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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is holding a "public health grand round" at its Roybal campus in Atlanta, Georgia. The topic is "Public Health Response to a Nuclear Detonation":
The CDC is holding a session January 16 to discuss personal safety measures and the training of response teams "on a federal, state, and local level to prepare for nuclear detonation."
The meeting, part of the agency's monthly Public Health Grand Rounds, will include presentations like "Preparing for the Unthinkable" and "Roadmap to Radiation Preparedness," and it will be held at the CDC's headquarters in Atlanta. "Grand rounds" are a type of meeting or symposium in which members of a public health community come together to discuss topics of interest or public importance.
This isn't the first time in recent months that official entities have informed the public about the consequences of a possible nuclear strike. In August, amid escalating nuclear rhetoric from North Korea, Guam's Homeland Security and Office of Civil Defense released a two-page fact sheet about what to do in the case of a nuclear event. And in December, Hawaii started monthly testing of a nuclear warning siren system -- the first such tests since the end of the Cold War.
It had been planned in April and has nothing at all to do with any particular statements or tweets.
Also at Time.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:05PM (2 children)
No, the trick here is that:
- using technology that probably hasn't been maintained perfectly or tested recently
- built by government contract
- being handled by people who are in a high-stress situation (yes, I know, trained military and all that, but even military guys aren't going to be thinking "ho-hum, we're about to start a nuclear war") and have never actually done the real thing before
- with minimal margin for error
All works perfectly as designed.
Part of the problem is that North Korea just isn't very big, which means that it doesn't require much of a mistake to hit SK, China, or Russia.
And again, you're talking about actions that will kill millions of civilians. That's a no-no for a reason.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:29PM
Nukes are maintained. We are constantly rebuilding them. On a regular schedule, each warhead gets shipped back to a national laboratory to be disassembled and have old components replaced.
Accuracy is very high now. Granted, it would be higher without democrat obstruction, but it is pretty good. This is why we are no longer much into 20 megaton warheads.
Killing millions of civilians is how war works. We haven't really had a war since Japan surrendered. Some folks need killing. Many lives, all around the world, are a negative value for us.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday January 08 2018, @01:11AM
As already pointed out by AC they undergo regular rebuilds (also - is this issue about age of explosives (affects both efficency and shape, either of which can cause a fizzle), rust on cabling and such (which also can cause fizzles) - the timings of implosion bombs are insane).
Regarding testing everything but the warhead gets tested regularly, and the warhead is replaced with dummies of same weight and weightdistribution for such.
I agree that humans are the weak link, but hopefully the nuke will be delivered via ICBM from someone with presence of mind and not some PTSD'd frontline-assignee.
Regarding degree of error - let me google that - oh, seems like 50% chance for an ICBM to hit within 200m of target, with never versions down to about 90m. And we are talking about munitions where you count the blast in kilometers. I'd say they are well within close enough. (btw, if you aim at pyongyang you need to miss by more than 80km/50mi to hit outside of NK)
I agree that the deathtoll would be high (then again, the initial _conventional_ NK counterstrike at SK would probably exceed it - unless SK got a heads up from US), but the fallout wouldn't really be that much of an issue (especially not in the grand scheme of tihings)
(Nuking a city would be a war crime, but not because of the nuke but because you are targetting civilians. So using nukes isn't a no-no, but the choice of targets discussed are)