Russia Unveils 'Satan 2' Missile Powerful Enough To 'Wipe Out UK, France Or Texas' (telegraph.co.uk) 1028
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Telegraph: Russia has released the first image of its new nuclear missile, a weapon so powerful that it could wipe out nearly all of the United Kingdom or France. The RS-28 Sarmat thermonuclear-armed ballistic missile was commissioned in 2011 and is expected to come into service in 2018. The first images of the massive missile were declassified on Sunday and have now been published for the first time. It has been dubbed "Satan 2," as it will replace the RS-36M, the 1970s-era weapon referred to by Nato as the Satan missile. Sputnik, the Russian government-controlled news agency, reported in May that the missile could destroy an area "the size of Texas or France." Russian media report that the missile will weigh up to 10 tons with the capacity to carry up to 10 tons of nuclear cargo. With that type of payload, it could deliver a blast some 2,000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russia reportedly tested a hypersonic warhead in April that is apparently intended for use on the Satan 2 missiles. The warhead is designed to be impossible to intercept because it does not move on a set trajectory.
Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember when Putin said that the defense systems installed in Poland and Romania will be useless because they are working on "something else"?
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Remind me, why are we picking a fight with Russia again?
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Because having Russia dominate the world would be horrific?
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a world dominated by the US is all peaches and cream?
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
In comparison, yes.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Good thing comparisons don't change the fact that most of the world hates the USA and Russia equally, and don't excuse either being such assholes.
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Yip, hate America for that safe and technology loaded western lifestyle you all enjoy :-)
I don't think you appreciate just how touch and go the events of WW2 were towards the end. Europe and the Pacific could be very different places to live today.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Yup it was touch and go whether america would join at all. Just had to wait until the old world powers had bankrupted themselves and destroyed their industry. It all worked out very nicely for the new world order.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup it was touch and go whether america would join at all. Just had to wait until the old world powers had bankrupted themselves and destroyed their industry. It all worked out very nicely for the new world order.
The boon of having all the brightest displaced people move to the USA certainly didn't hurt either. The US was at that time, and still is, the safest place to be if you're worried about either terrorism or a real fighting war. The US reaped the benefits of importing a whole lot of german engineers and scientists for decades. Too bad we lost our balls at some point and are afraid of immigrants now.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
You are an idiot if you think "that safe and technology loaded western lifestyle" has even meaning in the vast majority of the World.
America, as any dominating nation, fucks up the World to protect its interests. Don't be naive as to think America is doing everyone a favor or something like that.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
So the Marshall Plan fucked up Europe then?
In some ways, yes, both because of the highly uneven distribution (Spain got nothing), and because how it was distributed, with agreements requiring recipients to also buy from the US, creating long term dependencies, and only being given to recipients who could afford to pay the subsidized prices to their local governments. I.e. the poorest did not benefit, and it caused a greater distance between rich and poor.
The Lend-Lease agreement during the war was worse, where it ended up being European countries lending equipment and personnel to the US, but the US would lease personnel and equipment to European countries. Some countries were still paying the US for that up into the early 2000s.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
The Marshall Plan was a win-win-win situation. First, the US companies got rid of their overproduction after the war. Second, it was a good propaganda stunt to make the US look more appealing than the USSR. And finally it did actually help the destroyed countries because they had no infrastructure to build that crap themselves.
But, frankly, that last part was just the icing on the cake. Not the cake itself.
Re: Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, thanks for NTSC, 110V AC, and most importantly feet and inches.
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Funny)
It's ATSC now, buddy.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
If your tiny little syphilitic Eurobrains can't handle that, by all means keep using your soft, pussy-ass metric system.
It is pretty much this unlikely combination of arrogance and ignorance that much of the rest of the world considers "uniquely American".
Also, doing the right thing -- for the wrong reasons, after having tried everything else.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
You're welcome for radio,
You mean James Clerk Maxwell wasn't Scottish?
Or are you saying Heinrich Hertz wasn't German?
Or maybe even that Giugliemo Marconi wasn't Italian?
Perhaps I was wrong about Reginald Fessenden's birthplace, Québec, being a province of Canada, and it is in fact a US state?
television,
Facsimile: Alexander Bain (Scotland), improved by Frederick Bakewell (England)
Rasteriser: Paul Julius Gottlieb Nipkov (Germany)
Term "television" coined by Constantin Perskyi (Russia)
Amplification tubes: Lee de Forest (USA), Arthur Korn (Germany) et al
First instantaneous transmission of images: Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier (France?)
CRT: Karl Ferdinand Braun (Germany)
Nipkov disc wireless viewing: Charles Francis Jenkins (USA) and John Logie Baird (Scotland) (independently)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not countries that invent stuff -- it's scientists and engineers. And scientists and engineers don't respect borders, stubbornly sharing knowledge and learning across worldwide networks, and building on each other's successes to make successively greater and greater things. For any country to try to claim any invention as its own is to appeal to ignorance.
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, without the Marshall Plan alone, I think Europe would be in one of three states right now:
- Annexed by Russia and presently in second world status, with the Iron Curtain still alive and well.
- Starting yet another world war, as if the first two weren't enough.
- Technologically even worse off than former Warsaw pact states are presently.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
No, Hitler merely repeated Napoleon's error, and ultimately met the same fate.
The Americans etc.destroyed much German war capability, driving them back to Berlin. The Russians sapped the Nazis' eastern front and with just a little material help from the Americans counterattacked and pincered the Nazis. Had the Americans slowed we would have seen the Soviet empire established with a western border on France and maybe Belgium. whether that would have been better or not I would leave to your imagination.
We could debate the potential success of the Allies if Russia had not counterattacked, but I'm thinking that Hitler's greatest weakness was believing he was a military strategist. Killing Nazi generals was the best Allied strategy, leaving him with successively junior and weaker staff, less likely to speak up and challenge his worst ideas. But any significant delay in defeating Nazi Germany could have resulted in a nuclear weapon being detonated either on the Continent or on Britain, and we would have a very, very different world than we do now. Japan was so isolated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were considered events 'somewhere else' by most of the world, and underappreciated for the gravity and potential except for the US and Russian leadership, who entirely understood that any singular advantage in nuclear weapons could result in worldwide destruction or hegemony, with no middle ground.
Thank your luck stars that the US held the early advantage. The Soviet Empire would not have hesitated to use such leverage to brutal effect, and that would be a different world also. The US had very different aspirations for world influence, and that made a difference to the relative benefit of the world.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
All of which was built in China / Korea ^.^
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
The web was invented by tim berniers lee, a brit working in cern, a european city.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, more accurately it would be an American-built website, on a Taiwanese-made server, using Taiwanese-designed hardware, running a Finnish operating system, with his American designed cellphone made in China, running a Finnish operating system...
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Manufactured in Israel. If it's an Intel CPU, it was designed in Hillsboro, Oregon, USA (unless it's an ancient Pentium-M). And the fabrication process and fab plant layout was also designed and tested in Hillsboro, Oregon, USA at Intel's D1X facility, as that is exactly what that facility is for - perfecting the fab design for the next node shrink. Just like the D1C and D1D facilities right next to it, which have been converted into manufacturing fabs.
Oh, and if the grandparent poster has an iPhone, the CPU was designed by Apple, in California, USA. The CPU would have been manufactured either by Samsung or TSMC, and not in the US.
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
If you're running a current generation Intel CPU, then its silicon was fabricated in either Chandler, Arizona, USA or Hillsboro, Oregon, USA. There are no other semiconductor fabrication plants in the world capable of creating wafers with 10nm lithography.
It would have been designed in Santa Clara, California, USA, which is where Intel's engineers reside.
As for your product code, that tells where it was packaged (and no, I don't mean sticking it in a retail box.) Wherever that CPU is packaged is where it is officially "made" for tax/tariff/embargo considerations, but in reality very little of the production happens in that location.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
The internet was NOT British invented, the web was. And you're uneducated if you think the two words are even remotely interchangeable.
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
How would you know? Seriously, this is not trolling. How many countries has Russia invaded for profit or global politics and how many did the USA? Who used nuclear bombs on civilians? When has Russia ruled the world so that we cab compare?
It seems to me that the old-fashioned communists in Russia [and their modern day descendants] were much worse towards their population that towards foreigners, whereas USA seems to be the reverse. As I a neither American nor Russian, I prefer the Russian way.
Russia warned many times after the end of the [first?] Cold War that the West is constantly moving goalposts and breaks agreements about military bases, NATO membership and the like.....sorry but the most serious Western analysts agree with this [Google it, it is true, the West admits they did not handle their victory from the Cold War very well].
I am not fond of the Russians at all - at the end they occupied my country for half a century and installed totalitarian regime there but let's be a bit more realistic here...
And finally - I am very sorry if I hurt your feelings, but I really hate the Western leaders hypocrisy and constant masking of blatant power grabs with words as "humanitarian", "democracy" and so on...in contrast Putin [although being also a liar, of course] appears way more honest in his motives and explanations - "you do this, I kick your ass" instead of "if you build that oil-pipe I'll bomb you for democracy". I mean just look at the name of this weapon - no masking, no rosy glasses, no BS. It is Satan, period. A similar weapon in USA will be called "peace maker" or "bringer of democracy"
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that the old-fashioned communists in Russia [and their modern day descendants] were much worse towards their population that towards foreigners
except for Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria.. and every other country that they were able to occupy.
I don't know what kind of world revisionist history you've been smoking but if you can't tell the difference between what happened in western and eastern Europe after WW2 then there is no reason to discuss anything. No one can argue with that kind of crazy.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
In the history of the Russian Federation, which is less than 30 years old, we have seen the Russian military involved in the following conflicts:
I left out the Russian military conflicts that were contained within Russian borders, for example the Second Chechnyan War between 1999 and 2009.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
That's indeed the kind of ideas that is now floating around. I rank it in the category of Iraq coming to kill us all, with the same combination of inflating the threat and at the same time regarding the opponent as a pushover. I think Colin Powell has made some sensible comments on that. Russia is paranoid about us, about NATO. We scare them. They are a small power, we're a big one that is surrounding them more and more, and then sabre rattling is a sensible response. You may think they're wrong but you should at least listen to what they're thinking. Apparently that is not happening at all, while the wartalk on this side is increasing, by politicians because it makes them popular,and by the military because of budgetary reasons. And that makes for very dangerous times.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
At least Russia didn't sell weapons / training to the Afghan mujahideen, the Saudis, most of the dictators in latin america for the past couple centuries, or Syran opposition who openly collaborate with terrorists.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
At least Russia didn't sell weapons / training to the Afghan mujahideen, the Saudis, most of the dictators in latin america for the past couple centuries, or Syran opposition who openly collaborate with terrorists.
Ah, yes, Russia the good guy that never sells weapons to morally questionable governments. Actually they just recently made deals to sell weapons to the Saudis and have also sold weapons to Iran, they have sold weapons to S-America: Venezuela, Peru, they sold plenty of weapons to Cuba during the past few decades (not sure where you are going with centuries there) as well as the mafia that passes for Syria's government, the Genocidal maniacs that pass for Sudan's government, the Junta in Myanmar... would you like me to go on?
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
You're talking like Putin isn't the madman.
Note: I don't think he's a madman - he's too smart to actually go down the road to a full-on military engagement against NATO. I do, however, think he is beating the nationalist drum in order to bring back the glory days of the USSR that everyone seems to remember without also remembering the crushing human rights violations, the starvation and bread lines, and the ever-looming threat of nuclear oblivion between the Soviets and the West.
For the millenials that have no idea what Soviet Russia was about: everything sounds nice and rosy until you find yourself being forced into being a farmer because that's what some bureaucrat designated you as. Don't like it? Better not say anything about it, or you're off to a gulag in the next purge.
Re: (Score:3)
Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine and a sliver of Georgia are the world? The USSR dominated far more of the world and we survived.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Because its profitable for the military industrial complex. Same reason as last time. Its ok, they are probably doing it for the same reason. Stroke national penis....make money disappear. Politicians everywhere work basically the same.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Russians remember the 20+ million they lost in WW2 and are never going to let 1941 happen again. They are justifiably paranoid. That's what Westerners do not get about the Russian national psyche. They trust no one, especially the US.
BULLSHIT US saved Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Theres a big difference between "helping" and "saving". Russia contribute man power and equipment like tanks that the west has no concept of. For example there were literally 10x more Russian armies when Germany surrended. The truth is Russia WON ww2 by blood and guts.
Please dont tell me bullshit about LL. LL was arranged in late 41, just a few months later Russia won the biggest fight in history, involving about 4 -5 million soldiers - the battle of Stalingrad. That was the start of the end of the NAZIS. Befor eyou jump... theres no way anythign got thru to Russia by the time of Stalingrad.
Stop you hubris. America would not have landed in Europe without the UK as well, just like the UK would have had serious problems without its friends like Canada and the rest of Empire helping it from day one.
Re:BULLSHIT US saved Russia (Score:5, Informative)
Both the Russian historian Boris Sokolov and none other than Josef Stalin disagree with you. From the Wikipedia page about Lend-Lease:
[Emphasis is mine]
According to the Russian historian Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Lend-Lease played a crucial role in winning the war:
On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR’s emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany’s might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.[24]
Nikita Khrushchev, having served as a military commissar and intermediary between Stalin and his generals during the war, addressed directly the significance of Lend-lease aid in his memoirs:
I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin’s views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were “discussing freely” among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany’s pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don’t think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so. [30]
Re:BULLSHIT US saved Russia (Score:4, Interesting)
Russia contribute man power and equipment like tanks that the west has no concept of.
And they got them to the front lines thanks to Buick.
The truth is Russia WON ww2 by blood and guts.
They might have won it with superior tactics and fewer casualties if they hadn't been so murderously barbaric in Stalin's purges. Beating someone by drowning them in your own blood is not something to be proud of.
Also, Russia would have lost without American lend-lease. We sent them tanks, trucks, rockets, gold, aircraft, jeeps. In ordinance and jet fuel, we sent them over half of what we produced.
Re: (Score:3)
The Germans fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia."
Re:BULLSHIT US saved Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Theres a big difference between "helping" and "saving". Russia contribute man power and equipment like tanks that the west has no concept of. For example there were literally 10x more Russian armies when Germany surrended. The truth is Russia WON ww2 by blood and guts.
Please dont tell me bullshit about LL. LL was arranged in late 41, just a few months later Russia won the biggest fight in history, involving about 4 -5 million soldiers - the battle of Stalingrad. That was the start of the end of the NAZIS. Befor eyou jump... theres no way anythign got thru to Russia by the time of Stalingrad.
Stop you hubris. America would not have landed in Europe without the UK as well, just like the UK would have had serious problems without its friends like Canada and the rest of Empire helping it from day one.
Russia won by blood and guts, but they wouldn't have won if not for the allies. Stalin constantly petitioned the US and UK for a second front and even when Italy was invaded he still demanded more.
Russia won by blood and guts,
The western allies won by guile and intelligence. That's why we got half of Europe.
But the truth is, Hitler was our biggest ally. Without his stupidity, Russia would have been swept aside. We didn't win the war as much as the Axis lost it.
The Soviet leadership were dumb as bricks. Their strategy consisted of building up huge numbers and overwhelming German positions. They never changed this strategy. They never had to as Hitler had refused to allow the German armies to retreat. As such, armies were cut off by the hundreds of thousands with 300,000 troops trapped in the Crimea alone as the Russians bypassed the region. Hitler had to defend a 1000 mile line across Russia, if he had of fallen back to more defensible line or even just a smaller one it would have given the Germans the edge over the Russians just by shortening their supply lines and lengthening the Russians.
The Germans had superior training, equipment, officers and more experience. Half the reason the Russians lost so many people is because they ordered them to run into German guns until they ran out of ammo. As Winston Churchill siad, "Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre, the more a general contributes in manoeuvre the less he demands in slaughter", the Russians used very little manoeuvre.
Against a competent leader... Like Montgomery, let alone Eisenhower... The Russians would not have stood a chance.
Re: (Score:3)
Did you know that the USA sent Russia more than 10K tanksin WW2? And airplanes? And food/fuel/etc?
Russian tank production in WW2 was roughly comparable to US tank production, by the way.
And there were definitely 10x more Russian armies than German armies at the end of WW2. But not 10x more tha
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
It might also be the behavior of a leadership trying to distract its citizens from realizing there are severe internal economic problems by pointing at the nasty, evil outside world threatening their way of life, and the leaders need to do things to stop the threat.
Hmm, now where have I heard that before....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and keep building new nuclear weapons and threatining people with them?
Yes why are those Russians putting their country so close to our NATO bases [libertycampaign.org]!!! This is blatant aggression!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Why do they get a free pass to act like they are lead by a KGB thug?"
Because they ARE lead by a KGB thug?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you analyze the outcomes of the demilitarization treaties, you'll notice that Soviets really got the short end of the stick. They were forced to scrap some modern weapons which they just finished developing, meanwhile USA just finished building defenses against all older Soviet weapons. In short, if it came to exchange, USA would be fine, Russia would be a nuclear wasteland. They are merely catching up and fixing mistakes of Gorbachev.
Re: (Score:3)
Aluminum was largely the key to the "missile gap" that developed between the US and USSR in ICBMs in the 1960s. Before that, ICBMs had been liquid-fueled, which presented storage, complexity and bulk problems (also prevented underwater launch on submarines). The US discovered that the addition of aluminum powder to solid rocket propellant mixes would simultaneously increase ISP, thrust, density, and burn stability, and moved immediately toward the development of a series of solid ICBMs; the Soviets were la
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Countries that want to grow and have large economies are nearly all democratic, with open trade policies. The exceptions are Russia and China. China has focused more on trade than weapons and their economy has grow.
You need global trade to go forward without you are limited in what you can do.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why Russia is invading Ukraine and supporting terrorists when Ukraine wanted to go their own way and have closer trade relations with the West, right? Because the sovereign nation of Ukraine didn't want to live under the thumb of Russia any longer.
Why the fuck the rest of the European leaders don't go the same way as Russia I have no fucking clue.
Because people don't want to live under a dictatorship where the guy at the top can steal your business on a whim and hand it over to one of his oligarch friends.
Nor do they want to live in a place where the dictator decides who can and cannot run for political office and where, if you become too popular with the people or reveal the corruption endemic in his rule, he'll have you killed.
If you can't see the obvious, you might be a Russian troll.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you smoking? Even the current mayor of Kiev was directly sponsored by a "NGO" that answers directly to our conservative party and hence Angela Merkel.
Some did, some didn't. Ukraine has been a very divided country in the past 25 years. But apparently for you only one part counts as people.
Even though Yanukovich had it coming, an armed rebellion would be dealt with harshly in every western country. Probably way more harshly than he did. I remember how the peaceful protests in Stuttgart against the planned reconstruction of the central railway station were brutally broken up by the Baden Wuerttemberg police.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
They did send in their military, that's who the "Little Green Men" were. Even Putin has publicly admitted this. The "vote" was held under occupation, not internationally recognized, boycotted by significant segments of the population, and even Russia at one point accidentally released [forbes.com] the "real" numbers from the vote which didn't match the official ones.
Do recall that Russia is a country where Chechnya "voted for" United Russia (Putin's Party) 99% in 2001. Some parts of Grozny voted for "The Butcher of Grozny" by well over 100%. You seriously think that's legit?
Amazing how many apologists for Russia there are here. False equivalencies are clearly alive and well.
Re: (Score:3)
you morons who keep using racist wrong have eroded its power....stop with the mental gymnastics to justify it
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and in the process of invading Ukraine.
Still? Wow it's taking them a while. Which units are invading Ukraine? As far as I know, all that happened was Crimea acceeded to them. And they may have indirectly supported some rebels in Donbass, but hey it's not like NO ONE ELSE ever supports "moderate opposition" anywhere...
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
You say that like the other two are a significant improvement.
Re:Two candidates (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want your voice heard, you should probably vote for the person who you align with best.
Or to put it another way, you wouldn't tell a Trump voter in Massachusetts not to vote. Trump has a zero percent chance of winning in Massachusetts, but millions will still vote for him even though their vote is "wasted". You can say the same thing about Hillary voters in much of the south. Their candidate can't win in their state, but they'll still go out to the polls and make their voice heard.
The two-party lock-in is pure rhetorical garbage. I can't in good conscience vote for a completely unqualified demagogue or someone who is the closest thing to a living embodiment of the establishment.
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you not listen to the guy yourself? Do you actually see a well adjusted human being that would be a good President? I am curious because I don't need the media to tell me he is a self centered, egocentric, narcissistic douchebag that will run the country and a good chunk of the world with it into the ground.
Feeding the trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
Nearly everything the mainstream news has been feeding you about Trump is either taken out of context, twisted, or just an outright lie.
Nice troll. There's almost nothing about Trump that is out of context. He's the one putting it all out there like a monkey flinging poo. You have to be either a troll or a completely moronic fanboi to actually believe that statement.
I'm amazed at how otherwise intelligent people can be so easily manipulated by lies that come from so-called experts that the media routinely trots out on stage.
You support Trump and you're complaining about people easily manipulated by lies? Hahahahaha.... I haven't laughed that hard in quite a while. That's one of the more astonishingly stupid things I've read in quite a while. Let me guess, you think folks like Hannity and Coulter are telling you the gospel truth too, right?
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Nearly everything the mainstream news has been feeding you about Trump is either taken out of context, twisted, or just an outright lie. Assuming that people are only voting for him because they are "racist, sexist morons" is childish, simplistic thinking at its height that was also programmed into you through the media by those currently in power.
I'm amazed at how otherwise intelligent people can be so easily manipulated by lies that come from so-called experts that the media routinely trots out on stage.
Lets assume for the moment that all of that is true, even a cursory review of his speeches shows that is lacking in emotional stability, easily riled, not interested in changing his position when factual information is presented, and knows very little about the constitution (i.e. a president appointing a special prosecutor goes against the separation of powers). I would think that any one of these would be a red flag no matter what your position is on the issues.
What you are saying is that voters should ignore these very real concerns and assume that it will all work out in the end...
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't personally know a single Trump voter who isn't a racist or a sexist."
So let's see if I've got this right. You don't know any Trump voters? Somebody I work with summed it up nicely. I'm going to vote Trump, I'm not thrilled about it, I'm not proud about it, I'm not going to broadcast it to the world, but for as bad as he is, he's a damn sight better than Clinton.
And I've been thinking about it. Who you view worse depends on your view of political correctness and corruption. If you think political correctness is important (view being unoffensive and standing up for social causes as the height of importance) and you may not be thrilled about corruption but will deal with it, you support Clinton. If you're sort of sick of the PC agenda being shoved down your throat but are incredibly pissed off about corruption in politics, you support Trump. And I know you're going to try to point out how corrupt Trump is with his business deals, but remember, corruption requires political power, and as much as you may not like how he does business deals, he's never held political office so has never been in a position to demonstrate corruption. And Clinton....well, when the FBI said she shouldn't be charged on a gross negligence charge because she didn't intend to commit gross negligence, well, those of us who can't stand corruption were just left with our jaws dropped unable to believe just how far the corruption went.
Re: Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't personally know a single Trump voter who isn't a racist or a sexist. I'm not saying there aren't some out there, surely there must be, but there's a reason why most of these scandals haven't hurt him more than about 5% points. It's because most of his supporters are proud of his transgressions. If Trump came out in favor of reintroducing segregation, he wouldn't lose many supporters.
I actually have a lot of friends and family (male & female) that are supporting Trump, and NONE of them are sexist or racist to my knowledge.The thing they have in common isn't that they like Trump, it's that no matter how much of a clown they see him as, the see Hillary to be worse. I think people in both camps aren't voting for their candidate as much as they are voting against the other one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If Trump came out in favor of reintroducing segregation, he wouldn't lose many supporters. It shows what a bad state our country is in that such a man has such a large following. Racism is still a huge problem in our country.
except for BLM is already advocating for segregation (black only dorms, back only safe spaces) and hillary supports that
so hillary is literally supporting segregation now..... should we simply ignore that like you have and make assumptions that have no basis in reality???
Re: Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Tzar Bomba (Score:5, Informative)
That is a big firecracker, but it is no Tsar Bomba [wikipedia.org]. The Tsar Bomba was tested in 1961, so the technological capability for high yield bombs is old news. Best bit about the Tsar Bomba: "In theory, the bomb had a maximum yield of 100 megatons if it were to have included a U-238 tamper, but because only one bomb was built, this theory was never demonstrated."
Here is a short documentary film on the Tsar Bomba [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:3)
True but according to wiki, it weighed 27 tons. Getting a bomber over France or Texas is probably a bit more involved than firing a ballistic missile.
Re:Tzar Bomba (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardly matters. a 100 MT bomb wouldn't destroy Texas. Or England. Or France.
And please tell me that a 10T rocket carrying a 10T bomb was a typo. Or are our glorious editors unable to count, as well as being unable to edit?
Re:welcome america to MATH 101 (Score:4, Informative)
No, it wouldn't. Nuclear weapons may be the most destructive thing we know how to build. But they're not black magic. And witless alarmism does no one any good. A 400MT nuke airbursted over Paris at the optimum height would pretty well wipe out it, its suburbs, and quite a lot of the surrounding countryside. But the majority of France would survive. and the UK would be untouched:
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nuke... [nuclearsecrecy.com]
Re:welcome america to MATH 101 (Score:4, Informative)
punch in 400000 (kt) in the yield box, and see what happens. Yeah it's big, but not as big as Texas. That would take something about 100 times the size of tsar bomba. I don't even know if that's theoretically possible.
Re:Tzar Bomba (Score:4, Informative)
Actually... This thing can potentially deliver up to 15 separate warheads, which could in aggregate sum up to 50 MT, which coincidentally was the approximate yield of the Tsar Bomba. However those warheads would have immensely more destructive capacity than the Tsar Bomba.
The reason is simple geometry: the energy of an explosion is dissipated in three dimension, but people live on an approximately two dimensional surface; all that energy which goes down and up is wasted. To do more destruction, you need to find a way of distributing the energy of the attack across the surface of the Earth, which can easily be done by delivering two warheads of half the size, or even better ten warheads of 1/10 the size.
This is what is behind the whole "area the size of France" thing. You couldn't do that with a single massive bomb, but ten smaller bombs might do the trick. Also note that terrain makes a difference -- as it did in the Nagasaki bombing, which missed its mark, causing the blast to be contained by the Urakami Valley. Southern France is extremely rugged, so it is unlikely that all of France could be destroyed by one of these things; however, there's no question that France as a country would be destroyed.
Re:Tzar Bomba (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure. But effectively destroying a country as an entity is one thing. "Wiping out an area the size of" a country is something else entirely. And the text specifies the latter. And I'm not even convinced that destroying a countries 15 largest cities would totally destroy it as a country. See, for example, the still very much in existence countries that had many of their cities wiped out in WW2.
Importantly though, France and the UK have nukes of their own. And if you target the cities with your 15 nukes, you leave the weapons untouched. And if you target the weapons and facilities; not only are the cities untouched, but there's still the nuclear missile submarines that you can't target because you don't know where the hell they are.
No, they didn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
At least, they certainly didn't make a missile with that kind of damage potential.
While it could throw a single 40 megaton warhead, it would more likely carry a handful of weapons topping out at about 50 megatons, total. Maybe.
Which is a lot, but nowhere near big enough to "wipe out" a medium-sized country like France.
They could pretty much destroy up to 15 separate cities with 300 kiloton airbursts (if the MIRV systems gives them that much spread and control, which it probably doesn't), but everything in between would be effectively untouched, and with a single weapon, most of Paris itself would only be lightly to moderately damaged. Modern high-efficiency weapons don't drop a lot of fallout in air burst mode, so that's not a consideration.
If they used ground burst targeting, they could cause a lot of downwind fallout, but it would leave large areas untouched upwind.
Forty to fifty megatons sounds like a lot, but when you compare it with how big the world is...
Re:No, they didn't. (Score:5, Informative)
It would be more widely dispersed in the air however, and perhaps that's the difference.
Re:No, they didn't. (Score:5, Informative)
The thing about a modern fission-fusion device is that the fusion neutrons help "burn up" a lot of the primary. They've supposedly moved away from the heavy uranium tampers of the early weapons to help reduce fallout (while losing some efficiency), or have fine-tuned them so much that they're effectively being burned up completely in the detonation.
As you mention, part of it's that the fallout that's left disperses over a very, very wide area.
Re:No, they didn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Wipe out" is indeed what it would do.
Let's imagine this is a MIRV with 15 separate warheads, totaling 50 megatons, total (maybe). Let's imagine the targets are the following British cities: London, Bristol, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinborough, with the larger ones receiving two warheads.
Britain would basically cease to exist as a nation. So much damage would be done the economy would be non-functional. All the transport links in the country flow through those now destroyed cities, and that infrastructure would be destroyed. Every single piece of modern electronics in the country and in neighbouring countries that was not EMP hardened would no longer work, and everything (especially the transportation system) depends on all this stuff working. The prevailing south west winds would ensure that enough fallout would end up on surrounding areas adding to the casualties, and areas with nearby nuclear power stations would receive a lot of extra fallout. Just feeding the survivors with a barely functioning transportation system would be a logistical nightmare - ground transportation would be difficult thanks most of the major road and rail routes having been destroyed. Injured survivors would be left to fend for themselves - the entire capacity of the health service would be overwhelmed with the casualties of just one of the bombs. The electricity grid would be destroyed, even to the undamaged areas, it would be years before power was restored.
The survivors themselves, many of them would be suffering PTSD in the years afterwards, and virtually everyone will have lost friends and family and probably most of what they own in the attacks. What survived wouldn't be Britain, it would be a grotesque almost zombie like Britain with at best third world conditions for decades following.
Just because there are survivors and some land left untouched doesn't mean the country is effectively destroyed.
I like the (alleged) picture of it (Score:5, Funny)
I think my girlfriend has one of these in her drawer.
Re:I like the (alleged) picture of it (Score:5, Funny)
Summary picked the wrong article to copy (Score:5, Informative)
The Telegraph article got the details wrong. Check out the RT version instead.
It is a 100+ ton missile that can carry about 10 tons of payload. They are also designing a new warhead that is maneuverable in order to avoid anti-missile defenses. They are claiming that it can hold 10 heavy warheads or 16 light warheads and/or a combination of warheads and decoys/countermeasures.
The whole "destroy an area the size of France or Texas isn't clear, but this is a missile announcement, not a warhead announcement, so they are probably talking about the area which could be covered in a single launch. I.E. one spread of warheads from a single launch could theoretically hit Paris, Barcelona and Milan. That would be pretty hard for anti-missile defenses to deal with.
Putin just out-tyranted Tsiolkovsky (Score:5, Insightful)
Russian media report that the missile will weigh up to 10 tons with the capacity to carry up to 10 tons of nuclear cargo.
The story here is that Russia has escaped the tyranny of the rocket equation, and designed a missile that is 100% payload and apparently 0% fuel.
Re:Putin just out-tyranted Tsiolkovsky (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
The warhead is designed to be impossible... (Score:3)
The warhead is designed to be impossible to intercept because it does not move on a set trajectory.
Cremlin: Oh Shit ... it is coming back to us
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would humans create a weapon like that? :(
Nobody in their right state of mind wants it to be used.
If it is ever used, it could mean the end of the world is nigh.
Why would anyone invest the resources in developing such a weapon?
Fuck the Russians, and the Americans, and the defense departments, and the technicians and engineers willing to take on such a job, and the generals and presidents commissioning such a thing. You are all assholes.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why? Because once a genie is out the bottle it can't be put back in because it only takes one person to use it. Plus an arms race seems to be a fact of life on this planet between humans and other animals too.
But hey, don't worry, we have the hippies at CND to save us. I'm sure one day they'll stop protesting at everything the west does and head off to russia to do the same thing there, right? I'm mean they're not a bunch of moronic congenital cowards who only protest against governments who they know won't hurt them are they.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the fundamental problem: we need a hippie solution. Nothing but making the world more peaceful is going to reduce the risk of nuclear annihilation. Why's that? Because even if one nation conquered the planet, it would only wind up splitting from within and becoming multiple competing nations again. And it's a problem because warmongers tend to react violently against... well, everything. And violence is something that hippies aren't prepared to deal with.
I guess what's needed is a sort of warrior hippie.
We could call them Social Justice Warriors ;)
Seriously, though. There's no military solution to the threat of endless war. It really is true that only cooperation can solve this problem. It's not enough to hold hands and wish real hard, though. The lovers of peace have to become as creative and determined as the makers of war.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
You need some sort of hybrid approach, where you convince easiest 99% of people to be peaceful, but retain enough military capability to dissuade the remaining stubborn 1% from doing anything nuts. Which is more or less what we're doing today. Except some of those pursuing the hippie part of this hybrid approach have deluded themselves into thinking their approach will work on the entirety of the remaining 1% just because it worked on the first 99% [xkcd.com].
That's what hippies don't seem to understand. Even if you temporarily achieved 100% indoctrination into a peaceful, cooperative society and completely disarmed. It just takes one person to be born who thinks differently and builds his own devices and following in secret, and spreads chaos and ruin upon that idyllic and disarmed utopia. You must have some sort of defense against this in reserve. Always. I don't particularly blame hippies for making this mistake - people tend to think that others will act as they themselves do. So if it's beyond their conception as to why someone would want to kill and destroy in order to have power over (parts of) the world, then it will literally be inconceivable to them that someone would ever want to do this. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a bad assumption.
Where have we seen this before... (Score:5, Interesting)
A cynic might suspect Putin is trying to reverse the smoke and mirrors strategy epitomized by the Strategic Defense Initiative to trick the US into spending itself broke countering a non-existent threat.
And yes, this is the guy Trump admires (Score:3, Interesting)
The insanity of Trump's admiration/support/connections for a leader who murders his opponents/journalists, commits war crimes deliberately attacking humanitarian convoys and hospitals (yes, I know the U.S. hit one but at the very least they admitted their wartime error and presumably is making reparations), breaks arms control agreements and violates fundamental agreements on not seizing land by force (Crimea was taken despite the Russian pledge to respect Ukraine's border in exchange for them giving up their nukes), drives his nation into an economic dead-end by focusing on one commodity (oil) instead of diversifying (which, of course would have required him to respect rule of law and cut down on the kleptocracy), etc. well this is amongst many many reasons why Trump is completely unqualified (should be disqualified) for being the president of the U.S.
So of course supporting a guy who basically says "I have a gun that can clean blow your head off", I guess that's nothing new for Trump. (and don't tell me that the announcement of this weapon wasn't authorized by Putin). Let me be clear, I do mean Trump supports Putin; by refusing the unanimous consensus of (all?) 17 intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the hacks of the Democratic Party (gee I wonder why no Republicans were hacked?) saying, he can't say who hacked the Democrats, he is supporting Putin.
Likewise Assange, by selling himself out to Putin because of his problems with Sweden (and presumably the U.S.) indicates that he is willing to sell us all (and especially for his fellow journalists* who have been dying in Russia) out for his own skin. It has really debased the once sterling reputation of Wikileaks, hasn't it? So sad.
*but I don't think very many journalists would still be willing to say he is one of them now
This missile is one level above Satan (Score:3)
I call it "Satan 2".
Grandstanding (Score:4, Insightful)
Ballistic setups are old tech. Even if you outfit them with maneuverable warheads, some of todays systems we're using to knock them down are maneuverable as well post launch. We have multiple to choose from. Patriot, THAAD, and pretty much any naval ship ( or shore installation ) outfitted with Aegis and SM-3 interceptors. It will not be long before directed energy weapons or rail-gun tech is fielded rendering pretty much anything incoming with a radar signature obsolete.
So we basically have a giant missile. The US MX-Peacekeeper had similar specs from 1986 - 2005. We decommissioned them in favor of smaller units that we can hide on submarines and super sneaky cruise missiles instead. Note, it's difficult to move giant ass heavy missiles. They tend to live out their lives in silos. Besides, MAD is very much alive and well in the 21st century. The major powers understand that using nukes on anyone else all but guarantees the target will return the favor before the first missiles even reach their apex.
In short, Russia now has a shiny new ballistic missile that has similar characteristics of a missile we first fielded thirty years ago. The only new component being the currently-theoretical maneuverable re-entry vehicles.
I don't see where this really changes anything other than the fact that all the old treaties prohibiting these things are pretty much off the table now. Though I doubt they were ever worth the paper they were printed on to begin with.
Here comes the "Trump 1" (Score:4, Funny)
The Trump 1 is many times more dangerous than the Satan 2.
While the Satan 2 can wipe out only Texas, the Trump 1 in contrast can wipe out the USA including Hawai and Alaska not harming Canada but harming Mexico.
And its paid for by russian tax payers.
Re:Here comes the "Trump 1" (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the most massive case of projection I've ever seen. Who's Trump going to start the war with? Russia shouldn't be an enemy. China? They're run by engineers, you couldn't start a nuclear war with them if you tried.
On the other hand, Hillary took the initiative in starting wars, the Libyan civil war comes to mind. She also represents the interests of the banks, the arms manufacturers, and the Washington DC establishment. You know, the ones who continually demand that wars start.
Destroying Texas (Score:3)
Russia has a nuclear weapon capable of destroying Texas, the question is: why would they do us such a favour?
Glad to see they are violating SALTII and START (Score:3)
AGAIN
And this time openly admitting it. Time to bring back either the MX to replace the MinutemanIII, and re-MIRV the MMIII while we are waiting
Re: (Score:3)
It's surprising what people will do in the name of "patriotism". And even now, other nuclear powers will have looked at this and immediately instigated a program to design and build an equivalent which will involve their some of their own populace who will be happy to participate.
And there's many countries who do not have nuclear weapons but want them and undoubtedly have many citizens that would enthusiastically work toward that goal.
Rather than being "inhuman", it seems to be very human to develop these w
Re:What kind of inhuman piece of shit (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Presumably anyone who lives in a country that is mentioned in sentences like "I think a preemptive nuclear strike against [countryname] would be a good idea."
The next question would of course be, "what kind of inhuman piece of shit would even consider a preemptive nuclear strike?"
Re: (Score:3)
And Sarmat means "Muffin" in Russian.
Re:Filter theory might be correct (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think a global nuclear was is likely. I think it's more likely that a small state actor that has nuclear weapons ends up getting hit in a pre-emptive or punitive strike for credibly threatening or actually using one against the US or Russia in a single strike.
Should that happen, it seems unlikely that a major nuclear power would risk some kind of retaliation what would surely end up mutual destruction.
I also doubt that any small state actor, no matter how apparently crazy, would try to do so because you just can't fight and win a nuclear war with Russia, China or the US. The Iranians or the North Koreans simply lack the ability to hit a major player hard enough to prevent an overwhelming retaliatory strike that would be the end of the regime and knock back the country's development by at least 500 years.
If we didn't have a nuclear war in the early 1960s, we aren't having one now.