North Korea threatens with a nuclear strike.

[Famine]

the North has said that if it comes to open warfare, nuclear devices can and will be used.

And, without a delivery system, only against themselves.

Which should be an amusing, if grisly, world first. The only country to nuke itself in response to threat of war.

 

[blaaah]

North Korea doesn't need a missile to deliver a nuclear bomb, they could transport one on a truck or put one in an air transport.

 

[Famine]

North Korea doesn't need a missile to deliver a nuclear bomb, they could transport one on a truck or put one in an air transport.

The truck would get it as far as the DMZ to the south or the Friendship Bridge to the north. The aeroplane would get it to Russia, China or Singapore.

In the case of the former, they'd nuke themselves and a bit of the DMZ (which is 2.5 miles wide - their underground tests correspond to a 1 mile radius destruction for a properly detonated weapon; a surface-based weapon is not properly detonated) or China. In the case of the latter, they'd nuke Russia, China or Singapore - and if they tried to deviate from standard flightpaths, they'd be shot down within 2 minutes.

 

[Dotini]

Talk of nukes at this stage is bit premature. More plausible is an artillery exchange over the disputed little island which could escalate if the South decides to use airstrikes to suppress the North's artillery. There will be US personnel on the island as a part of the South's artillery drill. This could be the casus belli that drags the US into the fight, dammit.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

And, without a delivery system, only against themselves.

Seoul is within artillery range of the DMZ. Nothing says "Screw you!" to the world more than eighteen million people being vapourised in a single instant.

 

[Famine]

The North has no way to deliver that kind of weapon. Even their long range cruise missile hasn't got the payload capacity (by a factor of about 20).

The nearest they can get to the South with a nuke won't actually touch the South with the fireball. Might get some of the shockwave there and possibly the fallout (depending on local wind patterns), but none of the devastation.

 

[Dotini]

The North has no way to deliver that kind of weapon. Even their long range cruise missile hasn't got the payload capacity (by a factor of about 20).

The nearest they can get to the South with a nuke won't actually touch the South with the fireball. Might get some of the shockwave there and possibly the fallout (depending on local wind patterns), but none of the devastation.

How about artillery shells with depleted uranium or other "dirty nuke" materials, delivered by the score to downtown Seoul? Not the spectacular mushroom cloud explosion which would be so amusing, but soon Seoul would be uninhabitable for an unspecifiable amount of time pending cleanup of nuclear contamination splattered everywhere around the scene of the holocaust.

 

[Famine]

DU isn't a "dirty nuke" material. It's a weight, used on shells (and bullets, even) to penetrate armour. Though it may have radiological after-effects, they're not significant enough to render a city "uninhabitable" - even if DPRK had enough of it to put into shells (they'd need far more of it than the WGU they'd put into nukes).

DPRK simply doesn't have the capability to wage non-conventional war on any foreign soil that isn't an "ally".

 

[Dotini]

DU isn't a "dirty nuke" material.

Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are stark raving bonkers when they say DU, when powdered into a dust and breathed or swallowed in food and water is not the absolute healthiest thing in the world for developing bodies. Iraq is living with consequences of this weight.

 

[Famine]

Read all, then respond, perhaps?

Though it may have radiological after-effects, they're not significant enough to render a city "uninhabitable" - even if DPRK had enough of it to put into shells (they'd need far more of it than the WGU they'd put into nukes).

 

[Keef]

Alcohol isn't the healthiest thing for developing bodies either, and we leave that choice up to individuals every day. Babies are born with big heads occasionally, but that doesn't mean we should slap a dirty nuke label on everything that can kill you or make you retarded, which is many things indeed.

 

[ExigeEvan]

Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are stark raving bonkers when they say DU, when powdered into a dust and breathed or swallowed in food and water is not the absolute healthiest thing in the world for developing bodies. Iraq is living with consequences of this weight.

There's a million things, including asbestos, they could use to that affect without using valuable uranium up.

The worst NK will deliver is a dirty bomb, which as has been said, could be a simple commercial airliner flown into a strategic area. You have to understand the simple differences in mechanics of an underground detonation and dropping a bomb (which ideally you want to explode above the surface).

This will come to a head soon, it'll be some devastating airstrikes for SK, and that'll probably be it for a little while longer.

 

[Sureboss]

"Dirty" bombs are highly ineffective too, aren't they? The firing mechanisms are incredibly complex, simply blowing the material up, isn't that great.

As you say, it will reach a tipping point, but I wouldn't want to 2nd guess what the North will do.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

The North has no way to deliver that kind of weapon. Even their long range cruise missile hasn't got the payload capacity (by a factor of about 20).

The nearest they can get to the South with a nuke won't actually touch the South with the fireball. Might get some of the shockwave there and possibly the fallout (depending on local wind patterns), but none of the devastation.

Maybe, but would you put it past Kim Jong-Il to detonate a warhead inside his own territory in an attempt to scare the Americans off by showing them he has them? Or maybe detonating one inside his own territory to make it look like the Americans did it?

 

[ExigeEvan]

"Dirty" bombs are highly ineffective too, aren't they? The firing mechanisms are incredibly complex, simply blowing the material up, isn't that great.

As you say, it will reach a tipping point, but I wouldn't want to 2nd guess what the North will do.

The simplest idea of a dirty bomb is to take simple radioactive material and disperse it using explosives. Probably very effective at displacing a population if done with the right material.

 

[blaaah]

Action happening right now with a live fire drill. I think there is a real chance of a conventional battle soon, maybe not full on general war.
I dont think other countries will get involved (unless there is a full war).
The regime in North Korea could really do with total replacement.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Well, the UN have been unable to agree on what to do.

 

[chukabilly]

Here in the States, Korea is often referred to as the "Forgotten War". This is not because it is forgotten that it happened, but the American people have forgotten that we are still fighting it, although through diplomacy rather that militarily. American service members still receive war-zone pay for being stationed there. China will continue to support a regime that they may not care for, if for no other reason than to dilute the attention of the U.S. along a wider range of protagonists in the South Pacific region.
The Korean Conflict is actually a relic of the Cold War, morphing itself into a twenty-first century player of a dance begun at the Paris Conference of 1919. Both Japan and China walked out of that conference without any agreement with the European powers, or President Wilson, and the groundwork was laid for the decades of tragedies that mostly occurred after WWII. Even through the war, and especially after it finished, America's continued support of the government that became Taiwan, combined with it's protectionist treatment of Japan, led many Chinese Nationalists to believe that their very culture was an under-appreciated asset to the West. Nothing has been done in the last 60 years to change that, and the case can be made that there is a much greater sense of urgency by Western diplomats to change that perception. It may be too little, too late.
Even before this dubious campaign in Iraq, and before this necessary but futile prelude in Afghanistan, China was testing the prowess of America in the Pacific. (Remember the Chinese fighter who grounded an American spy-plane just after President Bush took office in 1990?) Even Russia is now looking to settle scores with Japan, which the U.S. has sworn to protect, with claims dating before their war of 1905. The point is: North Korea has never been more valuable to China, whether proxy or not, because it presents another threat that the U.S. has to be worried about. If anyone dies in South Korea, the U.S. will receive as much blame as the South Korean government. It has become a political liability that won't disappear, regardless of the tenor of the administration in Washington. My beloved country is too involved to quit, too broke to continue, and too distracted to decide.

 

[blaaah]

I don't think China really cares about what the US does. It is strong enough to protect it's own interests without having to worry about controlling North Korea.

 

[Famine]

Maybe, but would you put it past Kim Jong-Il to detonate a warhead inside his own territory in an attempt to scare the Americans off by showing them he has them? Or maybe detonating one inside his own territory to make it look like the Americans did it?

Not at all. He's a nutter.

He won't be able to pull the latter off though - yields and isotopes will be massively wrong.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

He won't be able to pull the latter off though - yields and isotopes will be massively wrong.

Oh, of course not ... but you've got to think like Kim Jong-Il here. And while it's easy for us to say that the blast pattern, the contrails and wake (assuming he manages to launch one as part of a missile) and so on will all be tell-tale indicators that it was a North Korean missile, the more challenging question is this does Kim know that? He may have a phony doctorate drawn up to make it look like he is personally overseeing the North's nuclear program, the chances that he fully understands it are not odds that I'd be playing. The worst-case scenario is that he believes his own lies and is wholly convinced he is an expert on the subject, but his actual knowledge of nuclear devices is limited to only the most general terms; ie that the rapid, uncontrolled splitting of atoms can result in a massive detonation that could obliterate an entire city, and that is the extent of his knowledge. In that case, it's not inconceivable to come up with a scenario whereby Kim is unaware that nuclear devices differ greatly between one another, and that he may believe that his weapons will be the same as American or Chinese or Russian weapons.

 

[Famine]

They can't put a nuke on a missile - their Scud derivatives don't have the payload capacity for their nuke tech.

They're at a stage slightly in advance of the US nuclear program of 1945 - they can reportedly deliver a nuke that weighs slightly less than Little Boy (4 tonnes) and which gives a slightly larger bang (25kton - 1 to 1.5 miles destruction radius). Their short range delivery systems have a capacity of about a tonne - and their only intercontinental missile can move about a tenth of that.

So the only options become plane - which would be shot down if it deviates from its flightpath, or which can deliver a nuke to Russia, China or Singapore - or truck - which won't get within range of the South before it's cut down in a hail of bullets, or which can deliver a nuke to China.

Which leaves them with "nuke an ally" or "nuke ourselves". Which will, in either eventuality, turn North Korea from an impassable piece of dead land with a nutter at the helm to an impassable piece of dead land which clicks like Flipper watching porpoise-porn. Either way, North Korea's nukes (all seven or so of them) aren't a worry for the outside world, unless you happen to be Kim's buddy.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Again, does Kim know this? And if he was painted into a corner with no way out, what's to say that he won't detonate the device inside his own territory on or near the DMZ in such a way that prevailing winds would carry the fallout into Seoul? If people like Kim say they have nukes and threaten to use them, it never hurts to plan a contingency against their use rather than assume that he can't do it for whatever reason.

If I were Kim and I really wanted to do it, I'd put the device on a plane and fly it out to Shanghai or Hong Kong or Manila days in advance. I'd then give it orders to do the rounds and make it look like it was a legitimate cargo plane. And then, after much city-hopping, file a final flight plan for Seoul. That way, the plane has a legitimate reason for flying to the target and the device would have been away from the area for long enough that most people would have forgotten about it or wouldn't even suspect it. Hell, I'd have it change airplanes a few times. Of course, the risk is that there's a good chance the device would be found before it could be detonated. The plane would have to visit a Chinese city first, because China is the only country the North trades with. But if he picked the destinations carefully - Macau, Manlia, Hanoi, Taipei; places where security isn't as tight - the plane could avoid detection.

This is probably why I shouldn't be running a country.

 

[BobK]

Babies are born with big heads occasionally, but that doesn't mean we should slap a dirty nuke label on everything that can kill you or make you retarded, which is many things indeed.

Like the GT5 forum, for instance.

Well, the UN have been unable to agree on what to do.

As usual...

The point here is, as I believe Interludes is trying to make, is that Kim is irrational. Yes there are logical reasons why he cannot do this or that, but they won't stop him from trying. And who's to say he's not planning something totally bizarre that hasn't even occurred to us?

 

[Dotini]

Kim has just done something bizarre. He has refrained from responding to the south's live-fire from the disputed island, and instead agreed to allow UN inspectors back in to view his nuclear works. This has been presumably orchestrated by that visiting polymath, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, whom the North Koreans seem to regard as some kind of plenipotentiary.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/...e-fire-artillery-drill-despite-north-threats/

 

[prisonermonkeys]

The South have just done a major military drill, bigger than the one they did a few days ago:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8188204/skorea-starts-major-live-fire-exercise

 

[Sureboss]

Also:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12067735

The bubble is about to burst.

 

[Alex.]

With the chinese missle over California issue too. This is not good. But DPRK might as well nuke themselves if they fancy nuking South Korea. Is the country run by chimps or what?

 

[Lizard]

Also:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12067735

The bubble is about to burst.

And I predicted this in summer and no one believed me.

And the north wont nuke the south they will try for the US from a submarine as the US are a bigger threat as an ally to the south than the south are as a nation.

 

[Stevisiov]

And I predicted this in summer and no one believed me.

And the north wont nuke the south they will try for the US from a submarine as the US are a bigger threat as an ally to the south than the south are as a nation.

I don't think that is the case. North Korea don't have the capabilities to launch a Nuclear missile from a submarine.

I don't believe there will be a war between the Korea's this year or next. North Korea said they would respond to the live fire drills with an attack. They have decided against it. If North Korea desperately wanted a war they would have started it already.