Kim To N. Korean Military: Be Ready To Use Nuclear Weapons At Any Time (reuters.com) 321
PolygamousRanchKid writes with this story from Reuters, excerpting: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his country to be ready to use its nuclear weapons at any time and to turn its military posture to "pre-emptive attack" mode in the face of growing threats from its enemies, state media said on Friday. The comments, carried by the North's official KCNA news agency, marked a further escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula after the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday imposed harsh new sanctions against the isolated state for its nuclear program. South Korea's defense ministry said on Thursday North Korea launched several projectiles off its coast into the sea up to 150 kilometers (90 miles) away, an apparent response to the U.N. sanctions. ... North Korea has previously threatened pre-emptive attacks on its enemies including South Korea, Japan and the United States. Military experts doubt it has yet developed the capability to fire a long-range missile with a miniaturized warhead to deliver a nuclear weapon as far as the United States.
Says PolygamousRanchKid: "Oh, joy oh joy... I knew that 2016 was missing something: the threat of nuclear war!"
Nuclear weapons aren't the deterrent (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no real risk of a nuclear strike coming out of NK. The real deterrent they have is the massed conventional artillery pointed at Seuol. Any attack on NK would have to be so overwhelming as to destroy the artillery in a minute. If not millions of civilians die.
Re:Nuclear weapons aren't the deterrent (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no real risk of a nuclear strike coming out of NK. The real deterrent they have is the massed conventional artillery pointed at Seuol. Any attack on NK would have to be so overwhelming as to destroy the artillery in a minute. If not millions of civilians die.
Nobody is seriously considering a first strike on North Korea. All their bolstering about their enemies threatening attack is for domestic consumption. With the new sanctions imposed life in North Korea is about to get even harder and injecting a new dose of fear in the populace helps to keep them under control. The truth is that what South Korea fears as well as China fear most is a rapid collapse of the regime and millions of immigrants making a mad-dash for the borders
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If they make a mad dash to the the south it will be through a giant minefield.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nuclear weapons aren't the deterrent (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Through a minefield designed to stop T-72's. I don't think you realise the enormity of the situation there.
spike Kim for food (Score:2)
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My guess is that the outcome analysis pretty much came back with "not worth it. Even without nukes they wouldn't".
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Why?
As things stands the US has a nice easy to present bogeyman which is almost zero actual threat to the US.
If they removed them, they would gain little, and lose a useful political piece (got to keep the unwashed masses scared of something,
god forbid peace came to the middle east, nice to have a backup!)
The US gets to prod them with a stick from time to time (always nice to carry out live fire exercises right on their ocean border zones) to
keep the system churning away, NK gets to point to a terrible enem
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Nuclear weapons aren't necessarily missiles (Score:2)
There is no real risk of a nuclear strike coming out of NK.
Nuclear weapons aren't necessarily missiles, nor even nuclear bombs. Nuclear weapons include dirty bombs, nuclear dusting and various other things. Some of the later only require WW2 era technology. North Korea is capable of attacking the US with these older technologies.
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How exactly?
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For even lower tech there is a simple dirty bomb. A regular bomb encased in radioactive material. Delivered like any other bomb, methods subject to its size.
Whether you take out a room, a city block or an entire city won't make much difference to how the US reacts though. Radioactive material should be traceable back to NK reactors.
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No, not really. The only real nuclear risk to the US would be a bomb smuggled into a port. I'm sure this is possible but the actual damage from that would be minimal. Also the risk of getting caught is extremely high. That sort of operation would produce too much chatter to not get detected.
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No, not really. The only real nuclear risk to the US would be a bomb smuggled into a port. I'm sure this is possible but the actual damage from that would be minimal. Also the risk of getting caught is extremely high. That sort of operation would produce too much chatter to not get detected.
Do not confuse the operational skills of NK operatives with the idiot jihadists in the middle east. The NK operatives are highly trained and extremely proficient special forces types. The NK's aren't very chatty.
Also don't fixate on city killers. Contaminating a city block or even a room would have a massive effect in the US. And a massive response.
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Sorry I don't give NK military the level of credit you do. I doubt that they are particularly well trained or well equipped. They are also not combat tested to any degree.
Re:Nuclear weapons aren't necessarily missiles (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry I don't give NK military the level of credit you do. I doubt that they are particularly well trained or well equipped. They are also not combat tested to any degree.
Do not confuse the NK military in general with the NK special operations types. Its night and day. They're special operations types are highly capable and have proven it in South Korea. For example in the 1990s a NK reconnaissance team infiltrated South Korea by submarine and successfully surveilled a navy base for several days. When the sub came back to pick them up the sub ran aground. Classified equipment was destroyed and then the recon team executed the sailors and tried to make it to NK on foot. They were discovered and evaded the South Korean military for over a month, killing and wounding several dozen South Korean soldiers in the process. Most of the recon team was killed during this long hunt, one is thought to have made it to NK.
On another occasion a NK sub got caught in a fishing vessels nets. Its seems to have scuttled itself when the South Korean Navy tried to take it. The water was shallow enough for divers to search it. Evidence of numerous successful recon mission on South Korean territory was found.
Re:Nuclear weapons aren't necessarily missiles (Score:5, Insightful)
"Highly capable" doesn't mean what you think it means.
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Nuclear weapons aren't necessarily missiles, nor even nuclear bombs. Nuclear weapons include dirty bombs, nuclear dusting and various other things. Some of the later only require WW2 era technology. North Korea is capable of attacking the US with these older technologies.
Dirty bombs are the strategic equivalent of poking a polar bear with a small twig.
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Nuclear weapons aren't necessarily missiles, nor even nuclear bombs. Nuclear weapons include dirty bombs, nuclear dusting and various other things. Some of the later only require WW2 era technology. North Korea is capable of attacking the US with these older technologies.
Dirty bombs are the strategic equivalent of poking a polar bear with a small twig.
Good thing NK is run by a rational grounded person who would never do something so stupid, no matter how desperate.
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Thank goodness we have our own Kim [youtube.com] on our side to prevent this from becoming reality.
Re:Nuclear weapons aren't the deterrent (Score:5, Interesting)
millions of civilians die
Millions would not die [nautilus.org]. The death toll of a surprise barrage by NK conventional artillery would be tens of thousands. Long range NK artillery would be neutralized in the first week. Seoul would survive.
You're parroting the claims of the NYT and others that tend to exaggerate the consequences of conflict for their own misguided reasons. Without nuclear or chemical weapons NK cannot destroy Seoul, and with such weapons they face rapid obliteration by the strategic weapons of South Korean allies.
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Very interesting report. Certainly makes me rethink the (for lack of a better term) conventional wisdom about NK's ability to strike at Seoul. Until now I would have essentially agreed with the OP. The report definitely seems to be well thought out and thorough, however it does rely on some information which, while it may be the best available, is not completely verified (acknowledged in the report, to it's credit). For example, the so-called "Dud rate". I'm don't necessarily disagree with these numbers, bu
Re:Nuclear weapons aren't the deterrent (Score:5, Interesting)
This stuff is easy to look up yourself.
Hell, get on Google Earth or Google Maps and review all the places they say there will be attacks from.
You'll find a few holes and tunnel entrances.
What you won't find, is fast deploy-able anti aircraft weapons. You won't find ports or ships to carry attackers. You won't find rail lines that can't be cut fast, and you won't find shit for infrastructure to support a war or a movement of troops. You won't find airfields of any merit. You won't find planes on any of the ones that are there that have moved in years. To attack, they'll have to WALK. Over MOUNTAINS.
Cluster bombs, dropped mines, and other simple stuff will stop them. Hell, drop FOOD behind the lines with a leaflet that says "we dropped all the food behind you." That's what they want anyway, that's the reason for all the threats.
Nothing will come of any of this. China will ship them some more food and they'll quiet down until the crops fail next year.
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Nothing will come of any of this. China will ship them some more food and they'll quiet down until the crops fail next year.
Why do their crops seem to fail year after year ? Do they put ALL their resources in the military and nothing for the rest of the country ?
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A good portion of the country just sucks to crow crops. Poor soil, terrain, and climate conditions just make it impractical to grow crops in a significant amount.
For the parts that can grow crops, economic sanctions have had their effect to. Having very limited access to commercial pesticides, fertilizers, petroleum products, and electricity for irrigation results in significantly lower crop yields than what a modern farm would yield. Add in severe natural disasters, lack of diversity in crops, shitty seed
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Why do their crops seem to fail year after year ? Do they put ALL their resources in the military and nothing for the rest of the country ?
That is a large part of it. Military first is a main guiding principle in NK. They justify it due to the threat of the USA and their puppet government in SK. Even when the country was starving, food first went to the military as well as other resources.
Other points are that NK just isn't a good place for growing crops. Most of the good farm land is in the south and the north is good for mining. Another is that the country very seriously follows the guidence of their supreme leaders, and at one time, the eld
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There is no real risk of a nuclear strike coming out of NK
Personally, I'm not as confident as that - we already know of people in this world, who are prepared to throw it all away even in an empty gesture, if they are pushed hard enough; and they do seem to have the capability to make nuclear weapons, even if it is only just. The problem is that they have been pushed into a corner that gets ever tighter, and they still haven't got the sense to change their tack. Do we believe they are going to back down at some point? I'm not convinced - it would appear that we ha
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But the corner that they are in is the corner the rulers want to be in. They can point at the big bad americans and live it up. Yeah the general population lives in hell but those in the ruling party live a very very comfortable life.
These people are not driven by a crazy religion or ideology. They are just leveraging the western threat to live the high life at the price of the peasants.
Re:Nuclear weapons aren't the deterrent (Score:5, Insightful)
rhetorical threats from a mentally unstable leader
Kim is NOT mentally unstable. His actions are deliberate and rational. The Kim dynasty has been in power for 70 years. They have wrung concession after concession out of the rest of the world. If Kim negotiated calmly, no one would cave in to his demands. But by issuing threats, and using bizarre behavior, he has been able to get his opponents to accept any deal this is even halfway sane.
The North needs to deescalate.
That would be foolish. It would lead to the end of his regime. He needs an external enemy to justify his rule.
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You sure? He's friends with Dennis Rodman.
Enough said.
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And with that small nuke, they could simply fire on Okinawa. Most of the military forces in the Asia/Pacific region would be gone with one strike.
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So it would take 3 days longer until li'l Kim is a charred corpse?
Look, he's much, but not insane. He knows well that ANY strike ANYWHERE would be answered with the total and absolute annihilation of anything and everything that might possibly, remotely have some kind of something resembling power in NKor. In other words, they want to keep their hookers and blow, and they really want to stay alive.
The very last thing they want to do is give anyone a good justification to end that.
Re:Nuclear weapons are a deterrent (Score:2)
And what then mr know-it-all?
Tell me, what exactly do you think their second step would be, and what do you think the worlds reaction (for example, China..) would be?
Perhaps N.Korea can invade someone with their highly capable navy, using their extensive airforce for air cover, and hold the ground against
the efforts of the rest of the world?
They want such weapons to protect what they have now, which almost certainly includes their access to nice western toys for their elite.
They will rattle their sabers for
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No, they don't have a device that's small enough to fit on a missile. Yet. But Cramer is wrong - a few kilotons is enough to wipe out a city.
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If they lob a nuke even remotely somewhere into the vicinity of the US, the sheet of glass strategy would possibly be seen as "not enough. But a start".
The silver lining around every (mushroom) cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, because millions of innocent dead is a bright side. Some of the things you say are so stupid they're baffling.
Re:The silver lining around every (mushroom) cloud (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, because millions of innocent dead is a bright side. Some of the things you say are so stupid they're baffling.
I see you didn't quite follow his reasoning, so let's go over it. The millions of innocent dead are the downside. The fact that it couldn't happen a second time, because after a nuclear exchange the problematic North Korean government would no longer exist, that's the bright side.
Accuse the parent poster of joking in bad taste if you want, but what he posted was perfectly logical.
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because after a nuclear exchange the problematic North Korean government would no longer exist, that's the bright side.
Yep because that has happened so often of the past 100 years that it's worth killing millions for.
But I disagree with one fundamental part of this... we have been far closer to the threat of nuclear war than this. It's a little man trying to show how big he is. He's all sorts of crazy, but he's not stupid. North Korea won't pre-emptively strike the USA any more than they were the first nation to put an astronaut on the sun (at night of course because it would be too hot during the day).
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Unless NK has a huge jump in technology any bomb they set off would be relatively low yield meaning to would be very unlikely for the US to go all MAD within seconds. If they bombed a US city they would also launch artillery strikes on South Korea, this would see US forces in Japan & SK hitting back hard, extremely quickly. On top of that the Chinese would move in fast in order to ensure they were at the negotiating table afterwards.
Realistically even if NK nuked an American city America would not nuk
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No they wouldn't. Because even though there are plenty of gun toting crazies in the US you do not fire ICBMs anywhere near a nuclear power. NK shares a border with China. China would not sit still with missiles coming in or stand off bombers in bound.
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I really really really hope you are wrong. NK isn't free to nuke someone. if they nuke someone the rules are going to die along with a lot of other people. But it will be using conventional weapons.
If the US starts using long range or sub deployed nukes the risk of China panicking are too high. One missile wrongly identified as headed towards a Chinese population centre and we are all dead.
If thousands and thousands of US troops land in NK and Kim et all are executed no other country is going to think i
Dark as coal (Score:2)
Look at the bright side - the day after a North Korea 1st strike, the problem with North Korea will be solved. Or at least disappear.
By what means? The U.S., nor any other nation, would not issue a retaliatory strike, and probably not even invade. A few facilities bombed, and that's about it.
It would take several consecutive strikes before any first world nation (well OK just the U.S.) would consider a nuclear strike right now.
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Look at the bright side - the day after a North Korea 1st strike, the problem with North Korea will be solved. Or at least disappear.
Seems doubtful that the west would dare retaliate with nukes given that North Korea is attached to China.
Which is of course why NK gets away with all the bullshit that they get away with to start with.
Re:The silver lining around every (mushroom) cloud (Score:4)
We don't want North Korea to disappear, we want them to be integrated back into the international community. To stop being crazy. To enjoy the good things we all enjoy.
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Nobody would stop to ask for consent. A nuclear attack means instant retaliation.
Not necessarily. An "instant retaliation" requires presidential authorization to launch missiles in response, and President Obama's character is such that he will never approve of launching the nukes, not even in retaliation after a first strike from NK turns San Francisco or New York City into a glowing pile of ash.
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Whether he has the authority or not to prevent it, no president would have the power to stop it. The will of the people to counter attack would be overwhelming and to attempt to prevent that would just end up getting him removed legally or (most likely) otherwise and replaced with someone who will if not the military telling him to fuck off and attacking anyways.
But all shit talking aside, if North Korea attacked, Obama would sign that attack order without hesitation. Hell, you can see everything he has don
Re:The silver lining around every (mushroom) cloud (Score:4, Insightful)
Who said anything about President Obama? The second Little Kim acts out, CHINA will obliterate North Korea.
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The Chinese would much rather maintain their highly profitable trade with this hypothetical island, than continue to prop up Li'l Kim at a huge loss.
Not to mention that the boys in Beijing are getting *mighty* tired of losing face just so Kim can keep playing the schoolyard bully.
If the Americans promised not to venture north of the DMZ, the Chinese would likely be quite happy to have SK take over NK any time.
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I'm not a math major, but I would like to know how many parking spots will a 20 megaton US nuclear bomb yield?
The US doesn't have any 20 megaton bombs. The last weapons in that range were decommissioned 40 years ago. Most US strategic warheads are 200KT or less. That is still 10 Nagasakis, but only 1% of 20MT. Nuclear arsenals today are vastly smaller than they were at the height of the cold war.
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I'm not a math major, but I would like to know how many parking spots will a 20 megaton US nuclear bomb yield?
The US doesn't have any 20 megaton bombs. The last weapons in that range were decommissioned 40 years ago. Most US strategic warheads are 200KT or less. That is still 10 Nagasakis, but only 1% of 20MT. Nuclear arsenals today are vastly smaller than they were at the height of the cold war.
As a weapon of sheer terror the 50 Megaton Tzar bomba is, well Tzar. As far as actual destruction goes most of the energy of a air-blast actually goes up into space rather then to the ground. If your target is a sprawling city rather then a fortified bunker a large number of smaller warheads will do more damage to your target then a larger bomb. Today's ICBM's are designed to carry multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles , each of which carries a separate nuclear warhead
Yawn (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Seoul and no one I know is even slightly concerned about this guy. No one is scared and no one cares.
Ignore him.
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ALL IN (Score:3)
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I don't think there is an endgame, just the status quo with a small number of ultra-rich aristocrats very happy with the situation and a very large number of starving peasants unable to change it.
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BTW, has anybody noticed that Kim Jong Un always seems to be the one-and-only fat guy in any picture you ever see of North Koreans? Not even the elite folks that flank him are fat (except for the brims of their hats, of course.) Maybe he has a rule about that or something: "I am only fat guy in North Krorea!" Just wondering...
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Not scared (Score:2)
It's just all bluster. (Score:5, Interesting)
Mostly because people who have seriously studied the DPRK military note their military is like the military divisions in Moscow during the Soviet era: all show and no go. Many have said that the DPRK military may not even have enough ammunition and military hardware to mount a full-scale invasion of South Korea.
Re:It's just all bluster. (Score:5, Informative)
They don't have the capability to invade South Korea. They haven't in a very very long time. If they tried to march south they would be massacred.
What they do have is an absolutely stupid number of artillery pieces pointed south and we know at least some of them work because they keep firing them. The US estimates that NK has 8600 artillery pieces of which 4500 are currently aimed at SK. Even if you assumed 50% were inoperable the amount of explosive that would rain on Seoul is insane.
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Well i dont know thier layout at all but couldn't the US just bomb those positions? not fast enough? I guess theres no such thing as a tactical nuke but if they are all in the side of a mountain, perhaps creative means could be used.
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Well the estimate is 4500 artillery aimed at seoul. Lets assume you manage to knock out 75% in a pre-emptive strike. That leaves 1125. If we make the assumption that they are the D-20 which are the predominate NK equipment they can fire 4-6 rounds in the first minute and then sustain 1 rpm. Assuming we identify them and destroy all of them in 30 minutes (not fucking likely) that means close to 40,000 shells have landed on Seoul in the first 30 minutes.
There are 10 million people living in Seoul. How ma
Re:It's just all bluster. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since you ask a serious question, then why not a serious answer.
My ballpark would be 100,000 people dead depending heavily on the type of ordinance (HE, AP, Incendary, Frag, etc)
so, that is around 1% of the population. Remember, those shells will land roughly randomly - I am assuming they have been
setup to specifically target the population (if totally random then it will be MUCH lower).
However your figures are highly flawed, as you are not allowing for losses in the NK artillery, or for desertions in people who dont
actually want to shell their own families (remember, Korea was only separated a few generations ago), equipment failure, etc.
You are also assuming all of those pieces can reach high popluation densities, however the border is long and the ranges not that great.
By your own claims (and I agree) their most common artillery piece is similar to the D20, around 20km range.
The center is Seoul is 30-40km from the border (30 if you count a specific inset area..), so they only have the closer areas to
target, which are lower density. They would also need to have concentrated all their artillery in a very small and specific region to even
target Seoul.
And, lastly, think about what they would 'gain' by such an attack. The rest of the world would wipe them out.
No more young girl harems for the great leader, no more european sportscars, no more playstation, no more living as kings for the ruling class.
If they are lucky they will be reduced to running and hiding while they are being hunted after the fall of their state.
Hard to see their motivation for such an attack..
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My figures were based on them having lost 75% of their capabilities due to a pre-emptive strike by the US or other forces. You can pretty much cross out any desertion / non-firing because of not wanting to attack people if they were subject to a first strike. You would of course have to add in runners but I felt that 75% out of action probably covered those.
It was in response to the previous posters comment of can't the US just bomb them. I also assumed a 100% silence rate at 30 minutes which is probably
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I read a paper to this effect from an Air Force officer. I'm not sure what it was but I seem to recall it was something like a graduate school thesis. The paper basically laid out why it was best to just leave North Korea alone.
The paper spelled out the number of artillery pieces that they have, the number of conventional shells they have on hand to fire, the rate that they can fire, and the range that they are capable of reaching. These artillery pieces are placed in deep in mountain sides where they wo
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The paper speculated that any attack on NK would result in a bombardment of any and all populated areas in SK. Since a large portion of the population lives within artillery range the result of such bombardment would be very deadly. In the time it would take to destroy those artillery pieces about 2/3rds of the SK population would be dead or homeless.
Is that not assuming all, or at least 2/3rd of the population live within range (20-30km) of the artillery which is definitely not the case. And that's if they're literally on the border, any recession into NK territory would reduce the effective range further. Going by this map you've got maybe 3 or 4 places big enough to be marked within range. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_South_Korea#/media/File:Korea_south_map_-_Valentim.png). That probably also assumes the population would take no measur
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That's exactly what Stratfor would say. They describe most leaders, such as they are, as rational players primarily interested in their survival. DPRK doing anything other than posturing w/ nuclear weapons would be against their survival.
He had to up the ante (Score:5, Funny)
He took one look at American's presidential candidates and said to himself: "Self, if I don't do something fast, I'll lose my title as craziest man on the planet."
This is when editors really need to step in (Score:5, Insightful)
Says PolygamousRanchKid: "Oh, joy oh joy... I knew that 2016 was missing something: the threat of nuclear war!"
We don't need this stupid bullshit in the summary. I'll read the comments if I want stupid bullshit.
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Also, as the guy has absolutely no clue. We just averted a very real possibility of nuclear war just a week ago, when the ceasefire agreement was reached for Syria. There is still a good chance of it, but it seems to be considerably lower now. Saudi Arabia and Turkey threatened to invade Syria and Russia would have no choice, but to use tactical nuclear weapons to defend their troops there. What we would do in response is not too hard to guess.
Compared to this, there is almost no threat of actual nuclear wa
Well its been quiet with ISIS (Score:3, Insightful)
so guess the western powers need to throw rocks on another buggie man/hornets nest/
His numbers don't add up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cue cartoons of him in a nappy trying to count on his fingers, because that is the magnitude of his arsenal and the nature of his behaviour.
Come on, China. Just end it already (Score:3)
At this point, we really won't even mind if you keep it as a "communist" buffer state. Just install a saner puppet. Really. We won't mind that much. Do it. DO IT. DO IT!!!!
domestic politics (Score:2)
Instead of armchair explanation... (Score:5, Informative)
Lankov may have an agenda (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Pre-emptive attack would be really smart (Score:2)
Mad Max (the old one) style (Score:2)
Yadda yadda yadda (Score:2)
Same shit, different day.
Maybe someday the south will just say, "OK, bring it on you fat little faggot!" and smack the shit out of them.
Problem solved.
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They don't have to have an ICBM, just get an object into orbit and they can drop it anywhere provided they have enough math skills
Eh... that's basically the definition of ICBM.
I suppose you could argue if they are actually launching a satellite into a stable *orbit* that would eventually drop a nuke with any accuracy it wouldn't technically be ballistic - but in that cast it's an order of magnitude more complex than an ICBM so what's the point...
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NORAD does too much tracking. If a bird deorbits they know which bird it was, who put it into orbit when and from where.
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The point is, instead of 20 minutes of warning you get maybe 5 before the nuke lands on you, thereby rendering all of our anti-ballistic technology useless. Oh, and you'd have no idea who deorbited their nuke so you can't even retaliate properly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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errr.... which takes the MUCH more powerful rocket system and more accurate guidance? to do sub-orbital lob and hit a target, or put object fully into orbit, to de-orbit later and hit a target?
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He got the downmod for doing it wrong [encyclopediadramatica.se]. What a bunch of noobz we're cursed with, these days. NOW GET OFF MY LAWN.
Re:Nuke North Korea (Score:4, Insightful)
So basically, you want to nuke North Korea because you want to nuke North Korea.
And you assume that Kim is not a rational actor. That's a big assumption. Especially since he seems to have proved himself quite adept already at removing possible threats to the power that he was born and raised to assume as the scion of a Stalinist dynasty.
(And I am also an EU citizen, and you most certainly do not speak for me.)
Thanks for playing!
Re:Is there a trend, here? (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Funny how you never protested when the off-topic, non-tech stories agreed with your point of view".
I have. Less often, because it's well-covered by many others here.
As a conservative you have failed to notice that in the past couple of decades, the Fox News approach (a conservative lie is just as good as the truth...they've been caught so many times I've lost track) passes as "fair debate".
What you're seeing here is an invasion by the right wing echo chamber. Debunked lies cycle through over and over
Re: North Korea's next target ... (Score:2, Insightful)
The US does not hate China dude. If North Korea attacked China, the US would assist- if China needed help swatting that fly, which they would not.
Your whole preconception is wrong.
Re:North Korea's next target ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is Americans love the Chinese. We buy their products like crazy. We love their food. We admire their art, exotic language and respect their ancient heritage. We welcome their people to study and work here. Sure we complain about the trade imbalance and the gamesmanship between our governments. But for the things that really matter they are our brothers and would instantly and without hesitation rally to their aid.
Make no mistake, if North Korea would actually use nuclear weapons in anger against *anybody*, it would cease to exist as a political entity in less than a week.
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How did that work out for Germany when the wall came down? NK has virtually no production capacity or skilled labor, and would be a drain on the ROK economy for years before things got better.
Re:North Korea's next target ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Costly at first to feed and house millions of Germans who had been starving for two generations and had been used to planned poverty, but they caught up surprisingly fast.
Koreans have been one people since the beginning of history. We tend to forget that the whole idea of North Korea dates back only to the immediate postwar years. NK is a fake country that has existed this long only because of the perceived support of China, which is now finding the place to be more trouble than it's worth. When the wall comes down. no matter what the reason, Both Korea will immediately cease to exist, and there won't even be any equivalent of Ostalgie.
Re: North Korea's next target ... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is gullible to think that Kim Jong Un is insane? He pokes SK, Japan, and the US on a regular basis. He has attacked SK previously, and fires off missiles and explodes nukes as a temper tantrum every year when the US and SK have their annual cooperation drills.
The guy is clearly crazy, the only reason they won the Korean war was due to China's support, and he has managed to alienate China, their closest ally, by setting off nukes after they told him to quit it.
Re: (Score:3)
Such a near sighted comment. -Wishing- an attack and deaths of many thousands and possibly millions of people just to 'stomp' an army into the ground.
This isn't a video game, these are people's lives. Losing your parents, children, loved ones, and/or family is horrible every single time.
Please don't think of wars at a macro level with a 'winner' and 'loser'. At the micro level, it's devastating; brothers that live their lives without limbs, children born without eyes, and sometimes lifetime poverty for fami