by Phillyguy for The Saker Blog
Summary
The US emerged from WWII as the world’s leading economic and military power. Since that time US hegemony has been predicated on: 1) unrivaled military strength, 2) control of world’s energy reserves and 3) primacy of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. All of the pillars supporting US global dominance are now being threatened by continuing US economic decline coupled with ongoing economic development of China and other Asian countries, who are increasingly using currencies other than the US dollar, for international trade. US economic decline is fueling global instability and increasing the possibility of conflicts erupting between global powers. Thus the threat of nuclear war hangs over the world.
How did we get here?
The US emerged from WWII, with its manufacturing base intact and was the world’s dominant economic power. This began to change in the mid-1970s, as US corporate profits began to stagnate/decline, a consequence of increasing competition from rebuilt economies in Europe- primarily Germany (Marshall Plan), Japan and Korea (US wars in Korea and Vietnam) and later China (1). To deal with these structural economic problems confronting US capitalism, the directors of economic policy in the government and large corporations faced a decision that would play a major role in shaping global geopolitics for the next 5 decades. They could make large investments in the domestic economy, developing state of the art manufacturing facilities and equipment that would enable US corporations to effectively compete with those in newly emerging economies, or abandon manufacturing and change the structure of the US economy. As we now know, policy makers chose the latter route. This policy was based on economic attacks on poor people and labor, financial deregulation, increased spending on the military and war and rampant financial speculation.
In November 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected president and during his administration, began a frontal assault on organized labor by firing members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) who went on strike over grievances concerning working conditions in 1981. Reagan also instituted tax cuts for the wealthy, which have continued under succeeding administrations (2). In 1993, Bill Clinton entered office and proceeded to attack poor people by cutting public assistance to poor families- signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and pledging to “end welfare as we know it” (3), facilitated job outsourcing (passage of NAFTA) and deregulated finance by signing the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA) aka Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which also repealed the Glass–Steagall act, a component of the depression era 1933 Banking Act (4). In 2001, George (“W”) Bush became president and immediately signed legislation cutting taxes for the wealthy, including major cuts to inheritance taxes. Following the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center in NYC, President GW Bush sent US troops to Afghanistan, to ostensibly find Osama bin, head of al-Qaida and alleged leader and organizer of the 911 attacks. In his 2002 State of the Union address, the President gave his now famous “axis of evil” speech, which included North Korea (DPRK), Iran and Iraq (5). This list was later expanded to include Cuba, Libya, Syria and Venezuela (6). In 2003, President Bush invaded Iraq and deposed their leader, Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein.
2008 Financial Crash
The policies instituted above combined to create the 2008 financial collapse, the largest financial disaster since the Great Depression. In an attempt to contain the economic damage resulting from this financial implosion, the US FED bailed out Wall St banks and to prevent further falls in the Stock market, has provided Wall St with a nearly unlimited supply of ultra-cheap funds (circa $4 trillion) for share buybacks and MA deals in what has been referred to as an “orgy” of corporate debt. Despite multiple tax cuts for the wealthy and financial largess of the US FED, and other Central banks including Bank of Japan (BOJ) and European Central Bank (ECB), global capitalism is confronted with slack demand, high levels of excess capacity and skyrocketing debt. In addition, economies in the US and EU are challenged with high employment and anemic job growth.
The economic policies shaped over the last four decades have been continued under Obama and Trump and have played a decisive role in directing US foreign policies since the mid-1970s. The relatively rapid economic decline since 2000 directly threatens US global hegemony and in response the Pentagon has engaged in an increasingly reckless, bellicose and astronomically expensive foreign policy (7, 8). Indeed, the US is currently involved in wars stretching from the Levant, to Caspian Basin, South-west Asia, Persian Gulf, China Sea, Indian Ocean, Horn of Africa, the Maghreb, to Eastern Europe and Russian border. The staggering economic costs of these wars can be seen with conflicts in Afghanistan (longest running war in US history) and Iraq being estimated to have cost US taxpayers $ 6 trillion (9).
Focus on China
The emergence of China as a potential competitor to US hegemony was recognized by the Obama administration and in response, reoriented US foreign policy with his “Asia Pivot” in 2012 (10). Harvard Professor Graham Allison has warned that the US and China are in “Thucydides Trap” using Athenian historian Thucydides analysis of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), where “it was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable”
(11). Tensions with China have been heightened by the Trump administration’s protectionist trade policies, tariffs on Chinese exports to the US and out right thuggish behavior, an example being the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver, Canada (12, 13). The anti-China campaign is being ratcheting up further with vague accusations of “China’s attempts to obtain trade secrets and intellectual property through a state-coordinated cyberespionage campaign….. a brazen effort by the Chinese to obtain Western technology and other proprietary information”, featured in a prominent piece in the “paper or record” (NYT) by David Sanger (14). Sanger is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (www.cfr.org) which plays a major role in influencing US foreign policy.
Not surprisingly, most of the “analysis” of US-China relations presented by establishment academics such as Graham Allison or corporate media pundits like David Sanger present an accurate picture of economic relationships between the US and China. Unfortunately, consistently lacking is a critical and comprehensive examination of how and why this happened- i.e., decades of deliberate US government and corporate policies which facilitated China’s economic rise and accelerated US economic decline (see above). This is not surprising as intuitions like the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Council on Foreign Relations, Rand Corporation and related “think tanks” along with corporate media are all committed to supporting policies which promote corporate interests and maximize corporate profits.
Thus, campaigns against China and Russia share broad support among the directors of US foreign policy. Collectively, these polices have exacerbated international relations, greatly increasing the threat of a direct military confrontation between the Global powers and potential use of nuclear weapons, as President Trump laid out in his recent National Security Strategy (NSS) speech (15). In his traditional Christmas message Pope Francis stated “The winds of war are blowing in our world and an outdated model of development continues to produce human, societal and environmental decline”. Indeed, The Pope specifically mentioned the decision by US President Trump to recognize Jerusalem (Al-Quds) as Israel’s capital and his bellicose rhetoric towards North Korea, setting up potential new global flashpoints (16). By closely aligning themselves with US policies which increasingly threatens China and Russia with military attack, US “allies”- members of NATO, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, will likely be targeted by Russian and Chinese nuclear weapons in the event of hostilities.
While there has been extensive analysis of US foreign policy and ongoing US wars, there has been surprisingly little inquiry of the consequences of a nuclear attack on the US. Such a discussion is made all the more urgent by the expansion of US/NATO into Eastern Europe and close to the Russian border, the US/NATO supported coup in Ukraine in 2014 (17), conflicts in the Middle East and Trump’s bellicose rhetoric towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Iran, China and Russia, US withdrawal from the Paris Climate accord, JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) and most recently, exiting the INF treaty with Russia.
Vulnerability to War
The job of military strategists, like that of prosecuting and defense attorneys in a legal case is to assess the strength and weakness of their opponent(s) and design strategies taking into account these features (18). In the case of the US, the strengths are pretty obvious. The US possesses formidable military power, albeit being gradually confronted by Russia and China, and the dollar is still the dominant currency in the international monetary system, although its strength is being eroded by growing US debt and competition from the Euro and Chinese renminbi, which was recently added to IMF’s basket of reserve currencies. The primacy of the dollar is also seeing competition from bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (19).
The structural features of US society make it extremely susceptible to nuclear war. Some of these attributes include: population density, energy dependence, reliance on information technology and social instability.
1. Population Density A dozen regions comprise the major economic centers which drive the US economy (20). Approximately 2/3 of the US population lives on littoral areas of the country- 38% on the East Coast (Atlantic Ocean), 16% on West Coast (Pacific Ocean) and 12% on the Gulf Coast (21).
2) Energy US society is highly energy dependent. The US has 5% of the world’s population but consumes 18% of the world’s energy. Approximately 65% of electricity is generated from fossil fuel (oil, natural gas and coal) while 20% is obtained from nuclear power (22, 23). Nuclear power plants rely on electrically powered pumps to circulate water around the reactor cores to keep them from overheating. When these pumps cease functioning, the reactor cores overheat and literally undergo a “meltdown” releasing highly radioactive uranium fuel assemblies into the environment, which occurred during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in Ukraine (24) and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan (25).
3) Transportation and Agriculture. Our transportation “system” relies on energy inefficient automobiles and planes as the primary means of local and distant travel. US agriculture is extremely energy-dependent, requiring 10 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food (26). Further, the average food commodity transits 1500 miles from production point to consumption site- e.g., California strawberries in PA (usually transported on diesel fueled trucks; 27).
4. Information Technology – The functioning of our society- industries and businesses which provide jobs and keep our economy running, healthcare, educational system and the government all rely on information flow to function (28). This system encompasses local computers, the internet and fiber optic cables serving as data pipelines, computer server farms and “cloud” storage facilities, all of which consume lots of electricity (29).
5. Social Instability Our society is extremely polarized- exemplified by the election of Donald Trump in November, 2016. Following Trump’s election, there has been a rise in racist, neo-Nazi groups as we saw in Charlottesville, VA (30).
Likely Targets
In the case of a major conflict, key targets in the US will include military installations, major cities and energy infrastructure, the last two being “soft” targets, easily hit and difficult to defend. Attacks on energy related facilities will include electrical generating stations, oil and natural gas production sites and refineries, storage facilities, pipelines and loading docks. Also targeted will be fiber optic cables and computer server farms and storage facilities. When this happens, the US economy and society will completely cease normal functioning. Electrical generation will stop and the pumps required for distribution of potable water and operation of sewage treatment plants stop working, resulting in the rapid development of Cholera epidemics, as observed in Yemen (31, 32). Rapidly dwindling supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel mean that transportation is greatly restricted, businesses, hospitals and education facilities, heavily reliant on electricity and information technology completely stop functioning. Energy intensive agricultural production rapidly declines resulting in food shortages and starvation. Lack of electricity causes the electric pumps circulating water around reactor cores of the 98 nuclear power plants currently operating in the country (23) to stop, resulting in core meltdowns, producing Fukushima and Chernobyl- like nuclear disasters across the US. These economic and social disruptions will likely lead to vast social panic and unrest across the country, resulting in violent confrontations such as occurred in Charlottesville, VA, 2017.
There is no way an energy intensive, technologically advanced society like the US can adapt to conditions following a major war. This will likely lead to complete destruction of the US as a country and may well lead to extinction of the human species. With the exception of a handful of journalists such as Professor Michel Chossudovsky, director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Steve Lendman, Geopolitical analyst, Helen Caldicott, Australian physician and anti-nuclear activist, and discussion of a “nuclear winter” following a nuclear war (33), there has been little discussion about the direct impact of a major war on US society by mainstream media outlets.
Concluding Remarks
The US is very vulnerable to any nuclear attack, and from my perspective, it is doubtful that US society will survive such an event. Unfortunately, it appears that the only approach the US is following to address its structural economic decline is an increasingly bellicose and belligerent foreign policy. Indeed, in September, 2017, President Trump gave a speech in front of the UN, referring to DPRK leader Kim Jong-un, as “Rocket Man” and stating he would “totally destroy North Korea”.
Not to be outdone, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said at a recent UNSC meeting “if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed”. Russia and China share a border with North Korea and thus will be directly affected by any war on the Korean Peninsula, potentially leading to a nuclear war, as recently pointed out by William Polk (34, 35). Rather than toning down their bellicose rhetoric, the Trump administration, along with members of Congress have continued issuing threats against China and Russia. Speaking to the UN General Assembly in September, 2018, President Trump and his top advisors delivered “fiery” speeches against Iran (36).
Final Points
1. The US is the only county in the world to have used nuclear weapons, which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan at the end of World War II (37). Following the “success” of these attacks, the Pentagon had detailed plans to use over 200 atomic bombs to strike 66 “strategic” targets in the Soviet Union (38) and since that time, plans to attack Russia have been continuously upgraded (39, 40).
2. The ruling elite in the US are well aware of continuing (accelerating?) US economic decline and looming strategic debacles confronting the Pentagon in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (7-9). At the same time Russia, China and Iran are incorporating increasingly sophisticated military hardware into their armed forces (for an excellent analysis see 41, 42). The US response has been an increasingly reckless, bellicose and astronomically expensive foreign policy.
3. Once nuclear weapons are used, the chances of a rapid escalation are very high.
4. The use of mini-nukes has been pushed by US military planners as representing “less risk” to the civilian population. Indeed, the US is currently undertaking a $1.3 Trillion upgrade of existing nuclear weapons, which began under the Obama Administration (43). Trump has announced the US will leave the INF treaty unless Russia discontinues certain missile programs (44).
5. In the event of a nuclear war, the devastation will be rapid and very widespread and there is no preparation for such an event. US infrastructure will be completely destroyed, which will likely tear our society apart.
I was a “baby boomer” and grew up when the US and Soviet Union were testing atomic bombs. I recall my Mom, a member of “Women for Peace”, putting a bumper sticker on our family car that read “Our Only Shelter is Peace”. This is still true today.
Notes
1. The “Decline” of U.S. Economy: A Historical Comparison. By Chen Dezhao, China Institute for International Studies; Link: www.ciis.org.cn/english/2011-11/18/content_4635120.htm
2. Reagan insider: ‘GOP destroyed U.S. economy’. By Paul B. Farrell Market Watch Aug 10, 2010; Link: www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy-2010-08-10
3. The End of Welfare as We Know It- America’s once-robust safety net is no more. By Alana Semuels The Atlantic, Apr 1, 2016; Link: www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-end-of-welfare-as-we-know-it/476322/
4. Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall) June 16, 1933. Federal Reserve History; Link: www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/glass_steagall_act
5. Text of President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address. Washington Post, Jan. 29, 2002; Link: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/sou012902.htm
6. Global Warfare: “We’re Going to Take out 7 Countries in 5 Years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran..” Video Interview with General Wesley Clark By General Wesley Clark and Amy Goodman Global Research, May 14, 2018; Link: www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166
7. Losing by “Winning”: America’s Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria By Anthony H. Cordesman Aug 13, 2018; Link: www.csis.org/analysis/losing-winning-americas-wars-afghanistan-iraq-and-syria
8. The Costs of War: counted in TRILLIONS. Dec 13, 2017 by Phillyguy for the Saker blog; Link: thesaker.is/the-costs-of-war/
9. United States Budgetary Costs of the Post-9/11 Wars Through FY2019: $5.9 Trillion Spent and Obligated by Neta C. Crawford Nov 14, 2018; Link:
watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2018/Crawford_Costs%20of%20War%20Estimates%20Through%20FY2019%20.pdf
10. The president’s Asia legacy is not worst in recent history. But it’s not the best either. By Michael J. Green Sept 3, 2016; Link: foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/03/the-legacy-of-obamas-pivot-to-asia/
11. The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War? By Graham Allison, The Atlantic, Sept. 24, 2015; Link: www.belfercenter.org/publication/thucydides-trap-are-us-and-china-headed-war
12. Trump could make Obama’s pivot to Asia a reality By Josh Rogin Washington Post January 8, 2017; Link:
13. Washington using legal cover to conceal economic banditry by Finian Cunningham RT Dec 12, 2018; Link: www.rt.com/op-ed/446285-china-us-economy-huawei/
14. U.S. Accuses Chinese Nationals of Infiltrating Corporate and Government Technology By David E. Sanger and Katie Benner Dec. 20, 2018; Link: www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/us/politics/us-and-other-nations-to-announce-china-crackdown.html
15. Trump’s National Security Strategy: The return of “great power” military conflict By Bill Van Auken 20 Dec 2017; Link: www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/20/pers-d20.html.
16. Pope laments ‘winds of war’ blowing around the world in Christmas message. Chicago Tribune. Dec 25, 2017; Link: www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-pope-francis-christmas-message-20171225-story.html
17. It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war By Seumas Milne. The Guardian Apr 30, 2014; Link: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict
18. Striking a Strategic Balance – Putin’s Preventive Response By Rostislav Ishchenko [Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard] Oct 22, 2018; Link: www.stalkerzone.org/rostislav-ishchenko-striking-a-strategic-balance-putins-preventive-response/
19. 21st century reserve currencies – (how long) will the dollar-euro dominance prevail? Kevin Koerner and Franziska Winkler Deutsche Bank Nov 15, 2017; Link: www.dbresearch.com/servlet/reweb2.ReWEB?rwnode=RPS_EN-PROD$HIDDEN_GLOBAL_SEARCH&rwsite=RPS_EN-PROD&rwobj=ReDisplay.Start.class&document=PROD0000000000455549.
20. The Dozen Regional Powerhouses Driving the U.S. Economy by Richard Florida
Mar 12, 2014; Link: www.citylab.com/life/2014/03/dozen-regional-powerhouses-driving-us-economy/8575/
21. People- Geographic Distribution of US Population; Link: www.theusaonline.com/people/geographic-distribution.htm
22. What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source? Link: www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
23. Nuclear Power in the USA (Updated Oct, 2018); Link: www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-power.aspx
24. Backgrounder on Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident; Link: www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/chernobyl-bg.html
25. Fukushima Daiichi Accident; Link: www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx
26. How to Feed the World By Michael Pollan. Newsweek, May 19, 2008; Link: michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/how-to-feed-the-world/
27. How Far Does Your Food Travel to Get to Your Plate? Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA); Link: cuesa.org/learn/how-far-does-your-food-travel-get-your-plate
28. More Dependence on Internet Leads to More Cyberattacks Worldwide by Elizabeth Lee. VOA, Aug 26, 2017; Link: www.voanews.com/a/dependence-on-internet-leads-to-more-cyberattacks/4001728.html
29. The Surprisingly Large Energy Footprint of the Digital Economy. Our computers and smartphones might seem clean, but the digital economy uses a tenth of the world’s electricity — and that share will only increase, with serious consequences for the economy and the environment. By Bryan Walsh. Time, Aug. 14, 2013; Link: science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-cloud-is-using-more-energy-than-you-think/
30. Charlottesville rally violence: How we got here. By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN Aug. 14, 2017; Link: www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/us/charlottesville-rally-timeline-tick-tock/index.html
31. Yemen is currently facing the largest documented cholera epidemic in modern times. A new report warns it could get worse. By Alanna Shaikh, MPH UN dispatch May 08, 2018; Link: www.undispatch.com/yemen-is-currently-facing-the-largest-documented-cholera-epidemic-in-modern-times-a-new-report-warns-it-could-get-worse/
32. Cholera epidemic in Yemen, 2016–18: an analysis of surveillance data. By Anton Camacho, et al. The Lancet Global Health Lancet Glob Health 2018; 6: e680–690; Link: www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2214-109X%2818%2930230-4
33. The Risk of Nuclear Winter by Seth Baum May 29, 2015; Link: fas.org/pir-pubs/risk-nuclear-winter/
34. America on the Brink of Nuclear War: Background to the North Korean Crisis By William R. Polk Sep 6, 2017;
Link: www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/06/mayday-korea-america-on-the-brink-of-nuclear-war
35. America on the Brink of Nuclear War: What Should We Do? By William R. Polk Sep 7, 2017; Link: www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/07/america-on-the-brink-of-nuclear-war-what-should-we-do).
36. President Trump’s Efforts to Isolate Iran at the U.N. Backfired By W.J. Hennigan Sep 26, 2018 Time; Link: http://time.com/5407295/donald-trump-iran-united-nations/
37. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Gratuitous Mass Murder, Nuclear War, “A Lunatic Act” By Stephen Lendman Global Research, Aug 09, 2018; Link: www.globalresearch.ca/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-gratuitous-mass-murder-nuclear-war-a-lunatic-act-2/5467504
38. “Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”, 204 Atomic Bombs against 66 Major Cities, US Nuclear Attack against USSR Planned During World War II When America and the Soviet Union Were Allies. By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, Oct 27, 2018; Link: www.globalresearch.ca/wipe-the-ussr-off-the-map-204-atomic-bombs-against-major-cities-us-nuclear-attack-against-soviet-union-planned-prior-to-end-of-world-war-ii/5616601
39. The U.S. Government’s Plan Is to Conquer Russia by a Surprise Invasion by Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog Dec 11, 2018; Link: thesaker.is/the-u-s-governments-plan-is-to-conquer-russia-by-a-surprise-invasion/
40. The US is Planning a Major War with Russia and China. By James ONeill, Global Research, Dec 24, 2018; Link: www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-is-planning-a-major-war-with-russia-and-china-reports/5663819
41. Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning Byby Andrei Martyanov, 2018 (Book); Link: www.amazon.com/Losing-Military-Supremacy-American-Strategic/dp/0998694754
42. Solari Report- quarterly interview with The Saker Nov 21, 2018; Links: thesaker.is/solari-report-quarterly-interview-with-the-saker-2; www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDsL2Fm2Ddc
43. U.S. Nuclear Modernization Programs. Arms Control Association Aug 13, 2018; Link: www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/USNuclearModernization
44. US demands Russia ‘end or modify’ missile it doesn’t like to save INF treaty RT. Dec 7, 2018; Link: www.rt.com/usa/445791-usa-demands-russia-scraps-missile-inf/
A few nukes into Antarctica would drown half the world. A few hundred nukes exploding simultaneously around the globe may achieve the same thing. War is coming. Global war is coming. Make no mistake about it. It is unavoidable because the the leadership of the US and UK are insane. Plus there is a tiny colonial power in the Middle East whose citizens own the bulk of the West’s media and they want all the Goy dead. in the early 1980’s it was estimated they had 200 nukes. Nearly 40 years later for some bizarre reason the estimate of their nuke stocks had not been revised. Perhaps they now have 1000 nukes. And can we be grateful for Germany’s supply to them of high end submarines especially equipped to deliver nuclear missiles.?
Angela Merkel you are a dog.!
US leadership has rejected the scientific predictions of nuclear winter, which makes nuclear war even more likely.
In 2017, I wrote an article for the Federation of American Scientists, Turning a Blind Eye Towards Armageddon — US Leaders Reject Nuclear Winter Studies, which summarized the series of peer reviewed studies on the long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war, as well as the ongoing rejection of these predictions by US political and military leaders. Please see this article for a more comprehensive explanation of the consequences of nuclear war. I will briefly summarize the findings below:
The studies considered the consequences of a range of nuclear conflicts, including a “regional” nuclear war fought with a total of 100 atomic bombs (similar in explosive power to the atomic bombs the US detonated in Japan, which are the type that currently make up the arsenals of India and Pakistan) to a large nuclear war fought between the US and Russia using the thousands of deployed and operational thermonuclear weapons (with explosive power typically 7 to 85 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb).
The immense nuclear firestorms ignited by even the “small, regional” nuclear war would cause about 5 million tons of black carbon soot/smoke to quickly rise above cloud level into the stratosphere, where it could not be rained out. The smoke would circle the Earth in less than two weeks and would form a global stratospheric smoke layer that would remain for more than a decade.
The smoke would absorb warming sunlight, which would heat the smoke to temperatures near the boiling point of water, producing ozone losses of 20 to 50 percent over populated areas. This would almost double the amount of UV-B reaching the most populated regions of the mid-latitudes, and it would create UV-B indices unprecedented in human history. In North America and Central Europe, the time required to get a painful sunburn at mid-day in June could decrease to as little as six minutes for fair-skinned individuals.
As the smoke layer blocked warming sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface, it would produce the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1,000 years. The scientists calculated that global food production would decrease by 20 to 40 percent during a five-year period following such a war. Medical experts have predicted that the shortening of growing seasons and corresponding decreases in agricultural production could cause up to <A HREF="https://psrmaine.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2018/07/nuclear-famine-handout-ME.pdf"<two billion people to perish from famine.
A war fought with hundreds or thousands of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons would ignite immense nuclear firestorms covering land surface areas of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. The scientists calculated that these fires would produce up to 180 million tons of black carbon soot and smoke, which would form a dense, global stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke would remain in the stratosphere for 10 to 20 years, and it would block as much as 70 percent of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere and 35 percent from the Southern Hemisphere. So much sunlight would be blocked by the smoke that <A HREF="https://fas.org/pir-pubs/nuclear-war-nuclear-winter-and-human-extinction/"<the noonday sun would resemble a full moon at midnight.
Under such conditions, it would only require a matter of days or weeks for daily minimum temperatures to fall below freezing in the largest agricultural areas of the Northern Hemisphere, where freezing temperatures would occur every day for a period of between one to more than two years. Average surface temperatures would become colder than those experienced 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age, and the prolonged cold would cause average rainfall to decrease by up to 90%. Growing seasons would be completely eliminated for more than a decade; it would be too cold and dark to grow food crops, which would doom the majority of the human population.
Steven Starr
Senior Scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility
Director, Clinical Laboratory Science Program, University of Missouri
apologies for the two faulty links in my previous post, due to poor formatting:
see https://fas.org/pir-pubs/nuclear-war-nuclear-winter-and-human-extinction/
and https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/two-billion-at-risk.pdf
Thank you so much for posting that.
Thank you Mr. Starr. Or I suppose that given your job titles its likely to be Dr. Starr?
Thank you for making such a well informed point. I try at times to make this point. That nuclear war means the end of human civilization as we know it, and possibly the extinction of the human species along with many other species.
US leadership uses the ostrich with its head in the sand approach on multiple issues. Climate change and the sustainability of more debt are at least two others. The fact that they deny the likelihood of nuclear winter does not make it go away.
Nuclear war is simply unthinkable. All of the trillions of dollars being spent on more nuclear weapons are either a complete waste of money on something that can never be used, or a suicide pact.
Thanks for posting that Steven. It’s useful to spell it out in detail. But with no electricity, no water, no fuel, no transport system, no medical services of the most basic type, no industry or agriculture, it’s probably all fairly academic when you just think about that.
I have actually heard US politicians say nuclear war is exaggerated – look at Hiroshima. That was bombed and it’s okay today, isn’t it?
“In the event of a nuclear war, the devastation will be rapid and very widespread and there is no preparation for such an event. US infrastructure will be completely destroyed, which will likely tear our society apart.”
Re:”will likely tear our society apart” You think? Likely? This is Anglosaxon euphemism at its finest. No electricity–let alone the rest of its dependencies–in this modern world means certain (not “likely”) death within a few short weeks. You don’t even need an a-bomb to accomplish it.
The “likelihood” of the existence of the US five years from today is very “unlikely.”
A sudden coronal mass ejection (CME)—a massive burst of solar plasma (electrons, protons, and ions) that is hurtled out into space—which often occurs alongside particularly large solar flares.
If a CME as large as the one that triggered the 1859 storm were to occur today, the consequences could be devastating. Given the increase in our reliance on electricity and telecommunications (even since 1989), the effects would certainly be far more significant than malfunctioning telegraph pylons.
One analysis looked at a 1921 storm—which was ten times more powerful than the 1989 event—and estimated that if it occurred today, it would leave some 130 million people without power, potentially affecting water and food distribution, heating and air conditioning, sewage disposal and a host of other aspects of the infrastructure we take for granted daily. The total cost of an even larger storm, such as the 1859 event, could be enormous: an estimated $1 to $2 trillion in the first year alone, and a total recovery that could take 4 to 10 years in total.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-damage-could-be-caused-by-a-massive-solar-storm-25627394/
The health effects of nuclear explosions are due primarily to air blast, thermal radiation, initial nuclear radiation, and residual nuclear radiation or fallout.
Fallout. When a nuclear detonation occurs close to the ground surface, soil mixes with the highly radioactive fission products from the weapon. The debris is carried by the wind and falls back to Earth over a period of minutes to hours.
The first three of these effects are “prompt” effects, because the harm is inflicted immediately after the detonation. By contrast, the radiation dose from fallout is delivered over an extended period. Most of the dose from fallout is due to external exposure to gamma radiation from radionuclides deposited on the ground, and this is the only exposure pathway considered by the computer models that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) used to estimate health effects for this study.
The variation in the number of deaths due to acute and latent effects from fallout from a 300 kiloton respectively, as a function of wind direction ranging from 90,000 to 800,000 for acute effects and total fatalities, however, vary by less than a factor two, from 1 million to 2 million.
Considering that most 15000 thermonuclear heads are 500 kiloton each, and would explode over continental areas (North America, Europe, Russia, and China), then for 2 years people cannot breathe, and cannot plant for 10 years, without fatal consequences.
https://www.nap.edu/read/11282/chapter/8#83
Fallout from a nuclear war will be greatly exacerbated by the destruction of nuclear power plants and their spent fuel pools.
The spent fuel pools at commercial reactors have been used for long-term on-site storage of used (spent) fuel assemblies, and these pools contain huge amounts of fission products. A single spent fuel pool at a US commercial reactor will typically contain 5 to 7 times more highly radioactive fuel than is found inside the reactor core. Because reactors burn fuel assemblies for about 3 years before they are put into storage in the spent fuel pools, the used/spent fuel contains a great deal more of the long-lived fission products (radioactive cesium, strontium, and plutonium) that are produced by the detonation of a nuclear weapons (which occurs in an incredibly brief period of time).
There is often more radioactive cesium in a single spent fuel pool than was released by all the atmospheric nuclear weapon tests combined. Because cesium is the second most volatile element after mercury, it will become a gas by the time a spent fuel assembly overheats to the point of rupture or ignition. Thus most of the radioactive cesium (cesium134 and cesium137) in spent fuel assemblies is released during a catastrophic reactor accident, such as took place at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
It only requires half a gram of cesium137, made into an aerosol and evenly distributed over a square kilometer, to make that square kilometer uninhabitable for a century or longer; it takes slightly more than one gram of cesium137 to make a square mile uninhabitable for a century or longer (see https://ratical.org/radiation/Fukushima/StevenStarr.html for illustrations and explanation). A US dime weighs slightly less than 3 grams.
There is often a ton of cesium137 that resides within the used fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pool that is found at all commercial nuclear power plants.
I would disagree that the main health effects from nuclear war come primarily from fallout, since if agriculture becomes impossible because of nuclear winter, then most people and animals who manage to survive the initial effects of the war will eventually starve to death.
Steven Starr
Power stations Nuclear, if they do not loose ultimate heat sink (which they probably would right away) and if everything works, have enough diesel to keep the “boiler” under control for maybe 30 days.
They are also primary targets… Tispis from MIT (I think) wrote and published in Scientific American on this subject sometime in the late 1970’s…
Withal, N War means everything goes and we’re all dead. In, however, some of our deepest mine-shafts…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y
@ Steven Start
_ ” by destruction of nuclear power plants _” …
Yes , destruction of power plants is deadly as use of nukes.
But when one remembers wish and intention of Nikola Tesla ,
greàtest ivnentor of present civilisation,
to provide free energy , wireless energy , he was stopped.
His research cancelled.
His labs burned many times.
He was killed for his inventions.
How could electro company send bill to some home , if energy is free ?
He invented ac current and powerplant based on energy of water.
Niagara falls.
Not cesium.
He was against einstein and his theory that led to nuclear energy.
But even now , on edge of nuclear war , nuclear catastrophy ,
no scientists says , hey ,
lets think about Nikola Tesla and his concept of free energy to mankind.
Lets continue his inventions and give free energy.
Lets shutdown all nuclear plants . Danger to mankind.
There is not to be something like free energy. Energy has to be paid.
Dr. Steven Starr,
In other words, most humans and animals will die.
To add to your comment I offer the following supporting information on the effects and affects of Nuclear Winter. Please feel free to comment and correct any errors.
There are those who claim that a nuclear war is winnable, particularly among the US civilian and military “leadership”, based on the fallacy that in a first strike we can destroy most of their missiles prior to launch and shoot down most of the remaining incoming nuclear missiles. This is currently absurd as both both Russia and the US have dispersed their nuclear delivery systems to prevent an effective first strike attack.
Based on the following factors, full-scale thermonuclear exchange between Russia is not survivable for between 95% and 98% of the world population as it will result in a Nuclear Winter. Such a Nuclear Winter would be worse than even predicted due to massive quantities of sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, soot, and dust+radiation entering the upper atmosphere as well as dramatic increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. A more accurate accounting of the atmospheric effect of a 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange (including the weapons of allies) is as follows:
(1) sulfur dioxide release:
Theodore Postol pointed out that “during the period of peak energy output, a 1-megaton (Mt) nuclear weapon can produce temperatures of about 100 million degrees Celsius at its
center” which results in complete atomization of materials at some distance from the detonation site. http://nap.edu/940
Previous Nuclear Winter studies have failed to recognize that modern homes and buildings contain large quantities of sulfur in the form of gypsum (CaSO4-2H2O) which would become sulfur dioxide upon being atomized in a nuclear explosion.
The average home size in America is almost 1900 sq ft and contains 1.6 pounds of gypsum/ sq ft, for a total of almost 260 Kg of sulfur per house. To inject 5 Tg of sulfur into the atmosphere in a nuclear exchange would involve the vaporization at high temperature (>1500°C) of 10 million US homes in the nuclear fireballs. If worldwide 100 million homes are incinerated the sulfur dioxide contribution to a nuclear winter event would approximately equal the Tambora eruption of 1815.
The Mount Tambora eruption in 1815 “threw 55 million tons of sulfur-dioxide gas (50 Tg of SO2) more than twenty miles into the air, into the stratosphere.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1816-the-year-without-summer-excerpt/
By comparison, the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption generated some 20 million tons of SO2, yielding a global temperature reduction of 0.5 degrees C.:
http://history.aip.org/history/climate/aerosol.htm
Thus the Mount Tambora eruption would have been expected to cause a 1-1.5 degree C drop in global temperatures due to sulfur dioxide
(2) oxides of nitrogen
Previous studies have shown that “oxides of nitrogen released in above ground nuclear tests between 1952 and 1962 reduced ozone in the upper atmosphere about 5% based on a “linear relation (with known proportionality constants) between bomb‐produced 90Sr and bomb‐produced nitric oxide.”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JC078i027p06107
An air burst, for example, is estimated to produce about 1032 molecules of nitrogen oxides per megaton TNT equivalent. Based on 5,000 Mt yield in an all out nuclear war there will also be 24Tg of NO released in the atmosphere just from the reactions with atmospheric nitrogen gas. Additional nitrogen compounds from materials within the blast and forest fire zones will slightly add to this total.
https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/basic-ozone-layer-science
For nuclear explosions of intermediate and moderately high yield in the air or near the surface, the cloud reaches into the altitude range of 50,000 to 100,000 feet. Hence, the nitrogen oxides, along with increased upper atmosphere moisture, from such explosions would be expected to enhance mechanisms that decrease the ozone concentration. Unlike, the previous above ground test where the ozone could recover following an individual atmospheric test a full scale nuclear war would result in an estimated maximal ozone depletion of 43 percent assuming Russian use of their higher yield weapons.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219160/
According to Brasseur and Solomon, 1984 “each NO molecule introduced into the stratosphere can destroy about 1012 to 1013 ozone molecules during its residence time in the stratosphere.” This suggest that ozone depletion may be greater than estimated.
http://nap.edu/940
Other entrained reactive chemicals would further reduce the ozone levels.
https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf1983/baker83a.pdf
Even after washout of dust and sulfur from the upper atmosphere the ozone depletion should persist further damaging plant and animal life that survives the Nuclear Winter.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000205/full
(3) Soot (carbon black)
Toon et al. in 2007 pointed out that 5 Tg of soot (from 50 15kt nuclear weapons) would reduce the global average temperature by 1.25°C for 3–4 years and by more than 0.5°C for a decade. They also indicated that the carbon black is likely to become coated with sulfates, organics, and other non-absorbing materials, which could act as lenses, refracting light onto the carbon black. This effect might increase absorption by ∼50%, leading to potentially greater impacts than those we modeled. Most of the sulfates will be washed out in a couple of years as is it is hydrophilic. Unfortunately, carbon black will remain in the upper atmosphere for many years as it is hydrophobic and thus will be resistant to nucleation with ice.
http://web.kaust.edu.sa/faculty/GeorgiyStenchikov/nwinter ToonAcp-7-1973-2007.pdf
This study considered only a nuclear exchange of about 750 kilotons (TNT equivalent) when a full scale nuclear exchange would yield over 5,000-6,000 times this amount of carbon black generated. NEEDLESS TO SAY THE GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WILL BE FAR BELOW FREEZING FOR MORE THAN A DECADE.
(4) Dust+radiation
Dust entrained in the upper atmosphere would be highly variable depending on the megatonnage of air vs surface blasts in a nuclear exchange. As far as I know no one has analyzed the effects of a nuclear war on dust contribution to the upper atmosphere. Needless to say any dust would contribute to further reduction of light to the earth’s surface.
Radiation would be the least of the worries for those who survived the global cooling from Nuclear Winter. A fairly complete accounting of the radiological effect of nuclear war can be found at:
https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/effects/eonw_9.pdf
A portion of the nuclear weapon targets are hardened facilities where a ground blast would be employed. Some of these are nuclear weapons facilities (naval bases, etc) containing considerable nuclear materials.
Other sites, include Hanford spent fuel storage and nuclear waste tanks (65 million gallons of high level nuclear waste), plutonium storage facilities and with the 4,000 spent fuel ponds on the planet cumulatively represent the radiation of over 60,000,000 Hiroshima sized bombs if targeted. Many of the fuel cooling ponds will boil dry once the reactors either go critical or longer supply cool water to the ponds. The fuel will melt along with the cladding and a portion of this material will become airborne contaminating the local area creating a dead zone.
Military reactors on ships and submarines are of particular concern as they are primary targets and the fuel is metallic uranium which is not replaced during the life-cycle of the vessel. Such fuel is referred to as high burnout fuel (see ORIGIN code for more details) and has considerably higher concentration of hot isotopes such as Cs137 and Sr90 than commercial spent fuel.
(5) Carbon dioxide
The resulting firestorms from nuclear detonations would be dependent on other climate factors and have not been modeled as far as I know. While not a factor in global cooling, the enhanced carbon dioxide levels will add to global warming once carbon black, sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen are washed out of the atmosphere. The elevated carbon dioxide will cause a rapid surface heating below 10,000 ft and a cooling above 10,000 ft. due the adsorption spectrum of carbon dioxide
For those interested in further reading, a Federation of American Scientists review contains a summary of the more recent peer-reviewed studies on nuclear winter (which US leadership has decided to ignore or reject), see “Turning a Blind Eye Towards Armageddon — US Leaders Reject Nuclear Winter Studies”
https://fas.org/2017/01/turning-a-blind-eye-towards-armageddon-u-s-leaders-reject-nuclear-winter-studies/
@ Anonymous
_ ” angela merkel , you are … ” …
What if ,slightly extended , comparable lists ..like…
Angela Merkel , daughter of Adolf Hitler , you failed your father ,
Like Adolf Hitler failed his Rothschild father ,…
Like Napoleon failed his father…
Like many children that failed their fathers…against one , same opponent.
So , it seems that in Rusia sons were honouring their fathers ,
and sons honouring their fathers ,..line of fathers line of sons. Different approach.
So it seems that those line of fathers are important.
And mother also , Mother Rusia .
Difference with genes. Difference with faith. Differnce that caused wars.
Whats good , wahats evil.
…
@ Anonymous
_ “. because leadership of US and UK are insane ” …
What if they are not lidership ? And ,
What if they are not insane ?
So , we may asume they are just followng orders ,
instructions from levels above them ?
( there is “City of London ” , inside ordinary , town London ,
inside kingdom of england.
And that Queen of Engĺand can not enter that ” City ” , if they do not ask her , or if she does not ask them in advance _ to announse her wish to visit them.
When they allow her to come , she comes , plainly clothed , and bows her head before them.
And that they are on raised platform to tell her that they are above her.
Above Queen of England ).
But it seems to be they are very clever , very obediant one.
Nobody said that french Markon is stupid.
No very clever one , but obedient to his , Rotschild masters ,
and that Rotschilds , also clever ones , are also obediant to their masters.
So they are just obediant servants to their masters , ordering them what to do.
Although maybe some of them would like not to do it ,
But who asks them. They are to serve.
Agree with you. The “Masters” , as you call them, have a very ancient lineage. Way back and before the birth of Our Lord Jesus. In Saint John’s Apocalypse they are called ” The Synagogue of Satan” .” They” have been doing a very fine job.
all of the nuclear bombs in the world are insufficient to melt the Antarctic ice caps.
US war plans don’t include attacks on US soil. The plans are for the wars to be fought Over There.
As a Rand Corp. plan put it….”However, even under such desperate conditions, the resort to nuclear weapons would not be China’s only option: It could instead accept defeat.”
We are the Clueless, led by the Insane, stumbling into Oblivion for the profits of the Greedy.
And to pretend that the knowledge of the human race can be hoarded for the benefit of only a few? Outrageous. https://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2019/01/intellectual-property-and-war-on-china.html
This is both an extensive and a mild compassionate description of the aftermath fm a nuclear attack on the US of A.
It does not say nothing on submarine lauched nuke torpedoes on the ports of the US: five or six of them will render the ports, their cities and their entire regions useless for decades. Does not say on the canadian aftermath: since 70% of canadian population lives in a 160 km wide land stripe from the us border. How about one or two 50 megaton bombs in the Yellowstone core thermal steam fountains enough to perforate a 50 m hole and release steam in incalculable volumes into the air? which in turn could cause a nuclear winter? What if the enemy chooses to send first ultrasonic missiles to a dozen electric power sources, thus cutting off their response abilities?
I am totally sure that the late extension of american threats up to russian borders and the proposed retreat from the INF treaty will produce a deeper arms effort in Moscow and further sophistication steps in Moscow computerized nuclear reaction plans.
Phillyguy’s probably being rather moderate, taken altogether his essay sounds like the watered-down draft, and there are numbers one might quibble about too. Nevertheless, his essay is true.
This general truth begs a question of two… Is the deepstate insane? If not, if they believe this is going to work, what’s the goal? I mean, yes, the world can be ruined…how does this seem “good” to “our elite”?
Some speculate that the idea is to provoke a war that can be blamed on “the enemy” while depopulating the world, or at least Die Heimat (we never heard ’em say “Homeland” until the coup of 200, eh?) with the idea that they themselves will then rule over vast estates and servile slaves.
There’s a story going around that USSR had on the occasion of Able-archer (1983) at least one state-side sapper team that was in position to liquidate Andrews AFB. They were, presumably, called off. You know how a sapper team could do that, there’s one way, so you can safely guess…
VVP said, loud and clear, if a fight becomes inevitable…
Bet on it. He’s not a bluffer. His “weapon” is straight talk and straight law and lawful actions…and the war has long ago “authorized” pre-emptive attack…
At Plum Island the electrical grid is isolated and last Summer they were war-gaming a cold “black” -re-start of the power grid… In three weeks without electric power millions would be dead already and re-start probably quite impossible, except for some local isolated spots, and if, say, a gadget detonated at 50 miles up over, say Kansas…pretty much every transformer in 1000 miles would be ruined. These are hand made purpose built, and few spares exist. And I got that news straight from a nuclear boffin at Cal-tech. And the effectiveness can be improved by doping the upper atmosphere. And it may be possible to detonated at counterpoise locus, ie about the opposite spot on the globe…think about the wave energy – it spreads out, then re-concentrates at counterpoise. What’s the place opposite Kansas? Yes, that’s it…
PossibleUse searchwords set > “plum island power grid” “Real-world scenarios of power grids being crippled by hackers aren’t purely hypothetical: the Ukrainian power grid was attacked in December 2015, affecting 20 substations and leaving about 230,000 people without electricity for hours”
There’s plenty of evidence as to what “they” plan..
If people get too fractious, the nazis may black out the Country, thus killing much of their “own” people, the proles and solving much of “their” problem – us. Similarly, if properly curated, Russia may have to do the thing for them, though one assumes it would be more precise and do capitol ships first.
If it happens we’ll never know how. We’ll be busy either dying or rooting ’round for the stuff we wish we had, water, food, firewood, and all that…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24VOo7-ctKU (big muddy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqiblXFlZuk (so long, it’s been good ta know ya)
We ain’t dead yet. Pray for Peace (and do not help “them”)!
Amen to that
Just one 5 megaton warhead fired down the throat of the Yellowstone Caldera.
Adios Amigos.
US society will not be able to survive a financial crash, let alone a nuclear attack. The US already has one civil war behind it. A financial crash might not lead to a new civil war, but it will almost certainly contribute to the break up of the US, which I think is almost certainly inevitable.
When it comes to a possible nuclear confrontation, the chief problem will be food. The bulk of the US population lives either in big cities, or in small towns. Only about 2 % of the native population is engaged in agriculture (migrant workers excluded). This means only about 2 % of the population knows how to grow food, which is a dangerous situation. Worse, I have been reading articles that US agriculture (farms) are in decline. I am not sure how accurate this is, but any real decline can only worsen the situation.
The worst enemy to the people in the US is it’s own elite, who compromise less than half of 1 % of the entire population. To the elite the United States is simply the place where they live, and to which they own no loyalty. Their loyalty is to their money. For years the elite has been buying up real estate outside the US, preparing to flee.
Trump may be trying to curtail the power of the elite, or else he is pretending to be. However, if someone in the US does not really curtail the feudal mentality of the US elite, then this very same elite will be the ruin of the US, one way or another.
Many of this elite have acquired property and bolt holes in New Zealand, which they think will be safe.
There is a school of thought amongst them that a world population reduced to 500 million would be ideal. This would give them all the personal trainers, relationship consultants, personal spiritual advisors, hairdressers, servants and sex slaves they need.
There was actually a conference of these people recently in London.
Among the topics discussed was how to ensure the continued loyalty of bodyguards when money became worthless. One proposal was to keep these people obedient by controlling food stores, or possibly fitting them with shock collars. The feasibility of replacing human bodyguards with robots was also discussed.
It’s nice to know that our billionaire friends have given this such thought.
The idea of nuking the US seems rather justified. In the unforgettable words of Bill Kristol:
”What’s the good of nuclear weapons if you can’t use them?”
Precisely.
Why the US? Why not the fake “Middle Eastern” country that controls the US government?!… As far as the criminal history goes, Mossad’s fingerprints can be found on just about every international crime since its inception. They should go first, then humanity can recover.
Too many people in USA still see themselves as Hegemon and that Nuclear War is winnable for them. But they are certainly no Hegemon now, and could not even beat Iran never mind Russia….
The USA period of Hegemony was a very short one in historic terms- we can say 1991 (fall of USSR, Capitalist wave) -2014 (return of Crimea, Chinese as # economy) was the period of imperial tyranny of world affairs. During Cold War, the USA and its closest allies UK, West Germany, Canada and Israel were vastly out numbered by Communist, Non-Aligned and anti-Western governments. Imperial media has always obscured this fact. France, Austria, Skandinavia and Italy for example in Cold War all had a massive Communist oriented, anti USA sentiment, even if they were ruled at times by puppets of USA. In a nuclear war they would have defected very quicky to Eastern side.
Remember that USA, like its predecessor as Hegemon, the British Empire, which it resembles in almost every way, did NOT earn its position as hegemon, it very ‘fortunately’ (actually intentionally) gained its power after a period of chaos in which its main rivals fought each other . They played an extremly cunning came of Divide and Rule, brutally effective and Machiavelian. The British Islands were a backwards feudal monarchy on the edge of Europe, but in early 1800s the Napoleonic Wars divided Continental Europe, caused mass destruction and left the British as the only stable force that had not been torn apart by war. From this position they could dominate the Oceans as Global Pirates, plundering the world from 1815-1914.
USA, this hyperconservative state of simple Farmers and Christian Zionists along with exiled European Bankers, isolated from all the continents, did same thing, Divide and Rule, giving loans to Hitler, to Mussolini, and empires of France and Britain, then fought Nazi’s once USSR did the hard work and west Europeans were suffiecently worn down to destroy themselves forever, then made sure they were there at the end to inflict the fatal blows and claim the victory and re organisation of Europe on their terms. Then the IMF, World Bank, UN and the Global Media were created as the tools of this new Hegemon. The Nuclear Bomb was intended as the ultimate act of terror to intimidate the rest of the world, yet, did it work even then? After the first bomb, the Japanese showed no sign of surrender even though it was a completely new and horrific weapon they could not defend against. It was only after the surrounding of the oceans, rumor of chemical weapons and the threat of Soviet invasion of Sapporo that made them surrender.
Russians and Chinese do not seem scared of USA threats because they know they are empty. The latest Divide and Rule game was to get Russia and the Muslim world to fight each other in 1990s and then split Russia up- it failed spectacularly, and Russia is now the Peace Broker of the Middle East. Hope is not lost. Trump has destroyed the Republican Zionist party from inside and any hope of Hispanic or Blacks voting for them is gone. Right now it could seem that the anti war oriented Ocasio-Cortes, Sanders or Gabbard are most likely candidates for next President and the anti-Zionist, USSR supporter Corbyn could soon be leader in UK. Netanyahu is now seen as a corrupt criminal even by other Zionists. Interesting times for the Empire.
i like your analysis
“The British Islands were a backwards feudal monarchy on the edge of Europe, but in early 1800s the Napoleonic Wars divided Continental Europe, caused mass destruction and left the British as the only stable force that had not been torn apart by war.”
Is that the backwards monarchy that gave you the industrial revolution?
@ Steve
_ “… is that the backward monarchy that gave you the industrial revolution ? ” …
Industrial revolution , with all those inventions that followed
do not necessarilly mean that they brought hapiness and wellness to mankind.
Look side affects of industrial revolution ! …
Enormous poisoning of earth , air , rivers , waters , oceans …
Everything is poisoned by those so called ” positive inventions ”
meant to do good to mankind.
But , it turned out to be opposite.
It all harmed mankind to innumeruable measure.
If nukes , also inventions of industrisial revolution , do not destroy mankind ,
than other hundreds oh thousands poisonous chemicsls man invented , will do.
Either nukes , or nonnuclear inventions , could destroy mankind.
At the first begining of industrial revolution , when steam engine was invented ,
there was an invention of steam locomotive , begining of train , railways.
Locomotive was able to achieve fantastic speed of 5 km/h. Imagine !
And there were men who said : It is end of world starting !
Yes , by 5 km/h !
Progresive thinkers laughed ! There are those afraid of speed ! Progress !
But where we are now ?
With train speed 500 km/h ? With airplanes speed 3.500 km/h ?
Did those inventions bring happyness to mankind ?
That plane with speeds 3.500 km/h can carry nukes , and kill milions people !
Since , first and foremost , all those inventions were used in making tools for wars.
Hardware for warware.
Than , what was leftover , could be used in civillian use.
Best scientists for military research. Most money for military research.
GMO food that is invented to make men sterile , and decrease mankind ! Help?
Herbicides , pesticides , poisoning soils , earth , rivers , lakes , ocean ! Help ?
There was inventor who invented three inventions , to help mankind !
First , he invented adding lead to gasoline , for better engine combustion ?
And how that addition of lead poisoned air ! Men wearing gas_masks in city !
Second , he invented _ tch _ or so name chemical , as addition to refrigerter cooler.
And that gas used in aerosol can sprays. Favourite in cosmetics and everywhere.
And leaking of that gas caused creating ozone holes in earth atmosphere.
That let unfiltered cosmic radiation reach earth surface. Greenhouse effect.
Third his invention , i hapilly forgot. So he was better not being borned.
And there are hundreds of thousands such inventions , chemiçals , poisons.
Farmaceutical revolution and thousands of deadly drugs. For healing ?
Problem is that those chemical inventions made by man , are not recyclable.
They can last hundreds , or thousand years , poisonig everything around.
Pvc bags so favourite in supermarkets , are found at deepest depths of ocean.
Everything God made is perfectly recyclable.
In chains of reactions of decomposition , until simplest form is reached ,
and than starts use of those compounds in some new form. New life.
Clean , simple , ecological .
Made by God . !
Created by God !
And that is difference between creation and invention.
Between cosmic evolution and industrial revolution.
Anyone who thinks of invading Russia is not just mad, but utterly babbling mad.
Charles XII, Napoleon and Hitler were not amateurs, and they commanded some of the very best fighting forces ever deployed. But none of them ever stood a chance – the only question was whether any of the invaders would survive to see his home again.
Russia is immense, and has a lot of extremely inhospitable territory plus some very inclement weather – in summer as well as winter. It also has potentially vast reserves of manpower (and womanpower, and if necessary childpower).
But none of that would really be needed. The weapons the RF has today would guarantee annihilation for any foreign force to cross its borders – if they could even do that. Enemy ships would have no chance of survival for hundreds of miles offshore, and enemy aircraft little better. Missiles might get through, but that would lead to a thermonuclear exchange which no one would win.
As Bertrand Russell wisely remarked, “War doesn’t show who’s right – only who’s left”. Next time there will be no one left.
None of the world’s major powers has the capability of invading and conquering any of the others.
American had a peak of something like 120,000 troops in Iraq trying to occupy and control a population of about 20 million or so. And that was only with the Sunni third of the population actively resisting and with the Kurds as willing collaborators.
After thinking about that, an invasion and occupation of Russia is a ludicrous notion. Same the other way around. Both nations are too proud to submit to an occupation, and neither can create a large enough force to even try it against a proud people wiling to resist by any means. And above, some other commenters referred to the defeat of China. I’m trying to picture America invading and occupying a billion Chinese. That isn’t going to work.
Just perhaps, one side might defeat the military of the other, and just maybe the world doesn’t end in a nuclear war. But actually going in and establishing a government that rules over any of the world powers is not going to happen. Nobody has the force to do so. So, just if by some miracle they fight a war that doesn’t go nuclear, at the very best they would set back the military and industry of another country for a bit. But they aren’t going to occupy it and they aren’t going to control it and the absolutely certain result of such a victory would be that the defeated power would eventually rebound and rebuild and they will hate the guts of the power that attacked them.
Thus, as WW2 followed WW1, WW3 would be followed by WW4 and WW5 and WW6 and that goes on until either someone goes nuclear and creates hell on earth or people have enough sense to listen to the Son of God and love their enemies to end such madness.
Hence the “Coalition of the Willing”. Remember? You always bring your vassals along and use them as cannon fodder. Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
Coalition had 956,600, including 700,000 US troops against Iraq’s 650,000 soldiers. It took US months preparing for this attack. So, your numbers need revising.
Others did it as well. Napoleon had 250,000+ Poles (called Polish Legions). He used them to conquer Spain before using them in Russia. Hitler had Italians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Hungarians and other Germanic people. Turkey while quietly supporting Germans officially stayed out of it.
America’s agenda is not necessarily direct occupation.
The USA’s agenda is to sow chaos and destabilization in a targeted nation in order to force it to obey the American world dictatorship…. I mean… liberal democratic world order.
This is exactly what the United States is doing throughout Eurasia–and indeed in Africa and Latin America.
America is the Empire of Chaos.
in a limited nuclear fight us will
It is also worth recalling that over the past few months, various US politicians and public figures have threatened (1) to impose a naval blockade on Russia, and (2) to bomb Russia to destroy its nuclear weapons. This comes in the context of the continuing aggressive military encirclement of Russia, extensive and protracted efforts and openly expressed intentions to destroy its economy through sanctions, speculative attacks on its currency, and the coordinated manipulation of energy prices, actual attempts to overthrow the Russian government through subversion, terrorism and regime change, lengthy and ongoing campaigns of vilification and propaganda, and wide ranging attacks on Russian diplomats, sport, businessmen and ordinary citizens. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Russian General Staff has come to the conclusion that all this is a preparation for war which is now inevitable.
Much the same could be said of US activities in the South China Sea, escalating economic warfare against China, and the targeting of Chinese officials, military officers, business people and ordinary citizens. Iran, Venezuela, DPRK and other countries are subjected to threats of invasion, economic strangulation and regime change virtually on a daily basis. 40% of humanity is now subject to US economic warfare. It is difficult to see how war on an unprecedented scale can possibly be avoided for much longer.
Many people seem to take comfort in the thought that “..even they wouldn’t be crazy enough to do this……….” but such faith may be misplaced. At the time of Cuba in 1962, both leaders had recent personal experience of war. Khruschev had fought at Stalingrad. Kennedy had a torpedo boat cut in half underneath him in the Pacific. The current crop of western leaders, Merkel, May, Macron, Juncker, Trudeau, Trump, are the worst in its history. Arrogant, venal, corrupt, deluded, ideologically driven and irredeemably ignorant. Western policy and foreign policy adventures over the past 30 years have formed one long sorry catalogue of disasters and catastrophes, with no positive achievements whatsoever.
These people believe their own propaganda. Putin is a crude kleptocratic thug who murders people purely for the pleasure of it. The Russian armed forces and the Russian economy are a joke. The Russian people are yearning to overthrow their hated dictator and hand over their natural resources to Wall Street. Much else in a similar vein, and much else even more divorced from reality, can be read every day in their MSM mouthpieces like The Economist.
As regards actual war with Russia, in the 1960s the US operated a projected plan of attack which went by various names, including the Grand Attack Plan. This envisaged dropping 3,600 nuclear weapons with an average yield of 1.5 megatons on 2,100 targets in Russia, China and allied countries, including 900 cities. It was estimated that this would cause 285 million fatalities immediately, though a later estimate raised the figure to 1,000 million. Planners in effect “split the difference” and used 650 million as a working figure. Typically perhaps, no account was taken of Russian or Chinese retaliation, British and French nuclear arsenals, the thousands of tactical nuclear weapons, chemical, biological and conventional weapons, or a possible nuclear winter leading to the extinction of humans and all large creatures.
Populations seem to have lost their fear of nuclear war as a real possibility. It has been realistically projected that a 30-50-20 rule would apply. 30% of a target population would perish in the first day or so of an attack. Another 50% would die in the first 6 weeks or so. Everything required to sustain life would have been destroyed. No electricity grid, no fuel supplies of any description. No clean water or sanitation. No medical facilities of even the most basic type. No transport system. No roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, ports or airports. No agriculture. No industry or commerce. 20% might survive beyond these first few weeks, but most of these would succumb to starvation, disease, exposure, radiation and chaotic lawlessness and disorder within the first two years.
Absent a nuclear winter, some communities might survive for a protracted period at a very low level of subsistence. Some have suggested that it would be “back to the Middle Ages,” but this is probably way too optimistic. Medieval societies were quite sophisticated. They built magnificent cathedrals and castles. They had extensive trade networks. Their people had extensive agricultural knowledge and trade and craft skills that have been long forgotten. Such things would be way beyond the capacity of surviving human communities. It would be more like the Stone Age enhanced by a few surviving relics of modern civilisation like metal tools.
Absent a nuclear winter
The 30-50-20 rule is a good way of looking at the nuclear war casualties, however, most Western military leaders believe that nuclear war is survivable with just a few hundred million dead. The also do not recognize that Nuclear Winter would occur as Dr. Teller told them it was not true.
Given Nuclear Winter here are some other details -sorry about repeating many of your great points. Initial “survivors” must also consider the following secondary impacts from a full scale nuclear war:
Lack of electrical systems and electronics
Nuclear detonations at high altitudes would result in massive electromagnetic pulses which would wipe out the electrical grids and any unshielded electronics. The lack of communication is particularly disturbing to people immersed in and in many cases addicted to the electronic media systems. Many people would go crazy not knowing what is happening to their family and friends are doing and what to do next.
(b) Warbands
Once stocks of food are depleted widespread famine would occur. Famine would happen much earlier if a nuclear war occurred prior to harvest time.
Following the nuclear war the initial survivors will have to contend with what the great historian Arnold Toynbee called war bands. Such bands, much like in the movie “The Road”, will attempt to scavenge for food, clothing and other items from those who cannot protect themselves. Your neighbors will even attack if they think you have resources or break in to gather resources if they think you are dead.
(c) Water shortages
Subfreezing temperature over a decade due to a twilight conditions will result in deep freezing of surface fresh water, including rivers. Survivors will either have to have a hand pump, or have a pump in a Faraday cage along with fuel, and a deep well in order to acquire fresh water. Otherwise, chipping ice and melting it over fire will be exhausting and will result in additional long term radiation exposure.
(d) Disease
Those who survive the deep freeze will have to savage food from nearby locations where the occupants have died of disease or freezing. As the temperature return to “normal” the billions of human corpses as well as that of the domestic animals and wildlife will thaw out. Those who survived the initial nuclear war will have produced massive quantities of feces that will also thaw out (stock up in toilet paper now). Cumulatively, this rotting organic matter will likely cause a public health crisis and perhaps a pandemic among the survivors of the Nuclear Winter..
(e) Long term radiation exposure
Those who survive will likely have full chemical biological and radiological protection and can survive on stored food for some time. Ultimately, they will have to grow crops to survive into the future. Those who have the skills and seeds to grow crops will have to contend with exposure to excess levels of long lived radioisotopes such as cesium, strontium and uranium which will result in higher levels of cancer for many decades.
(f) Medical care and chemical effects
The free book “Medical Implications of Nuclear War” goes into further details of the medical issues resulting from nuclear war and the aftermath. http://nap.edu/940
Many initial survivors would be subject to radiation poisoning, radiation and thermal burns from firestorms and blast injuries from overpressure for which medical care and supplies would not be available leading to excessive death rates. Theodore Postol estimates that “firestorms triggered by nuclear explosions would kill two to four times as many people in or near cities than have been predicted by standard government studies.”
Investigators from Brown University pointed out that “high levels of ionizing and ultraviolet radiation, burns (including blindness) and physical trauma, malnutrition, and psychological stress impairs the cell-mediated immune capability of a great many survivors, making them likely to succumb to diseases such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, and cancer.”
http://nap.edu/940
Initial “survivors” would also be subject to increased cancer risk due to deposition of carcinogens such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos, dioxin (e.g. TCDD) and a wide array of polyaromatic organics.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219160/
A lack of medical facilities, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and doctors will also make survival a game of chance with many dying due to routine injuries, infections and even diseases such as appendicitis and gall bladder ruptures.
(g) Acid rain
After a decade or so, the washout of nuclear wastes from the atmosphere will result in wide-scale acid rain due to sulfuric acid and nitric acid atmospheric washout. This acidification will further weaken plants that survived as well as reduce biomass (food) available to the survivors.
The ultimate tragedy for humans following a nuclear war is that, unlike past wars, there will be no full recovery from the next one. We humans love our belief systems and fallacies, and those in power are unaware that rebuilding takes energy and that net energy per capita is set to begin a very long, slow decline. Modern civilization is fossil fuel based and if there is no energy there is no rebuilding. See the vast literature on oil resource depletion, technology required for oil extraction and declining Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERORI) for further details.
I once proposed to Dr Toon in the mid 1990s that the best nuclear war prevention strategy is to place nuclear weapons in all major population centers as a reminder of the threat of nuclear war. Such a strategy would also prevent a first strike from being considered, knowing that most of your population would die a quick death and the aggressor’s population would face a far more painful slow death in a Nuclear Winter. Perhaps then, people would recognize the real danger of such a war.
A better question to examine would be what is happening to those nations that America is actually raping, exploiting, invading, balkanizing, regime changing, or bombing back to the Stone Age?
According to the recent Brown University “Cost of War” study, the United States has directly caused the deaths of half a million people through its wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan alone. The number of indirect deaths caused by America’s wars of aggression likely runs into the millions. These numbers do not address America’s proxy wars against Syria, the bombing of Libya, or its sponsorship of the war on Yemen.
Study Shows US Has Caused the Death of Millions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
https://blackagendareport.com/study-shows-us-has-caused-death-millions-iraq-afghanistan-and-pakistan
So, to be blunt, why should non-North Americans give a rat’s ass about the hypothetical consequences of nuclear war on US society.
America will reap in blood what it has sown around the world.
A nation like the USA whose wealth and economic way of life are based on war, ultimately will have war rained on their heads–and deservedly so.
Exactly. If anything, a nuclear strike upon the US would mean fewer Exceptionals and Indispensables for the rest of us to put up with.
Perhaps, scientific application of radiation in certain novel and experimental combinations of the necessary global dosages, will facilitate the beneficial mutagenesis of our collective chromosomal blueprints; this will possibly allow our now latent evolutionary potential to “uncork”, and re-gestate: the societal biogenomic repression of heretofore natural genetic progress, by detrimental class-consciousness, and the consequenting false-bias selection behaviors, will be irrevocably overthrown; finally nature will run free as was intended, and “homo sapient solipsist” will reverberate with the energy of a million crashing waterfalls — as it attempts to swim uphill in a great orgasmic rush of revolutionary salmon spawning.
That was a mail I received shortly after the event
A friend just posted an interesting article about the rice paddies in Fukushima.
In the natural farming methods used area, there was no radio active substances found
as opposed to the nearby path, which is 1 m away recorded high.
The dame happened after Chernobyl organic farms in Austria were not affected. I heard from “people” that even close to Chernobyl organic gardens ere safe . I do not now remember the details so this is between ()
Also, people had been drinking huge amount of sake prior to the Hiroshima bomb attack,
they weren’t affected and survived even though they were only 1km away because of the work of microorganism. How amazing it is.
Micro organisms have been identified on nuclear wastes ( personal communication from Russian ex USSR military officer ) All this does not mean that there will be no enormous disasters of the worst kind.( what about earthquakes volcano explosions etc) It only means the planet will recover but we may not be part of it
@ bernie
_ ” a friend just posted interesting article ” …
Interesting indeed. Wishfull. Hopefull.
Would you go and live near fukushima plant ?
And set organic garden there ?
Tomatoes , potatoes raised on uranium poison ?
Uranium based organic garden ? New kind. Hopefull.
Amount of radiation at fukushima is not measurable.
Instrument can not measure.
And humans uncapable to stop poisoning.
For thousand years.
As scientists calculated and measured.
And some e_mail says they do not know their knowledge.
They are wrong . live freely in contaminated area ?
Have you heard for term ” half life ” ?
Time needed to decrease amount of radiation by half.
Measured in thousands of yeras.
_ ” micro organisms have been identified on nuclear wastes ” …
That is just research.
Scientist searching for soulution what to do with nuclear waste.
As each year there will be more and more
piles of thousand years lasting nuclear waste.
What was earlier practice ?
You load nuclear waste on ship , and when ship reach middle of ocean ,
some great ” incident ” ” happen ” , and ship sinks down into sea.
No ship , no waste. But they can not repeat it quite often.
_ ” it only means planet will recover ” …
Yes , planet could recover. In thousands and thousands years recovery..
But , in meantime humankind may dissapear from planet.
And cocroaches will be new / old inhabitants of planet , Moter Earth.
there is absolutely no need to go nuclear against US. Knocking out a few transformer stations can easily bring the electrical system down, yet keep all production facilities intact. In last 30 years, we had two blackouts on the East coast, caused by rather innocent accidental misshandling of the grid – somebody turned on or off a wrong switch and the whole system stopped working. Generators were not damaged, the grid was intact. Only, the load went down too quick, and genarating stations begun to shut down due to laws of physics – electricity cannot be produced and not used, and vice versa. That is a kind of catch 22 situation. Consumers want to hook up to the grid again, but teher is no juice flowing, and the juice cannot flow without consumers. No signicficant destruction of any kind. It took a week to bring it back to operation. What happens when grid collapse is caused by deliberate action, and blackout lasts say 3 weeks? We don’t want to know. actually we do know already – remeber New Orleans and that hurricane, then flooding in Texas just a year ago.
It is not Russian or Chinese nukes that threaten us It is our own ignorance that will do us.
@ Zagor
_ ” there is absolutelly no need to go nuclear ” …
_ ” knocking out a few transformer ” …
Yes , it is very nice idea … Clean job … No poisonous nuke war..no worries …
But nuke silos do not operate from power grid. They have their own…
And still there are deadly dangerous submarines left…
Submarines are greatest danger in nuclear war.
Unnoticable , deep down bellow surface.
And nuclear submarines are stil operational dangers in possible war.
Siloes are first targeted , aimed , and destroyed ,
but submarines are left to send their revenge…from very seashore of opponent…
I think Zagor is pointing out one instance of the vulnerability of the opponent.
Yes fireworks would continue even without power grid on multiple fronts, Dead Hand option anyone?
The point is that Western society gets noticeably derailed by outage of traffic light never mind anything more severe that that.
Paper tiger !?
@ S75ponny
_ ” one instance of vulnerabity of opponent ” …
Yes , there is instance of vulnerabity in mind of possible thinker about situation.
You are right.
But , there is also awarness of fragility , fragility of whole system of state.
Like fear of common citizen, for possible outcome , war…
And , even so , system handlers do think about war options. They like them.
So one possible conclusion could be , they do not care about those people.
They have their own sets of priorities , and orders to compile , regardless …
@бели орао збг
Thank you for discussion.
I am in agreement with exception to “there is also awarness of fragility , fragility of whole system of state”. I don’t see any evidence of (self) awareness it appears that ignorance and self proclaimed exceptionality is the norm.
Even a small portion of population which suspects a problem reacts irrationally just look at so called preppers.
I live in North America and I am saddened by the state of affairs. During 1st Cold War the fear drove masses to protest and get involved in peace movement, a movie such Day After had impact on everyone including presidents and sentiment gave us goodies such ballistic missile treaties which now are being wrecked. The movie Day After is now considered to be archaic and irrelevant.
I am repeating what was said before but once again “we (the west) live in glass castle while we are throwing rocks”
The west is walking into a well deserved nasty awakening, just saying.
@ S75ponny
_ question …of …fragility …
Well , those words i am writing are not native words of my language
, and besides i am not such a educated person. Just another concerned man.
What i was thinking about ” fragility ” , was something like this…
One person living in some village of usa , looks around him and notices signs of system in state of neglection. Homeless people , unemployed , roads in bad shape , railways under constant reconstruction ,…
And that person has some air base containing those silos around…
How he could not be afraid by such fragility ?
Is not it a state of living in glass castle ?
_ ” west is walking into a well deserved nasty awakening ,…
Suppose , as some example , we replace ” west ” , by ” airplane “… Small scale
And there is group of 330 people , like 330 milions , large scale.
And they gather from all posible sides of roads in nyc , and board that plane.
And plane crashes.
Many die , but some stay alive, that was their destiny.
So it may be destiny of west. Or some other country , or all of mankind.
And , there is one concerned man , thinking about his prospects to stay alive.
He senses fear …fragility …all world at edge of horrible war …
_ ” during 1st cold war ” …
World is in such state always , since begining of mankind ,
state of cold war never ended , even warm war , it is constantly present
But it is better called as war between good and evil.
That what is it about .
@бели орао збг
Sir, you have healthy world outlook and my respect.
Yes, Cold War is identified period of time. However underlying hostilities are with humanity for long time as you mentioned and certainly the beginning of it was in biblical times shortly after Adam & Eve.
Over and out
For those of you who are interested, and especially for the US visitors/readers:
A nuclear attack simulation on the US:
https://www.nuclearwarmap.com/
Select large scale attack simulator……once loaded press the red “launch” button.
FEMA nuclear targets by US state:
http://www.ki4u.com/webpal/d_resources/list.htm
Nuclear attack planning 1990 (from Soviet attack):
https://fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/napb-90/
List of secondary and tertiary targets (a bit out-dated):
http://www.survivalring.org/community/library/us-nuclear-targets/
Finally, US nuclear war plan on Russia, China, etc.:
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/us-nuclear-war-plan-report.pdf
https://www.nrdc.org/resources/us-nuclear-war-plan-time-change
Not that you would want to survive any of this living in the Northern Hemisphere, but my money is on more Russians and/or Chinese surviving than US Americans (as the Saker calls them).
Good luck!
There will be no nuclear winter any time soon. The outcome of the next Global war was decided by proxy in Syria. Syria & Iran (also Hezbollah) & Russia won. Israel, Saudi, UAE, FUKUS (also NATO) lost.
A2/AD S-300 & Pantsyr wins
F-35 vs S-35 the jury is out but looks like S35 orders are increasing
F-22/F-35 Stealth vs Russian Cold Plasma low RCS ……anecdotal references suggest American pilots were surprised that Russian combat planes appeared out of the blue in their visual range but not anouncing their radar signatures….
Drone swarm tactics impact at Khmeimim AFB vs Russian A2/AD defenses ……seems Russians smarted from first episode that reportedly caught them partially with the pants down. Then it became routine for the Russians to take all of the drone swarm down with EW.
Prompt Global Strike? These are American plans but Russia is deploying Khinzal & Avangard soon.
CBG? the Poseidon weapon just unveiled can take care of coastal areas, hopefully naval not civilian targets and entire CBGs at Sea.
I think that means: “call off your dogs and cool down for while, emperor….have a cold beer!
@Sun Tzu,
With full respect, In you laudatory equation you fully missed a factor of demented one who is holding bundle of hand grenades in a ballroom full of some 200 people. This demented entity is closely watched by handful of humble guys while one of them is holding a straight jacket behind his back waiting for a right moment to slide it onto that demented one and benevolently hoping that few out of the crowd of 199 will help. Rest of the ballroom guests are bewildered and very silent.
PS; how’s weather in Eastern Zhou?
Laudatory? Lol I will tell you what is laudatory. China, India, Turkey going ahead with S-400 purchase in spite of sanctions and/or bribes to buy Patriots or THAAD. …..
For the more realistically minded, let’s recall the historical record:
First FUKUS TLAM attack against antique but somewhat modernized Syrian A2/AD performed rather poorly. Second larger FUKUS cruise missile attack faired worse when reportedly 70% of cruise missiles (of different vintages and makes) were downed by either EW or direct hits by Syrian A2/AD countermeasures.
It was embarrassing to see Mathis failed attempt to justify failure by lying with a straight face. The biggest lie was that all missiles hit their target. Thus, it follows that bizarrely they dropped dozens of missiles for the destruction of a single building.
Third, it is a known fact of the new normal that the vaunted IAF can not enter Syrian air space, even with its F-35, since a few Russian S300 sets were donated to Syria. IAF has tested for holes and openings and can’t find a hole in the Syrian A2/AD shield. IAF has had to lob low observable glide bombs from Lebanon’s air space and even these are taken out by Syrian air defenses.
Even more Laudatory is the parade of Pentagon Generals summoned by the US Congress to explain and confirm that there is nothing at present in the US Armament that can defeat the new generation of Hypersonic weapons named Kinzhal and Avangard and the nuclear propelled submarine drone named Poseidon.
Weather is fantastic, you ought to check it out!
Thanks for your contribution Sun Tzu.
Your assessment is correct and accurate however as I pointed earlier it doesn’t include important factor of a [caps on] demented maniac [caps off] who doesn’t really care about careful assessment as you presented.
Demented maniac has lots of his cronies cheering for him and they are giving high fives to each other and they are wallowing in their own fabricated truths and none of them really cares about reality.
The west is talking about winnable thermonuclear war or casual use of tactical nukes in even small conflicts such as Yemen. There are even reports on recent deployment of tactical nukes in Middle East. Is the pin pulled?
So, this is how close we are to full scale devastation. Also in your assessment other important factor is missing which is competence of nuclear forces in the west. It is easy to accidentally press red button while snorting cocaine.
I wish I could share your optimism with you but those additional factors I mentioned (and more) caution me not to.
As per weather we should enjoy it whether good or bad because soon we may have none.
Over and out
From today’s Global Times
‘China must have the ability to make rivals pay unbearable costs when the country is forced into offshore combat and also the unquestionable capability of strategic nuclear counterattack. This is the basis for the US to respect China’s core interests in the latter’s offshore waters, and China should not ever vacillate.’
‘ ….. also the unquestionable capability of strategic nuclear counterattack.’
I was too young to take in any discussion about the Cuban Crisis
Since then the talk of a nuclear option has never really surfaced
What scares me now, is that it is being openly discussed as an option
It seems to me that we are truly on the brink of a miss-judgement that will rapidly escalate
The movie ’37 Days’ is about the 37 days between the assassination of the Archduke and the start of WWI. Nobody could imagine the consequences of war on an industrial scale so it was seen as an option.
I fear the same is happening now.
There is no way of knowing the consequences of nuclear war.
Perhaps we are ‘sleep-walking’ into war again.
I wonder if there will be a future generation who will marvel at this generation’s stupidity if there is a nuclear war
“US corporate profits began to stagnate/decline, a consequence of increasing competition from rebuilt economies in Europe . . Japan and Korea . . ”
Forgive a slightly different insight regarding the decline of the US industrial advantage.
Prior to WWII American industrial scientists identified a pivotal weakness in industry, namely “top-down management.” Supposedly, all intelligence and drive was located at the top, with the bottom peopled by dumb / lazy slobs. This management paradigm held through the 1970s — as Germany / Taiwan / Japan et al took over in precision manufacturing e.g. office equipment, photography and autos.
What did Japan and the others do differently? In the aftermath of WWII, Japanese management suffered a major loss of prestige. Japanese industrial engineers began studying attentively the insights of American industrial scientists, such as Gorham and Deming, that industrial production is a network of individuals, each with particular expertise. The fundamental job of top management is to identify and coordinate such expertise. And Japan did precisely this ( using quality circles and such to ) produce excellent products that functioned better than those of their American competitors.
Rather than reform, US top managers closed plants and off-shored production, as they awarded themselves multi-millionaire salaries and bonuses. As the US economy weakened, these inept managers directed the US Business Roundtable and US Chamber of Commerce to push Capital Hill for an imperial foreign policy of grabbing the wealth of vassal nations.
I myself was instructed in Demming’s principles and protocols. They began (at a “US “Defense” (?) Contractor) and they began to work. Then “management” canceled the Policy…they evidently thought “TQM” was something like a lathe, some gadget they could use to control the workers.
Probably the company taught us TQM and Demming for two nested reasons, one, they could bill Uncle Same at cost-plus for the program of instruction and, two, the executives could get fat bribes from the sub-contractor that provided phony “experts” to teach us TQM and Demming. They got these “experts” for minimum wage on a temporary hire basis…
I even have one of their silly “certificates”, and a medal. You can imagine how proud I might be.
The correct term for “Defense Contractor” is “sutler” This has a negative connotation in American rhetoric circa 1880, and is far too honest a noun. Hence the euphemism “Defense Contractor”…
My deduction about why they did not adopt TQM? It interfered with looting…
Moral responsibility, humanitarianism, fear for our children . . . these are some common themes as to why one should face and confront the nuclear issue head-on . Is this realistic? Yes. No. Maybe.
Maybe there is a way to crawl back inside your mother’s womb, to be born again yesterday; but there isn’t a likely scenario that rids the planet of our own madnesses— save the one we have designed!
The makers and planners of the second world war, either by design or incidentally, made the bomb a fact to contend with. And it was then, three generations ago, that the citizens of the world had the time and space to act correctly; and that time is gone, and that particular space, in terms of human liberty and virtue, is gone too.
No, the nuclear reality is omnipresent and incontestable. Bombs do proliferate and abound and the nations have all prepared precisely on this point, that the earth is now massed and primed for detonating beyond present comprehension; and not in one or two conflicts only, but dozens at the very least. The stage is set, the weapons are at hand, all that lacks is the knock of death. The collapse of this world empire will, without doubt, unleash the greatest disasters in history. As to the question of the prelude to chaos . . . what advice can anyone pretend to give.
America is planning to overthrow Maduro before 2020.
Why?
America’s large oil company-ExxonMobil plans to drill and export oil from Guyana and the disputed Essqeuiba region by early 2020.
Henceforth, Exxon will increase exports of oil from Guyana to 800,000 bbl by 2025 and estimated to 2.5 to 5 million bbl by 2030. Venezuela will be replaced by Guyana as the major oil producer in South America.
However, Guyana only has 8 to 15 billion barrels of proven reserves, and before 2040, Exxon would have depleted 80% of the oil reserves.
Guyanese have told me that Jimmy Carter helped to rig the elections to install a pro-American and pro-British leader who acts as a proxy racist against nonwhites.
“Following Trump’s election, there has been a rise in racist, neo-Nazi groups as we saw in Charlottesville, VA (30).”
Yet there’s no mention in this article of the DOZENS of incidents of Establishment supported left-wing mob violence targeting Americans. The “left” IS the establishment but you people just don’t get it. Stuff like this is why this blog has no relevance in domestic American politics.
The use of the phrase “releasing highly radioactive uranium fuel assemblies into the environment” is not indicative of a particularly high level of expertise in nuclear matters.