Seismic Data From North Korea Suggest a Repeat of 2013 Nuclear Test 136
Lasrick writes: Seismologist Jeffrey Park has done an initial analysis of the seismic data from North Korea's reported nuclear weapon test and found 'an uncanny resemblance to the signals recorded for the February 12, 2013 detonation.' Park's analysis pretty much destroy's the North Korean claim that they detonated a hydrogen bomb, and he postulates that P'yongyang is desperate for attention during the US presidential election cycle.
Siegfried Hecker, one of the world's top experts on the North Korea nuclear program, is nonetheless concerned that the DPRK has now completed its fourth test, and with it a greater sophistication in their bomb design. Hecker is also skeptical that the test was an H-bomb. However, as he says, "We know so little about North Korea's nuclear weapons design and test results that we cannot completely rule it out."
Siegfried Hecker, one of the world's top experts on the North Korea nuclear program, is nonetheless concerned that the DPRK has now completed its fourth test, and with it a greater sophistication in their bomb design. Hecker is also skeptical that the test was an H-bomb. However, as he says, "We know so little about North Korea's nuclear weapons design and test results that we cannot completely rule it out."
Important consideration (Score:5, Funny)
We also cannot rule out that NK has crated an earthquake machine, capable of producing any degree of tremors in the Earth they would like - the seismic data being so identical re-enforces this possibility since they would likely want to copy known seismic output for a test.
Re:Important consideration (Score:5, Insightful)
A nuke might be a simpler accomplishment.
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It's all a cover for their top secret fracking scheme.
Further Considerations (Score:3)
Why would you want a nuclear weapon when you could have a machine to make earthquakes?
You can't stir a cup of tea with a nuke, whereas in theory the earthquake machine offers an infinite range of variability for custom uses; paint shaking, avalanche causement, or cleaning every camera sensor in the country all at the same time. Would you not be fanatically devoted to a country where your camera sensor was forever free of dust? An earthquake machine is plainly the most direct path to the love of the people
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I can't believe NK would be able to independently invent an earthquake machine - the only way I buy this is if they stole the plans for HAARP. Maybe, except they'd have to get past Dick Cheney first, and we know he's good with a shotgun!
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we know he's good with a shotgun
Oh nonsense. We all know it's his friend who deserves all the credit for that shooting.
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it's called fracking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
the techonology was first achieved by the rogue state of oklahoma. we have not yet received their list of demands. however, they have shared the dangerous technology with the unstable province of alberta, which has recently upped the ante of horrors:
http://gizmodo.com/shattering-... [gizmodo.com]
What's an election cycle? (Score:5, Insightful)
P'yongyang is desperate for attention during the US presidential election cycle
When are we NOT in an election cycle? Is there any time ever that someone is not campaigning for public office?
Even if they aren't actively campaigning, they are positioning and posturing for future "election cycles"
Oh, and I believe I saw some aluminum tubes in a satellite photo of N. Korea... so....
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Oh, and I believe I saw some aluminum tubes in a satellite photo of N. Korea... so....
They plan to make some thermite?
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only because they're too dumb to go fix/prevent the disaster that sent them to the past in the first place.
damn illogical romulans.
Foremost expert? (Score:2)
He can't really be one of the top experts on the program if he admits "We know so little about North Korea's nuclear weapons design and test results", indeed the real top experts of the north korean nuclear program are all either in north korea and/or working for an intelligence agency...
*Yawn* (Score:2, Insightful)
I know they are not a good government, but we are not going to fix them. We have not fixed them in the last 60 years of them being a bad government. Nobody else will fix them either. Every Government needs a bogeyman, and the DPRK still works as one.
Personally even if they had a H-Bomb what is the fright? That they are going to use it against their own population? Until they have something better than coal fired missiles from the old USSR the world is not under eminent threat.
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You're right. If there wasn't a Kim Jong-un, we'd have to invent one.
Hopefully, one with a better haircut. The Kid & Play hairdo just isn't working. They just don't make super-villains like they used to.
https://youtu.be/UEaKX9YYHiQ [youtu.be]
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Clearly, there are North Koreans with mod points tonight. I guess they're reading Slashdot by candlelight.
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I imagine Kim has a secret force of DPRK secret police working to monitor all Internet mentions of his regime and mod them down if they mention his hair.
"Comrades, you must pose as normal Srashdot users and if they say anything about Kid & Pray or the fact that I'm big-boned, mod them into the stone age!"
Because I'm so very ronery.
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Maybe not "the world," but South Korea's right next door. Japan isn't that far away. Probably not too many other countries available to them (China's their biggest proponent so that's pretty unlikely..) unless they've significantly improved their rocket tech since last I heard.. but those two countries are pretty tasty looking targets anyway.
I know Americans often like to forget, but the US alone does not encompass "the world," and NK managing to nuke Seoul or Tokyo (or even a smaller city in those nation
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It's most likely that China's reaction in the event of NK nuking another country would be to invade NK before anybody else can so they can maintain influence there.
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That would be probably the best outcome possible for everybody. NK population gets a (ok, probably fairly slight) quality of life improvement.. NK as a country are no longer a threat.. and China gets to annex some territory that nobody's going to get pissy over.
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Apart from South Korea. Who are a US client state.
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Well yeah, SK might get pissy but it wouldn't have anything to do with being a "US client state" -- it would be because they'd want to annex NK themselves to reunite the full country of Korea.
They'd probably still be better off with China running NK than the Kim dynasty though. China's less likely to do something totally insane just for the hell of it.
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Its pretty reasonable to assume that if the Glorious Leader decides to launch his countries nuclear weapons against their southern rivals, his intention is to suffer a Glorious Death while dealing his rivals a devastating blow.
Come now (Score:2)
Your argument of me being an American and believing that America encompasses the world demonstrates that you have a poor and irrational belief. How about less emotional statements and some facts to back your position that DPRK is a threat.
Fact: North Korea does not have the ability to launch a nuclear weapon at either Japan or South Korea. The scuds they have are not capable of carrying that large of a warhead, tend to fall apart, and even if the glue holds they can't hit what they aim for so missiles end
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If and only if they think that it is absolutely impossible for a weapon to be sneaked into Seoul (or Busan, or another large port city ; how about Incheon?) on board a boat. You don't even need to get it to dock, as long as your ship is sufficiently un-suspicious that you're not searched at sea.
Korea doesn't have as much of a drugs problem as America, but it does have a drug market. So a
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I think the people of South Korea and Japan would like to have a word with you on that one.
Probably a dud... (Score:2)
Probably a fizzle. Didn't have their primary configured correctly to ignite the secondary or the secondary was configured or built incorrectly.
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Or, more likely, it's the exact same kind of device they detonated 3 years ago but they're just calling it an H-bomb. Like TFA suggests.
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Wasn't that an Edison-ism?
Apostrophe (Score:2, Insightful)
Park's analysis pretty much destroy's the North Korean claim
Destroys.
Not that anyone will bother to fix it, I'm sure.
Oops? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, let me ask you this, would you like to be the guy that tells Mr. Un that the H bomb fizzled?
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No kidding.....
Kim: Well? Did it work?
Physicists: Uhhhhhh......YEA! Yea! It worked. The reason it was so small was because we are saving the big portion of tritium for use on the evil imperialists. We only used a tiny bit. yea. that's it!.....
Kim: Well done!
Re: Oops? (Score:2)
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Poor little Kim (Score:1, Offtopic)
He's so ronery.
The truth about the seismic data (Score:1)
The truth about the seismic data can be found here:
Not Kim jong Uns secret weapon, but his secret fitness training. [der-postillon.com]
I am shocked! (Score:3)
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he's not dead you imperial heathen!
he simply transcended to a higher plane of being, and will return one day in our hour of need astride his faithful unicorn steed, leading an army of unicorn cavalry to crush the west!
Uh oh (Score:2)
No one is going to do anything until it's too late...and by "too late" I mean after this crank dictator sets off a nuke in a city somewhere, or sells one to some other crank(s) who set it off in a city somewhere.
I'd not be against invading North Korea and freeing the people there. The overwhelming majority would be thanking us after a couple of months with plentiful food, clean water, and electricity that isn't rationed. Oh, and without being executed for shit like accidentally creasing a picture of Gloriou
What does it change? (Score:2)
What does it changes if North Korea masters building hydrogen bomb?
Does that make the country more scary than if it just mastered fission nuclear bomb?
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What does it changes if North Korea masters building hydrogen bomb?
Does that make the country more scary than if it just mastered fission nuclear bomb?
North Korea gets more geopolitical optionality, and can maintain de facto sovereignty with a weapon of last resort. look at one of 2 (probably 3) nuclear states in the middle east, Israel, see how an ambiguous nuclear capability can protect an unprotectable position indefinitely.
otoh it upsets the balance of power in the region, and makes the good Korea almost impossible to protect. Seoul is toast in any conflict, but that won't stop the US from sewing asia and the pacific with antiballistic missile s
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[it] makes the good Korea almost impossible to protect.
Is nuclear weapon relevant against the neighbor? If the north bombs the south, odds are good that it will get nuclear pollution too.
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I think someone confused hydrogen bomb with boosted fission bomb. They both use tritium but the later could be small enough to be delivered by the missiles that North Korea has and would would be the next step in their atomic bomb project.
Juche Korea! (Score:1)
North Korea is smart and they are still alive because of their nukes. I admire their honesty and steadfastness.
Meanwhile, Colonel Gaddhafi has been keel-hauled and ritually sacrificed by a french secret agent on live TV. His once prosperous country is now in a state of chaos and bloodshed due to islamist militia terror. Saddam Hussein was hanged on live TV and his once prosperous country is now in a state of chaos and bloodshed due to saudi funded ISIL-Daesh terror. Assad and his iranian, russian allies are
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HAH! Good one. Sure, there might not be snipers and the DPRK can't afford to waste bullets on firing squads, but they can't afford to waste the labor either, so they solve that problem with massive slav
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I noticed you don't have anything to say about the rest of the post, and admit that the quoted part is at least partially true. The strange thing is that there is so much anti-North Korea propaganda that it makes it hard to tell what is true and what isn't.
I can tell you this, though, and that is that if the propaganda you refer to were actually true there would have been a revolution by now. That kind of situation cannot last, people will put up with a lot, but only so much. And North Korea has been around
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Past that, it's just the old and discredited theory that pro
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Building an atomic bomb is easy, the US did it with minimal use of computers from the 40's onwards. The problem is getting the materials required and so far neither Iran nor North Korea has been able to (legally) acquire the required material. Also, one bomb/missile is not a threat, they shoot one, you shoot back a hundred. IF the target hits you have some casualties ranging between 100 and 500k (nuclear bombs are scary but not movie-style, nation-wiping scary) but again, you kill them. What is scary is if
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Well, the Y'all Quaeda candidates for President are really setting up a welcome for more refugees.
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That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s. At that time the rocket people were re-implementing the V-programmes, looking at novel pro
Re:Its anyone's guess (Score:4, Interesting)
If they have plutonium (and apparently they do), it's not that much harder to get the lithium-6 using the COLEX [fas.org] process and deuterium from many-staged distillation separations to make the lithium deuteride needed for the Teller-Ulam [wikipedia.org] bomb. It only took the US a few years after Alamagordo.
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> Also, one bomb/missile is not a threat, they shoot one, you shoot back a hundred.
That's how you get Capone.
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Nation killers? That is a little hyperbolic, unless you think we are intending to bomb one of those tiny city sized nations.
Re:Its anyone's guess (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know, if you put 768kT MIRVs in a single missile and targeted each separate warhead at a single city, you could theoretically do enough damage to a mid sized country to cause it to teeter close to collapse. In fact, if you shot those at say, the top 5 US cities, you wouldn't have enough to end the US, but you'd crater the US economy in short order. It's not necessary for those warheads to even annihilate those cities, which they probably wouldn't, but it would be enough to empty the cities out and cause complete chaos.
Yes, you can't kill everyone in a country that way, and it would actually take quite a lot of nukes to seriously depopulate a country by direct explosion effects or even residual radiation. But it could kick off the loss of order and infrastructure which would allow disease and disorder to complete the job. In that sense, radiation is much worse because it has a denial effect over areas that wouldn't be otherwise damaged by a blast.
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and that means the military Industrial Complex can shift out of low gear.
There's nothing magical or useful about the military industrial complex for economic purposes. Since you're making war tools and such, you're actually diverting resources from making your economy better. So nuking five US cities and then shifting the military industrial complex out of low gear is going to badly mess up the US economy.
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What war can do, and has done in the past, is set up a nation for an economic boom. A pre-war nation might have a poor economy but during a war that nation is fighting for survival, it gives the nation a common enemy and a common goal. That pre-war nation might find itself held back by infighting, a lack of purpose, or whatever.
A nation at war needs everyone contributing. People that could not find work before will be compelled to work one way or another. People will be sought out to do whatever they ca
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Assuming there is a nation post-war. That is a hell of a gamble, not even considering the fact that countless people will die just to find out. Don't confuse the comfort the US experienced in the second world war with that experienced by other nations during wartime.
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Creating an economy whose sole purpose is to destroy some other group of people with their own economy, is not and never will be a healthy economy.
A post-war nation can find itself in a position for an economic boom.
Which isn't saying a thing. N
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Not so hyperbolic. The Trident II can carry 14 independently targeted W88 weapons, each about 500 kTons. I don't think one of these could kill the United States, the targets are too big and spread out. I do think the US would be a long time recovering if you nuked the 14 biggest cities. Most European nations other than Russia I think you would kill. If you launched an entire submarine load, 24 missiles, from one of our Ohio class boats, I think you could pretty much kill any continent you choose.
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If you launched an entire submarine load, 24 missiles, from one of our Ohio class boats, I think you could pretty much kill any continent you choose.
Do we get to count longer-term effects (e.g. mass starvations caused by nuclear winter) into our score?
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Fission bombs detonate most of their material and don't have much long term effects. Neither Nagasaki nor Hiroshima are or ever were 'dead zones' like Tsjernobyl is (Tsjernobyl's dead zone is not caused by the explosion either but rather the unburnt fuel still in the sarcophagus).
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I wasn't concerned so much with the radioactivity as with the massive amount of black carbon [popsci.com] that would be thrown up into the atmosphere, causing significantly diminished sunlight (potentially worldwide) for several years thereafter, with the resulting diminished crop production causing food shortages.
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But for that you need 14 warheads + a sub or other delivery vehicle + another dozen or so to test with. That was my point, they're making 1 bomb, they haven't gotten anywhere near close with mass production, obtaining the tools, expertise or materials to put it all together and neither do they have a delivery vehicle nor long range missiles; they can perhaps only reach their immediate neighbors but that's too risky, maybe they could clear their own country and hit parts of Russia/India/China if they're luck
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My reply was to Coren22, to say that a single MIRV ICBM can mostly kill all but the biggest countries. I am in no way suggesting that the North Koreans have anything approaching this capability, either in missiles or in warheads.
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Now you've done it!
Monaco is starting a nuclear program of it's own.
Re:Its anyone's guess (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't an assessment of "what they're capable of", it's an assessment of what they just did. "The west" has an international network of seismographs and satellite suites specifically designed for picking up nuclear explosions, both on the surface and underground, and assessing their strength and various properties about them. In fact, this capability was first introduced as far back as 1963, it's nothing new. You don't blow up an atomic bomb on Earth without it being detected and analyzed.
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They only have a stunted A-bomb that they don't have a delivery system for. So, they're still not really a serious threat.
However, they are much closer to taking that crappy payload and putting it on a missile that could hit Japan.
And they could probably already trundle that device into an underground tunnel that goes right into Seoul.
It's mostly a joke because they're waving around a BB gun and calling it an assault rifle. You could still put someone's eye out with that thing, though.
Re:Oh, well, that's okay then (Score:5, Informative)
They only have a stunted A-bomb that they don't have a delivery system for. So, they're still not really a serious threat.
They tried the A-bomb three times:
- The first one had yield that was way low (about 1 kiloton). Probably a "fizzle" (extreme shortfall of output, typically from blowing apart too soon, though it may still be far more powerful than a conventional explosive). EVERY country developing nuclear explosives has had one or more fizzles.
- The second did considerably better (about 4 kilotons), though probably still below their design intent.
- The third was better yet (about 7 kilotons). This is right in the ballpark of other countries' first bomb models, a tad more than half the yeild of the "Little Boy" bomb (about 13 kilotons) dropped on Hiroshima.
So it looks to me like they've got a competent design crew and a working design. At this point they may have their A-bomb robust enough, as well, to fit onto a missile and survive the trip to a target.
This was allegedly their first try to test an H-bomb, and had a similar yeild to the third A bomb. Maybe they had an ignition failure on the second (H) stage on their first try. Any bets on whether they do on their second or third?
The Teller-Ulam configuration is a bit complicated. But it's not all that hard to understand or to build. (With the amount of secrecy and misdirection published on nuclear weapons I would expect that first try by a new player would, more likely than not, either fail to ignite or have significant shortfalls in yield. But I'd also expect an army of physicists and engineers to figure it out and get it right pretty quiclkly. People might try to keep secrets, but physics doesn't.)
Meanwhile: A Nagasaki-sized bomb might be small by Cold War standards, but it's quite adequate to ruin a city.
However, they are much closer to taking that crappy payload and putting it on a missile that could hit Japan.
They have been making, and selling, their successful knockoff of the SCUD for three decades now. They have tested a number of long-range missiles. That's apparently part of the same program, so I would expect it to have a payload weight and volume adequate to carry the bombs.
And they could probably already trundle that device into an underground tunnel that goes right into Seoul.
With those missiles no tunnel is required. But they could also put it in a container, put that on a cargo ship, and sail it into pretty much any seaport in the world. If the coast guard doesn't catch it far enough out, blammo!
It's mostly a joke because they're waving around a BB gun and calling it an assault rifle. You could still put someone's eye out with that thing, though.
7 kilotons of TNT equivalent is the energy of metric s**t load of BBs.
Conventional Example (Score:2)
There is actually a pretty decent historical example of a conventional explosion in a seaport with plenty of detail, an this was in what was likely a less populous city at the time than most would be. During WW1 two ships carrying explosives collided in Halifax harbour in Nova Scotia, Canada. The resulting blast was about 2.9 kilotons of TNT, which pretty much leveled the city, and was the largest conventional explosion prior to nuclear weapons. 7 kilotons would be more than twice that obviously.
https://en. [wikipedia.org]
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To be fair, a single 5g BB going about 36% the speed of light would also have the equivalent of 7 kT of TNT. Maybe they just invented the world's best Daisy Model 25...
If they've got that (and can get it high enough that they don't have to fire through the Earth's land masses or oceans), they don't need the (non-BB) missiles. B-)
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They'll shoot their eye out.
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Creating a nuclear yield, given having the materials to do the job handy really isn't that tough of an exercise now that it's been done, if you can do math.
Making a device that can do that small enough and rugged enough to attach it to a missile and deliver it somewhere (accurately), and still have it function when it reaches it's destination, is a completely different story.
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I know, we all need to panic! North Korea finally has the bomb! Surely they have imminent plans to use it!
Also, I'm really looking forward to the debut of 30 Rock on NBC in a couple days, I really like that Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan.
And the World Series is coming! Who is going to represent the American League, will it be the Tigers or A's? What about the National League, are you thinking Cardinals or Mets? The Cardinals' rookie pitchers Anthony Reyes and Adam Wainwright are looking pretty good, right?
I
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The fundamental problem, though, is that the only way to actually stop a country from doing what you don't want them to do is to successfully invade it. Otherwise -- since sanctions and negotiations are of limited effect -- if they're really motivated, they're going to do it.
Of course, invasions have their own set of problems; successful American invasions have a jillion more problems, and invading the DPRK has about a jillion squared problems (not the least of which that Seoul is within reach of DPRK roc
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The fundamental problem, though, is that the only way to actually stop a country from doing what you don't want them to do is to successfully invade it. Otherwise -- since sanctions and negotiations are of limited effect -- if they're really motivated, they're going to do it.
Precisely this. Did 50 years of sanctions effect regime change in Cuba? No? Did all the international sanctions out the wazoo against North Korea prevent it from building nukes? No? So why would a continued regimen of sanctions on Iran, no matter how harsh, have made a difference? Arguably, only the US policy of "constructive engagement" with China has made any significant change in unfriendly regimes in the past half-century (and you would have to find it in your heart to thank Richard Nixon for that one).
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Cuba survived in large part thanks to support from the old USSR. NK survives in large part thanks to support from China.
I'm not sure Iran has that level of support behind them (though its also possible I'm just not fully up on international politics..)
Sanctions are basically the country-level equivalent of starving a castle out during a siege -- works great when you're successful but if they're getting supplied from somewhere else and you can't block that, you're not going to accomplish much other than was
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Cuba survived in large part thanks to support from the old USSR. NK survives in large part thanks to support from China.
True but Cuba's gravy train dried up after 1991 and they have still limped on for 25 years under the same Communist government led by people with the same last name. You're right that North Korea, for all their "juche," does more or less completely rely on their Sugar Dragon to the North, although much of its foreign exchange is actually through illegal black market trade rather than the largesse of the Chinese government.
I'm not sure Iran has that level of support behind them (though its also possible I'm just not fully up on international politics..)
You're right that Iran doesn't have a sponsoring patron in quite the same way. But the
No Easy Fix [Re:Thanks] (Score:1)
Agreed. NK leaders will only go down with a nasty fight and take a lot of people with them in the process, mostly South Koreans.
Any politician who claims there is an easy fix deserves being slapped with a wet pig.
If they claim they can solve it using "strong leadership", they deserve TWO wet pigs. I'm tired of that phrase.
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The fundamental problem, though, is that the only way to actually stop a country from doing what you don't want them to do is to successfully invade it.
Well, there is one other method -- nuke (or otherwise destroy) Pyongyang until there is no more North Korean government left to annoy you with its pesky nuclear tests.
Not that I'm advocating such an approach, but I suspect that is what would happen if North Korea allowed any of its nuclear bombs to be used for anything other than an underground test / posturing exercise.
Furthermore, I suspect that North Korea's leaders know this, which is why they are unlikely to use a nuclear weapon on an enemy, or give a
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destroy Pyongyang
Trouble is, Pyongyang is estimated to contain around 10% of the NK population (~2.3mill/24mill according to a quick Wikipedia scan.) That's a hell of a lot of civilian casualties, and the world in general is pretty set against civilian casualties these days -- al'Queda and ISIS and other bullshit groups like that would be easy to deal with if you had the option of "just blow up everything within 100miles of their known bases."
That level of civilian destruction is generally saved for comic book maniacs howe
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Trouble is, Pyongyang is estimated to contain around 10% of the NK population
Yes, of course, which was why I was quick to point out in the very next sentence that I wasn't advocating that, and neither would anyone else except possibly if North Korea launched a nuclear first strike.
So somebody's going to have to go in and clean up the mess.. and then the question becomes whether they'll be any better than what you just took out.
That is a good question, but presumably no matter how bad the aftermath was, it would not include a North Korea with nuclear strike capability (unless they hid nuclear weapons somewhere else, and still had people willing and able to deploy them, I suppose -- which isn't inconceivable)
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it would not include a North Korea with nuclear strike capability
No, but it could end up worse if it gets boondoggled like when the USSR broke up and they just flat out lost track of a bunch of them. I mean nobody knows how NK's nuclear program is setup -- whether its spread across many sites or still packed into a single research facility or what.
In particular if they're distributed across the country to any great degree there's a good chance that any knowledge of the external sites would be lost in the attack and those weapons would be available for any unscrupulous r
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I suspect (DPRK getting nuked) is what would happen if North Korea allowed any of its nuclear bombs to be used
Unfortunately, the DPRK is waaaay too close to too many other people that we aren't at war with.
Re:Thanks (Score:4, Informative)
For this we can thank Madeline HalfBright and BJ Clinton. Thanks guys! In about ten years, we will be having the same conversation, except about Iran , Hillary, and BHO.
Here is the non-right-wing fantasy version (aka the "reality based version") of how North Korea went nuclear:
North Korea built its first graphite reactor, a prototype for its plutonium production reactors, during Ronald Reagan's first term of office, and it went critical in 1986 during his second term.
By that time work had begun in the plutonium reactors, and a plutonium extraction plant that was near completion in 1992, when Herbert George Walker Bush was in office.
The, in 1994, when Bill Clinton was President, and Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State the U.S. arranged the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework [wikipedia.org] which halted all work on the Yongbyon site, both the reactors and the processing plant and North Korea made no further movement toward going nuclear. This lasted for eight years, the entire rest of the Clinton presidency.
The in 2002, during the George W. Bush Presidency, ham-handed confrontational 'diplomacy' ('cuz real men don't do subtlety?) caused the Framework to breakdown, and North Korea restarted all of its weapon program facilities. This resulted, four years later, in 2006, with George W. Bush still in office North Korea began its series of nuclear tests.
So all of the significant progress toward going nuclear occurred during 5 Republican presidencies, and the 8 years of Bill Clinton are marked by a remarkable freeze on that program.
Now go back to you Democrat-hating, Fox News is on.
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Re:Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh, the 1994-2002 gap corresponds to when North Korea was in the grip of a severe famine and lack of resources. I wonder if that had anything to do with their sudden willingness to negotiate. Let's not investigate this any further, and give all credit to the Clinton administration that was the author of so many successful international adventures such as Blackhawk Down.
This is a textbook example of selection-bias. Let's rewind and condense the conversation that happened.
OP: "Democrats caused this. Conclusion: Republicans good, Democrats bad."
Reply: "Here are some facts.. Republicans were always in power when NK did nuclear, Democrats never. Conclusion: Republicans bad, Democrats good."
You: "Only replying to one aspect of your post, ignoring unpleasant correlation between NK nukes and Republican presidency, dismissing correlation between lack-of-NK nukes and Democrat presidency. Conclusion: Republicans good, Democrats bad."
Me: "I'm not American and this is too complicated for trivial cause & effect analysis. Conclusion: Republicans, Democrats, NK government, OP, Reply, and You all bad, Me awesome."
Letter in my local newspaper (Score:2)
Someone got himself published after the 2009 test saying "we never had problems like this when George W. Bush was president".
Re: (Score:2)
Iran wants to sell oil to the world and compete with Saudi Arabia for regional influence, and has an electorate pushing for economic growth over confrontation. North Korea has no electorate wants to stay isolated, it's the whole juche philosophy. Very different scenarios.
pot calling the kettle black. (Score:2)
Too many people are living in an alternate reality put in their heads by hate-radio, and other right-wing media. They're angry, totally-misinformed, and they're eager to tell you [...]
There may be no way to deprogram the people we've lost to media designed to drive the Conservatives mad. [...]
Cults used to be small, local dysfunction, but thanks to 24hr propaganda on TV and radio, a massive media-driven cult has been created, and these idiots vote for scoundrels like Trump and Cruz.
Sounds to me like the pot
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, we developed them, yes we're the only ones to have used them, but since then we've been pretty devoted to making sure they never get used again. Though rather perversely, that meant building lots of them for a few decades, but now we and every other nation that has them are working to reduce stockpiles.
A rational nuclear power sits on its nukes, h
Re: (Score:1)
Well for crying out loud we have targeted nukes nowadays. So why haven't we anonymously nuked his palace and the government building so the citizens of DPRK can have a bloody meal with protein in it rescue dropped on the country? They're starving to death up there...