was a hypothesis based on some well-intentioned computer models, but is no longer a current prediction in any case that I know of.

[daleo]

13. I wouldn't say the hypothesis has been abandoned

But there is a range of opinion in the scientific community. I know this is just an encyclopedia article, but it is from 2004. Perhaps you would like to point us to some articles that expand on your statement that nuclear winter is no longer expected.

"nuclear winter, theory holding that the smoke and dust produced by a large nuclear war would result in a prolonged period of cold on the earth. The earliest version of the theory, which was put forward in the early 1980s in the so-called TTAPS report (named for last initials of its authors, Richard P. Turco, Owen B. Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan), held that the ensuing low temperatures and prolonged periods of darkness would obliterate plant life and seriously threaten the existence of the human species. Later models, which took into account additional variables, confirmed the basic conclusions of the TTAPS report and suggested that the detonation of 100 megatons (the explosive power of 100 million tons of TNT) over 100 cities could produce temperature drops ranging from 5 to 15 degrees.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2004, Columbia University Press."

[anakie]

4. If it is ok for America to have a nuclear deterrent

other nations should be able to develop theirs. Especially when idiot Bush has his finger on the nuclear trigger.

[VegasWolf]

6. Thanks to chickenhawk awol, the Doomsday clock moves

closer to midnight.

[Rumba]

8. speaking of which

Haven't heard much of the doomsday clock in recent years. Link?

[celestia671]

9. I found this...

http://www.thebulletin.org/doomsday_clock/current_time.htm

Guess it hasn't been moved since 2002. It should have been though on November 3rd.

[Hand]

10. Seven minutes to midnight...

It's seven minutes to midnight

From the Board of Directors
March/April 2002, pp. 4-7 (vol. 58, No. 2). © 2002 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Chicago, February 27, 2002: Today, the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the minute hand of the "Doomsday Clock," the symbol of nuclear danger, from nine to seven minutes to midnight, the same setting at which the clock debuted 55 years ago. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, this is the third time the hand has moved forward.

We move the hands taking into account both negative and positive developments. The negative developments include too little progress on global nuclear disarmament; growing concerns about the security of nuclear weapons materials worldwide; the continuing U.S. preference for unilateral action rather than cooperative international diplomacy; U.S. abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and U.S. efforts to thwart the enactment of international agreements designed to constrain proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; the crisis between India and Pakistan; terrorist efforts to acquire and use nuclear and biological weapons; and the growing inequality between rich and poor around the world that increases the potential for violence and war. If it were not for the positive changes highlighted later in this statement, the hands of the clock might have moved closer still.

Doomsday clock

[Just Me]

7. Well, the "rule of force" has been imposed by THY ALMIGHTY,...

,...SUPERPOWER,...

What else would be expected?

Appeasement?

When we get beyond the "vision" of power-mongers,...we will finally,...live.

Containing "power-mongers" is what we live to contain.

Tough times for humanity.