N. Korea Nuclear suprise

People have told me that even though North Korea has nuclear technology, they don't have the technology to get one here except by plane. The way I see it, North Korea suprised the world by annoucing that it had "the bomb" when everyone had assumed that, for the most part, North Korea had given up it's nuclear ambitions. the same could happen with long range missle technology.

the Taepodong-2 ICBM long range korean missle, though it fell into the sea of Japan after only a minute on test lauch (amid speculation that it was heading for hawaii), is still a scary thought. If North Korea is able to ratify the problems with the Taepodong-2 and load it with a light payload, it has the capability to hit western parts of Continental United States, albeit with limited accuracy.

Honestly, why would they want to?
They can't have more than a handful of atomic weapons, while the U.S. has 10, 000+ thermo-nuclear warheads, so they would be obliterated pretty quickly if they tried any shenanigans like that.

A year ago they could have probably relied on China to protect them, but not any more, from the sounds of what's going on over there.

Lilttle Kim is sorry and he will not be blasting anyone.

The Chinese saw to that.

So, we know now they definatedly have capabilities of a small bomb, but they wont be playing war anytime soon.

Tho he's capable of anything i dont feel that would be his move(yet anyway).Imho,i think hes trying to provoke the US into striking first.

it would not be very smart to launch a nuke at the U.S. and if you do you want to make it count. With such low accuracy of their current ICBM I think they may want to wait to make their shots count. It is not likely to happen but If I had to say who would be most likely to I would say it would be him.

I can't say that Lil' Kim is going away. The US Secretary of State has spoken to the Chinese and is apparently unaware of such contrition as apology. Hmmm.

Here's a CBC News links that states the current "scene". I don't trust DPRK's leader... 'like Jim Jones with all the Kool-Aid in the world... and nuclear materels and missiles, much of unknown location... tick, tick, tick.

KJI is a psycho-sicko-nutbar on a downward death-spiral... and doesn't care. China can't stop that can they?

What if the Chinese only "said" Lil' Kim apologized? Or re-contextualized the "event" of apology to be more than KJI intended? Who'd "win" if Japan was attacked by NK? Who'd assume control of NK territory?

I see the possibility of a "China-sweep" of the Korea's, Taiwan, Japan, into Indoesia as a possible future, America is unlikely to go to war with China if it won't get the job done in North Korea. Chinese folks are smart and play for keeps so do Russians... both can deliver to American cities and no one wants "the big staus quo" disrupted yet.

I suppose we'll all find out.

Victor K.

43'

[edit on 21-10-2006 by V Kaminski]

yes we will see more of north korea, unfortunately they are not done yet with U.S.A nor china. we are locked into it now and i fear that iran will be the first dommino to fall in the gulf. north korea falls third i cannot see the second, but this oil thing over there will escalate and make us all fight for this oil, since alot of the worlds oil comes from over there and a few other places. this black gold is the root to all our problems and it is getting worse with the nations competing with a dwindling oil supply. it will escalate, i see it , i call them the domminos, the nations are the domminos. large oil supplies for all the nations are dwindling fast and the nations cannot find a large enough source to fix this problem. this has been a mounting problem since carter was president and the cuban missle crisis. these people can only lie for so long. watch, you will see it escalate into a war, world war. they know it , that is why bush wants to pass this bill for the draft. he knows we wont have the manpower with the present draft, so he wants to up the anti to 42. its all because of this oil thing. congress will get pushed into this when it escalates further it will have no option. this bill will get passed. this comming election is to get the peoples hopes up for things to get better, then this bombshell drops, war. i see this febrary,3 sometime, it starts with iran and escalates from there. watch for changes, tips to come, in time magazine on oil.

Originally posted by daedalas
The way I see it, North Korea suprised the world by annoucing that it had "the bomb" when everyone had assumed that, for the most part, North Korea had given up it's nuclear ambitions

Who exactly have you been talking to who was "surprised" when North Korea announced that they had the bomb? We've known about Yongbyon since '89.

In 1992, James Baker admitted that North Korea had possessed a crude nuclear weapon since as early as 1989.

The Agreed Framework was adopted in '94, in '96 Hans Blix said the IAEA could not verify North Korea's compliance because they hadn't made a declaration on their store of plutonium.

In '98 they fired the Taepo Dong I over Japan, sparking all kinds of concerns I'm sure you'll remember.

Then in '02 they finally copped to having the bomb.

So where did the surprise come from, aside from not bothering to read the paper?

the Taepodong-2 ICBM long range korean missle, though it fell into the sea of Japan after only a minute on test lauch (amid speculation that it was heading for hawaii), is still a scary thought.

More or less. I'm not aware of anything that says the Koreans have got a nuclear weapon down to the 500kg payload that the TD-2 can carry to maximum range. Getting a nuclear bomb to go off and getting one to go off efficiently are very different things. Our first nukes were around 4000kg (8 times what TD-2 can carry) and only had a yield of 16kt for little boy and 21kt for fatman.

The North Koreans have to make a tradeoff because of their relatively limited supply of fissile material. Either they make more bombs with less efficiency (which makes the most sense tactically and strategically) or they make very few bombs with more highly enriched uranium. This primarily leaves achitecture to up their output.

More power can come from "boosting" (using fissionable materials, but not in a true hydrogen bomb mechanism) and from multiple stages, but i really can't say if that's realistic for them.

The Korean nuclear test probably had an output of about 5kt, and we don't know what size the device was.

In a vacuum, I'd say that the Koreans could realistically put something on a TD-2 with up to 20kt output, maybe 40 on the high end.

Considering the test though, I see two primary possibilities:
1. They can't put a working device on TD-2 at all, which is why they didn't do a launch test.
2. They detonated one of their warheads, and the TD-2 can lob 5kt at us.

Here's an idea though. 20kt airburst at 540m will give you .6 kilometers of utter destruction in an urban environment, heavy damage for 1.7 km, and moderate damage out to about 5 km. Second degree burns would be limited to a 3.2km radius, acute radiation symptoms limited to 1.8. It's not until you get up into the range of coldwar era hydrogen weapons that you start seeing 10s of kilometeres of utter mayhem.

Take Korea seriously, but don't panic.