Tag: Nuclear Threat

What Would Happen If The Nukes Came?

As a child of the Cold War we were confronted almost daily with the possibility of nuclear holocaust…even taught in our schools….our movies and TV shows were about the evils of such weapons use…..

An old evil is waiting…..waiting for its time to be unleashed on the world.

Both the US and Russia have walked away from the Cold War nuclear agreement, the INF, and the word is that both nations are already planning to expand their nuclear capabilities.

Not a good idea!

But the attitudes of the 2 leaders is that they must prepare for nuclear retaliation to gain a peace.

This is a silly notion that seems to be gaining popularity within the Trump White House.

Now what would actually happen if the two nations decided to nuke each other?

There is a wealth of opinions on this notion…the SciFi genre is full of the possible outcomes…..but are predictions even close to reality?

The simulations have been run, and it’s official: even today, a nuclear war between the US and Russia would plunge the planet into a nuclear winter, with clouds of soot and smoke covering the planet.

Globally, temperatures would plunge by around 9 Kelvin (9 degrees Celsius or 16 degrees Fahrenheit) on average, due to the lack of sunlight reaching ground level.

The new model matches one of the best existing models we have, published in 2007. Both reports predict a nuclear winter of several years, upwards of a 30 percent global reduction in precipitation over the first few months, and a cloud of smoke enveloping first the Northern Hemisphere, and then the Southern Hemisphere, too.

“Here we repeat the [2007 nuclear war scenario] using an alternative state-of‐the‐art modern climate model run at higher resolution and with a more explicit simulation of stratospheric chemistry and aerosols,” write the researchers in their paper.

“The use of nuclear weapons in this manner by the United States and Russia would have disastrous consequences globally.”

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-best-simulation-we-have-says-the-threat-of-a-nuclear-winter-is-all-too-real

It is an old story that needs to be retold for a younger generation that has little idea what the results of the use of nukes would be…..plus to call out the thoughtless toads in government that have NO idea what they are doing or who they will effect with their nonsense…..

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

“Lego ergo Scribo”

Nukes For China

We have heard all the spurious arguments for the nuke policies for Iran and North Korea……but what about a strategy for a nuclear power and one of our biggest opponents? China.

A diverse range of external stimuli, including technological trends and geopolitical shifts, is leading the strategic community of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to reconsider existing nuclear policy, strategy, and operations. According to Chinese open sources, U.S. global conventional precision strike systems, U.S. missile defenses, and India’s nuclear weapons modernization, among other threats, could shake the PRC’s faith in longstanding nuclear doctrine and posture. The 2013 Science of Military Strategy confirms that “the nuclear security circumstances facing China in overall terms are trending toward complexity.”   In response to such challenges, some Chinese analysts have proposed loosening the no-first-use policy and undertaking quantitative and qualitative improvements to China’s nuclear forces.

A departure from enduring nuclear policy and strategy may also reflect China’s growing power and sense of purpose as it seeks to reshape its surroundings and accelerate the erosion of the U.S. position in the Western Pacific. Indeed, Chinese analysts are exploring Cold War history in Europe, from which they may be drawing lessons about the vulnerabilities of U.S. extended deterrence in Asia. While it remains unclear how and to what extent Chinese nuclear strategy will advance Beijing’s expanding ambitions, the internal debates suggest that China may be increasingly inclined to adopt a more coercive nuclear strategy.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/07/17/chinese_nuclear_weapons_strategyleaning_towards_a_more_proactive_posture_part_ii_external_drivers_of_potential_changetechnical-military_developments_and_perceptions_of_credibility.html

China continues to confront the US and its Asian allies on many fronts and yet the president is concerned over a country that is not yet a nuclear power…..where is the sanity there?

I believe you ignore China’s nukes at your own peril.

Just Nuke It!

The US is concerned with the nukes in development by nations like North Korea and Iran…..and yet they freely give them technology to nations that are the bane of human society like the Saudis….

So do we want nukes or not?

The report is that nuke warheads are on the decrease….

The number of warheads has decreased over the past year, even as countries continue to modernize their nuclear forces, according to an annual assessment of global nuclear arms.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released the SIPRI Yearbook 2019 on the current state of armaments, disarmament and international security.

The report found that 13,865 warheads in existence at the start of 2019 were owned by nine nations: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

The year before hosted an arsenal of 14,465 warheads.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/2019/06/16/heres-how-many-nuclear-warheads-exist-and-which-countries-own-them/

All in all this is good news right?

But rest of the story…..

The Pentagon’s inability to win America’s recent wars in any convincing way may be about to become a much bigger problem than anyone realized, as experts express major concerns about a new policy doctrine adopted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

US struggles with conventional warfare, despite massively outspending everyone else, and they are hoping to turn that around by using nuclear weapons in America’s assorted conflicts, seeing nuclear war as creating “conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability.”

This Nuclear Operations document was published online by the Pentagon briefly last week, but was subsequently removed, and approved by the Joint Chiefs, with officials saying it is “for official use only” now.

Experts see it as a substantial change in US military policy, and particularly nuclear war policy. They say in particular this document does not focus on nuclear deterrence, but rather on US nuclear first-strikes as a war-fighting doctrine. That they see nuclear strikes as a potential cure-all is particularly troubling.

It is not clear if it is directly related to the low-yield nuclear weapons whose funding is a topic of major debate in Congress. Some in Congress were concerned that creating more low-yield nuclear arms would make their use a lower-threshold issue.

Though more usable nukes would clearly fit nicely with the Pentagon’s doctrine of using nukes more, it’s not clear that the doctrine is dependent on having lower-yield options, or if the US will just nuke with whatever they’ve got.

(antiwar.com)

Sorry but this type of double standard is typical for American thinking……and foreign policy.

So are the warheads decreasing or are they on the rise?

The Pentagon publishes a report for nuclear stability……

The U.S. military appears to believe it can somehow prevail in a nuclear war, according to a Pentagon document that was briefly made public, and has plans for using atomic weapons in “small and limited” capacities in order to create “strategic stability” for itself in the world.

The document, Nuclear Operations (pdf), describes the current political and military environment and the challenges faced by the Pentagon in strategizing how to most effectively deploy nuclear weapons in war. It was first reported on by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), which downloaded and released the document on June 19.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/20/pentagon-releases-then-deletes-document-detailing-use-nuclear-weapons-restore

Please make up our minds for us….or at least stick to at least one version of the truth…..

Closing Thought–29May19

The news is dire….whether you worry about that damn silly “caravan” or the resurrection of ISIS or those abortions or what the president had to say in his immature megalomaniac way or maybe it is the drama of the day today it was Iran well at least before noon……but there is an old worry that is at high risk and NO one cares……

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons may have pushed 122 countries to sign the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons treaty, but a top UN security expert says “the risks of nuclear war are particularly high now, and the risks of the use of nuclear weapons … are higher now than at any time since World War II.” Renata Dwan, director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, told reporters from Geneva on Tuesday that the “urgent” issue should be getting more attention, reports Reuters. She noted every state with nuclear weapons has nuclear modernization programs in progress. Dwan also described new technologies and new types of war transforming the arms control landscape amid heavy competition between the US and China.

“How we act on that risk and the management of that risk seems to me a pretty significant and urgent question that isn’t reflected fully in the [UN] Security Council,” Dwan said. So far, the nuclear ban treaty has been ratified by 23 UN member states—most don’t have nuclear weapons—of the 50 needed for it to take effect, per the Hill. The US, Russia, and China, strongly oppose the ban with Defense One describing much uncertainty, and sometimes secrecy, among them. Indeed, a recent PAX report found $116 billion in active contracts between governments and the private sector to design, build, and maintain nuclear arsenals—a figure likely understated, per the Intercept, which reports America’s nuclear modernization program is expected to cost $1.2 trillion by 2050.

Nukes have been a problem since the first one was dropped and then the race to see who could have the most…….and it is still a problem that needs addressing but there seems to be NO taste for arms control in this White House…..

Nukes are still aimed at our heart…as ours are targeted at theirs…time for some leadership on arms control…..

Just My Thought to end my day of serious posting…….when I read stuff like this I think of the guy riding the bomb down in Dr. Strangelove……

Nuke War, What Are The Chances?

40 years after the collapse of the USSR the chances of a nuke war is virtually impossible……right?

Of course, nuclear war is extremely unlikely. Although the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has placed the hands of its famous clock at five minutes to midnight, that doesn’t mean very much and never has. The fact of the matter is that world nuclear inventories, led by reductions in the United States and Russia, have never been lower, and none of the major powers expects a nuclear conflict in the way they did during the Cold War. To crib a line from Captain Jack Sparrow, however, nuclear war is not impossible, it’s improbable, and a nuclear war could take place in more ways than you might think, sparked by any number of occurrences from a pure accident to an intentional strike.

I’m going to focus here on a war that could involve the United States and its allies on one side, and Russia or China on the other. Nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, or between a future nuclear-armed Iran and Israel, is unlikely but far easier to imagine than a global nuclear conflict. Indeed, this is one reason Americans don’t think about nuclear war very much anymore: they think it will happen somewhere else. (If a regional limited war takes place, however, you’ll know it: even a small exchange of nuclear weapons will create a global environmental catastrophe that will dwarf Chernobyl or Fukushima.)

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/five-ways-nuclear-war-could-still-happen-10665

With more and more nations wanting to secure nukes the chances of something going wrong and a nuke being deployed gets better and better……and the chance of stupid infecting the leaders of these countries gets better and better as well.

…

the chances of nuclear war are “higher than they’ve been in generations.”

That was the frightening assessment the United Nations Security Council received last week from UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu, and it made barely a ripple in the media.

For that matter, Trump’s decision in February to withdraw from a key nuclear treaty, signed amid great hope 32 years ago by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, was deemed worthy of about 24 hours of news coverage.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2019/04/10/prospect-of-nuclear-war-highest-in-decades-yet-media-ignores.html

As more and more countries pursue nuke power….the chances of a war with nukes grows as well.

What Year Is It?

Good damn question!

I remember when I was a kid in elementary school (yes I am an old fart) when we had the “duck and cover drills”….these were drills we had where we would get under our desks and cover our heads to practice for the impending nuke attack by the Russians.

Not our finest time and I will bet you are wonder just why that came to my busy mind……

First, our president in his tiny brain has taken the US out of the 80s nuke treaty we had with the Soviets……(this post of mine has some info about the INF Treaty)……https://lobotero.com/2018/10/30/the-inf-in-the-rear-view-mirror/

It is 2019 not 1959…..but yet Trump’s bromance, Putin, since the end of the treaty has thump his chest at the US……..

 

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia is militarily ready for a Cuban Missile-style crisis if the United States wanted one and threatened to place hypersonic nuclear missiles on ships or submarines near U.S. territorial waters.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-putin-idUSKCN1QA1A3

That was a scary threat for I was around for the first one and it worried us all daily until it was over.

Remember there was a time when all our major cities we targets for Soviet nukes and likewise for all the Major cities of the USSR.

And you thought those scary days were over, right?

Think again!

Vladimir Putin is seemingly following DC’s lead of late, first by announcing that Russia will, like the US, pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and now by threatening another mirroring. The Russian leader gave his annual speech, akin to the State of the Union, to the nation Wednesday, and he dropped a warning to the US: If you deploy missiles anywhere in Europe, we’ll not only target those countries, but also America. “Russia will be forced to create and deploy types of weapons which can be used not only in respect of those territories from which the direct threat to us originates, but also in respect of those territories where the centers of decision-making are located,” he said, per Reuters. “We know how to do this and we will implement these plans immediately, as soon as the corresponding threats to us become a reality.”


Putin stressed that Russia would only deploy if the US did first, but that the US should watch its step. “It’s their right to think how they want,” he added. “But can they count? I’m sure they can. Let them count the speed and the range of the weapons systems we are developing.” To underscore his warning, Putin took the opportunity to throw in that testing for two new missiles has been completed, per the Washington Post. Putin ended his speech by noting he hoped to keep the arms conversations going with the US, but that Russia “would not keep knocking on a locked door,” per CNBC. The US and Russia have a six-month period in which they can try to hash out the terms of the INF Treaty before making a final pullout. (Putin has been bragging about Russia’s new hypersonic weapon.)

As an old radio show use to tell us….”Let’s return to yesteryear”……

Operation Opera

That time again for your history lesson….since I started the day with post on Israel and nukes….I decided to continue along those lines…..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera

On this day in 1981 Israel launched Operation Opera……a plan to destroy an alleged nuclear reactor being built in Iraq……

It is the world’s first air strike against a nuclear plant.

An undisclosed number of F-15 interceptors and F-16 fighter bombers destroyed the Osirak reactor 18 miles south of Baghdad, on the orders of Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

The army command said all the Israeli planes returned safely.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/7/newsid_3014000/3014623.stm

And now the story is that Israel is helping an Arab neighbor with their hopes for a nuclear reactor…..my how times change……or do they?

June seems to be the magic month of Israel’s military adventurism…..watch the news after all this is June…..

Your history lesson is complete…..thanx for stopping by……

Closing Thought–07Feb18

Is there Really A Doomsday Weapon?

How many movies have you seen about some fantastic weapon….in essence a “Doomsday Weapon”?

Right.  But do they exist?

Some say Russia has one….Status-6

“The detonation of Status-6 in any [large US port city] would essentially wipe out their population into the far suburbs,” says a senior analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy. Status-6—a mysterious Russian nuclear weapon described in the Nuclear Posture Review released Friday by the Trump administration—is what NPR calls “a doomsday machine. Or at least a doomsday-ish machine.” The report describes Status-6 as “a new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo.” The underwater drone could travel for years underwater and carry a nuclear payload larger than any current US or Russian weapon. While Russian state TV leaked an image of Status-6 in 2015, Friday’s report is the first time the US has publicly acknowledged it, according to CNN.

Russia would likely use Status-6 as a “third-strike” weapon if it’s attacked by the US and unable to use its other nuclear missiles. However, it’s also possible Status-6 doesn’t exist. Edward Geist of the Rand Corp. says Russia may have simply enlarged a drawing of a normal torpedo “to get our attention.” The Trump administration could have included it in the report to drum up support for its plan to strengthen the US nuclear arsenal. “There is no indication from public information that Russia is actively developing the system, but it is alarming to see it in a Pentagon document,” says Adam Mount at the Federation of American Scientists. Elsewhere in the report, the US discusses plans to make new, smaller atomic bombs as a deterrent against Russia. The Russian foreign minister calls the plan “confrontational” and “anti-Russian,” the BBC reports.

Speaking of nukes….this is an interesting look at US policy……

http://theantimedia.org/dr-strangelove-nuclear-posture-review/

MY posting day is done….TTFN….chuq

“Mine Is Bigger Than Yours”

I wish that our president would cease embarrassing himself with infantile bullshit….I recall back during the campaign when the size of his hands came into  and he went off about the size of his “other” parts …..a juvenile response……some are starting to question his sanity.

His Tweet about the size of his nuclear “button” does not help…..

President Trump fired back at Kim Jong Un’s claim to have a nuclear button on his desk by telling the North Korean leader that his button is bigger—and more functional. Kim “just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,'” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Trump, who appears to be stepping up his rhetoric against Pyongyang after months of relatively restrained remarks, also brought back his “Rocket Man” nickname for Kim earlier Tuesday, the Washington Post reports.

Like I said….Juvenile bullshit…..and yet there are still slobbering admirers that suck up every word from this liar extraordinaire….speak of lying…..

“All governments lie,” as the saying goes, but Donald Trump appears to have taken presidential lying to new heights during just his first year in the White House.

According to an ongoing analysis by the Washington Post that has tracked Trump’s formal speeches, Twitter tirades, and impromptu remarks to the press, the president made 1,950 false or misleading statements during his first 347 days in office. On average, the president says something that is untrue 5.6 times per day.

With just over two weeks left before he reaches the one-year mark, Trump is on track to surpass 2,000 lies, misleading the public at a far higher rate than his recent predecessors.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/01/02/very-best-liar-nearly-year-trump-averaging-56-untrue-statements-day

But it matters not to his supporters…..I have noticed that most of them that I know tend to stretch the truth a bit so as the say “birds of a feather flock together”……

Who’s Got The War?

All the news about this nuke versus that nuke coming out of North Korea…..all, the rhetoric back and forth…..all the threats fired in the others direction….the situation is spiraling…..

Just how long has North Korea been wanting a nuke?

North Korea has always been an enigma to the western world. They are coined the “Hermit Kingdom” by many Western cultures because of their almost complete shut-out of foreign media. Nevertheless, North Korea makes headlines across the world, and lately, those headlines involve one thing; Nuclear weapons.

There have always been efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear program through many acts of diplomacy, but North Korea would typically go back on the pacts they made with any country. It was becoming a trend and a tool that they would use to garner leverage in negotiations: fuel, food, or aid of any kind. But now, they have a working nuclear arsenal, and are threatening the very existence of our planet. So how did they get here? Here’s a brief history of North Koreas Nuclear Program.

Source: A Brief (and Terrifying) History of North Korea’s Nuclear Testing

So North Korea has been testing and doing all the research to acquire a nuke since the 1950’s……they have come to the point now where they are testing nukes regularly and now the research on a delivery system.

Since Trump came to the seat of power the rhetoric aimed at North Korea has become louder and louder…..more mike the Tweets than anything substantial….then Trump goes to the UN and delivers a speech that threatens North Korea with annihilation….now NK has turn the tables…..

In the escalating war of words between the United States and North Korea, the latter just fired a verbal bomb by way of Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho. The Independent quotes the official as telling reporters in New York on Monday that “the whole world should clearly remember it was the US who first declared war on our country. Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to [take] countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.” It’s not the first fiery statement made by Ri in recent days. More on the situation:

  • Background: Ri was the one who previously likened Trump to a barking dog, and in a UN speech on Saturday, he called President Trump “a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency” whose decision to call Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man” makes “our rocket’s visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more.” Trump responded, tweeting this Saturday night: “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!”
  • Today’s response to Ri: Sarah Huckabee Sanders addressed the subject head-on in Monday’s White House press briefing. “We’ve not declared war on North Korea, and frankly the suggestion of that is absurd.” CBS News has more: “It’s never appropriate for a country to shoot down another country’s aircraft when it’s over international waters. Our goal is still the same: We continue to seek the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. That’s our focus, doing that through both the most maximum economic and diplomatic pressures as possible at this point.”
  • “How worried should we be?” That’s the question Joshua Keating asks at Slate. It’s “pretty scary” stuff, he admits, but he cautions against overreacting and explains why. He also points out that “in some sense the US and North Korea are already at war,” as the Korean War of 1950-1953 didn’t end with a peace treaty.
  • About those bombers: The AP reports America flexed its military muscle on Saturday as well, with US bombers and fighter escorts entering international airspace off North Korea’s east coast and flying to the farthest point north of the Demilitarized Zone of any American aircraft in the 21st century.
  • Who is Ri, anyway? According to a Sept. 16 article in the Atlantic by Joel S. Wit, he may be our “best chance for finding a way forward because of his close ties to the ruling Kim family”; Wit explains why here. The Guardian calls him the “diplomat who could defuse the crisis.”

As the two sides ramp up their rhetoric China has had to step in and sound like the adult in the room……

After a weekend of additional threats traded between the US and North Korea, a top official in Beijing urged both sides to rein it in. The White House and Pyongyang should “not further irritate each other and add oil to the flames of the tense situation on the peninsula at present,” says a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, per Reuters. The plea came after a North Korean official told the UN Saturday that a nuclear strike against the US is “inevitable” because of President Trump’s mockery of Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man.” Trump followed that up with a threatening tweet Saturday night: “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!” (And that’s after Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” the North, and Kim’s reference to Trump as “mentally deranged.”)

Over the weekend, China said it would ban textile imports from North Korea and limit exports of refined petroleum products, but an analysis at the Washington Post asserts that Beijing is still “not prepared to do anything that might bring down the North Korean regime.” Specifically, that would mean putting a full stop to exports of crude oil to the North. “The North Koreans have figured out that the Chinese are genuinely in a bind,” says one expert from the Lowy Institute in Australia. “Having cried wolf for so long about having limited influence, the Chinese genuinely do have limited influence in North Korea right now. It’s not just weasel words.” Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated to British leader Theresa May in a phone call that he thinks the situation must be resolved through new talks.

Of course all this could just be a couple of playground bullies shoving each other….but I am not willing to take that chance.

Someone needs to step in and bring some sanity into the conversation.