Weekend Discussion
What’cha gonna do ... if it hits St. Louis?
I’d email Vilmar & ask if he wanted to take over the blog.
Posted by Oink
01/28/2006 at 08:16 AM
In case Israel decides to make the first move on Iran, it might be more efficient to do an EMP over Teheran than trying to take out a bunch of hidden underground nuclear facilities. If the height of detonation is figured carefully, Iraq and Afghanistan would be relatively unscathed. Now how about that lunatic midget in North Korea?
Oink you made me chuckle again. Very naughty! Skipper will not be amused though. Bacon could be on the menu.
As for the air detonation. Well maybe they have the resources but I reckon US submarine technology is years ahead of anything the Koreans and Chinese can dream up. If it were successful no doubt the results would be horrific. I’m no expert but I would think a 50 megaton yield would require hydrogen bomb technolgy. As I understand it they don’t have this yet and it seems to me they would have a pretty hard time covering up a weapons test of this magnitude.
Lyndon: You are correct...a 50MT bomb IS H-bomb tech...which they clearly don’t have. Physics tells us that fission bombs (what the Norks have and the Iranians are working on) have an upper limit to size, probably in the area of about 100KT. Even if they “souped it up” with a little deuterium/tritium, that’ll push it to about 200KT, but that’s about it.
Besides, even if certain electronics are not hardened against EMP, there’s always the Faraday cage.
I’d be very disappointed if the Chinese were able to get a submarine close enough to launch a missile. We have SOSUS and a lot of very expensive long black quiet things under the water who should be following them around.
the US will have men on mars by the time anything like this could happen
Is there much to discuss, really?
Any catastrophe of such magnitude, regardless of its nature or source, is sure to knock a vast majority of our population free of such eroded and faulty veneer of civilization (meaning reason) as they still retain. Picture, for example, news of an oncoming asteroid collision. The result would be an unchained mob of savages, spreading like an hysterical amoeba, a mob bent on nothing but pillage, rape, and murder.
Their one thought would be, “I might as well do what I’ve always wanted to do, for tomorrow isn’t coming!”
Meaning, “I never had the world I wanted, and now that the world’s coming to an end, I want at least a taste of what I missed!”
If I sound overly pessimistic, I regret that, but I can no longer muster any reason to believe otherwise.
Alot more things are EMP hardened than you think. EMP hardening isn’t actually that hard to do anymore… Heck, the electrical systems in some (modern) cars is shielded from electromegnetic interference enough so that they classify (i.e. pass the military specification) as EMP hardened.
If a missile detonates over St. Louis we will all be dead - read DEAD.........Am a member of the decontamination group for my hospital (all ER personnel are) - we have regularly scheduled exercises ..........but is I’m dead, I don’t think I will be able to respond........
Posted by Dottie
01/28/2006 at 09:13 PM
You really need to read the story - Lights Out by Halffast
Caution ... it is 75 chapters
and some of the best writing I have seen anywhere
http://www.mfco.net/surv/fiction/
Rick in North Georgia
teaser - After five minutes, Mark turned the radio up.
……Ladies and Gentlemen, the Vice-president of the United States.
My fellow Americans, as you know, 27 minutes ago the power went out. Also affected were most of the communication and transportation systems in the continental United States, most of Canada, and parts of Mexico. This seems to the effect of a large EMP burst. We are not sure at this time of the source of the burst and we do not know if was accidental, an act of God, or a malicious attack. We do know that the burst is NOT the result of a nuclear attack. I repeat, we have NOT been attacked with nuclear weapons. As many of you know, the President and most of his cabinet were in route to his ranch in Texas on Air Force One. Since the burst, we have not had any contact with them....
Posted by RickD94
01/29/2006 at 12:59 AM
Thanks for the reference, Rick. 75 chapters doesn’t bother me, as long as they’re good ones. I’ll check it out.
Yeah but this discounts the multiple nuclear submarines at our own disposal. Each one capable of taking out an entire country. 24 missiles each with up to 5 warheads and each warhead a whole heck of a lot bigger then 50 megatons! i.e 100 - 300 megatons each and that’s just the declassified information. It was recently reported that these missiles are currently being upgraded. Nobody knows where they are at any given time except a handful of individuals. They can be anywhere including under the polar ice cap.
Ok, so the USA is blacked out, but that’s not gonna stop us from retaliating and wiping our enemies off the face of the earth, literally! Besides we’ve known about EMP for quite some time, you can rest assured that our missile silos are shielded against an EMP attack. Not gonna help much of the civilian population which is why we need our personal firearms to defend ourselves from looters and rioters. I’ve heard the Mormons have a canning operation where you can bring your food in and they give you everything you need to can your own supplies. They have been preparing for Armageddon since the beginning. There will be survivors after a nuclear attack, but you may be luckier to get vaporized at the start then to fight for survival in the ensuing radiological nightmare..
Lord knows what technological nuclear advances we have in place, much of it kept secret. I would not be surprised to find out we have space based weapons that can be launched from any working satellite uplink on say a submarine when it surfaces, etc. The American military has been planning scenarios like this for the last 50+ years! We have plans upon plans upon plans and scenario upon scenario.
However, should the proverbial ‘shit’ hit the fan, we will be on our own much like in New Orleans! We cannot expect to be rescued. We will have to survive on our own until help eventually arrives. There will be much chaos and death long after the initial catastrophe.
I am not as worried about North Korea as I am about Iran. The Iranian figurehead president and the ruling Mullahs are completely off their rockers! They are literally provoking the western world into a fight. They can’t possibly be that stupid? Or is it their plan to bring about Armageddon sooner rather then later? At least the Russians feared death, hence the “Mutually Assured Destruction” concept of the Cold War then kept us from obliterating all life on the face of the earth!
Posted by MJS
01/29/2006 at 01:10 PM
I can’t see this really happening anytime soon unless the Russkies sell one of their old missile boats to North Korea. I think the Chicoms are building or developing SSB’s now but nothing deployed for deep water operations yet maybe. Makes for a good “what if” post.
OCM: Good list, but I fiddled with the link a bit and still don’t get why some are in red. Probably obvious…
Also read Wik’s criteria—Doomsday can mean ‘already happened’ or ‘narrowly averted’.
Posted by Oink
01/29/2006 at 06:30 PM
The red ones are links to pages reserved for articles that haven’t yet been written. IOW dead links that will go live when someone gets around to writing something.
Duh ... Thanx StinK
OCM will please explain why (#17) he disagreed with two on the list. Ghostbusters (original) was one of my favorites, with humor and a tad of good thinking—not too much. And the end of the world was averted. cf my #19.
Mars Attacks sucked pond scum, but it met the above criterion. Don’t lousy movies qualify?
Posted by Oink
01/29/2006 at 07:51 PM
I have waited to see if anyone from the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) responded. Only one was close - Draven.
Air burst of even 100kT above Lawrence, Kansas (geographical center of the US) has the following effects:
1. Radio communication disrupted for some 10 days due to ionization of the troposphere.
2. Non-hardened/protected electronic systems offline for good.
3. Power transmission offline until affected systems are repaired - 10 days to a year.DARPA Net, the precursor to the Intenet as we know it, was an implementation of a redundant network architecture & protocol to allow military and government computer systems to remain on line. Modern implementations of a fail safe system are probably light years beyond even what I suspect.
Boomers not in port would identify and attack the source of the attack on the US once orders were received. Read NoK or Iran - just smoking glass craters left. When the smoke cleared, humanitarian aid would come into those areas to stabilize the remains.
This is not a scenario that even scares me. If you car is built after 1985, it will most likely still run. Telephones, cell phones, power transmission and TV systems will have to be repaired, but we would survive. The nutters in the cities who cannot think or fend for themselves will be the danger. The Church of Jesus Christ of LDS (Mormons) have the right idea - have two years worth of non-perishable food on hand for emergencies. Canned foods and dry foods can go a long way. Have a well stocked arsenal to keep the nutters at bay, while you make an escape. Take your iodine pills.
Skipper - Not even a scary scenario. I am more frightened of the Jihadists, Commies and useful idiots in our midst than I am something like this.
The Hobo
01/28/2006 at 10:37 AM
01/28/2006 at 02:02 PM
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