If you had an A-bomb...

[Mandylion]

North Korea may test A-Bomb.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/29/in...29KORE.html?hp

My question is, where is the Dear Leader planning on testing this bomb, if it exsists, and has anyone checked which way the wind blows recently?

Why do I always seem to be down-wind of these things....

[Erik]

Originally posted by Mandylion
North Korea may test A-Bomb.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/29/in...29KORE.html?hp

My question is, where is the Dear Leader planning on testing this bomb, if it exsists, and has anyone checked which way the wind blows recently?

Why do I always seem to be down-wind of these things....

I think almost all testing is underground these days. They try not to test in the water or above ground because of all the harm that can be done to the eco-system. I guess less harm can come if tested underground.

cool link...

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapc...lks/index.html

Check out the menu on the right hand side interactive "the nuclear club"

[noyhauser]

Most definately underground. Underwater tests must be done at a great depth, and causes massive ecological harm anyways. The worst tests for radiation exposure were the American shallow water tests at Bikini and Ewentok Atolls, where the Bomb threw up millions of tonnes of particulated coral dust that was heavily contaminated.

PAkistan tested one of their weapons inside a mountain, that is probably the same way Korea would. Seeing that Korea got a lot of their expertise from Pakistan, Its likely that they will try to do the same thing. The Pakistanis are very much to blame for the Current crisis, They secretly gave Korea a gas centrifuge in 1996, which is how they are able to produce Weapons grade Uranium 235 and Plutonium to build their bombs.

[Frank D. White]

They are going to test fire on Califonia but it will drop short a nd land in Japan. The north K's are as crazy as American warhawks!

[SalaryMan]

And why would ANYONE want to test such a destructive divice ? I mean come on! who needs them? aspecialy the likes of north korean!! I know the USA owns most of the worlds mass destruction devices but atleased they know how to control them! they don't break out in sudden missle attacks on another countries. I fear the worst for japan right now .. and to make matters worse : i live here.

[noyhauser]

Its called deterrence, North Korea fears the US and also believes that It can get concessions out of its neighbours if it has one. If you had 100,000 troops on your border, that would wipe the floor against your forces, you would consider building nuclear weapons as well.

N. Korea'' Kim Jong Il wouldn't launch his weapon, he knows that if he did, his country would be nuked by the US in response. Where he would lose everything. So I wouldn't worry too much

[Elizabeth]

Apparently the US has just conducted another test on its nuclear stockpile as well. Not an explosion this time, though, just a blast.....

http://www.asahi.com/science/update/0920/003.html

[noyhauser]

The US is leagally bound to not test nuclear weapons under the comprehensive test ban treaty signed by President Clinton. They probably were testing the explosive mechanisms that would compress a nuclear core. There is no nuclear components involved, just the compression explosives and a very heavy metal which is used to simulate Uranium or Plutonium. Experimentation with the initators is important because if you can create a better mechanism for starting a nuclear reaction means that you can make a more efficient bomb, using less fissile material and create less radiation fallout.
This sort of experiementation is very common, and is completely legal under the CTBT. I think this sort of reporting is a bit of scaremongering, because a lot of nations do this anyways (its cheap and a efficent way of bettering a nation's nuclear aresnal). And such experimentation can be done relatively benignly, without many individuals knowing it has happened.

One of the reasons why the United States signed the CTBT is that they are able to accurately predict the outcome of nuclear tests in large supercomputers which can predict the possible outcome of a detonation. But they need input information from these tests to be able to do the large scale nuclear tests.

[senseiman]

The thing that worries me is that the US is trying to develop "mini" nukes. Bush and Co. seem to think that the nukes they have now are too big to use, so they want to make smaller ones that they can use whenever they want. I'm pretty sure this would violate some treaty or another, though I think they may actually already have broken every international agreement the US has ever signed so it may not matter to them at this point. It is pretty scary that these psychos are actually in charge of the world's largest military and seem quite bloodthirsty in their desire to use it.

[noyhauser]

Oh Mini nukes are a contavention of the Salt I, II and the Start I and II. Testing them would blow the bottom out of the CTBT, and about a half a dozen other treaties. Mini nukes are designed for one purpose as "bunker busters" to detonate underground Biological or chemical storage facilies, destroying them. I'd say thats about the most implausible situation ever, as the Iraq war showed that intelligence can be wrong. But hey, you would never know you were wrong since such a bomb would eradicate any evidence (smart weapon). I think the program is about the most uselss imagined, initial calculations have shown that there is no way to safely detonate a nuke underground without significant fallout.

[senseiman]

Well, that certainly is a lot of treaties for them to be breaking for no real useful purpose. I think the real motivation for them to develop them is just as a way of taking the stigma off of the use of nuclear weapons. They drop one on some abandoned cave in Libya or somewhere and claim that they have destroyed Dr. Evil's secret hideout or whatever cause de jour they are using to scare the public. Then they say "See, that wasn't so bad, was it? We used Nuclear weapons to rid the world of Dr. Evil and nobody else got hurt. Nuclear weapons are our friend!" And then they bring out the big bombs, because they've already started a nuclear war so why not go all the way, right?

[eidii-kun]

Originally posted by SalaryMan
And why would ANYONE want to test such a destructive divice ? I mean come on! who needs them? aspecialy the likes of north korean!! I know the USA owns most of the worlds mass destruction devices but atleased they know how to control them! they don't break out in sudden missle attacks on another countries. I fear the worst for japan right now .. and to make matters worse : i live here.

Hmm...they would test them for effieciency of the nuclear weapon because the first atomic bomb only had the effieciency of 1.5% meaning that the remaining 98.5% of the bomb was vapourized whilst the 1.5% of the bomb was actually used. And USA, I think some country has to stand up to them sometime, too much power means evil and betrayal come first. They've already shown that in Iraq.

But back to the topic of why North Korea would bother testing a nuclear bomb. I'm guessing that either they want to show power like USA, or they're standing up to USA to see to that USA stays low not try to kill each country 1 by one and go world domination mode.

I'm hoping that none of the nuclear weapons are used against any country. But something of this power eventaully causes casuaties in human numbers, and other animals. I mean, testing underground. You'd need a pretty big space to explode a nuclear bomb. And deep depths of water arn't going to work either because the a-bomb is probably going to be crushed by the water pressure not to mention humans being crushed by the water pressure.

So the only hope of safely testing nuclear equipment is on another planet, far away, hopefully Mars near the poles. That may be beneficial.

[eidii-kun]

Originally posted by noyhauser
Its called deterrence, North Korea fears the US and also believes that It can get concessions out of its neighbours if it has one. If you had 100,000 troops on your border, that would wipe the floor against your forces, you would consider building nuclear weapons as well.

N. Korea'' Kim Jong Il wouldn't launch his weapon, he knows that if he did, his country would be nuked by the US in response. Where he would lose everything. So I wouldn't worry too much

But the United States would also know that if N. Korea constructed a nuclear bomb of great magnitude, N. Korea could in turn cause more damage to US than US to N. Korea. US cannot afford any more problems after 9/11

[eidii-kun]

Originally posted by noyhauser
The US is leagally bound to not test nuclear weapons under the comprehensive test ban treaty signed by President Clinton. They probably were testing the explosive mechanisms that would compress a nuclear core. There is no nuclear components involved, just the compression explosives and a very heavy metal which is used to simulate Uranium or Plutonium. Experimentation with the initators is important because if you can create a better mechanism for starting a nuclear reaction means that you can make a more efficient bomb, using less fissile material and create less radiation fallout.
This sort of experiementation is very common, and is completely legal under the CTBT. I think this sort of reporting is a bit of scaremongering, because a lot of nations do this anyways (its cheap and a efficent way of bettering a nation's nuclear aresnal). And such experimentation can be done relatively benignly, without many individuals knowing it has happened.

One of the reasons why the United States signed the CTBT is that they are able to accurately predict the outcome of nuclear tests in large supercomputers which can predict the possible outcome of a detonation. But they need input information from these tests to be able to do the large scale nuclear tests.

But why would they need a better nuclear arsenal? This world must be power mad to do this. The world would probably end in a nuclear war... They just need 1 country to make the first move...

[eidii-kun]

Originally posted by senseiman
The thing that worries me is that the US is trying to develop "mini" nukes. Bush and Co. seem to think that the nukes they have now are too big to use, so they want to make smaller ones that they can use whenever they want. I'm pretty sure this would violate some treaty or another, though I think they may actually already have broken every international agreement the US has ever signed so it may not matter to them at this point. It is pretty scary that these psychos are actually in charge of the world's largest military and seem quite bloodthirsty in their desire to use it.

It usually depends on how small this "mini nuke" is. I would still think that the conventional nuclear bombs are much more efficient than these claimed "mini nukes" if used with the correct understanding about how the chain reactions affect the efficiency of the bomb.

[eidii-kun]

Originally posted by senseiman
Well, that certainly is a lot of treaties for them to be breaking for no real useful purpose. I think the real motivation for them to develop them is just as a way of taking the stigma off of the use of nuclear weapons. They drop one on some abandoned cave in Libya or somewhere and claim that they have destroyed Dr. Evil's secret hideout or whatever cause de jour they are using to scare the public. Then they say "See, that wasn't so bad, was it? We used Nuclear weapons to rid the world of Dr. Evil and nobody else got hurt. Nuclear weapons are our friend!" And then they bring out the big bombs, because they've already started a nuclear war so why not go all the way, right?

No, I don't believe the world is that gullible. But perhaps the existence of humans may end in a nuclear war. Who knows.

[senseiman]

I didn't mean to imply that the world was that gullible. Bush (or some other president) only has to convince the American public that nuclear weapons aren't really that bad. Given that 70% of this same American public currently believes that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the World Trade Centre attack, I don't think there is any way of possibly understating its gullibility.

[TyPe-ZeRo]

Uh I think we were believing that Osama Bin Laden, did this, and I think there were like videos of him saying that he did it too.. so i doubt u can call it "believing"

[FuruiDan]

Sad... just imagine a nuclear war breaking out. We need smart people to run the nations, we cant have anyone that is a scared fox (Kim Jong) that will just blow something up and kill millions. I wish we could just get rid of all the nukes. I think we should work harder towards peace, less of this Bush shit. I wish I could vote, ;-(

[senseiman]

Actually, typezero, they conducted a poll in September asking "Do you believe Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11?" and 70% of respondents said yes. But there is no evidence to support this nor any reason to believe that Saddam had anything to do with it. I assume they believed Saddam was helping Bin Ladin or something.

Yeah, Furaidan, we need to get rid of nukes.

[FuruiDan]

yeah thats true, we dont have any evidence, i think it was just bush wanting to finish off what his dad started... then again what the hell do i know?

[nikki_the_insane]

Originally posted by Erik
They try not to test in the water or above ground because of all the harm that can be done to the eco-system. I guess less harm can come if tested underground.

And when did Korea start to care about the ecosystem let alone anyone besides themselves?

[FuruiDan]

true