EMP exaggeration extreme......2000 nukes exploded since 1945. Deaths? a lot less than Dresden or Tokyo fire bombings.
EMP is real. Ending the world with a fission nuke ? Get real.
Posted on 08/10/2017 8:07:36 AM PDT by dangus
A nuclear exchange with North Korea might result in only hundreds of deaths, but one in the not-so-distant future could result in tens of millions.
Only hundreds? Is that insane? We're talking about NUCLEAR BOMBS, here, right?
Since miniaturization is technologically difficult, yet necessary for missile-borne bombs, North Korea would presumably arm its nuclear missiles with the SMALLEST bombs it has, not the largest. A mid-air on-target detonation would require very sensitive timing, so presumably it would be impact-triggered, and therefore ground-level. And Korea's furthest-range ICBMs would likely have very poor accuracy. So hitting a major city would require a major stroke of luck.
How much devastation would a bomb cause?
There is an online app called Nukemap, which allows a user to see how many people would be killed in the event of a nuclear bomb detonation. Users can select the location, size of the bomb, and whether it's a ground-level detonation or a mid-air detonation. Lethal effects include nuclear radiation, radiation poisoning, blast, and thermal radiation.
Randomly pick a location in the United States, and you'll probably find out that a Hiroshima-sized blast would kill a few hundred people. Quite possibly, a few dozen. You see, Hiroshima was a very densely populated city, and the bomb struck the population center. (Nagasaki missed its target, but nonetheless hit a very densely populated region.) Not many cities have that kind of population density. And you probably don't realize that about 99% of America is what YOU would call rural.
During the cold war, a bomb was accidentally dropped outside Goldsboro, NC. Since then, that population has surged. A Hiroshima-sized bomb would only kill a couple thousand. If North Korea pulled that off, it would be an unspeakable, horrific act of war. But not Armageddon. Not likely the size of the World Trade Center attacks. And only a fraction the size of what the World Trade Center attacks COULD have been if only the attack had struck after the business day started.
As a nation, we would survive it.
Even a bomb typical of our own missile arsenal would only have caused several thousand deaths.
With regards to that Goldsboro near-disaster, you may habe read that "the effects would have reached Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia or New York." You probably didn't read what those effects were: a slightly reduced rate of certain common cancers. And MAYBE a slightly elevated rate of rarer cancers. Such a bomb would probably save more lives in Baltimore than it would cost.
I think it's very important to get these facts out there. After Chernobyl, hundreds of thousands of babies were aborted for no damned reason at all. I guess people believed 1960s-era horror movies about what radiation does to humans. Very near the meltdown, there was an elevated rate of some cancers, like thyroid cancer. These were detectable largely because those cancers are otherwise so rare. There was a slightly elevated rate of certain birth defects, again, detectable because any other causes are so incredibly rare. But in the areas around Chernobyl, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, cancer rates are actually lower than normal. (We're waiting to see the long-term effects on the Japanese meltdown.)
The armageddon scenarios from the Cold War were based on nuclear bombs being dozens of times larger than anything North Korea is likely to build... and there being thousands of nuclear warheads launched.
Today, North Korea may or may not be able to strike an American city with a nuclear warhead. We may be able to pulverize them before a launch was possible. We may be able to knock down any missile before it reached the U.S. Those that reach the U.S. may not be those same missiles capable of being armed with nuclear warheads. (Even Kim only threatened Guam... probably for a reason.) Our risks are not existential.
But imagine a hundred nuclear bombs all falling in the vicinity of Los Angeles. Now, the fallout levels become easily deadly, over the homes of twenty-or-so million people. Now, we don't have enough cures for the radiation poisoning. Now, the infrastructure is irreparably damaged. Now, relief and rescue operations are overwhelmed. Now, the land itself becomes uninhabitable.
FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY. I AM NOT AN EXPERT. I KNOW SLIGHTLY MORE THAN THE AVERAGE BEAR, BUT I AM USING ONLY THE SORT OF TOOLS AVAILABLE ON LINE.
See, the thing is, if the Norks played their cards right, they could pop a nuke, even a small one, about 400 miles above Kansas. The resulting EMP burst would likely bring down the power grid in the US for months, if not years. Some projections I've seen predict more than 200 million people would die from starvation, disease, violence, privation, and secondary effects. Nobody would be killed by the initial blast in space.
So, yes, I'm all for nuking the Norks if it prevents that. On the other hand, if we hit them, the Chinese might EMP us in retaliation, which comes to the same thing.
The problem with North Korea is that it is controlled by just one person and we have to understand him instead of the North Korean culture.
Is he crazy or is he just bluffing?
I tend to see people doing things for their own best interests.
The North Korean leader has a pretty good life.
He has lots of booze and money and women.
He has that because he robs his own people.
So, in a nuclear exchange, would he be able to continue to live his lavish lifestyle?
Nope.
Tyrants need people to push around and steal from.
He doesn’t have this even if he survives a nuclear exchange.
Explanation: “And you probably don’t realize that about 99% of America is what YOU would call rural.”
The government defines as “metropolitan” any area within any county that contains any urban area, so a large portion of America is “metropolitan” including many of the sparsest lands in the U.S. But only 2.3% of the United States is contained in parcels that are “developed” with commercial, industrial or residential housing. So maybe I should’ve said, “98%.”
I don't think that's necessarily true. Many think Kim is just a figurehead, much like Hirohito was in Japan.
One thing I've noticed from watching Nork TV, is that Kim rarely gives speeches. He usually is just sitting there, basically doing nothing.
Is there a scientific reason the EMP blasts from the tests in the Southwest did not knock out the grid in the US? What is the difference?
EMP exaggeration extreme......2000 nukes exploded since 1945. Deaths? a lot less than Dresden or Tokyo fire bombings.
EMP is real. Ending the world with a fission nuke ? Get real.
That may very well be.
But, who in North Korea benefits from a nuclear exchange?
Dead and broke is dead and broke.
I thought about that.
China benefits.
Maybe the Chinese really are pulling the strings there.
Let them know they can be held accountable.
Thanks for posting. Your information is, based on what I’ve seen/researched over the past 35 or so years, accurate. Unlike the sensationalist movies of the 1950s, and the ideology-driven sensationalism of the Left, nukes are just weapons. Ones with large explosive power, to be sure, but weapons nonetheless. So, actual science (not made-up crap like “climate science”) applies.
The simple fact is that the effects of blast and heat dissipate dramatically as you put distance between you and the explosion. Radiation gets cut by a factor of 10 in 7 hours, another 10 in 7 days, and yet another 10 in 7 weeks - meaning that it is 1/1,000 as dangerous after 7 weeks as at the time of detonation. Oh, and radiation is only a problem close to the detonation UNLESS the fireball touches something material (as opposed to just air, as in an airburst). Only with a ground or low-altitude burst do you have fallout issues...and there, time and distance are your friends.
Again, this is science, not some kind of mysterious wizardry. I’m not real keen on being near (or downwind of) a nuclear explosion...but I don’t believe that I’ll panic because I know what to do. We need more rationality about this subject, not unreasoning panic.
Part of me thinks this is like “The Mouse that Roared”.
Some think maybe having a “war” is the easiest way to get rid of the regime, and to have the country rebuilt.
I think the Chinese have plenty of agents in the country that can seize power, once Beijing gives the signal.
In what reality does a nuclear exchange only result in a few hundred deaths? Nuke North Korea now and the death toll in that country and the neighboring countries will run into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Sorry but I think you are underplaying the effects by a factor of 100 or 1000.
The Goldsboro bomb was an H-bomb that did not explode. I don’t see how you can compare an unexploded effects w/ an exploded one.
Kill a few hundred, thousand people?
Had it exploded I’ll bet on a prevailing Easterly breeze Raleigh and surrounding would deserted today. On a S.Westerly breeze the Outer Banks would be off-limits.
Another dropped off the coast of Savannah. Never found BTW.
There were other Broken Arrow incidents, IIRC one in Spain, West Canada.
While NK’s ability to deliver an accurate nuke to US soil may be minimal now, what about satellite nuke/EMP devices? Shipping contaners?
The economic impact would be huge, negative.
Not even taken into account S. Korea, Japan, etc.
I’ve played around with Nukemap for quite a while. It’s why I really don’t worry about a nuclear bomb regarding physical damage. It is the emp use of one that could be pretty bad, though it’s never been tested on any large scale to the best of my knowledge.
Before the first blast, there was a contingent of scientists who believed the detonation of a nuclear bomb could cause a chain reaction in the entire atmosphere of the earth. I forget the particulars, but obviously it was put to bed at some point.
Also, one reason the hiroshima bomb was so devastating is that the place was made of sticks and paper.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not deserted or off limits. They are vibrant, new, thriving cities. Maybe the 1000 ft wide crater would be off limits, but not entire zip codes as the uninformed would have you believe. FWIW....our nukes were airburst over the cities. The Broken arrow incidents would have probably been ground burst if any of the safety measures failed.
“Is there a scientific reason the EMP blasts from the tests in the Southwest did not knock out the grid in the US? What is the difference?”
Finally, our electrical grid was far less vulnerable back then. Integrated circuits were unknown (and they are highly vulnerable to EMP unless specifically - and well - shielded), as we used vacuum tube technology (which is not vulnerable to EMP). As an aside, in 1976 when a Soviet pilot defected to Japan with his Mig-25, we (well, at least the press and media) were stunned that it used vacuum-tube technology. Much fun was made of the Russians...except that the plane was specifically built to shoot down the B-70 bomber (which we ended up cancelling) in a nuclear environment (i.e. with nuke-armed anti-aircraft missiles). It really wouldn’t have been smart for one Mig to fire off a nuclear missile at a B-70, and to then go down (with all of its fellow nearby Migs) due to their OWN weapon’s EMP. So, the Soviets simply were using science to prepare for a likely environment in the event of war with the US.
That, in a nutshell, is why our early atomic tests didn’t KO the electricity in this country.
I think these EMP predictions are way way overblown. I put EMP in the same class as the Y2K threat. Yes I think it’s possible to achieve an EMP type effect with a nuke but I doubt there would be any significant damage. The known results of tests seem to indicate that it would take a bomb with a huge yield and a precisely placed detonation and even then the effects would be very limited.
We recently visited Hiroshima . It is a thriving city . Except for the beautiful Peace Park, it is as if nothing odd happened there.
None.
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