North Korea and Possible War

[barq2]

I'll chime in here quickly and keep it short. I vote we let Don and Kim in a UFC cage match type of fight and just let them hash it out. First to say uncle loses. Having to make humor out of this since the thought of nuclear war gives me the worst kind of anxiety ever. Mostly knowing our ICBM defense system is only 50% effective. I don't know about you but if 100 rockets are shot then 50 of them have a chance of causing damage. We will definitely will get the kill shot but they will wound us. So it's basically saying we would get shot in the knee at minimum. I know I wouldn't want to get shot period. The question is what do we do and are we unnecessarily provoking them to shoot first?

Haha! The cage fight really made me laugh :-) Not sure who'd win... Kim is much younger but not in good health.

If you live on mainland US soil I think you are safe. I agree that the defence system that shoots down missiles is imperfect. But then it is the equivalent of trying to shoot one bullet out the air with another!

It would be so obviously suicidal for North Korea to hit the USA, I just can't see it happening. Plus China is getting more actively involved. Their interests are different to the USA's, but if NK did something very stupid then they'd end up with a refugee crisis and then in the longer term a potentially re-united Korea, which means American military on their border. They don't like that idea, so there is a lot going on behind the scenes to pressure them into not firing more missiles.

That said, it would help if Trump stopped tweeting insults. What was it he called Kim, "little rocket man"? That's really not good because in NK Kim is an almost god-like figure, thus it is maximum disrespect and almost forces Kim to perform some show of strength. Obviously Kim is a horrible humanbeing, just look at what he has done to those who dare criticise him, but poking him really doesn't help.

The fact is that the majority of NK's military force is in the man-power. With their reservists they are the 4th largest army in the world, but for the most part they are very poorly equipped. The large army is a threat to South Korea, but really not to the USA as a country.

Jesus you have alot of knowledge, you must be in a war torn area ? If you don't mind me saying ,you seem to have a lot of knowledge about everyday ied's and radioactivity !

Thankfully not war torn, but I can see why you came to that conclusion! I know very little about conventional explosives, I know more about the nuclear stuff - but don't worry, I'm a pacifist! :-)

I'm not really on the inside, but I meet with people who are. Until the situation with North Korea the focus was far more on terrorists getting hold of radiative material and exploding it in a city - hence all the dirty bomb stuff I posted.

Now I deal more with human factors like mass panic, but it is still necessary to understand the nuclear physics to properly appraise a situation. So some of these things are more like psychological weapons. We can learn from situations where people have been freaking out about radiation readings 10x higher than background radiation. Obviously that's not great, but it isn't that serious either. Something like 170 counts per minute on a geiger counter sounds very scary.