Rapture,

Calm down. I think N. Korea is smart enough to know that if it launched a nucular warhead at anyone, and actually HIT something, that the world reaction would be swift and through and North Korea would probably cease to exist. Even they are not THAT stupid. Lets face it, they only have ONE! Nato allies have Thousands.

Calm down, I doubt it is a nuclear weapon and it probably won't hit anything. Interesting news though. I can't believe they are stupid enough to launch that thing. If hits the U.S. they will be in big trouble.

thanks raptureready for keeping us informed.

My gut feeling is that NK does not even possess a working nuke.

Thanks rr.

nawty

I have been keeping my eye on this since it hit the news. The one thing that I heard on fox news cable channel today that it was pointed at the united states. I'm not really sure that they can get that info. I dought poly ding dang, or what ever that nut heads name is would  really do it  right now. It's already pissing off many countries. He is just posturing because of the situation that we are having with Iran.  Now where they have it pointing, Who knows, I did not hear any official state where it was pointing, just the news person. But if your friend in the air force is concerned  it makes me concerned. Please keep us informed about his feelings on the situation. But lets all be cool and relax, there really isen't anything we could do. Between BF and NK we will drive ourselves crazy.  EVERYBODY TAKE A DEEP BREATH...NOW EXHALE..ok yea that don't work. But lets do it anyway....

I have been reading bits and pieces about this threat all week.
Supposedly it has a range of over 9,000 miles. Don't know which direction it is pointed, but needless to say it would have to fly over populated areas any way they have positioned it.

I also read that we don't believe that they have a nuclear war head that is light enough to be put on this rocket. It could, however, be a hydrogen weapon.

There are also rumors that it may just be a satelite.

There have been tests of our missle protection program and the decision to shoot it down has been made.

So... As I told my co-worker earlier this week, we may be using our BF preps for something else, but at least we are ready.

Every TV clip I see on the box shows a long skinny missile being launched.

ozjohn wrote: Every TV clip I see on the box shows a long skinny missile being launched.   In my experience ICBM capable missiles are all short and fat.  More space for fuel and warheads.   OJ

    Can't watch the news...the BF movie is on. But I think it is Camels that are making everyone sick? I better pay more attention!


    

   

RaptureRead,
Worst case scenerio...your ready. Best case, you got a great simulation in and will be that much more ready for a future situation.

You were right to post. It would be worse if you hadn't and something did happen. I hope you continue to post all your concerns. Regardless of how small or large they are. Someone told me size was relative?? Oh...that was my husband!     

Just kidding, of course! Thanks goodness he doesn't visit the forum, and see that I use him for an occassional laugh..or does he???


    
    
    
    

i'm glad you posted it. i went to a few sites myself about north korea since i read your post. its also been on fox news and on coast to coast radio. anyway i say thanks for posting it. i called my husbands uncle, ricky who is an independant truck driver and he say hes still driving tonight but says not many are on the roads tonight hes coming from missour to texas tonight. he also said there are trucker web sites called ooida or ole blue gonna try to find them see if i can find out more info. on this

Japan, as far as I recall, had no real reason (and lots of reason not to) bomb Pearl Harbor. Bombing Pearl Harbor made no sense -- it just ***sed off the US and gave them another enemy with tons of resources. Up until that point, we'd been staying out of the war.

But they bombed us anyway.

My point is, war isn't always logical.

Shooting a missile at the US makes no logistic sense from North Korea -- they can't win, unless they count global annihilation as "winning." But they hate us, and their leader's a true madman who is NOT well grounded in reality.

He may think that because we're preoccupied by Iraq and Afghanistan we can't fight another war. Note that this man has those who oppose him executed or sent to concentration camps. I can easily see a scenario where Jung Il asks his "advisors" -- "Is the US weakened by the wars in the middle east enough that we could win a fight with them?"

-- and his advisors, not wishing to be shot for disagreeing with the great leader, nod and say, "Yessir. We can beat our enemies. Lets start by taking DC out ..."

Plus Jung Il has made it clear he thinks we're going to invade him. If he thinks we're going to invade him anyway, he may figure getting the first strike in and making it count may be the best move. If we strike HIM first, well, he's seen what we did to Iraq and Afghanistan ...

If they have a bomb, it's likely to be a small nuke akin to what we hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki with. Small as such things go, not particularly technologically advanced, but rather reliable and easy enough to make. They have the technology to make it; most of their GNP goes towards their war machine. We know they have enriched uranium from their nuclear power plants and making a basic nuke from it isn't actually that difficult and could be counted on to work, from what I understand, without being tested.

(They couldn't test it first. North Korea may well cease to exist via a swat from the Chinese if they did. China's downwind and would be unamused. Plus it would tip their hand -- and if they have a limited amount of uranium, would waste it. They'd probably rather test it on their enemies ...)

Making it small enough to fit on a ballistic missile ... I wouldn't want to assume they couldn't. We could by the 60's. They're at least at that level of technology.

If they DO lob a nuke our way, my bet is that they explode it in the atmosphere rather than on the ground over a densely populated area -- DC, New York, LA. This would take less aiming and be a more efficient use of a single nuke than trying to hit a specific target. They could be off by 100 miles in the DC area and still make a big impression.

The resulting electromagnetic pulse would be a very bad thing, would disable any unhardened electronic device within several hundred miles and take down the grid.

I'm not sure how bad the radiation would be from an airburst ... anyone know? I suspect not "as" bad as a nuke exploded on the ground as there would be less fallout.

Korea worries the hell out of my simply bcause Kim Jung Il is a loose cannon. He's an unpredictable madman who's demonstrated his lack of care for human life and his cunning on many occasions. You know, the reason we haven't attacked him in the past is that he's got Seoul (South Korea -- several million people) held hostage. There's a dam in North Korea that he's got wired with explosives; if we attack him, he's indicated he'll blow the dam and kill a few million people in Seoul.

Interesting times. I fueled my truck up today on the off chance that, if we do get hit, and the grid goes down, and I have a driveable truck afterwards, I can bug out to the high country. Otherwise, I think I have all the preps I need.

Correction, it's plutonium that they have. Just for accuracy's sake.

    Also, regarding size -- by the late 1950's, the US had a nuke small enough to picked up and carried by a soldier onto a battlefield and launched by a small rocket at opposing troops -- the idea was to contaminate the battlefield with short-lived radiation to prevent enemy advance, and kill any enemies within a few thousand feet in the process.

If we could develop a nuke that small using slide rules and 50's era technology, I'm sure the Koreans could do do the same. They do have computers and quite a bit of information about how to make things work can be inferred from the internet from non-classified publically available info.

Why does NK need a missile anyway? It's so much easier to load a warhead onto a ship and sail it right into port....   Less fiddling with finicky guidance mechanisms and whatnot.

A cunning plan indeed, redcloud!

But perhaps their intention is to distract us from ....from......from that... that thing we were worrying about before.....what was it?


Oh, yes, bird flu!