Is it possible to stop nuclear war?
Currently, it seems impossible to stop a nuclear war by the end of 2020.
Trump is likely to drop about 450 50-kiloton nuclear bunker busters from naval F-15 'Sea Eagles' launched from an aircraft carrier on N Korea, to ensure he wins the next election, but if impeachment efforts appear successful, he could press the button sooner. The DoD claims the B61-12 'tactical nuclear devices' direct the blast downwards into the bunker, rather than into the air, so therefore are not WMDs. The DoD also claims these are necessary because N Korea watched the 'shock and awe' bombing of Baghdad and buried their missile bases too deep to be reached by non-nuclear weapons. So USA's manufacture of between 400 and 500 nuclear bunker busters started last month, bypassing both international and national objections by an 'accelerated 11-month retrofit program' which converted existing nuclear bombs into the 'b61-12 bunker buster' configuration, saving taxpayers $280 million compared to the original cost estimates, and approved in Trump's first national budget, in 2017. The actual cost is unavailable due to an unsuccessful ongoing audit to locate $20 trillion missing from DoD spending. The USA claims the nuclear bomb program does not violate international treaties because the nuclear bunker busters are being made by modifying existing tactical nuclear devices, and therefore do not constitute 'new nuclear weapons.' An attempt to block funds to this DoD program by Congress was bypassed by transferring authority for the testing and production to US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, although in all likelihood, the funds came out of the DoD's missing $20 trillion. With manufacturing commenced, the remaining issue is only logistic, as moving all the nuclear bombs onto aircraft carriers will take some time. But after that, USA's navy already established the public doesn't know where its aircraft carriers might be, during reporting on the last time it sent its aircraft carriers to N Korea. So it could be any day Trump feels like starting the bombing.
Trump is likely to drop about 450 50-kiloton nuclear bunker busters from naval F-15 'Sea Eagles' launched from an aircraft carrier on N Korea, to ensure he wins the next election, but if impeachment efforts appear successful, he could press the button sooner. The DoD claims the B61-12 'tactical nuclear devices' direct the blast downwards into the bunker, rather than into the air, so therefore are not WMDs. The DoD also claims these are necessary because N Korea watched the 'shock and awe' bombing of Baghdad and buried their missile bases too deep to be reached by non-nuclear weapons. So USA's manufacture of between 400 and 500 nuclear bunker busters started last month, bypassing both international and national objections by an 'accelerated 11-month retrofit program' which converted existing nuclear bombs into the 'b61-12 bunker buster' configuration, saving taxpayers $280 million compared to the original cost estimates, and approved in Trump's first national budget, in 2017. The actual cost is unavailable due to an unsuccessful ongoing audit to locate $20 trillion missing from DoD spending. The USA claims the nuclear bomb program does not violate international treaties because the nuclear bunker busters are being made by modifying existing tactical nuclear devices, and therefore do not constitute 'new nuclear weapons.' An attempt to block funds to this DoD program by Congress was bypassed by transferring authority for the testing and production to US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, although in all likelihood, the funds came out of the DoD's missing $20 trillion. With manufacturing commenced, the remaining issue is only logistic, as moving all the nuclear bombs onto aircraft carriers will take some time. But after that, USA's navy already established the public doesn't know where its aircraft carriers might be, during reporting on the last time it sent its aircraft carriers to N Korea. So it could be any day Trump feels like starting the bombing.
Comments (32)
Exactly. What the world needs to do is stop looking at Trump from everyone else's point of view and think how we look to him. N Korea isnt a real threat to US security, but it has proven it can hit Japan by mistake when trying to hit us, which makes it a perfect victim.
Not really. It takes a single look at the anti-ballistic missile defenses of Japan to realize that North Korea poses no threat to Japan either.
Hold your horses, not so fast...
And that's just from little more than a cursory glance.
We are probably lucky that NK has some pretty awesome ability to respond to any attack. As best I can tell, much of that ability can not be taken out in a first strike.
My analysis is that all Trump cares about is Trump, and a horrific war in Asia would not be good for Trump.
What worries me are unintentional fuck ups.
As example, one time in Arkansas a repair tech dropped a wrench which punctured the side of a missile in a silo, which led to massive escape of rocket fuel, leading to the rocket leaving the silo and dumping the nuke on the ground nearby. Didn't go off. If it had Arkansas would now be unlivable.
On another occasion somebody accidentally put on a training tape at NORAD which simulated an incoming Russian first strike. The generals called the National Security advisor and told him that we were under attack.
Crazy stuff like this could happen again at any moment. We're playing Russian roulette with modern civilization.
Why Pakistan should refrain from starting a nuclear war? The state´s official religion is Islam, and the country has been purged from other beliefs that amount to only 4%. With this strong islamic milieu, I do not see why Pakistan is more likely to feel guilty about using nuclear bombs than the U.S. War and violence are a sacrament in islamism. A sacrament is a ritual that brings you closer to God and makes you more worthy. Killing people or dying trying to was considered sacramental (human sacrifices) among Vikings or Germanic tribes, and they fought among themselves when Romans were not attacking. Or they´d invade, simply because war was sacred to them, a favoured path to be in good terms with their daemons and to prove worth. Islam is based on that kind of "morality", because early Muslims mixed Judaism with their own tribal ideas of the world.
Christian and post-Christian (Progressive) U.S. do not have the concept of Holy War or Jihad. That is partly why Europeans had to wait more than a century and lose more than half of Christianity to Islam before they could organize defence. And still, Christian soldiers needed to expiate their sins in monasteries or donating to the Church if they wanted to go to Heaven. Does Pakistan have "anti-belicist" movies and songs, like the endless list of those produced by the U.S. culture?
In Quran however, Muslims read that the promised triumph of Allah over the whole of human kind and long-for Doomsday looks suspiciously similar to what would happen if Pakistan (or Iran) started a nuclear war:
[b]We have made of what is on the earth ornaments for it in order to test them as to whose work is better, and [i]We will surely turn what is on it into a barren wasteland!. 18:7-8
So when the horn is blown once, and the earth and the mountains are lifted and crushed with a single blow; on that day the inevitable event will occur. 69:13-15
Therefore, watch out for a day when the sky brings forth a distinctive smoke that covers the people; this is a painful punishment.. 44:10-11[/b]
For all this, and the demographic bomb that is also in total harmony with Islamic teachings, I find more likely that Pakistan begins the Doomsday War, and feels less guilty about it if at all, than the U.S.
It would be better for Pakistanis to return to their lost hindu religion; at least Hinduism has no need for a Doomsday as they think that history is meant to be endless.
Which opens another huge box of worms. Where is the evidence that life is better than death?
I myself routinely wail about nuclear weapons based on the assumption that life is better than death, but that conclusion is really little more than faith.
That's like trying to prove a negative. Don't you find life rewarding enough to not want to die?
Rewarding in comparison to what?
There is no comparison. So, we must appreciate life for what it offers us regardless.
Not wanting to die is based on a comparison, whether one realizes that or not. Appreciating life is not the same thing as not wanting to die.
Not really. Again, you don't have anything to compare life to apart from your neighbor who always smiles every day when going to work and coming back from it. I'm not aware of people being able to compare their life to something like death, unless the suffering of living is so great that death seems like the only alternative. However, that is taking the issue to the extreme in my opinion, and fortunately, not many people contemplate suicide or at least shouldn't if there's some alternative to entertain that is more productive to oneself and others.
Quoting Jake
Yeah, that much I agree on. No dispute about that on my end.
I agree we have no basis of comparison. And thus, not wanting to die is not reason based. A reason based perspective would be built upon comparing A to B and then selecting the more desired outcome.
The fact that we may like where we are now doesn't equal where we are now being better than something else which is unknown. I like this forum, but that's only because I don't know of a philosophy forum populated by cute redheaded coeds who all find me to be The Genius.
Mods, are you reading this? Do you see now how you're totally falling down on the job? :smile:
NK doesn't pose all that much of a threat to the United States, but nukes or not, it poses a huge threat to South Korea. Seoul is about 9 million+, and is located very close to NK's concentration of conventional arms. We can't neutralize those conventional arms with a nuke without wrecking much of Seoul in the process. Should NK decide to attack SK even with conventional weapons, it would be bad for SK, us, and the world -- because of the possibility of a war getting out of hand -- even a conventional war.
I'd bet on Pakistan as a nuker before NK. Pakistan has the added advantage (in this bet) of being unstable. NK seems to be under tight control. That could change rapidly, but I don't think there are NKs anxious to seize the few nuclear weapons they have and attack Japan or SK. There probably are several factions in Pakistan that would like to attack India, for example, and factions in India who would be delighted to have an excuse to wipe out Pakistan.
Then there is Israel which might, if it were sufficiently beleaguered, decide to protect its future with a few well-placed nukes.
One thing about Trump and his nuking NK: I am not sure the military would obey a command to launch nuclear weapons on North Korea.
Hardly know where to start on the totally false statements here. Like the F-15 is a land based aircraft used by the USAF, not the USN. And that 450 number is gotten likely from the life-extension program for the old 1906's era B61 bomb that Pentagon has asked for during the Obama years. (Why the US would use the full arsenal on NK I have the faintest idea)
What's the likely outcome? That basically North Korea gets it's ICBM delivery system which makes the US not to engage in a "pre-emptive" strike on the country. Clinton didn't go to war with North Korea. Neither did Bush or Obama. North Korea has sunk a South Korean warship and made an artillery strike on a South Korean town and that hasn't started a war. In earlier decades North Koreans even killed American servicemen on the border and that didn't start a war either.
I'm doubtful of Trump attacking his new friend in North Korea, just to get the focus away from domestic issues. Typically the US can be very belligerent towards countries that don't have nuclear weapons, only those that have so-called potential weapons.
Also, if you look at history nuclear weapons seem a good way to end a war. Japan surrendered after Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I'm not condoning the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Japanese but, arguably, the war would've exacted a greater toll if left to conventional means.
It's very human - this folly; like a smoker who's afraid of immediate fatality, say, in a car accident but continuing to puff on his deathsticks.