BadgeIsBack

Delivering a nuclear warhead to Sydney or Melbourne...could he: would he?

Discuss..

GarryP

Yes.

Nah, he hasn't got that many and the US or Japan are more of a target.

BadgeIsBack

Not entirely convinced he has the capability but I'm not up to date with these things these days. I knew old GarryP would have the requisite insider knowledge of course.

GarryP

Sarky

N Korea have demonstrated the ability to explode fission bombs in 2006, 2009, 2013, January and September 2016. They are talking about the Jan 2016 being a hydrogen bomb, debatable, but not impossible.They tend to be a bit small and fizzle-like, getting a good detontion is not easy; but they will and are improving.

Everyone goes on about sticking it on a missile, but they have subs and ships and sticking the device onto one of those and sailing it to the destination is well within their capabilities.

You might well find that the recent international focus on finally doing something about N Korea is less about Trump's willywaving and more about the fear that they can turn the 30 kt detonations into 300kt with a bit more refinement. 30kt is comparable with Hiroshima, would spoil your day, and take out the average CBD (17k dead). 300kt is more like a Trident warhead and would take out the inner suburbs too (75k+ dead). That would spoil your whole year.

It's considered from a RAND study that even a small nuke in a population centre would severely test a country via the direct and follow on fallout effects, and would probably push the world into another GFC as the insurance effects hit home.

Enough knowledge for you?

moneypenny20

Call me precious but I don't like the heading so I changed it. He's obviously a psychopath but from what I can gather he is neither stupid nor has learning difficulties and I don't see the need for the word. Left the internal ones.

As you were.

BadgeIsBack

Your're welcome. I was testing the waters...
I liked the rhyming that's all. Came to me in a flash.


GarryP, a few months ago I was playing around with a tool which shows blast radius depending on detonation height. Without wishing to trivialise, I was amazed at how big a weapon is needed to take out an entire metropolis in terms of fireball, blast wave etc. Clearly nations do have big ones, and small ones in their armouries, and as a nervous Major at the Staff College to camera once said : 'and ones that go whizz-bang!'.

GarryP

Blast falls off the fourth power, meaning the radius doesn't push up fast in relation to the explosive 'power'. Radiation etc. are with distance squared, but then you have shielding from nearer buildings etc.

It's not so much the direct effects that are so destructive, but the knock on ones from fallout, displaced persons, system breakdown, and particularly the financial system (which is very unstable and acts to communicate the effects beyond the immediate event).

Best system analysis of the implications I've seen is this one from RAND:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_r...RAND_TR391.pdf

if you want a Sunday afternoon read.

Amazulu

No and no

Any long range ICBMs that he has will be few in number and he will have more important targets. I think they can only reach as far as the NT and maybe far north Qld anyway. Any nuclear launch by NK would result in the destruction of their entire country about 15 minutes later. As always, MAD is in play

China can sort out Kim now if they want to - and they need to as it is not in their best interest to have this nuclear-armed nut-job right on their border

spouse of scouse

I'd have thought this madman would be a the top of a few countries' assassination bucket lists. Why is he still alive?

Gordon Barlow

I've often wondered that, Spouse - why no nation ever tries very hard to assassinate its enemies' leaders. Mainly, I guess it's a sort of professional courtesy between politicians, but also it's because it wouldn't achieve anything useful. All nations' heads of state - whether elected or not - are tribal leaders who are supported (however reluctantly) by their respective tribes. "He might be a sonofabitch,but he's our sonofabitch" - that kind of mentality. I remember an incident several years ago when Cuba's representative in the UN insulted US President G W Bush. The strongest criticism of that insult came from one of Bush's strongest Democrat critics. "I will not have my President insulted!" He said. Something like that. Remember, too, that no dictator governs alone; there's always a gang of like-minded supporters.

BritInParis

Because it's a relatively difficult thing to do and all it would do would be to unleash chaos and war on the Korean peninsula. China would also take a very dim view and it might lead to a nuclear standoff with a country which has a greater and more effective nuclear arsenal than the DPRK.

spouse of scouse

Thanks Gordon and BiP for your thought provoking responses.

I asked the question because the comments sections of so many media reports I've seen are full of 'he needs a bullet in his head' type statements. Although I understand that they are (for the most part) comments made out of fear and loathing, I've not been very successful in encouraging people to articulate why they think that killing him is a simple, sustainable solution.

DeadVim

I seem to dimly remember a troll supposedly from Korea threatening to kill me on here so it's possible.

Brisbane is a place too, omitted to mention I guess because a nuclear strike might be pointless.

Swerv-o

I don't believe he has the capability to deliver a warhead to Sydney or Melbourne via a launch vehicle - the longest range device they have operational is the Musudan, which could just about hit PNG I think.

They do have two others in development though, which if successful could be used to deliver warheads to the US and Australia - though they seem to have huge reliability problems.

Whether he would try or not is another matter. There has been some thawing in NK since the death of KJI - it is at a glacial pace, but definitely seems to be happening. I think that the hope was that this would accelerate, and for a while it did look like it may happen. There is a growing free market of trade in NK, and information is becoming more available such that the populace are starting to question the leadership. Whether this will continue, or even happen at a pace that could effect significant change remains to be seen.

He could well have a pop at the battle group there, but to do so would invite retribution from the US, and would also probably lead to war on the peninsula again. China is the key to success here - so how they respond over the coming weeks will give us more of an insight.

Personally I'm not losing any sleep over it at the moment...


S

Gordon Barlow

History Lesson awaits Trump if he Attacks North Korea: Analysts - Patriot Rising
This is an interesting "minority report" on North Korea, which might give us some clue as to what's in the mind of its ruling regime. If the report is even a quarter accurate, the USA would be utterly crazy to even try to invade. It seems to me that NK is a bit like Russia in being a heck of a lot stronger in defence than in offence. I don't know why the US just can't let them alone and ignore them. NK isn't going to attack anybody, except pre-emptively; so why give it any grounds for suspecting that it will be attacked?