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We've talked a bit, in the past, about the possibility of a nuclear bomb signal/demonstration by Russia, in its conflict with Ukraine and the West. The thought there has always been about a demonstration explosion, probably with a low-yield weapon, on or off the battlefield, or a nuclear power plant 'incident'.
Now, Global Times, a mouthpiece for the more right-wing within China's CCP, has described an alternative scenario. That scenario is provocatively titled Note to the US - a nuclear war can be won by rivals [globaltimes.cn]
The scenario looks simple: detonating one or multiple nuclear bombs in the stratosphere, creating an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), that would cause nationwide electrical grid anomalies, cascading systems failures, and ultimately unravel the fabric of American society. (Or, more likely, European society -- but then the Global Times is rather obsessed with the US, and counts the EU among future third-world nations anyway.)
Even non-state and rogue state actors could defeat the US with only a small number of EMP weapons, is noted, and one of the advantages of such an attack is that attribution is rather hard to do:
At least 15 nations can access low earth orbit, and many have access to geosynchronous orbit. The real nature of every object launched cannot be known with certainty. Nuclear weapons can also be concealed in and called down from the clutter of the super-synchronous graveyard orbit for surprise use.
And thus the MAD aspect is removed from nuclear weapons, argues Global Times: it's hard to bomb the real culprit back to the Stone Age, if you don't know who to blame in the first place. To end with some good news: luckily,
... the electrical infrastructure designs of Russia and others have spared no expense in applying Cold War civil defense lessons. Command economies, long range planning, hardened grids, and stability of centralized leadership further aid their societies in surviving any potential EMP attack. Given their histories and traditions, those cultures are probably more adept at continued functionality in the absence of amenities and infrastructure than the US.
Pfewww.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 15 2022, @10:51PM
I would like to express my gratitude to whoever moderated my ovaltine post as funny, thereby allowing it to appear to the non-logged-in casual browser.
There is actually some sense to that posting which seems to have escaped the dolt that moderated it down. It seemed curious to me that two identical journals would be posted less than twelve hours apart, both with identical titles claiming to involve a "Signal".
This immediately brought to mind the radio broadcasts portrayed in the movie, The Longest Day, where the phrase:
is portrayed as the signal for action by the French resistance - especially since the original poster of the journal was Janrinok who has claimed to be in France on various occasions.
So I surmised that the duplication of journals was meant to be a signal of sorts either to a third party or between Janrinok and quietus, and to alert others to this possiblility, I pretended to decode the message, producing the infamous secret message portrayed in the movie, A Christmas Story [1983].
Seriously, for a site that purports to pander to geeks, this explanation should not be necessary. When you hit that "troll" button, you are simply demonstrating that you are too stupid to see the relevance of the post.