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posted by martyb on Monday September 04 2017, @05:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the Marvin-the-Martian-had-no-comment dept.

We had three Soylentils submit stories about North Korea's claims it had detonated a hydrogen bomb and reports of seismic activity.

North Korea has Conducted a Major Nuclear Test.

North Korea said on Sunday it detonated a hydrogen bomb, possibly triggering an artificial earthquake and prompting immediate condemnation from its neighbors -- despite the rogue regime calling the test a "perfect success." http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/09/03/quake-in-north-korea-may-have-been-nuclear-test.html

North Korea Claims Successful Hydrogen Bomb Test

North Korea claims to have successfully developed and tested a hydrogen bomb. Observers have detected tremors associated with a blast several times larger than previous underground nuclear bomb tests. North Korea also claimed to have developed a hydrogen bomb capable of being fitted on a missile:

North Korea carried out its most powerful nuclear test to date on Sunday, claiming to have developed an advanced hydrogen bomb that could sit atop an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The bomb used in the country's sixth-ever nuclear test sent tremors across the region that were 10 times more powerful than Pyongyang's previous test a year ago, Japanese officials said. While the type of bomb used and its size have not been independently verified, if true, the pariah state is a significant step closer to being able to fire a nuclear warhead to the US mainland, as it has repeatedly threatened it could if provoked.

[...] The device was more than eight times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, according to NORSAR, a Norway-based group that monitors nuclear tests. Based on the tremors that followed the test, NORSAR estimated it had an explosive yield of 120 kilotons. Hiroshima's had 15 kilotons. But South Korean officials gave a more modest estimation, saying that Sunday's bomb had a yield of 50 kilotons.

がんばれ! 你能行的!! 화이팅!!!

Also at BBC, Reuters, and NYT.

4.1 Magnitude Seismic Event in North Korea at a Low Depth

Earthquake News Today initially reported that a 5.1 magnitude event designated 2000aert had occurred near Sungjibaegam, North Korea at a depth of less than 1km at 03:30 UTC September 3.

Their updated report 2.5 hours later gave a magnitude of 4.1.

All reporting stations were in the USA.

NPR, formerly Nation Public Radio, subsequently reports

North Korea has claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb

The blast was picked up by seismic stations all over the world, and it was big.

[...]North Korea's previous nuclear tests have been in the tens of kilotons range. That corresponds roughly to a weapon the size of the ones used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. It's believed that the North's earlier tests were of nuclear weapons that use uranium or plutonium (or both) for their explosive yield.

This time, the North claims to have mastered a far more powerful hydrogen weapon. Some early estimates are putting this test in the hundreds of kiloton range.

[...]Modern nuclear weapons of the sort possessed by the U.S. and Russia are almost all thermonuclear in nature. It allows the weapons to pack a huge punch while fitting in a warhead small enough to be delivered by a missile.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2Original Submission #3

 
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  • (Score: 2) by fnj on Tuesday September 05 2017, @03:32AM (4 children)

    by fnj (1654) on Tuesday September 05 2017, @03:32AM (#563650)

    You're absolutely full of bullshit.

    1) No comment on your fantasy of "demonstrating" by expending a large proportion of the US strategic deterrence. There is no industrial base left to manufacture replacements afterward. Keep in mind that arms limitation agreements are in fact depleting the deterrence further all the time.

    2) There are no battleships left in service or conceivably returnable to service. No 16 inch guns. BTW, we have no 12" guns either, and not even any 8" or 6" cruiser guns.

    3) There are no "clean" H-bombs. What we do have is 2 and 3 stage boosted fission A-bombs. Some of them are just a little less "dirty" than plain A-bombs, and others are extremely dirty.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 05 2017, @01:22PM (3 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday September 05 2017, @01:22PM (#563745)

    I'm less full of BS than our fearless orange haired septuagenarian leader: "They will be met with a fire and fury like the world has never seen"

    I count roughly 18 Ohio class submarines in service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ohio-class_submarines [wikipedia.org] each carrying either 154 cruise missiles or 24 Trident (MIRV) SLBMs.

    You caught me out on the battleships, I see the Iowa class are decommissioned now, though they did serve in GW1. The modern thinking is probably that any one of the 10 currently operating Nimitz class carrier groups can more than replace the functionality of the old battleship designs.

    Still, we've never demonstrated the potential of MAD to the world, and I hope we never do - you're right that "clean" H bombs don't really exist, it's all a relative thing - though the detonation of 100 warheads north of the DMZ to effectively widen it to 50 miles would be a pretty straightforward, and constitute less than 50% of the atmospheric nuclear detonations conducted during the saber rattling phase of the cold war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing [wikipedia.org]

    Maybe we could just politely ask that the noisy dictator widen the DMZ voluntarily, and send 100 conventional warheads as a demonstration?

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by fnj on Tuesday September 05 2017, @04:19PM (2 children)

      by fnj (1654) on Tuesday September 05 2017, @04:19PM (#563801)

      I'm less full of BS than our fearless orange haired septuagenarian leader: "They will be met with a fire and fury like the world has never seen"

      Granted, but that is setting the bar awfully low.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 05 2017, @06:25PM (1 child)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday September 05 2017, @06:25PM (#563855)

        This is a democracy, we collectively set that bar ourselves.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 05 2017, @08:34PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 05 2017, @08:34PM (#563916)

          ORLY? Must be nice where you are.

          A Democracy is where the majority rules.
          ...not a majority of the money; a majority of THE PEOPLE.

          Here in the USA, the majority of people want the rich to be taxed more, less war, well-regulated banking, a Medicare-for-All program, and fundamental reform of political campaigning.
          ...and in almost every one of those cases, that is a SUPERmajority. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [shadowproof.com]

          Oh, wait. More recent numbers are in.
          Yup. Now, in every case, it's a supermajority who wants that stuff. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [commondreams.org]

          ...yet The Majority is being ignored.
          ...while The Rich get what they want.

          That's NOT a Democracy.
          That's an Oligarchy.

          .
          ...and a big THANK YOU to Lamestream Media for doing such a fine job of informing everyone about what's actually going on.
          /sarc

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]