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North Korea, claims they've successfully tested a Hydrogen bomb


Ser Scot A Ellison

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Come on Scot

You're confusing issues of scale here. Even a Tsar Bomba won't come close to taking out an entire country. Unless its Belgium or some tiny place like that.

In fact, I've read recently that even a full thermonuclear exchange between the US and Russia has been vastly overstated as an extinction level event. Far from killing billions, the damage would more likely be in the 4-500 million deaths range, and mostly limited to the countries involved in the exchange.

A few bombs owned by a minnow nation like North Korea - even if one reached Tsar Bomba status, which would be impossible for them to achieve in any case - would mostly endanger the cities targeted and not the entire region or anything apocalyptic like that.

What was the casualty rate of the Mount St Helens eruption? Well, most nuclear weapons don't have a tenth of its yield, and even the legendary Tsar Bomba - which was way too big to ever be delivered to a target by the way - only had twice the energy of the Mount St Helens explosion.

So while nuclear weapons are awesomely destructive, they are not the embodiment of the apocalypse as some try to suggest.

Nonsense.

A simulation of a US-Russian exchange:

http://www.nucleardarkness.org/warconsequences/hundredfiftytonessmoke/

  • 2600 U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons on high-alert are launched (in 2 to 3 minutes) at targets in the U.S., Europe and Russia (and perhaps at other targets which are considered to have strategic value).
  • Some fraction of the remaining 7600 deployed and operational U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear warheads/weapons are also launched and detonated in retaliation for the initial attacks.
  • Hundreds of large cities in the U.S., Europe and Russia are engulfed in massive firestorms which burn urban areas of tens or hundreds of thousands of square miles/kilometers.
  • 150 million tons of smoke from nuclear fires rises above cloud level, into the stratosphere, where it quickly spreads around the world and forms a dense stratospheric cloud layer. The smoke will remain there for many years to block and absorb sunlight.
  • The smoke blocks up to 70% of the sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface in the Northern Hemisphere, and up to 35% of the sunlight is also blocked in the Southern Hemisphere.
  • In the absence of warming sunlight, surface temperatures on Earth become as cold or colder than they were 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age
  • There would be rapid cooling of more than 20°C over large areas of North America and of more than 30°C over much of Eurasia, including all agricultural regions
  • 150 million tons of smoke in the stratosphere would cause minimum daily temperatures in the largest agricultural regions of the Northern Hemisphere to drop below freezing for 1 to 3 years. Nightly killing frosts would occur and prevent food from being grown.
  • Average global precipitation would be reduced by 45% due to the prolonged cold.
  • Growing seasons would be virtually eliminated for many years.
  • Massive destruction of the protective ozone layer would also occur, allowing intense levels of dangerous UV light to penetrate the atmosphere and reach the surface of the Earth.
  • Massive amounts of radioactive fallout would be generated and spread both locally and globally. The targeting of nuclear reactors would significantly increase fallout of long-lived isotopes.
  • Gigantic ground-hugging clouds of toxic smoke would be released from the fires; enormous quantities of industrial chemicals would also enter the environment.
  • It would be impossible for many living things to survive the extreme rapidity and degree of changes in temperature and precipitation, combined with drastic increases in UV light, massive radioactive fallout, and massive releases of toxins and industrial chemicals.
  • Already stressed land and marine ecosystems would collapse.
  • Unable to grow food, most humans would starve to death.
  • A mass extinction event would occur, similar to what happened 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out following a large asteroid impact with Earth (70% of species became extinct, including all animals greater than 25 kilograms in weight).
  • Even humans living in shelters equipped with many years worth of food, water, energy, and medical supplies would probably not survive in the hostile post-war environment.

A simulation of global temperatures one year afterwards:

http://www.nucleardarkness.org/warconsequences/globaltemperatures1yearafter150/

Yes, we really are talking most of the world dropping 10-30 degrees Celsius.

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no no, nuclear weaponry is quite harmless.  it's been around for 70 years or so and has killed less than one-tenth of the human persons who have died since 1945 in motor vehicle accidents in the US alone.  

if one wants a true apocalypse, one should therefore send a moderate number of US motorists.

The largest portion in this sample should be the Silent Generation and the early Baby Boomers.

Armed with a couple cases of mad dog and an unlimited international data and texting plan.

Followed by Generation Z.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korea-likely-lying-about-hydrogen-bomb-test-experts-say-n491401

So they will be sending out drones to test air quality to help determine whether North Korea actually set off an H-bomb.  Current seismic events argues that a nuclear weapon was set off; just not an H-bomb.

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Nonsense.

A simulation of a US-Russian exchange:

http://www.nucleardarkness.org/warconsequences/hundredfiftytonessmoke/

 

A simulation of global temperatures one year afterwards:

http://www.nucleardarkness.org/warconsequences/globaltemperatures1yearafter150/

Yes, we really are talking most of the world dropping 10-30 degrees Celsius.

That site presents the most pessimistic estimate and the reality might not be quite that bad, but these things do damage in so many ways that widespread use of them most likely will wipe out most (if not all) of humanity. The direct damage due to the explosions is relatively well measured and will mean the end of whichever countries are on the receiving end of it -- even if much of the population survives, the destruction of major cities will take out most of the industrial, scientific, financial, political and communications bases. Then come the effects which are not well measured: the temperature will drop (but it's hard to tell by how much), there will be widespread radioactive fallout (again, hard to tell how widespread and how intense) and the already weakened ozone layer will be damaged further, possibly to the point of destruction. Depending on how bad these are, a few people may survive and some societies far away from the impacts and lucky in terms of being in zones with relatively little cooling and radiation might even avoid disintegration, but the world as we know it (with its nearly global trade, communications, etc.) will be gone and it will be centuries before anything like it might return.

By the way, XKCD has a relevant comic strip today:

judgment_day.png

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I read articles saying that the whole nuclear winter thing may be an exaggeration because it was first thought up after Hiroshima. Everyone saw how much of the city burned and made the assumption that if that happened on a bigger scale it would lead to cooling effects because of smoke blocking out the sun.

But then you have to consider that in 1940's Japan most cities were built of wood for there was a lot of combustible material to hand that would burn. Nowadays most modern cities are concrete/bricks and would not "burn" to the extent that was imagined so smoke would potentially be considerably less.
And consider also that even a city burning could be tiny compared to the size of some forest fires or volcanic dust clouds, so it would be really hard to predict how much dust and smoke a full exchange could cause.

A full exchange would be bad in many other ways though, trade would collapse, political turmoil, collapse of infrastructure. I'd say those would probably do more harm than the actual explosions and any further environmental effects. The human race has grown so used to surviving as a global population that being split up into isolated "survivor populations" would possibly do a lot more harm.

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The closest modern analogy we have to a nuclear winter is the so-called Year Without A Summer (1816). This was a one-off drop in global temperatures of 0.4 to 0.7 degrees Celsius, caused by the 1815 eruption of Mt Tambora:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

The result was an international food crisis. From a drop of less than one degree.

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Come on Scot

You're confusing issues of scale here. Even a Tsar Bomba won't come close to taking out an entire country. Unless its Belgium or some tiny place like that.

In fact, I've read recently that even a full thermonuclear exchange between the US and Russia has been vastly overstated as an extinction level event. Far from killing billions, the damage would more likely be in the 4-500 million deaths range, and mostly limited to the countries involved in the exchange.

A few bombs owned by a minnow nation like North Korea - even if one reached Tsar Bomba status, which would be impossible for them to achieve in any case - would mostly endanger the cities targeted and not the entire region or anything apocalyptic like that.

What was the casualty rate of the Mount St Helens eruption? Well, most nuclear weapons don't have a tenth of its yield, and even the legendary Tsar Bomba - which was way too big to ever be delivered to a target by the way - only had twice the energy of the Mount St Helens explosion.

So while nuclear weapons are awesomely destructive, they are not the embodiment of the apocalypse as some try to suggest.

 

 

The analogy doesn't really hold; much of the energy of a seismic event or volcanic eruption is lost to the Earth's crust, so even if natural disasters are much more energetic than anything we do in terms of joules, the actual energy transferred to people and structures is generally much less.

Also cities aren't built on top of volcanos, take Naples, it is considered to be dangerously close to Vesuvius, yet if the Little Boy or the Fat Man went off over the volcano it wouldn't even kill anyone in the main part of Naples.

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  • 1 year later...

North Korea has successfully test fired a Pukguksong-2 missile, which is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead at least 1,200km (and possibly 2,000km). It is a land-based derivation of the Pukguksong-1, which is submarine-mounted.

The situation here is that, despite over a decade of heavy sanctions, North Korea is continuing to develop nuclear weapons and is working on the KN-14, an ICBM capable of hitting, at least, all of Alaska, Hawaii and the west coast of the United States and, speculatively, as far inland as Chicago. That would also put eastern and central Europe in range. However, the KN-14 has not been flight-tested and its threat remains, so far, theoretical.

At 1,200km, the Pukguksong can hit all of South Korea and the western half of Japan. At 2,000km it can hit all of Japan and also reach Taiwan (the Philippines and Guam would still be out of range, however). North Korea has other missiles, such as the Musudan, which can hit Guam and all of the Philippines.

The timescale of development appears to be accelerating, with North Korea successfully diverting the money and aid it does receive from the outside world into preserving the regime and continuing weapons development, at the expense of the general population.The timescale for North Korea to gain actually nuclear-armed missiles now appears to be at less than a decade and potentially less than half of that. North Korea is also developing a submarine-based second strike capability, although given the poor state of its navy that may be a longer-term threat.

The United States, South Korea and Japan have called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, but it's unclear if more sanctions, even if China agreed, would be effective. Removing the existing support could trigger another famine (North Korea has never recovered from the terrible famine in the mid-1990s which killed a million people and is dependent on food aid from China to survive), which would neutralise North Korea but only at a potentially titanic cost of lives and a massive flood of refugees which both China and South Korea would struggle to cope with.

The alternative, a US-led military assault on North Korea to destroy both its ballistic missile and nuclear programme, would also need to destroy North Korea's artillery capability (it has thousands of guns ranged permanently on Seoul, which is only 20 miles from the border) and could well trigger a major diplomatic crisis with China, not to mention encourage North Korea to launch an all-out assault on South Korea. That would be defeated, but again the cost in lives would be extraordinary.

The other alternative would be to try to trigger internal dissent and collapse the regime from within. That is more likely than it sounds, since the black market (which North Korea has stopped trying to stamp out, after realising its economy would collapse without it) is also delivering DVDs and news of the outside world which flatly contradicts the official line and shows the standard of living in other countries as being vastly higher than in North Korea. But it seems unlikely that the internal dissent movement (which barely exists at the moment) will be able to topple the regime before it becomes a nuclear weapons power.

The question is if the USA and its allies are willing to risk the consequences in order to lance the North Korean boil once and for all, or what will happen if North Korea does gain nuclear capability and starts using that to threaten its neighbours at a point when neutralising it is not possible without risking a nuclear war.

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4 hours ago, Werthead said:

The question is if the USA and its allies are willing to risk the consequences in order to lance the North Korean boil once and for all, or what will happen if North Korea does gain nuclear capability and starts using that to threaten its neighbours at a point when neutralising it is not possible without risking a nuclear war.

There is one option you didn't mention and it would look very much like Obama's deal with Iran. 

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4 minutes ago, Relic said:

There is one option you didn't mention and it would look very much like Obama's deal with Iran. 

That's because North Korea has never wanted any kind of access like Iran has, and is not desiring in any way to get rid of sanctions. They do not and will not accept UN inspectors or inspectors of any kind. And they're much further along in their nuclear weapon development than Iran reportedly is.

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10 minutes ago, Relic said:

There is one option you didn't mention and it would look very much like Obama's deal with Iran. 

I don't think this option is even on the table. Iran isn't an isolationist power. On the contrary, it wants to be the regional power. It is also much more directly plugged into the world economy and the sanctions imposed on Iran in punishment for its nuclear ambition really hurt it, so there was something on the table that could be talked about (the same with Russia). North Korea doesn't have any of that as an issue.

In addition, North Korea has nukes already, whilst Iran was still years away when the deal was signed. North Korea doesn't have a delivery mechanism though, and the delivery mechanism is something they can develop much more quickly.

ETA: Also, North Korea has rejected resumption of the Six-Power Talks on the basis they are already a nuclear power. They will only consider talks without the precondition of denuclearisation, which the US is insisting on.

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On 08/01/2016 at 11:20 AM, Lordsteve666 said:

I read articles saying that the whole nuclear winter thing may be an exaggeration because it was first thought up after Hiroshima. Everyone saw how much of the city burned and made the assumption that if that happened on a bigger scale it would lead to cooling effects because of smoke blocking out the sun.

But then you have to consider that in 1940's Japan most cities were built of wood for there was a lot of combustible material to hand that would burn. Nowadays most modern cities are concrete/bricks and would not "burn" to the extent that was imagined so smoke would potentially be considerably less.

That seems like a dubious theory.
I agree that the models used for nuclear winter were always uncertain though, since they had to be based on assumptions that couldn't be verified.

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On 1/7/2016 at 5:27 PM, sologdin said:

no no, nuclear weaponry is quite harmless.  it's been around for 70 years or so and has killed less than one-tenth of the human persons who have died since 1945 in motor vehicle accidents in the US alone.  

if one wants a true apocalypse, one should therefore send a moderate number of US motorists.

President Trump orders the launching of the Great Carmada from the California coast.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I don't think this option is even on the table. Iran isn't an isolationist power. On the contrary, it wants to be the regional power. It is also much more directly plugged into the world economy and the sanctions imposed on Iran in punishment for its nuclear ambition really hurt it, so there was something on the table that could be talked about (the same with Russia). North Korea doesn't have any of that as an issue.

In addition, North Korea has nukes already, whilst Iran was still years away when the deal was signed. North Korea doesn't have a delivery mechanism though, and the delivery mechanism is something they can develop much more quickly.

ETA: Also, North Korea has rejected resumption of the Six-Power Talks on the basis they are already a nuclear power. They will only consider talks without the precondition of denuclearisation, which the US is insisting on.

Yeah, those are good points. So, what is their end game? What are they trying to accomplish? I'm sure they want sanctions lifted and they probably would like to join the global economy in some way, otherwise what is the point of the constant antagonism? If you come across any literature on the subject I'd be interested in reading about it. 

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1 minute ago, Relic said:

Yeah, those are good points. So, what is their end game? What are they trying to accomplish? I'm sure they want sanctions lifted and they probably would like to join the global economy in some way, otherwise what is the point of the constant antagonism? If you come across any literature on the subject I'd be interested in reading about it. 

The point is to ensure that no one messes with them

They have nukes so that the US cannot simply do whatever it wants to them. So that China can't. So that South Korea can't invade. They don't care about joining the global economy - and doing so would likely be a death knell for their current regime. They don't want to be a more regional power. They don't care about projecting influence, even if they could. 

The point of the constant antagonism is to ensure that the US never, ever treats them lightly as well as making sure its citizens know that it is North Korea vs. the world. Ultimately they probably want the US to treat North Korea the way they treat other Nuclear states - as ones that have nuclear capacity and aren't giving it up, and are okay with them having it (similar to, say, Israel or France).

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9 minutes ago, Relic said:

Yeah, those are good points. So, what is their end game? What are they trying to accomplish? I'm sure they want sanctions lifted and they probably would like to join the global economy in some way, otherwise what is the point of the constant antagonism? If you come across any literature on the subject I'd be interested in reading about it. 

The prevailing theory is that the North Koreans feel that their regime will not be secure until they have nuclear capability. They will not feel that secure until they can hit Washington DC. When they do that, they will use that as leverage to get what they want: respect, sanctions lifted etc. Their ultimate desire is reunification of Korea under their rule, but they'll settle for survival if that is not achievable.

This is why the US has a problem. North Korea is playing a very high stakes game and aren't being restrained by international norms (that even Iran is at least paying lip service to).

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There are still a few areas where a deal could be done, such as nuclear test bans or rocket testing/development restrictions that could slow or limit the scale of their nuclear ambitions, but when it comes to a nuclear armed NK with IRBMs the ship has very much sailed.

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I'd go with the lance the boil option, while you still can. Start by deploying an Israeli type Iron Dome defense in South Korea. Then wipe out North Korea's artillery and missile arsenal with a massive air assault.

Link that with "decapitation" strikes against as much of its senior leadership as possible. I doubt loyalty to the regime runs that deep, so once you have boots on the ground surrender will likely follow soon after. Most likely, they would take out Kim Jong Un themselves, to end the war sooner.

If you wait, the stakes just get higher.

And what makes this different from Iraq, or Syria or Libya, is that you don't have a death cult as the prevailing religion of the area. The North Koreans won't become a new source of Jihadi's. Instead, they will just want to start a new life post-dictatorship. Most likely you will eventually have a German reunification type process in the decades following such a war, with Korea becoming one again, albeit with a massive wealth gap between the two halves. But that can heal, over time.

But first, you have to take out the regime.

EDIT

A bit of googling brought up this interesting scenario analysis:

http://viableopposition.blogspot.co.za/2013/02/a-history-of-preparing-to-attack-north.html

As you can see, there is no easy choice here. All options carry consequences. Note the extensive stocks of chemical and biological weapons North Korea could deploy against Seoul, for example. But in my view, these consequences just grow more severe the further North Korea develops its weapons program.

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What is so dangerous about the recent missile test from the DPRK is the type of missile fuel used.  These missiles are NOT liquid fueled, they are solid fuel missiles.  This allows them to be deployed in TEL/Transport/Erector/Launcher vehicles, and without the long tail of fuel and support vehicles needed to fuel a liquid fuel missile - liquid fuel cannot be stored in a missile long term, and for nuclear missiles that are liquid fueled, it shows intentions when they are deployed and begin to fuel up.  It also gives recon and attack systems time to find them, fix them, and destroy them before they are launched.   We lose all of that when the missile is solid fueled, as the trucks are VERY difficult to find, much less fix and destroy.  They can be deployed anywhere a truck can drive, and these types of mobile missiles are THE most dangerous types of nuclear weapons out there (land based anyway) due to the nature of their mobility and difficulty in tracking them.

 

That's the "news" from the most recent DPRK test, they've proven that they can now deploy mobile solid fuel missiles in land based TEL launchers, and the obvious advantage of using a similar type missile if they choose to deploy them at sea, another HUGE problem, having to task one of our submarines, 24/7, to tracking a DPRK ballistic missile armed sub.  It would take a fleet of at least 4 of our boats to guarantee 24/7 coverage of a DPRK SSBN base and/or sub.  The DPRK has just cost us billions in naval expenditures alone, not the mention the costs involved in the extremely difficult task of trying to keep track of mobile missile launchers on land.

 

Werthead hit the major points on the challenges an intercontinental nuclear missile armed DPRK presents - while theoretically possible to have the CIA/etc start a political operation a la "Arab Spring" to try and destabilize and topple KJU, past experience has shown that not even his relatives are safe from execution for things as simple as falling asleep while he's speaking.  I agree that this would be the best method to use, I just don't think it has a good chance of success right now.

Going after the DPRKs capability they have now, or wait and see how KJU acts once they have an effective long range system deployed, is really the only 2 viable options.  Neither are very good - one ensures a massive loss of life on both sides, as there is little chance that the North will just stand by as its nuclear program is dismantled by bombs and cruise missiles.  However, choosing not to act soon also runs the risk of having KJU beginning to make serious threats vs Washington DC/etc IF the DPRK is allowed to field a system that puts the cap city in the USA in range.  Two pretty poor choices right now - Just made far worse by the fact that the DPRK can now put mobile land based launchers in the field, and has also proven it is capable of fielding an SSBN, albeit a loud and easy to track one, which will still cost a lot in terms of resources to track.

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