The Second Apocalypse
Miscellaneous Chatter => General Misc. => Topic started by: Madness on August 17, 2017, 02:44:33 pm
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My finger searches for the pulse in odd places and so it was just recently I realized that people are actually worried about nuclear apocalypse.
I happen to think that Trump and the subsequent requisite media popularization of the words by the POTUS is more likely to prompt conflict than Kim - who probably would if he could but he can't. It seems likely that no matter which demagogue - in this instance, Trump - instigates Kim, North Korea is still steadily (kind of?) progressing towards nuclear capabilities.
Thoughts, SA noosphere?
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Unfortunately I think the response to being attacked is to retaliate, justified either preemptively or post-event.
I think in the grand scheme of apocalypse, the US comes out pretty well against NK. Mostly because they have fewer nukes than we have surface area. OTOH, the US has enough nukes to turn that entire country into glass and poison that entire countryside for forever.
But who knows. Maybe NK's allies, mainly China, decides they've had enough of that BS and they fire off too, in which case the world explodes and life recedes back into the seas until the radiation cools down ... or we just become Venus' twin.
At any rate, the media won't slow things down and bring to the table level-headed conversation. We seem to be operating at a pre-scientific level of thought, where emotions and 'feelings' are how we have decided to observe the world. Maybe if we could all just go back to the dark ages for a few millennium (with the help of Little Boy and his friends), things would come out better next time around ;) .
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The WWIV is not nuclear, and it is happening right now, in our very fucking countries.
Today at least 13 dead people in a terrorist attack in Barcelona, in a place where I've been lots of times and was bursting with tourists.
Sad. And we will not do anything to stop this fucking madness.
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I seem to have missed WW3 and WW4. Could you explain that a bit further?
And, sorry, but I don't think terrorism counts as a World War. Not to say it doesn't have an impact on events, in your country or others, but its not a world war.
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I seem to have missed WW3 and WW4. Could you explain that a bit further?
And, sorry, but I don't think terrorism counts as a World War.
WWIII is the Cold War for me.
We are actually in WWIV. Not an open traditional conflict, but a fucking war after all.
It is a war. And it has been for centuries, guerrilla is not war? Yes, it is. And terrorism is a elaborate lowcost form of guerrilla.
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At any rate, the media won't slow things down and bring to the table level-headed conversation. We seem to be operating at a pre-scientific level of thought, where emotions and 'feelings' are how we have decided to observe the world. Maybe if we could all just go back to the dark ages for a few millennium (with the help of Little Boy and his friends), things would come out better next time around ;) .
Lol, yeah, I tried to couch that sentiment the introductory sentences. It's a series of bureaucratic biases... POTUS isn't another celebrity whom they can ignore. Heaven forfend that the President of the fucking United States do something that isn't captured on video - and I don't mean this sarcastically, journalism would have no claim to the Fourth Estate otherwise, apt though ignoring him might be.
The WWIV is not nuclear, and it is happening right now, in our very fucking countries.
Today at least 13 dead people in a terrorist attack in Barcelona, in a place where I've been lots of times and was bursting with tourists.
Sad. And we will not do anything to stop this fucking madness.
Lol, Woden. I'm glad we're beginning to oscillate together.
I specifically considered WWW III/IV as the thread title and named it as I did for that consideration. I'd love to dissect the current worldwide conflicts with you, just not here ;).
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Sorry, I didn't know where to post this.
I am in fucking shock now. I have friends in that city, friends that live and work in the area of the attack. The videos of the attack are brutal. Sorry if I am too vehement about the matter but I am tired of this shit. I needed to share it with somebody, my apologies.
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Sorry, I didn't know where to post this.
I am in fucking shock now. I have friends in that city, friends that live and work in the area of the attack. The videos of the attack are brutal. Sorry if I am too vehement about the matter but I am tired of this shit. I needed to share it with somebody, my apologies.
I'll even make the thread for you, friend. I've known far too many people personally in my life that have experienced atrocity firsthand. It probably contributed to my adult intensity.
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Also, which attack are you talking about?
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Hey don't apologize. That's some serious shit. I was in about 4th grade when US had a major terrorist attack and I still remember how stunned people were.
I won't pretend like I can relate to whats happening, butI am very sorry you live so close to it.
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Also, which attack are you talking about?
This one:
https://elpais.com/ccaa/2017/08/17/catalunya/1502982885_564462.html
I will seach for international news about it. Here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40965581
Hopefully my friends are all well.
I don't live there, I live in the island of Mallorca (another spanish state so to say), but I've been in Barcelona many many times and I know pretty well the area of the attack. It could be far very worse. Lot of people there 24/7.
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Barcelona.
That's why I asked.
This trending use of vehicles as weapons is disturbing.
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Barcelona.
That's why I asked.
This trending use of vehicles as weapons is disturbing.
Here in Spain we had our share of terrorism - al least since I was born (ETA, etc).
But this kind of attack is specially sick.
It requires almost nothing, just a vehicle. It is cheap. And it is almost impossible of avoiding it.
The terrorists chose this street because is one of the main streets of Barcelona, it is always full of people, thousands walking there at every hour.
I'm afraid that we will see more attacks like this in Europe. Fucking sad.
Edited: it seems that at least one of the bastards is already arrested.
And the other one has been killed by the cops - good job.
The IS has claimed the attack.
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Thoughts, SA noosphere?
Very little more than brinksmanship, really. The NK nuclear program is designed to have the powers that be stay in power. Actually getting into a war is the literal end of that regime. So, they have to pretend to be willing to get into a war, but never actually ever fight one.
You win 100% of the fights you never get into. That's the point of the nuclear arsenal.
(Terror issues addressed in the other thread.)
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I totally agree. I think we won't see any nuke.
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Thoughts, SA noosphere?
Very little more than brinksmanship, really. The NK nuclear program is designed to have the powers that be stay in power. Actually getting into a war is the literal end of that regime. So, they have to pretend to be willing to get into a war, but never actually ever fight one.
You win 100% of the fights you never get into. That's the point of the nuclear arsenal.
(Terror issues addressed in the other thread.)
My only worry is that I have little faith in the leaders of either country to bail in this game of chicken. What happens when neither flinch and both go through? You end up with a lot of dead people, thats what. Some people would rather see the world burn than lose face.
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Thoughts, SA noosphere?
Very little more than brinksmanship, really. The NK nuclear program is designed to have the powers that be stay in power. Actually getting into a war is the literal end of that regime. So, they have to pretend to be willing to get into a war, but never actually ever fight one.
You win 100% of the fights you never get into. That's the point of the nuclear arsenal.
(Terror issues addressed in the other thread.)
My only worry is that I have little faith in the leaders of either country to bail in this game of chicken. What happens when neither flinch and both go through? You end up with a lot of dead people, thats what. Some people would rather see the world burn than lose face.
Fair, but for all the bluster, cowboy-ism, and machismo the fact of the matter is that both are actually extremely pragmatic. Not one actually wants to trade their elevated terrestrial status and worldly pleasures. Neither is suicidal, so we'll be fine.
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You don't have to be suicidal to be an idiot, but I largely agree. I'm not terribly worried.
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Anyway is Kim who have the all the odds to be obliterated if the war starts. Trump will be totally safe half the world away. So we have to wonder if the korean weirdo has suicidal tendencies to be sure that there will not be war.
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You don't have to be suicidal to be an idiot, but I largely agree. I'm not terribly worried.
But the entire point of NK having nuclear weapons is so that Kim can stay in power. Using them would assure his destruction, regardless of who he takes out. Whatever he would do, he would get obliterated in turn, invalidation the whole point of having the nuclear program in the first place.
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So says the logical mind with logical ends.
I'm not sure a child-emperor raised from birth as the divine ruler of the country/world/whatever would come to the same conclusion. "If I can't have it, no one can" seems closer to what might happen then anything more logical.
Just as Trump has advisors, I'm sure so does Kim, but how much they are able to disreguard and do as they please I don't have a clear understanding of.
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So says the logical mind with logical ends.
I'm not sure a child-emperor raised from birth as the divine ruler of the country/world/whatever would come to the same conclusion. "If I can't have it, no one can" seems closer to what might happen then anything more logical.
Just as Trump has advisors, I'm sure so does Kim, but how much they are able to disreguard and do as they please I don't have a clear understanding of.
Well, I don't know how logical anyone really is (including myself), but NK's procurement, posture, and "un-use" of a nuclear arsenal so far seems plausibly logical so far...
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John Oliver had a quality segment on Last Week Tonight. As he said, I think if - big if - Kim is a "rational agent," he's seen how Saddam and Gaddafi were taken out (actual complexities may differ) once they stopped pursuing their nuclear programs.
In fact, by the metric of conserving parochial cultures while establishing a nuclear energy program, Iran is almost the high water mark.
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Madness here is mate on another forum speaking about it 2weeks ago
"Of course NK should disarm... only a fool would say otherwise. I mean look how well it turned out for Libya and Gaddafi and Iraq and Saddam and Syria and Assad...
The world will be a safer place if NK dont have nuclear weapons. Riiiiight. Not for NK it won't."
Folk forget what happened to North Korea in living memory as well, it was bombed into tiny pieces, every city destroyed. Till there were no viable targets left.
Bombing of North Korea
The first major U.S. strategic bombing campaign against North Korea, begun in late July 1950, was conceived as similar to the major offensives of World War II.[305] On 12 August 1950, the U.S. Air Force dropped 625 tons of bombs on North Korea; two weeks later, the daily tonnage increased to some 800 tons.[306] Following the intervention of the Chinese in November, General MacArthur ordered increased bombing campaign on North Korea which included incendiary attacks against their arsenals and communications centers and especially against the "Korean end" of all the bridges across the Yalu River.[307] As with the aerial bombing campaigns over Germany and Japan in World War II, the nominal objective of the U.S. Air Force was to destroy North Korea's war infrastructure and shatter their morale. After MacArthur was removed as Supreme Commander in Korea in April 1951, his successors continued this policy and ultimately extended it to all of North Korea.[308] The U.S. dropped a total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, on Korea, more than during the whole Pacific campaign of World War II.[309][310]
Almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed as a result.[311][312] The war's highest-ranking U.S. POW, U.S. Major General William F. Dean,[313] reported that the majority of North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wasteland.[314][315] North Korean factories, schools, hospitals, and government offices were forced to move underground, and air defenses were "non-existent."[310] In November 1950, the North Korean leadership instructed their population to build dugouts and mud huts and to dig underground tunnels, in order to solve the acute housing problem.[316] U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay commented, "we went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too."[317] Pyongyang, which saw 75 percent of its area destroyed, was so devastated that bombing was halted as there were no longer any worthy targets.[318][319] On 28 November, Bomber Command reported on the campaign's progress: 95 percent of Manpojin was destroyed, along with 90 percent of Hoeryong, Namsi and Koindong, 85 percent of Chosan, 75 percent of both Sakchu and Huichon, and 20 percent of Uiju. According to USAF damage assessments, "eighteen of twenty-two major cities in North Korea had been at least half obliterated."[320] By the end of the campaign, US bombers had difficulty in finding targets and were reduced to bombing footbridges or jettisoning their bombs into the sea.[321]
As well as conventional bombing, the Communist side claimed that the U.S. used biological weapons.[322] These claims have been disputed; Conrad Crane asserts that while the U.S. worked towards developing chemical and biological weapons, the U.S. military "possessed neither the ability, nor the will", to use them in combat.[323] {/b]
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All good points, merchant.
Strange enough, I actually think Kim is more predictable than Trump is.
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The two of them walk on conditioned ground.