You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: North Korea | What if the only way to deal with the Nuclear threat, is to deploy technology nobody wants to reveal?

in #kr8 years ago

I'd question (from a quantitative approach only, there's no doubt that ANY nuclear weapons in ANYBODY'S possession is a potential existential threat to a large portion of the globe's biosphere) your risk assessments.
As far as the world goes, if the US suddenly were destroyed, it's a very major problem to the world, but not an existential threat, and the same for N. (or S., for that matter). For Kim, the optimal result would be a successful strike without retaliation (nearly impossible, given...this is the US)- but that wouldn't destroy the US. A retaliation probably WOULD destroy N. Korea, even with conventional weapons- and the ensuing carnage devastating to at least the region. This is NOT the planetary threat you envision, most of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere would be unaffected to any serious degree, and the Southern little at all unless the Coriolis balance at the equator greatly disturbed.
Over the long term, should these two belligerents (and one who was raised Quaker in the US can tell you, the US has ALWAYS been a belligerent bully) be self-selected for elimination from world significance, there might be a window of opportunity for great positive social development- but given the Islamist countries world, India, China, Russia, and MOST of the rest, I'd have little confidence things would get any better.
The fate of the world is controlled by over-brained chimps....

Sort:  

I cannot pretend to understand the calculations that Stoyan Sarg has conducted to come to the conclusion that two coincident nuclear ground based atmospheric detonations would cause, but I can say that the self sustaining vortexes he describes stripping the planet of first the atmosphere and consequently the water are the biggest existential threat which should be taken seriously if it hasn't already.

A single bomb dropped on the US would, of course, not end the US, in fact the response, as you identify would likely be far more devastating for more souls and disruptive to the way the world currently functions.

What I suggest is that we should be prepared to use whatever ways and means we have in order to prevent that first bomb from reaching its target.

I think you worry too much. It isn't an ICBM but an IRBM with a range of a few hundred miles. It could reach Japan's southern coast...

OTR radar was tried at Orfordness in the UK during the 60's and 70's, it was a VLF radar called Cobra Mist. It was so powerful that shipping was banned for12 miles out to sea, the VLF radiation would have killed any sailors who got too close. It a National Trust property now.