the 'Hand from grave' deterrent

More commonly known as the 'Dead Hand' the nuclear fail safe deterrence system was put online around 1985, this was to save the Soviets from winning 'the' nuclear exchange between it and the western countries if all of its high command were to be killed in a decapitation strike.

It would respond with overwhelming force against the western nations countries, possibly all members of NATO, it was of course kept a closely guarded secret until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It's been theorized that if one side carried out a successful decapitation strike against the other it might have been able to severely hinder a quick and sustained response.

It's these simply facts kind of remind me of that line from Dr. Strangelove in the war room when talking about the fictional Soviet doomsday machine:

"Yes, but the ... whole point of the doomsday machine ... is lost ... if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"

The joke is that obviously if one had this kind of deterrent it should state just that fact to 'deter' their opponent from attempting a first strike in the first place!

the lethality of another Indo-Pakistan war

I actually (unlike nearly everything else) have no real opinion on the relationship between India and Pakistan, both sides are extremely biased towards the other and the decade old hatred doesn't seem to have thought neither side anything whatsoever!

Another Indo-Pakistani war in the near future would be particularly lethal and may be the first time to see nuclear weapons deployed on human beings in this century.

Many say that following the Kargil war (the last war fought between the two countries) that diplomatic relations are beginning to commence, but truth be told mutual suspicion of the other governs their relationship.



But the cost of a war if fought with no clear winner (and listening to both sides assessment it would be hard to determine just that), could result in the near annihilation of both.

Take the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980's as an example, Iran had an economic and arms embargo on it and when attacked by a massive Iraqi force it managed to push it back and fight a devastating war on the offensive against Iraq (which was being armed by 44 countries) resulting in well over 1,000,000 slaughtered and both countries heavily damaged economically.

But the military arsenals of both of those countries wasn't enough to fight a large scale precise war, for example the Iranian Air Force very seldom went on offensives since their jet fighters were such a high asset, the Iraqi Air Force at the time had to fight a very conventional war with older MiG's (with the exception of a few dozen Mirage F-1's).

The Pakistanis on the other hand sport a good few of the good old F-16's, while they have also ordered 250 JF-17 fighters, (an interesting development to watch), the Indians on the other hand have over one hundred Su-30's and 40 Mirage 2000's.

The Iraqi Scud missiles gave Iraq the ability to make the people of Tehran flock to the hills throughout the war with Iran, but as seen on their full long term use against Tel Aviv proved capable of "only" killing a small number of Israelis using conventional explosives.



The Pakistanis and the Indians however not only have over 60 nuclear warheads each but also nuclear missiles with a range of up to 2,500km to deliver them to each others cities, this gives them (unlike the Iraqis and the Iranians) the ability to instantly wipe out thousands of each others people.

What bugs me about this is the fact is that Iran doesn't have a single nuclear warhead and have been scrutinized by the same western governments that allowed and encouraged Pakistan to build up a hefty arsenal of its own only ten years ago!



This has ensured that if and when India and Pakistan finally clash once again over religious and ethnic tensions they will have the opportunity to reek hell on each other!

is humanity destined to die on Earth?

With the US beginning to militarize space continuing with the Star Wars legacy left by Ronald Reagan Russia is planning a new missile defense that will be able to shoot down ballistic missiles and hypersonic aircraft.

Although the Russian one (which should be ready by 2030) could be in theory used against attackers coming from space that aren't part of the US military the US plan to militarize space is pretty much to be able to bombard any part of the world using space and ground forces with nuclear weapons!

The point behind all of this?

The United States and Russia are pretty much the two biggest kids on the block, they will eventually fight, the sad thing is that these nations have put their main initiative into building better means to kill other people (Russia's defense brought through paranoia of history repeating itself against it again), this was best illustrated through the Cold War which could have sparked a fire at any second that could have killed off a hefty percent of humanity in a matter of hours and send society back the way, the end of the Cold War represented a chance for east and west to unite.

But that never did happen and now we're back to a new Cold War, sadly it's all both sides seem to know to do after the last generation, I've stated before that the universe is huge, yet we don't seem to want to explore it any further than we already have after being able to do amazing things like land in the moon, even the Soviets were sending probes to Venus in 1975, that was over 30 years ago!

Yet superstition and people of various beliefs, different ethnic backgrounds are unwilling to live with each other and fight to the death to decide how to shape this planet, has human nature doomed us all to eventually die on this planet and not use our true initiative to truly work wonders?

It certainly seems that way:



Those UFO's that occasionally buzz Earth (not the USAF test drones and stealth aircraft over the Nevada Desert) could be alien boy racers for all we know who really couldn't give two shits about us and our problems, or maybe they are simply waiting for us to blow each other away before taking what's left as a place for a pit stop.

Anyway the point I was making is gone now!

what a real breakthrough in nuclear disarmament looks like!

Obama and Medvedev's agreements on nuclear arms reduction today has being described as a breakthrough, although that being said I doubt they'll break much ground until that US missile shield that's being established in Poland and the Czech Republic is fully removed since it is (rightly so) considered a threat to Russian security, the shield is supposed to stop missiles fired form neither Iran or North Korea, although I somehow doubt that will ever happen!



That being said the US and Russia still have ample amount of nuclear weapons to wipe each other out, the US arsenal numbers some 8,000 warheads, 2,500 of these are on 15 minute alert to be launched while Russia has 14,000 warheads left over from the Soviet Union.

Towards the end of the Cold War the Soviet Union had 39,000 nuclear weapons while the Americans were "behind" with 21,000 warheads, when Reagan and Gorbachev finally got talking there was a brief moment in which arms reduction became a reality, the Soviets dismantled several of their SS-20 missiles and observers from both sides observed the other dismantling missiles.



This was very short lived, when the Soviet Union collapsed instantly three former Soviet states still had nuclear weapons, Belarus had 61, Kazakhstan had 1,400 and the Ukraine had 5,000, they all voluntarily gave them back to Russia where most of them were dismantled.

The US meanwhile in the late 1990's encouraged Pakistan to build up its nuclear weapons stocks to over 60 nuclear weapons to counter India's nuclear weapons (an ally of Russia), Israel (an ally of the United States) have several nuclear warheads and missiles that threaten every city in the Arab world.


source

See what I'm getting at, Pakistan and India need to have serious limitations until neither of them have nuclear weapons, this will be difficult since Pakistan built so many nukes because of its size compared to India.

You know my stance on Israel their nuclear weapon should also be destroyed before they get into a war that might end up with them setting the whole Middle East on fire!

So in my mind all of this needs to happen before the US and Russia can talk serious about an end to nuclear weapons, that being said the reason it never got fully underway before the Soviet Union collapsed was because Reagan didn't want to get rid of Strategic Defense Initiative (the Star Wars missile defence), and Obama has already said he is reluctant on removing the missile shield from Poland and the Czech Republic.

I mean talk about Déjà vu!

the 'Hot War' could really have killed us all!

Did you ever hear people emphasizing the dangers of global warming, please, anyway whose afraid of global warming are morons, especially if they live in neither England or Ireland, oh the green house effect, more warmer days and less rain, and the water slightly rising, what a tragedy, anyone living on land below sea level is asking to be flooded!

Every time I see someone driving a Hybrid I feel sick, they are trying to slow down the process of more sunshine for us all, they would rather see us all having miserable cold and dark weather.

But one could imagine the telling someone in the 1980's that by the early 21st century our main fears would be a terrorist in a cave and climate change.

I mean back in the 1980's both the United States and the Soviet Union were waiting in parachute pants for Armageddon to start, if a nuclear war was fought millions of people would have been killed instantly.


Screen shot from The Day After

The cities of Tallinn, Kansas City and Moscow were the biggest hot spots in case of a nuclear exchange, the residents of which would have been killed instantly and mass amounts of radiation emitted into the air, in a matter of hours the nuclear war targeting cities would have killed millions more than both world wars combined, and detonating large amounts of nuclear weapons especially over cities would cause large amounts of smoke and soot to be injected into the Earth's stratosphere blocking the sun and bringing cold climate change almost instantly, now top that with radiation poisoning that will infect thousands instantly and have long lasting effects.

These days are gone (that still being said Russia isn't at the best of terms with the west and still has 14,000 nukes) and now we're worrying about slight climate change that will make the planet hotter and cause ice to melt, (as if ice melting wasn't an eventuality), if you had your doubts about global warming I hope I've helped you realize that it's more bogus than terrorists that "threaten" us from caves in Afghanistan.

A narrowly avoided catastrophe

In the weeks and months before the Six Day War the Soviet Union was spreading its influence into the Middle East, it backed radical governments in Egypt and Syria such as Nessar who had become the Arab worlds chief spokesman for the Arab world on the Israeli problem.



When the Six Day War begun Israel became victorious in the early hours of the war (it had begun) destroying most of the Egyptian air force in air strikes in Sinai, they were completely caught by surprise and over 80% of their air force was destroyed in a matter of hours.

During this time the Soviet navy had increased their presence near the war moving 20 war ships into the eastern Mediterranean, the US responded by sending in the US SIxth Fleet to be within one hundred miles of the Israeli coast, except for the USS Liberty which came near the Sinai coast.
They were in international waters flying the American flag, what need would they have for an armed escort?

On Thursday the 8th of June it had reached its destination, what was on shore was a nearly complete Israeli victory, they had seized the West Bank and were pushing forward to capturing Jerusalem itself!

On at least nine different occasions Israeli aircraft buzzed the Liberty, Israel was Americas allies, and it was obvious they knew just that, it was a clear summers day, what could go wrong?

That was when Israeli Mirages begun attacking the Liberty crippling it after firing rockets and machine guns at its deck, in this horrific incident 34 Americans were killed!
The Liberty had been crippled but was still able to send out a distress call to the American Sixth Fleet.



Knowing full well that the Liberty had been attacked the aircraft carrier USS America went into condition November, nuclear armed A-4 bombers and their fighter F-4 escorts were launched, the US had been prepared to retaliate against Egypt since they presumed it was them that had attacked the Liberty.

Ready aircraft had been launched (the ready meaning nuclear armed aircraft).

The US embassy in Cairo was warned that an attack was coming, the US had been ready to nuke that city and possibly kill thousands of people instantly and have hundreds more die slowly from radiation poisoning!



The aircraft were already on their way when Defence Sectary Robert McNamara gave the order for the aircraft to turn back not wanting to see a mushroom cloud over Cairo, McNamara wasn't the perfect defence sectary but he was right about what he said about going all the way with nuclear weapons, and that was essentially the complete destruction of nations!

Apart from widely accepted fact that Israel had attacked an American ship and killed 34 of its crew is bad enough, but imagine if the Sixth Fleet had gone all the day and incinerated Cario and killed thousands of people that lived there!

This clearly was a narrowly averted catastrophe that would have ever lasting effects to this day!

the final end to the Korean War?

If you've watched or listened to the radio in the past week then you've probably noticed that since last Monday North Korea are going just a little bit crazy, it was only talking about dismantling its nuclear program last summer and now its talking about breaking the 1953 cease fire and restarting the Korean War now that it has nuclear weapons.

Maybe this was sparked by failed six party talks my recent blog calling for pre-emptive strike on North Korea or the fact that nobody takes Kim Jong iL sewiously I don't know.

The Peoples Republic of China announced two days ago that it is readying for massive immigrations of citizens from North Korea in case a war does break out, but if it does what exactly will happen.

South Korea have the strategic advantage, a smaller army but a larger air force (and 40,000 American soldiers training everyday for this war) which means they will get the strategic advantage, but North Korea is thinking in 1950's terms.

What if Kim thinks its his time, he has nuclear weapons, maybe he's readying to hit Seoul with a nuclear bomb, wipe out power and communication and then send his 1,100,000 sized armed army across the 38th Parallel and unite Korea under his communist rule.

Of course this will never work in the long term, if the US and South Korea (which has no nuclear weapons) continue to fight this war conventional it will indeed have more than 1,000,000 people dead, I'm talking about the entire war not a strike on Seoul.

Although the bomb that they tested last Monday has the yield of the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, delivered by a missile it wouldn't wipe out Seoul but with a city so densely populated (over 10,000,000 people) you're talking at least 100,000 instantly killed by the detonation, the resulting wind would crush people and break windows as far as the city limits, so yes this is a big enough threat.

But the 24 or so MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets that their air force I doubt are configured to carry a homemade nuclear bomb, it is stated that the Taepodong-1 (a missile derived from the Scud missile) is a test bed for multi-stage missile technologies, but the Taepodong-2 which the US states would give North Korea the power to hit almost any country in South East Asia or the west coast of the United States, (George W. Bush never saw this as a threat!).

the Talibans final stand?

The current Taliban are a dissident of the mujahideen resistance which in the 1980's were supplied arms by the United States and proved to be the sand in the underwear of the occupying Soviets, they were even armed with the latest hand held FIM-92 Stinger missiles which they used to take down Soviet aircraft, the Russians were losing (literally) millions worth in hardware, in 1989 they withdrew leaving a powerful government in charge.



But civil war broke out which was to last until 1992, in 1989, the army and pro-government militias still had 1568 tanks, 828 armoured personnel carriers, 4880 artillery pieces, 126 modern fighter-bombers and 14 attack helicopters. Also, the DRA continued to receive massive aid from the Soviet Union, valued at two to six billion dollars a year, and Soviet military advisors were still present in Afghanistan. The government forces also came to rely on the use of large quantities of Scud missiles: between 1988 and 1992 more than 2000 of these were fired inside Afghanistan, the largest amount of ballistic missiles used since World War II. This considerable amount of firepower was sufficient to keep the mujahideen at bay.

Read that paragraph again, all that fire power and still not enough to keep the mujahideen at bay, although major fighting did continue the Afghan Army still proved to be tough but corrupt and many were negotiating with mujahideen rebels, by 1992 the war had come to the end and the afghan army had appeared to collapse after the mujahideen had destroyed half of Kabul!
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was no more.

The Taliban rose to power in 1996 but after the attacks on the World Trade in September 2001 the coalition responded with bombing Afghanistan in October, followed by a ground offensive of around 11,000 troops in December, following that Operation Anaconda in 2002 that hit the Taliban hard several fleeing to Pakistan, the war seemed to have cooled then.



Instead of hunting down the 50,000 or so in the mountains of Pakistan Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 bogging down the US Army there in the occupation, the Taliban then had five or so years, it was not until 2004 that it seemed to make a revival and now in 2008 it has sky rocketed, starting in his last year Bush had started to send troops to Afghanistan from Iraq and Obama has continued where he has left off.

They're no longer the thriving victorious warriors that they were back in the 1980's and now as the US completely control Afghanistan seem to be trying to bring order down in Pakistan, Gordon Brown has hinted several times of an attack on Pakistan (maybe even supported by India who at the moment has itchy trigger fingers).

For instance after Bhutto's assassination in late 2007 order came close to falling, US Special Forces had been readying for the seizure of all of Pakistan's nuclear weapon, (250 of which situated in ten bases across the country).

But the Taliban seem to be pushing for order to fall before their last attack since they've already proved they don't have the man or fire power to fight another war with the coalition since they've no longer anywhere to fall back too, they obviously realized this and after years of fighting seem to want to symbolize their downfall in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Or maybe get into the minds of the people since Pakistan at the moment is one bullet away from Islamic Revolution (think Iran in late 1978), and a revolution will leave the new leaders led by God knows who armed with 250 nuclear weapons including the means (ballistic missiles and F-16 fighter-bombers) to deliver them.

why a remake of Red Dawn wouldn't work today

Red Dawn the 1984 movie set during the height of the Cold War, set during the time when the United States and the Soviet Union were waiting for the feared nuclear exchange.

So when a movie came out about Soviet Paratroopers landing in a small town in Colorado and taking it over along with several other parts of America it was believable.

As the movie progresses a group of teenagers from a local high school retreat up into the hills and lead a guerilla offensive against the occupying Russian and Cuban forces calling themselves the Wolverines.



While the first hour of the movie has little direction apart from what we saw and that was Soviet paratroopers landing in the middle of a football field in the Wolverines local high school!

But about an hour into the movie a downed F-15 pilot who joins with the Wolverines explains how a handful of nuclear strikes against main points of communication were carried out, destroying Kansas City and Washington DC and destroying ICBM bases in Montana and the Dakotas.

At the same time Cuban and Nicaraguan troops march through the border as this is happening up south and the Soviets crossed the Bering Strait disguised as commuter planes (as they done in Afghanistan in real life back in 1980).

This then results in a conventional war fought across the midlands since each side doesn't want to use nuclear weapons, the plot was simple for the time and I doubt there was anybody at the time who doubted that what was shown in the movie was possible.

Director John Milius was inspired to some degree by the Afghan insurgency in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion.

That fact is another reason why remaking Red Dawn in a post 9/11 world is a terrible idea!

The Soviets are gone and are now a capitalist society, Afghanistan of course is occupied, yeah by the US itself and the Taliban are the ones running to the hills!

And what exactly does post 9/11 world mean, Arab terrorists as the bad guys?

Remember The Siege, a film where Arab terrorists simply make constant attacks in New York resulting in the declaration of martial law.

As stupid as it think a Red Dawn version of that, how would it work, its just a stupid prospect, and the ruining of a classic that that was made in a time that was relevant to the story!

nuke it!

Carloslabs has created an interesting project, Ground Zero, basically its integrated in with Google Maps to show what damage a different selection of nuclear bombs would do to certain areas.



Now for someone whose never been outside of Europe I was a little ignorant of the power of the Nagasaki bomb to see what damage it would do to Dublin (the results) a fair amount of damage to the city that would instantly fry to death those near the center, this awesome fire power was from 1945.



That not being enough I decided to find out what exactly a B-61 bomb would do to my house!

The B-61 is designed to be carried and dropped on its target by US fighter jets such as the F-16, its a shock to me to see the awesome power would literally wipe out the two surrounding villages in my area!

But that wasn't enough, its established the Tsar bomb would wipe out all of nearly any city on the planet so I wasn't interested in that, what I wanted to see was the damage caused by the impact of an asteroid, it was an asteroid that made the dinosaurs extinct so how much damage would one make across the globe if the epicenter was my house?



The results, apart from wiping out Europe, spreading across the North Atlantic, consuming Iceland and Greenland, and from southern Europe hitting most of north Africa, and spreading as far as northern Saudi Arabia!

I would highly recommend trying it out to appreciate the real power of nuclear weapons!