[pictishbroch]

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/
As we keep saying, democracy is fine, as long as you don't take it seriously. The candidates for the White House job are eager to show voters that they are patriotic, religious and right-thinking men. What they don't want to do is trouble the voters with real problems.

What kind of problems?

In our view, there are three major challenges facing the United States.

1) The country is going broke.
2) The military is out of control.
3) Standards of living are falling.

What? You haven't heard the Democrats mention these things? How about the Republicans? Nope…?

As to the first, the country is going into a recession with its finances in the worst shape ever. In fact, if you believe Eli Broad, founder of Kaufman & Broad, the big building firm, this is the worst period in U.S. economic life since World War II. In his entire life, he says he's never seen anything like it. And he's 75 years old.

But here, we're not talking about the economy itself. We do that every day. Here we're referring to public finances.

Typically, in a recession, the government tries to "lean into the wind" to counterbalance the effect of an economic slowdown. Business stops investing so much. Consumers stop spending so much. The government - according to classic Keynesian economics - tries to take up the slack by spending more.

But where does it get the money? The feds already have a deficit of about $500 billion. And a "financing gap" of $57 trillion. In the coming recession, predicts Bill Gross of the PIMCO fund, the federal deficit will go to $1 trillion. Obama will likely be the next president. He'll be tagged with the first TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT. But what can he do?

Obama says he's going to cut spending. But every economist in the nation is going to tell him not to do it - not during a recession. It will only make the recession worse, they'll say. Instead, they'll urge him to spend more money. They'll remind him that the Japanese used fiscal stimulus on a massive scale - equal to 10% of GDP - and it still wasn't enough to light a fire under their economy. A similar fiscal stimulant in the United States would mean a deficit of $1.7 trillion!

Our old friend John Mauldin is sure we will "muddle through" somehow. "We always do," he says. And it's true; we muddle through most things. But a man does not muddle through a hanging; nor does an economy muddle through when its government goes broke.

[nobodypanic]

MAD does not work with fanatics.

Really? Interestingly, concidering the US is the ONLY country to have used to nukes. Not NK, Iran etc. You think the US will try ordinary ground-based invasion on China, Russia or the greater part of the middle east once conflict over the last oil increases? When they have nukes? It would be madness not to use them.

i am not sure you understand what MAD really means. in order for MAD to be in operation, at least TWO powers must possess the ability to deliver nuclear weapons against one another.

so, pointing at the US's use of a nuclear weapon at a time when they where the only power who had such a weapon in a discussion about MAD seems puzzling.

further, consider the fact that for some years the US was the only power who held such weapons. did they run about crushing every nation on the planet by using such weapons without impunity?

if you ask me, from a humanitarian’s point of view, there could hardly have been a better nation to develop such a weapon first.

[pictishbroch]

MAD does not work with fanatics.

Really? Interestingly, concidering the US is the ONLY country to have used to nukes. Not NK, Iran etc. You think the US will try ordinary ground-based invasion on China, Russia or the greater part of the middle east once conflict over the last oil increases? When they have nukes? It would be madness not to use them.

i am not sure you understand what MAD really means. in order for MAD to be in operation, at least TWO powers must possess the ability to deliver nuclear weapons against one another.

so, pointing at the US's use of a nuclear weapon at a time when they where the only power who had such a weapon in a discussion about MAD seems puzzling.

further, consider the fact that for some years the US was the only power who held such weapons. did they run about crushing every nation on the planet by using such weapons without impunity?

if you ask me, from a humanitarian’s point of view, there could hardly have been a better nation to develop such a weapon first.

eh I think Russia is more than a match for delivering nuclear weapons or am I missing something here?

[EnergyUnlimited]

MAD does not work with fanatics.

Really? Interestingly, concidering the US is the ONLY country to have used to nukes. Not NK, Iran etc. You think the US will try ordinary ground-based invasion on China, Russia or the greater part of the middle east once conflict over the last oil increases? When they have nukes? It would be madness not to use them.

In this scenario Russians and Chinese will send most of nukes in their possession to US.
Attempt of invasion of China or Russia by US would terminate US, solve China's population problem and send Russia back to XV (...or V) century.

After due body counts are done Russia will end up as a sort of winner.
Vastness of Russian land and large proportion of Russians living out of cities implies fewest kt/square mile so Russians will end up with most inhabitable land left.

[Nickel]

After due body counts are done Russia will end up as a sort of winner.
Vastness of Russian land and large proportion of Russians living out of cities implies fewest kt/square mile so Russians will end up with most inhabitable land left.

You actually think there'd be "winners" after a full nuclear exchange? If there were anyone left alive after five years, I'd be astounded. And even if there were, it's unlikely we'd achieve anything like our current level of technology again for centuries or millennia, if ever. A nuclear war wouldn't be some happy mopping-up operation that solves our inconvenient problems. It would be the end of everything we love, hold dear, and have striven for over recorded history, followed by an epoch of needless, pointless human misery and suffering unlike anything seen even in the Stone Age. Life might have been nasty, brutish, and short back then, but at least the rainwater wasn't doped with strontium 90 with a tumor in every sip.

[pictishbroch]

After due body counts are done Russia will end up as a sort of winner.
Vastness of Russian land and large proportion of Russians living out of cities implies fewest kt/square mile so Russians will end up with most inhabitable land left.

You actually think there'd be "winners" after a full nuclear exchange? If there were anyone left alive after five years, I'd be astounded. And even if there were, it's unlikely we'd achieve anything like our current level of technology again for centuries or millennia, if ever. A nuclear war wouldn't be some happy mopping-up operation that solves our inconvenient problems. It would be the end of everything we love, hold dear, and have striven for over recorded history, followed by an epoch of needless, pointless human misery and suffering unlike anything seen even in the Stone Age. Life might have been nasty, brutish, and short back then, but at least the rainwater wasn't doped with strontium 90 with a tumor in every sip.

I think also that those who survived the explosions and fallout would also resort to tribal function mode and start killing each other for whatever remains of salvageable foods and goods.
The fact is that mankind has leaped way ahead of itself on the intellectual/technological level but has sadly not advanced(or maybe even went backwards recently)on the moral ethical level.

[pictishbroch]

A philosopher who I admire greatly called Paul Brunton wrote the following many years ago.


"Can we be saved from going headlong over the dangerous precipice which we are skirting so uncomfortably? Out of this world catastrophe there could have emerged an era dedicated to truer religious ideas and higher social forms. But instead the war years have brought to many people a degradation of outward circumstance and, what is much worse, a degradation of inward character. It has brought out bad instincts like hatred, violence, brutality, lust, greed, and envy. Suffering has taught them the wrong lessons. It has made them more materialistic instead of more spiritual. If civilization is destroyed, such people will be largely to blame. Our generation has been given its last chance to survive. At present utter collapse is merely possible. But if wiser principles are not adhered to or if their acceptance is too long delayed, then utter collapse will be sadly inevitable. If humanity cannot or will not respond to the call of this evolutionary voice, then its civilized life will collapse in a new Armageddon followed by devastating famine and widespread disease. Only after it has lost everything in unheard-of sufferings will the remnant that will be left alive after the inevitable interval of anarchy realize the need and have the will to make a fresh start in a nobler direction. There is sufficient reason to support the hope that a total collapse is unlikely. The human race will not wholly perish, although much in it that deserves to do so will perish. A remnant will emerge alive and pass into a new and better phase and purified form of its evolution."

he died in 1981

[HKFarmboy]

ah, yes. but now we have "useable nukes". as if there can be no blowback and no one will ever retaliate. not unlike the thinking in WW1 about gas warfare.

"useable nukes" like the "Patriot" Act and "America's Tanker" all packaged to dumb down Americans. If George Bushit doesn't attack Iran in his remaining 195 days then McSame 'ol Bushit will (assuming O'bama continues to daily reveal the fact that he is a twit).

without the oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz, we grind to a halt in less than 10 days. China is our long term enemy and will do everything it can to pen us in. Everyone is dependent on the remains of cheap oil. we will have precious few friends when it comes right down to it.

it is starting to feel like the end of the empire.

[EnergyUnlimited]

You actually think there'd be "winners" after a full nuclear exchange? If there were anyone left alive after five years, I'd be astounded.

I think, there would be plenty alive left.
Blasts would take perhaps 20-50% of population.
Fallout would take maybe half of blast survivors.
Disease & famine would take perhaps 90% of survivors of blasts and fallout.
This still give us huge numbers of survivors (hundreds of millions) surviving first 5 years.
Perhaps in longer run tens of millions worldwide would survive.
Incidentally it is optimal long term human population for hunter gatherer tribes.

And even if there were, it's unlikely we'd achieve anything like our current level of technology again for centuries or millennia, if ever.

I agree.
High tech civilization would be gone for good.

A nuclear war wouldn't be some happy mopping-up operation that solves our inconvenient problems. It would be the end of everything we love, hold dear, and have striven for over recorded history, followed by an epoch of needless, pointless human misery and suffering unlike anything seen even in the Stone Age.

I agree.
That misery would clear out within a century or two, though.

Life might have been nasty, brutish, and short back then, but at least the rainwater wasn't doped with strontium 90 with a tumor in every sip.

After several months radioactivity would fall to levels allowing life in severely affected areas.
After several years all long living isotopes would be gone from air.
Radiation induced tumors would be far less common then popularly believed.
Radiation related leukemia takes years or decades to develop.

Essentially within about 20 years everything would look grossly settled but technological civilization would be never rebuilt.

NB. Nuclear winter scenario is an overhyped statement of faith, not a scientifically proven theory.

[pictishbroch]

update.

well all know about Georgia eh!

things are getting wobbly out there,,,this ww3 will gather momentum slowly and end with an almighty pop if we are not all careful.

JERUSALEM, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Israeli President Shimon Peres on Thursday expressed his concern over the possibility that Russia might deploy missiles in Syria, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni cautioned such a move would destabilize the Middle East.

Such a move by Russia would jeopardize peace not only in the Middle East, but in the whole world, Israeli broadcaster Army Radio quoted Peres as saying on his 85th birthday.

The political veteran made the remarks when commenting on Israeli media reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who arrived in Russia on Wednesday on a two-day visit, offered to allow Moscow to deploy Russian surface-to-surface Iskander missiles in its territory.

"Weapons of mass destruction are less dangerous without a means for launching them, but once a launching system is developed, the situation will be terrible," Peres was quoted as saying, pointing to the northern neighbor which Israel lists as an enemy state.

Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post reported Assad's offer was publicized on Wednesday, the same day when the United States signed an agreement with Poland to place part of a missile defense system on the Polish soil, a move that Russia insists would endanger its security.

Also in response to this possible scenario, Livni said Russia should not agree to Syria's request for missile deployment, stressing that this could destabilize the Middle East.

"It is a mutual interest of Russia, of Israel and of the pragmatic leaders and states in the region not to send long-range missiles to Syria," local daily Ha'aretz quoted her as saying, while citing Syria's links with Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah as justification.

On Wednesday night, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to affirm the ties between the two countries. Olmert's office said the two leaders talked about regional and bilateral issues and looked to advance bilateral relations.

[sparky]

To mos6507

"Unfortunately the international community doesn't work that way. They would rather countries take a mushroom cloud over a major city before it's considered acceptable to fight back. "

Yep , and a very good thing it is too , considering the chances of a unplanned launch , the unreliability of sensors and the bloody narrow mindedness of the military ( a professional quality actually )
any leader with a finger and a button must be totally sure this is the real Mc Coy , it make for a less stressful life overall .
that's why the missile defense systems are deeply disturbing to the Russians .
It give a bonus to surprise , a decapitating strike can mop up a fair bit of the nuclear armed 500 launchers ,probably 80%

Further attrition during the flight phase and the data given by the X band radars would be used for the final obstacle of the THAAD

The retaliatory strike has some reliability issues , a certain percentage of misfire and some targeting would go by the window ,
I.E the same minor target would get several warheads while some crucial ones would get none

All this whittling down can give a positive outcome with statistically acceptable cost .

For the side without a missile defense..
... immediate reaction against an unconfirmed attack become vital ,
A case of use it or loose it .



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