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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21807067

It's all over the BBC front page.

It's going to be a fun 2013 and 2014, isn't it?

Good. Everyone should have reliable defense against a limited-scale ICBM attack, it makes it a lot less likely that we will have a nuclear war.

I concur with Peregrine.

I agree. I think we should expand this program substantially.

My concern would be that they'd be much more inclined to deploy a nuclear device in some other manner, however. I mean, why launch an ICBM that would immediately be tracked, possibly shot down, and then reprisals issued, when you can just smuggle one in a cargo container somewhere and claim it wasn't you?

Is the map shown at the bottom of of the article page for current missile delivery? If so, I had no clue that they already were able to hit US soil (albeit Alaska). Scary (well, scarier than what I thought).

I'd bet that map has about as much bearing on reality as a map leading you to Atlantis.

 Ouze wrote:
My concern would be that they'd be much more inclined to deploy a nuclear device in some other manner, however. I mean, why launch an ICBM that would immediately be tracked, possibly shot down, and then reprisals issued, when you can just smuggle one in a cargo container somewhere and claim it wasn't you?

Except that:

1) Supposedly you CAN track it based on the exact radiation traces left, weapons produced by different countries have a different "signature". And if you can track it (through this method or some other way) you have about an hour before your country ceases to exist.

2) You don't want to use nukes, ever. The goal isn't to destroy a US city for no reason other than because they can, the goal is to be enough of a threat that nobody removes them from power. ICBMs present that kind of threat even in the presence of anti-missile defense, because it's not 100% reliable and you don't want to deliberately put yourself in a situation where you have incoming missiles if you can do anything to avoid it. Smuggling in a cargo container, on the other hand, fails as a deterrent because by the time you can arrange it you're already dead. It only works as a first-strike attack, and a first-strike attack is only a good idea if you're a religious fanatic who thinks that eternal paradise is waiting if you can successfully nuke a city.

Can this extend to lending any protection to South Korea? They're the ones that need it.

Heh, I'd kinda be more worried about NK spies smuggling suitcase nukes or truck nukes around then ICBMs. You can spot silo construction from a MILE away,

The primary danger to SK is the hundreds (or thousands) of hardened artillery positions within range of Seoul, and the believed chemical shells they're armed with. They'll hit faster and keep up their bombardment longer, in addition to not being rockets that we've regularly shot down just to thumb our noses at them.

 Doctadeth wrote:
Heh, I'd kinda be more worried about NK spies smuggling suitcase nukes or truck nukes around then ICBMs. You can spot silo construction from a MILE away,

Not if he builds it in a volcano like a proper villain.

Well at least he's not writing his manifesto on the future of NK at age 3....

While I agree that a deterrent is necessary, I'm not sure you can count on logic where nk are concerned.
If you really want to make a point, a dirty bomb can have as much impact, and can cause as much terror as letting off a full blown nuke. It's cheap and easy to do, it doesn't need much nuclear material, and can affect huge swathes of the population.
It's maybe more suited to terrorists than nk, but a dirty bomb is my real fear for the next world catastrophe.

 Eggs wrote:
It's maybe more suited to terrorists than nk, but a dirty bomb is my real fear for the next world catastrophe.

Yeah, a dirty bomb isn't really very useful unless you're hoping to be martyred along with your entire country. And fortunately North Korea's leadership enjoy life enough to avoid doing obviously suicidal things like that.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 Doctadeth wrote:
Heh, I'd kinda be more worried about NK spies smuggling suitcase nukes or truck nukes around then ICBMs. You can spot silo construction from a MILE away,

Not if he builds it in a volcano like a proper villain.

I think that's worth an exalt.

 Eggs wrote:
While I agree that a deterrent is necessary, I'm not sure you can count on logic where nk are concerned.
If you really want to make a point, a dirty bomb can have as much impact, and can cause as much terror as letting off a full blown nuke. It's cheap and easy to do, it doesn't need much nuclear material, and can affect huge swathes of the population.
It's maybe more suited to terrorists than nk, but a dirty bomb is my real fear for the next world catastrophe.

While a dirty bomb could easily be made with commercially available materials, it's somewhat less dangerous than if the extra space the radiological materials took up was just more explosive. It affects nothing but the immediate blast area (the place where everything is getting shredded by overpressure anyways), does nothing but make cleanup longer and more expensive, and the only radiation risk comes from radiological material inhaled by or embedded in the flesh of any survivors, which is rather less hazardous than if it were a biological weapon or one of the nastier chemical ones.

In short, it's not something to bother worrying about.


Unless of course people are conflating "dirty bombs" with "neutron bombs", in which case yes, dangerous, but less so than more conventional nuclear weapons (in addition to being harder to manufacture), as they're just a nuclear weapon with reduced explosive power, but identical radioactive emmisions.

Sorry, but I disagree. A dirty bomb is not about hurting people, its about contaminating a large metropolitan, along with the population, and the utter chaos and general fear that that causes. The radioactive material can contaminate a large area, depending on prevailing wind conditions.

Maybe I used the wrong word with fear, because I don't think my area would ever be much of a target. But I do think that the next terrorist events we'll see are of this nature.

A "dirty bomb" only contaminates its immediate blast radius. For "prevailing winds" to disseminate it over a large area, it would basically have to be all but vaporized, with a blast requiring so much explosive that if any terrorist could come up sufficient explosive material I'd give ten to one odds the guy selling it to him is actually a counter-terrorism agent and it's actually just bagged dirt or imaginary or something. Even if he really did get his hands on that much actual explosive, his first thought is not going to be "why don't I buy millions of anti-static rods and pile them on top of all this?". And then it turns out it's really just dirt, and there's a SWAT team hiding in his closet.

In short, it's not something to bother worrying about.

The psychological impact of a dirty bomb outweighs its physical output by many times.

 Mr. Burning wrote:

In short, it's not something to bother worrying about.

The psychological impact of a dirty bomb outweighs its physical output by many times.

Because people think it's some kind of special, magical type of dangerous, on account of a grossly irresponsible sensationalist media fomenting fear to get better ratings/sell more papers. Treating it like it's actually something to be scared of only contributes to the problem.

1. The farthest that N.K. Missles can go is White Mountain, Alaska. They don't have real ICBM.
2. They seemed to put much faith in trench warfare. hoping to grind down the South. meanwhile S. Korean has a series of MBT (the K-1, Homemade Abrams) and some forms of drills to do blitzkrieg. hoping to revenge their humiliating defeat at the early stage of Korean war (1950 )
5. China seems not interested in this affair. doing side bets and deal with the winner once the war is over. What about Russia?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

In short, it's not something to bother worrying about.

The psychological impact of a dirty bomb outweighs its physical output by many times.

Because people think it's some kind of special, magical type of dangerous, on account of a grossly irresponsible sensationalist media fomenting fear to get better ratings/sell more papers. Treating it like it's actually something to be scared of only contributes to the problem.

Normally rational people will panic as much as the ill educated/media spoon fed if a dirty bomb goes off.

'Teh radiations' are its power.

I'm not sure where you are getting the idea a dirty bomb can only contaminate its immediate blast area? It puts radioactive material into the air, which is then moved by wind. It also puts it on people, who then move, usually to places like hospitals.

Admittedly the levels of radiation are low, but they are enough to panic people, cause a cleanup headache and score a pretty big media victory.

Incidentally, the litvenjenko assassination involved a tiny amount of alpha radiation, yet the victim managed to contaminate over 40 sites London.

^ How much does that irradiated sites harm Londoners? does that dosage kills anybody in contact with it meow?

Heavy metals don't drift, so much. The only way you're knocking them high enough is with a nuclear bomb or reactor meltdown, or so much conventional explosive the notion that a terrorist could obtain even that much of the necessary materials, at least outside of an active warzone, is laughable. If you're talking about what you might realistically see a terrorist do, you're looking at a small amount of polonium (like in that assassination, and that probably came from a commercial source) on some gunpowder or other rudimentary explosive, in which case you're looking at a small area contaminated with something you have to inhale or ingest to be injured by.

Considering the paranoia and vigilance by intelligence agencies these days, it's basically a non-issue anywhere in the first world. Chechnyan separatists or other paramilitary organizations in that general part of the world might be able to pull something like that off, but I assume if they could they'd have done so already, or realize that it wouldn't actually do anything, despite what the media's babbled about it.

This just lets us boost our defense shield against China/Russia/Etc while playing nice with them.

"It's not you China, we are still cool. You are still friends Russia. It's the North Koreans, they made us do this."

 Lone Cat wrote:
^ How much does that irradiated sites harm Londoners? does that dosage kills anybody in contact with it meow?

"Contamination" in this case meaning trackable with a geiger counter. It had to be ingested to cause injury. The same stuffs used in anti-static rods, meaning it's really just another poisonous heavy metal with some industrial applications. And possibly the worst way to assassinate someone, since it literally leaves a trail of evidence everywhere you go, just from contamination to your person.

A meltdown isn't the equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Depending on isotope type and size of reactor, it can go from something like a fizzle, to a chernobyl.

Thats effectively what a dirty bomb is. Again, you don't just use plutonium. There's cobalt-iodine, Thorium, Deuterium, uranium.

Heck, we even get radiated every single second (from the ground) without injury. detonating a dirty bomb on the ground would probably be about car size. And would probably radiate to a significant proportion, about half of NYC.

 d-usa wrote:
This just lets us boost our defense shield against China/Russia/Etc while playing nice with them.

"It's not you China, we are still cool. You are still friends Russia. It's the North Koreans, they made us do this."

This is exactly what I was thinking. How nice of NK to provide us with a justification to beef up our missile shield without spooking China or Russia.

Cant we just send some guys over to kill Their Glorious leader?