How many people are prepared to live off the power grid? We can't even legally have a backyard chicken coop in my regulated city.
New Red Dawn movie- do you think it could happen?
by moshe 31 Replies latest social entertainment
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fulltimestudent
You know what gives me nerves? War between Japan and China. Think about how destabilising that would be,
Jgnat, you're right! A war between China and Japan would be destablising to the world, mainly because of interlocking alliances that would mean a cascade into a much greater conflict.
But, I read the situation as being one where both sides know the consequences, and know that they can't go past words. I doubt that China for one wants to go down that route, as the popularity of the National government is dependent on constructing a modern state. Current progress can only be described as amazing, but there is still a long way to go as 50% of the nation is still existing in a poorer condition.
And you could read Sun Zi's, The Art of War, to understand that East Asians, with Confucianism underpinning their thinking (and not Christianity) think differently, and they do not have that "End of the (bloody) world," mind set that Christian based thought gives us.
So let me re-assure you, both sides are staking out their ideological territory, and I doubt very much that it means war. The problem is that things were done to China by the West, in the final stages of the Imperialistic era and the humiliation still rankles and every now and again it sort of wells up. The saddest thing (to me) is that there seems some evidence that the current US administration may have caused this problem as part of the 'pivot to Asia' movement that Obama/Hilary Clinton have been talking about.
But I understand how you feel. I'ts taken me near 40 years (starting slowly from 1975) to get rid of the cataclysmic mind-set that I developed as a JW.
Sorry for the digression from Red Dawn.
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Sam Whiskey
Because we are surrounded by water, the only way anybody could come in, would be through Canada. If THAT happened, we could be in trouble. What is that possibility? I hadn't thought about it until this thread...
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Satanus
Sam
Don't worry, we've got hundreds of thousands (the exact number is classified for security reasons) of hunter killer beavers submerged in all our waterways. They are trained to surface and activate on the appearance of any foriegn, unfriendlies. They then attack, cutting the legs out from underneath the invaders. They do almost as well on rubber tires. The metal links in tank treads are a challenge, though.
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Satanus
Seriously though, you guys got alaska. Stop them at the pass, so to speak.
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Sam Whiskey
What *if* they came through both sides (eastern coast and western coast) of Canada at the same time?
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Satanus
Sam
I believe that fear is a worse enemy to you than 'they' are.
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Bobcat
EMP attacks were an important part of Soviet war plans in the event of nuclear war. If Able Archer had went the wrong way the first thing that probably would have happened would be extremely high altitude airbursts of the big Sov warheads. Probably would have made a nice glow over the US.
There was some thought that several of the SS-18 ICBMs carried single warheads (rather than the 8-12 otherwise) with a 25-50 MT yield just for high altitude bursts and attacks on places like Cheyenne mountain. And I beleive the SS-9(?) FOBS was thought to carry 10-20 MT yield warheads. Some of the current Chinese ICBMs are thought to carry 3-5 MT yields. Even though they have relatively few, several of these at high altitude would probably create more havoc than if set off over a city.
The movies "The Day After" and "Threads" both portrayed the start of the war high altitude bursts. As you said, it was part of the thinking of the time.
Incidentally, in the movie "Broken Arrow" they portray an EMP burst from an underground detonation(!?) Anything can happen in the movies!
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Satanus
As far as the emp threat, i did a little googling on it. Here is something that came up:
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First you must realize that it takes a megaton bomb for EMP to do anything as serious as blowing streetlight breakers 900 miles away. Electronics inside metal boxes (like a car hood or a computer case) not connected to long outside wires will not be damaged, even at that level of EMP . While EMP is different from lightning, travelling over a long distance through wires attenuates the pulse and slows it down, so that ordinary surge protectors can activate in time. Computers safe from lightning are also safe from megaton EMP more than a couple hundred miles away.
Three countries in the world have megaton nukes at this time: the USA, Russia, and China. England had them at one time, but apparently no longer. China depends on the American economy to provide cash flow into their own; they are not foolish enough to destroy that (and half their own cities in retaliation). Russia does not have that economic dependency, but they proved themselves smart enough not to go beyond saber rattling during the Cold War when they were a superpower; they don't have that status now, and nuking the USA would not return it to them.
North Korea's bombs are in the small kiloton range, about the same size we set off over Japan. Instead of blowing breakers at 900 miles, they'd do little more than set off alarms at 100 miles from ground zero. North Korea may have an insane leader, but they have neither the nukes nor the delivery systems to destroy more than a city or two -- certainly leaving enough American manufacturing and war-making power to reduce the entire Korean peninsula to a green glow. I suspect Kim Jong Il (and anybody who follows him) understands that. That's not the sort of legacy a megalomaniac wants to leave to history.
We officially don't know about the size of India's and Pakistan's bombs, but it's doubtful that their first efforts are much bigger than anybody else's first efforts. Iran (with North Korea's help) might soon have a bomb, but why would the Koreans help them make bigger bombs than the Koreans themselves have? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may qualify as crazy, but not crazy enough to go after the 800-pound American gorilla when Israel is much closer and looks far more tempting. Besides, Israel has the technology and the motivation to prevent Iran from getting their own nukes.
Israel has more PhDs per capita than any other nation in the world, and while they are not admitting it, they almost certainly have nukes. How many and how big nobody else knows, but they are aimed at Iran and Syria, not the USA.'
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fulltimestudent
Another viewpoint on North Korea.