B-52’s are still in service, so the possibility still exists, however unlikely.
Uh, no. It doesn’t do any translation, it just archives the stuff the North Koreans themselves put up on the web. All the links to the “news” stories go to the KCNA’s site.
Yeah I’m seeing that now too. In my view, if it turns out to have been a dud, this will be extremly interesting. No one has ever really fired a nuke that mostly fizzled before (as far as I can recall).
If we can somehow get China to somehow “chastise” the little brother, that might do it. Economically or something.
We have time-tested ways of dealing with small-time wackos who are essentially alone in the world and just got their first nuke? Can you name even one previous example?
There’s a giant-sized difference between an ICBM and a simple missile, though. They don’t need ICBMs to hit Seoul or Tokyo or Beijing. And you don’t have to develop missiles at all if you want to bomb someone. Bombs are easy, and you can fit one on a “commercial airliner” which has all kinds of decent range and just needs a door you can push the bomb out of.
Has anyone here said Bush has nothing to do with it? I think most of the wingers have grudgingly acknowledged his complicity while simply refusing to give him 100% of the blame.
Shitty seismology technology or fewer stations to cross-compare various measurements? I mean that in all honesty.
No need, big dog. I’ve found that 95% of the people who use the “Baby Jesus” meme are ignorant trolls and the other 5% are just trying to be funny. :)
lol did anyone catch the Carter piece in the NY Times? I guess all ex-presidents have alzheimers now. He completely left out the part where the deal he brokered with NK was ignored on their end.
If North Korea engages in military action in response to non-military action (i.e. sanctions), even China will have a hard time defending them in the UN. China has an interest in maintaining North Korea; a strong, united, democratic pro-US Korea is not in their interest.
I’m wondering, however, if China is planning a scenario to back a few NK generals to have Kim… well, to have Kim discover a serious medical condition he wasn’t aware of.
“You are sick, comrade Chairman, very sick. Perhaps you should retire for health reasons.”
Just like you’re ignoring the part where it was ignored on our end too.
This just in: Kim Jong-Il says “Uh, whoops?”
“If the U.S. makes a concession to some degree, we will also make a concession to some degree, whether it be bilateral talks or six-party talks,” Kim was quoted as telling a Chinese envoy, the mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo reported, citing a diplomatic source in China.
Kim told the Chinese delegation that “he is sorry about the nuclear test,” the newspaper reported.
Methinks the Chinese lowered the boom HARD.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104AP_NKorea_Kim_Nuclear.html
And, just because I was one of the "wait and see"ers about whether it was a nuke or not, preliminary checks verify some radioactivity has been detected post-blast.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aO7kW.RjqqaE&refer=japan
Having no more info than 200 words on Bloomberg, I’m still cautious. A so-called “dirty bomb” can also produced airborne radioactivity and the yield on this thing was just so doggone small…
The largest conventional bombs in the US inventory are still only 1/10 the size of the North Korean explosion. “Small” is an extremely relative term in this case.
Yeah, but you can’t put “Piling up every explosive in the country down a mineshaft” past a nutjob jackleg like Kim.
H.
Well no one really knows the size of the explosion yet. If it does end up being a yield of up to 1 kiloton, then it ain’t that big. Keep in mind this was clearly done as a big one time demonstration of how large Kim Jong’s penis is, so you can’t compare it readily to mass-produced weapons in a regular military arsenal.
Here’s my anecdote: in WW1, the Brits detonated one huge explosion at the battle of Passchendale. They basically piled up about two dozen very large bombs in a tunnel under German trenches and blew about 10,000 guys to kingdom come. The yield was about 400 tons. That’s 90 years old with shitty technology. I’m just sayin’.
I said “1/10 the size” assuming NK’s bomb had a 500-ton yield. Which, apparently, is clearly possible with conventional explosives. I stand corrected.
That said, I’d be extremely surprised if our scientists could not differentiate between the radiation spread around by a dirty bomb and the radiation after a large-scale fusion reaction. The latter seems like it would be very distinctive and difficult to falsify.
Well, here’s the relevant sentence from DNI’s statement as quoted in Bloomberg: “Analysis of air samples collected Oct. 11, 2006, detected radioactive debris which confirms North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion”. “Debris” implies particulate floaties from the air around North Korea which test positive for radioactivity. It isn’t clear to me if the floaties themselves are radioactive debris thrown up from a blast site, or passively irradiated dust which happened to float by on that day. The latter case wouldn’t give us much info vis-a-vis dirty bomb vs. real nuke, but the former would.
edit: OK I found a further article at the Guardian here. It indicates that two tests have been made: the previously mentioned floatie test and an additional radiometric gas test. The gas test will be more conclusive once stringently vetted. Certain elements are only produced when an actual, honest to god fission event happens (however small). If those elements are found, then a fission event definitely occured. But if all we get is radioactive dust floaties (think: light fallout), it will be much harder to determine how the dust came to be irradiated.
It also says that China hasn’t found shit, though. For what that’s worth.
Hate to necro this, but oops, they did it again. Apparently.
We’ll probably discover that each of these tests is actually doing double duty; they’re strapping dissidents or out of favor sycophants to the bombs as they test them.
When I first scanned this, I thought it was “out of favor psychopaths”. I guess it makes sense either way.
Heh, yeah. A sycophant of Kim Jong Un is probably pretty messed up as well.
Unfortunately it’s probably just a good survival strategy.
Yeah. Just another day in the workers’ paradise.
Excuse me, was that sarcasm? Have a seat over here…on this bomb.
No, comrade that is not a “bomb.” Imperialists have “bombs.” We have “Deal Leader Reeducation Encouragement Devices.”