North Korea

[batman]

Think anything will come from all the recent rhetoric and saber rattling? 

 

[homework]

I'm currently in Okinawa.

 

Personally, I think they're blowing smoke trying to scare everyone. 

[thetruthaboutheaven21]

They won't do anything

pretty much everyone in the world is against them. 

[thebiglebowski]

I'd say the most likely scenario for the start of WWIII (even more than the Middle East's trouble) is that the US goes into North Korea and China gets involved.

[thebiglebowski]

They won't do anything

pretty much everyone in the world is against them. 

 

 

China is most definitely helping them

[batman]

I'm currently in Okinawa, and this is a serious issue. 

yeah i feel like tensions keep escalating. i just wonder how much is propaganda for him to prove himself.

[thetruthaboutheaven21]

yeah i feel like tensions keep escalating. i just wonder how much is propaganda for him to prove himself.

 

and plus the army in North Korea isn't something to brag about

China's is but if they side with NK we would be against them as well. 

[thetruthaboutheaven21]

and North Korea doesn't have the technology to build a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the United States

[thebiglebowski]

China is most definitely helping them

 

Just to be clear, I don't necessarily mean that they are helping with the nuke development (no idea if this have ever even been seriously accused) but just talking about general relationships between NK and China. Not sure if they would defend NK militarily or not. Just saying that it could be a domino. China has a really scary military.

 

Underground nuke tests are definitely nothing to take lightly, whether they are capable of reaching us or not. 

 

As mentioned above, at least if they ever made a move this would be an almost united world against them.

[batman]

i think its a pretty serious threat to have a map with US cities targeted. but it's almost too blatant--like they're trying to provoke the US.

[thebiglebowski]

I know this is just one of a thousand things like this but it always cracked me up:

 

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2004/ea_nkorea_06_16.html

[homework]

Think anything will come from all the recent rhetoric and saber rattling? 

 

 

They look disgusting in uniform. 

[thebiglebowski]

Are you an American in Japan or native Japanese? Or something else?

[homework]

American. I'm in the military. 

[homework]

[GradedOnACurve]

China is most definitely helping them

North Korea has nothing to offer to China at this point. Theres no give or take when a country like North Korea mismanages its resources like crazy.

I think North Korea is huffing and puffing like they do every 5-10 years. They may have one of the largest armies in the world but compared to United States they dont even come close in term of military capability. These are scare tactics meant to drum up attention and fear.

Yes I do think they have or are close to finishing a nuclear weapon. They learned from Iraq...actually develop the damn weapon so you could seem more dangerous.

[IanRees]

Crazy, one of my best friends just moved back to the states after a year of teaching english in South Korea, glad hes back before any of this crap escalates./

[bgdesign]

They are blowing wind up there citizen's skirts. Nothing will come of it. Alot of wind, no balls.

[mcm1610]

This is solely a new leader who is questioned in his own country trying to posture to show them he's a strong leader.

 

His military, while large, is a joke.  There aren't even enough weapons to go around.  They don't have fuel for their planes or tanks.  China will not back them because it will mean the loss of American business.  The only threat would be the artillery aimed to hit Seoul, which could be hit early, but the retaliation would be swift and brutal and North Korea would be emasculated in a heartbeat.  When the military is exposed as a joke, the leadership will be humiliated and the entire government will be exposed for the sham that it is and has been.

 

I wouldn't get too worried.

[homework]

This is solely a new leader who is questioned in his own country trying to posture to show them he's a strong leader.

 

His military, while large, is a joke.  There aren't even enough weapons to go around.  They don't have fuel for their planes or tanks.  China will not back them because it will mean the loss of American business.  The only threat would be the artillery aimed to hit Seoul, which could be hit early, but the retaliation would be swift and brutal and North Korea would be emasculated in a heartbeat.  When the military is exposed as a joke, the leadership will be humiliated and the entire government will be exposed for the sham that it is and has been.

 

I wouldn't get too worried.

 

Even so, threatening lives and the human existence in itself is nothing to joke around with.  

[thebiglebowski]

Why is it so hard for a country to build an intercontinental missile? I'm just curious. It just seems weird to me that they could have missiles and possibly nuclear weapons, but they cannot build missiles big enough to strike around the world? You'd think they would just be bigger versions of what they have already?

 

I guess that is a question not many could answer, though. If it was simple to build a missile it would be a problem.

[steventangent]

A missile is a complicated damn thing.

Also, China has made official statements condemning actions by North Korea. They support DPRK in a lot of other ways, but doubt they would assist them in being military aggressors. Especially since so much of their economy hinges on the United States.

[steventangent]

A Brief History of Blowing Things Up That Are Very Far Away From You:

It is frequently considered to be militarily advantageous to be able to kill lots of people or destroy a whole damn lot of stuff while it is still far away from you. From an early age, this was because the quicker you could harm something, the less chance it had to harm you.

Early man would sharpen sticks, or attach pointy bits of stone or bone, and hurl it at their intended target. This had varying degrees of success whether you were hunting a wooly mammoth, or trying to puncture someone's ribcage so that you may invade their cave and impregnate their women.

More sophisticated methods involved creating a bow and arrow, which allowed for further accuracy and higher velocities. Tribes that developed this found themselves able to kill more mammoths and impregnate more women than their spear-chuckin' counterparts. This worked great until the Chinese developed gunpowder, and by combining concepts, created "missiles" that could either be propelled by a controlled gunpowder explosion, or attached to arrows or spears to be fired and thrown respectively. These were effective when used either to repel the Mongol hordes, or eventually by the hordes themselves. It was a pretty good way to kill a whole shitload of your fellow human beings before you could become part of their empire.

Many years of conflicting and competing empires and cross-cultural pollination lead to the spread of the idea that killing people a long way away by blowing them the fuck up was a pretty great idea. Hundreds of years of experimentation lead to increasingly accurate cannons and guns, all following some combination of principles involving the firing of a missile through a controlled explosion of gunpowder. All was well and good until the next major breakthrough: the rocket.

Robert H. Goddard, well considered the father of modern rocket science, developed the principles of rocketry that not only allowed man to slip the surly bonds of gravity and leave our atmosphere altogether, but also for motherfuckers to blow up motherfuckers real good and at a much greater distance than any conventional cannon. Early rockets such as the V-2 had an engine, some form of navigational mechanism, and a destructive payload (aka, the Part That Goes Boom), in their most crude forms. Some complicated mathematics and stabilizing mechanisms lead to an unprecedented high accuracy. It bears mentioning that in between the cannon and rocket, modern flight allowed planes to drop bombs on the enemy deep into their territory; that was a great way to blow up people far away with a lot of accuracy, but each plane required a human crew of one or more and was a giant flying sitting duck unless you put a whole shitload of guns on it, which made it a giant flying sitting duck that could shoot back. Rockets allowed a similar accuracy, but with much less risk, clearly the best of both worlds.

Each form of missile was hampered by only two things, throughout history; countermeasures, and their own physical limitations. Each new development brought a new form of protection, from stronger wearable armor and shields for the earliest arrows, to anti-missile guns and flares for later rockets.

As computers advanced, and man developed an intricate network of satellites, more complicated forms of missile guidance were developed. The advent of the nuclear age gave man the heretofore unprecedented ability to destroy every fucking thing alive, leading to a deep-seated sense of existential anxiety that hums through everything whether we notice it or fucking not, thank you very much. Escalating tensions with Moscow and the arms race lead to obscene advances in the ability to blow up soldiers, nuns, babies, aircraft, ska bands, tanks, hockey teams, missile silos, bird sanctuaries, and everything else that might be considered an opportune target with deadly accuracy.

A modern missile, designed to Destroy a Thing Very Far Away with any amount of accuracy, must have all of the same characteristics as the earliest spears, just in much more complicated forms: a propulsion system, a way to be guided, or at the very least, aimed, and a payload. The farther away the thing you want to hit is, the more difficult it is to control environmental factors such as wind, especially if you're trying to hit something that can pick itself up and move the fuck out of the way. A missile needs some kind of propulsion; they can only have so much fuel, and being able to change direction in mid-flight will require even more fuel. The bottom line is that hitting a Thing Very Far Away is an intricate balance of being able to fuel and aim a sufficient payload for a far enough distance. A rocket big and accurate enough to hit a target on the other side of the world is going to have to be pretty god damn motherfucking complicated, expensive, and huge.

Luckily, a decades-long arms race, and an obscene military industrial complex, have provided the United States with a horrifying infrastructure to negate a need for any of this shit almost entirely via a network of land, sea, and air-based missiles that wrap the entire world like a security blanket of horror and instant death. This is known as the nuclear triad: if the nuclear missile silos in the midwest can't hit you, than surely a battery of missile sites in the former Soviet Bloc will, and if those can't, then a submarine hiding quietly in the Atlantic will, and if that doesn't work, then one of the many aircraft that can refuel in mid-flight and have crews that can operate 24/7 will most assuredly get you. North Korea has approximately none of that shit.

The bottom line is that without that infrastructure, building a missile that can hit something thousands of kilometers away requires complicated avionics, and the ability to fuel and control the thing in mid flight. And it's still not 100% accurate in every case. Pyongyang trying to hit a high-value American target, for example, Detroit, is like trying to throw a dart right at the bullseye through a window in the house across the street.

edit : I realize none of this answers your question. They can't develop "bigger versions of what they have already" 'cuz they got them squinty eyes.

[batman]

*slow clap*

Did you write that yourself?

[mcm1610]

They can't do that because they don't have advanced industry or education.

 

That's part of the reason a strong public education system is good for a nation, no matter how large. *ahem*.