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Nuclear War, Dieoffs, and Doomer Porn! Pt. 4

For discussions of events and conditions not necessarily related to Peak Oil.

Re: Probability of nuclear war

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 13 Sep 2017, 11:31:43

I've never believed that the D's were any better than the R's when it came to legislative corruption.

The Chinese will control the waters around them including one of the few large undersea petroleum deposits remaining, and their nukes give them credibility. Whether that is "projecting" power when it's only a few hundred miles away, is semantics.

The Russians are not a large threat themselves in any credible scenario. However they have already displayed a propensity to "lose" fissionable materials to rogue states, it's a crapshoot and nothing to be done about it.
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Re: Probability of nuclear war

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Wed 13 Sep 2017, 18:10:41

The truth remains that once one of these new nuclear "powers" actually sends a bomb into one of the older Nuclear powers cities the retaliation will be swift and complete. The question is will if say North Korea hits Japan or the USA will we give China the chance to choose sides and wipe out North Korea or choose poorly and have all of their major cities up in smoke within hours.
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Re: Probability of nuclear war

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Thu 14 Sep 2017, 01:22:53

vtsnowedin wrote:The truth remains that once one of these new nuclear "powers" actually sends a bomb into one of the older Nuclear powers cities the retaliation will be swift and complete. The question is will if say North Korea hits Japan or the USA will we give China the chance to choose sides and wipe out North Korea or choose poorly and have all of their major cities up in smoke within hours.

So, for argument's sake, say Boston or Chicago or whatever gets nuked by a suitcase bomb tomorrow or next week.

OK. Who did it?

Are you 100% sure?

If so, how?

If not, who do you deal "swift and complete" retaliation to?

Or are you talking about firing an ICBM, which can be tracked?

....

My concern is an outfit like NK or Russia giving these things to terrorist groups and letting nature take its course.

If you're sure Russia provided the nuke, then what?
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Re: Probability of nuclear war

Unread postby evilgenius » Thu 14 Sep 2017, 12:13:24

I understand that nuclear forensics can answer the question of where any bomb came from. The trick is the resolve. Mutually assured destruction means that you have to destroy if you have been destroyed. There have been countless works of fiction written where the leaders of the countries involved decide to trade cities. Given the groundswell that elected Trump, I don't think that would work. Real people want revenge.
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Re: Probability of nuclear war

Unread postby Tanada » Fri 15 Sep 2017, 07:45:48

evilgenius wrote:I understand that nuclear forensics can answer the question of where any bomb came from. The trick is the resolve. Mutually assured destruction means that you have to destroy if you have been destroyed. There have been countless works of fiction written where the leaders of the countries involved decide to trade cities. Given the groundswell that elected Trump, I don't think that would work. Real people want revenge.


Detective work on bomb debris will only zero in on the contaminants in the special nuclear material. For example the USA/UK/France cataloged each batch of plutonium manufactured in their production reactors so that if stolen material is used for a bomb they can track the material right back to the reactor it came from including usually the date of manufacture. However this ability has some serious caveats. It assumes all of the material in the device was A) Plutonium from one batch, B) Plutonium from a western reactor with good record keeping, C) Everyone is doing their best for accuracy and doesn't make a mistake using the equipment. If the debris in question comes from D) a pure Uranium bomb and E) Plutonium that is from several different reactors mixed together or F) Plutonium that has never been cataloged then the detective work can only tell you what materials were used to make the weapon and how efficient it was in using those materials. You can not confirm a location of origin without excellent records and good detective work combined.

As for the last point, I agree, if a minor power attacks a major power it isn't MAD because the major power will still be largely intact once the minor power has ceased to exist as a functional state. MAD is only when both parties have major arsenals and can strike back usually more than once after an attack. If North Korea or Iran has more than a handful of weapons when they strike are they more likely to hold some in reserve like the USA/UK/France policy to preserve a second strike? Or use them all in the first round to try and do maximum damage?
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Re: Probability of nuclear war

Unread postby evilgenius » Fri 15 Sep 2017, 11:23:59

Don't forget that the great powers have already given away their forensics secrets, by using atmospheric testing. Unless they've been making new bombs to give away from new sources the genie is probably already out of the bottle. There could be source material that comes from somewhere else yet, but how likely is that when they didn't foresee this situation when they started testing? Those programs during the Cold War were all out development programs. It is unlikely they held much back. Given the cost, would Russia, for instance, develop new weapons from new sources specifically to spread them out amongst terrorists? Wouldn't it be too easy for them to get caught? Clever of the North Koreans to test theirs inside of a mountain. Maybe that's because it would reveal much more than the world suspects, since they are convinced a country whose citizens basically eat grass did this on their own, if the signature of those bomb's material was known, or some construction technique revealed itself? In that case there are many potential suspects, maybe even Pakistan, although they don't have a hydrogen bomb.

I think the probability of war goes up as long as the resolve of the US to counter attack is perceived as weak. Whoever is in charge, has to make a statement about policy that says that the US reserves the right to reply in kind, and overwhelmingly, to any attack upon it, or its allies, which they interpret as an attack by a weapon of mass destruction, including biological and nerve agents. They even have to say that, and direct it at, whichever country these little provocateurs are beholden to. Right now, everything appears muddled, like living in a cartoon. It's all about tough talk, and the apparent size of each leader's balls (the true legacy of GW's flightsuit, and breaking international law to invade Iraq over false WMD charges).

Obviously, this doesn't include the US army being destroyed by such things if they attempt to invade some other country. That's where the reasoning exists for these small countries to possess these weapons. In such cases, they do not have to match the industrial capacity of the great powers in order to make the number of weapons they need. They do still need to keep a handle on them, though.
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Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby AdamB » Sat 23 Dec 2017, 11:35:31


While there’s no question that a nuclear strike on the Continental US would be utterly devastating, it’s not the only way a rogue state like North Korea could kill millions of American civilians in one fell swoop. Another possibility that is being studied by lawmakers and Pentagon officials is – like North Korea itself – a vestige of the Cold War. We’re of course referring to an electromagnetic pulse. By detonating a hydrogen bomb in just the right spot miles above the Earth’s surface, the North could permanently damage the US power grid – maybe even take it offline completely. By robbing entire swaths of the US of electricity, the North could precipitate thousands – if not millions – of deaths. The North first threatened an EMP attack over the summer, and North Korean media and its people have mentioned it several


Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 23 Dec 2017, 20:42:46

I think the USA could, NK? Not so much.
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby Cog » Sat 23 Dec 2017, 23:44:55

Overblown threat by a country not able to deliver it in the first place.
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 24 Dec 2017, 11:05:39

I often wonder how much of our military hardware/software comes from China.

More generally put, how reliant are our militaries our possible belligerent states?

I've read some Navy ships have used Windows computers for their networking. Not sure now, that may have been only a trial to keep costs down.
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby evilgenius » Sun 24 Dec 2017, 14:03:03

I think that the EMP danger is actually real. I don't know what the cost would be to shield electrical generation. I think it's an expense that shouldn't be left until after its importance is discovered before it is paid. I don't think that if everyone's car stopped working, or their computers quit it would devastate the country nearly as much as if huge swaths of the country were looking at months before they got electricity back.
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 24 Dec 2017, 14:35:01

Kinda like PR?

But without outside help.
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 25 Dec 2017, 06:38:30

Newfie wrote:Kinda like PR?

But without outside help.


Automatically raising the question how many freeze and starve if there is no food distribution and winter heating? Heck a two week blackout times with an arctic cold front would leave much of the northern tier freezing in the dark! I can't speak for you but my super efficient natural gas furnace needs 110 current to operate at all let alone distribute the heat through my home and prevent pipes from freezing this time of year.

So far the USA has been extremely lucky, every blackout with an extended power outage has happened in summer usually triggered by a heat wave. Over the next 10 days I am forecast to be in the single digit F temperature range every night so this time of year an outage would be tantamount to a death sentence for many, especially coupled with the 5" of snow and high winds drifting many roads closed.

An EMP or Coronal Mass Ejection causing a blackout right now would be very very bad for Ohio and about 23 other states where this arctic cold front is pouring through right now.
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 25 Dec 2017, 09:31:45

Yes, we have been very lucky.

I equipped our house in Philadelphia with a dead stupid simple diesel generator, Chinese, back before emission controls. 6kw. The main purpose being to keep power to the oil forced hot air heater. Freeze thaw would kill the pipes and create massive damage.

Now that I’m not there to start the thing I don’t know. Maybe I could talk one of the tenents through it.
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 25 Dec 2017, 13:16:52

Newfie wrote:Yes, we have been very lucky.

I equipped our house in Philadelphia with a dead stupid simple diesel generator, Chinese, back before emission controls. 6kw. The main purpose being to keep power to the oil forced hot air heater. Freeze thaw would kill the pipes and create massive damage.

Now that I’m not there to start the thing I don’t know. Maybe I could talk one of the tenents through it.


You still own the building and rent the spaces, don't you have a Superintendent to take care of issues while you are not present? If not I would very strongly advise you rent a handyman one of the apartments at half price, the savings in prevented damage is more than worth the costs.
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby evilgenius » Mon 25 Dec 2017, 13:42:32

Newfie wrote:Kinda like PR?

But without outside help.

I was thinking of them. I recently bought an inverter to convert from DC to AC. In the process, I discovered a lot of satisfied customer ratings of various brands placed there by people who had shipped inverters to their relatives there, and who heard good things back about how they were running.
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Re: Can The US Survive An EMP Attack?

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 25 Dec 2017, 17:25:23

Tanada,
Yes we have a building manager who has a handyman. Because of this thread I will likely meet with him and show him how the system operates. Also one of our long term tenents.

Thanks.

I bought the gen set in 1999 in part because of Y2K but also because the power company had been struggling with large power outages in our neighborhood. Some then they have spent millions to upgrade the grid and outages are now rate. None the less, not good to get complacent.
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The wrong button!

Unread postby dolanbaker » Sat 13 Jan 2018, 19:59:31

It seems that someone pressed the wrong button in the US state of Hawaii today.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42677604
An incoming missile alert plunged residents of Hawaii into panic on Saturday morning before it was declared to be false.

Mobile phone users received a message saying: "Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill."

State Governor David Ige apologised to Hawaiians, saying an employee had pressed the wrong button.

The US government announced there would be a full investigation.

An alert system is in place because of the potential proximity of Hawaii to North Korean missiles.

In December, the state tested its nuclear warning siren for the first time since the end of the Cold War.


Must have been pretty scary for those who believed it!
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Re: The wrong button!

Unread postby Shaved Monkey » Sat 13 Jan 2018, 21:35:12

So it seems like the boast that Trump has a much bigger button that works look like potential Fake News
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