Japan confirms plan to jointly develop missile with Britain

Fortunately, there are those in Russia who will see his reckless acts are now causing massive hardship to both themselves, the Russian people, and the economy as a whole.

With an attack on a nuclear plant, which way’s the wind blowing?

Very odd don’t you think?

Friday 4 March 2022 12:20, UK

“The wildfire broke out in the eastern part of the country, near the coast. South Korea’s government has issued a natural disaster alert and President Moon Jae-in is calling for an all-out effort to protect Hanul Nuclear Power Plant from damage.”

https://news.sky.com/video/wildfire-threatens-nuclear-power-plant-in-south-korea-as-natural-disaster-alert-is-announced-12557203

Of the 4477 warheads Russia has only around 576 are really going to threaten the west as they are submarine based. The rest will be destroyed fairly quickly if there was a clash between NATO and Russia. The Russia subs are good but we can hunt and kill them with the Astute. They can damage the west very badly but the return response on a nuclear exchange would leave a crater where Russia used to be. Realistically the Russian forces know that the West would be incredibly badly damaged and we would loose many millions of people but there really wouldn’t be anything left of Russia as the US, UK and France would launch all out nuclear attacks wiping Russia from the face of the planet. Sensible Russian military leaders know this self-evident fact and would put a bullet in Putin the moment he reached for the “red button”. I never wish ill on people but with Putin I would make an exception. Let’s hope the FSB or the Russian military wise up and remove this dictator.

Balance of harms

Is the harm to one individual worth saving the harm to millions of others?

I would be a no brainer if he was a terrorist threatening a room of people with a bomb: marksmen could take him out and be on the right moral and legal side.

The fact the bomb is nuclear makes no difference to the argument.

‘The Russian subs are good but we can hunt and kill them with the Astute‘

Yes, that’s what the Astutes are designed for amongst other things, as are the US LA and Virginia class SMs.
Unfortunately its not as straightforward or simple as that, in fact its a bit to simplistic a statement really.
NATO SSBNs are very quiet platforms, as are the Russian Borei class, it is very difficult to locate and track these craft, as they usually sail and slip away into the big blue at slow speed.
An added problem for NATO is that the Russian SSBNs spend a lot of their time up in the really high North under the Arctic ice and further West towards the Kara Sea, which is essentially their back yard, well within range of support units from shore bases.
Their ICBMs are assessed as having a range of some 5 – 6000 nm which is a little less then Trident D5s, but still well within range of say London if launched from the Kara Sea.
I wouldn’t bet on NATO units finding and sinking these anytime soon if a conflict did arise. There wont be a whole lot of the world left if things did get out of hand and these bad boys started launching missiles!!!

Indeed esp as they would be first strike, we would not. It would be mutual extinction in reality for all. Russia is a massive Country but in reality it’s major cIties and populous areas make its destruction as sure as ours.

The trouble is Andrew that latest studies on the global impact of nuclear weapons is troubling stuff. It turns out the old Cold War studies were well wrong and underestimated the impact as they did not include black soot production and proper crop modelling.

The latest studies show a 100 warheads exchange of medium sized warhead ( so the Pakistan India exchange model) would essentially destroy 10% of world food production for 7-10 years the impact would mostly be on the main grain growing areas, Europe, Russia and America. 10% food production for that long will essentially create a worldwide famine that would kill close to a billion people.

When you start looking at a 1000 warhead exchange your looking at most of the worlds food production gone for well over a decade ( so that’s remnant population survival only).

A full east west nuclear exchange, will take out most of the plant life of the planet for decades and kill almost every large land animal on the planet, it’s essentially a great dying event that the human race would be unlikely to survive.

essentially you only actually need one side to launch and it destroys every nation and most humans on the planet within a few years. The blast and radiation is not the true mass killer, it’s the soot from all the burning cities and towns.

Even at the height of the Cold War we never came close to that level of potential damage nuclear weapons are no where as big as people imagine and most are set for air burst. Nuclear winter was largely a myth and radiation drops of after two weeks to the point of being survivable for the majority. Millions would die and the human population would be down by the billions once all secondary effects are taken it to account but no where near extinction. You need to go two doctor strange loge levels of salted nuclear weapons to start looking at that.

Hi Martin there is plenty of modeling out there. It’s the impact on crops which is the killer and you don’t need a global winter. Most of our key crop plants are very sensitive. We loss most of our grain and rice harvests for 5-10 years and we loss billions. Just look up the modelling on a Pakistan India exchange. Air bust/ ground bust it does not matter. The issue is not radiation or blast damage or even particular matter injection into the high atmosphere ( although all this does damage) it’s the burning and black soot injection into the atmosphere that does it,

if you look at some of the black soot injection models with cooling estimates as well as crop modelling..it’s very scary. It does not matter if you survive the first year or two…with world wide mass failure of crops for 7-10 years deaths would be astronomical. Most people just don’t get how precautions food security actually is and what crop failure actually means.

i always remember a stark lecture I had when we reviewed food security in Western Europe and it’s always been a lesson I have take to heart. Western Europe is at all time two weeks away from no food on the shelves….. For whatever reason you remove the supply of food, in two weeks you will not be able to buy any ( as a professional risk manger, my house always has a 2 month supply of food, I don’t stock pile and it all gets rotated through and eaten but I always have full larders and don’t allow it to drop down.

But it’s important to understand even a limited exchange of 100 warhead on the other side of the world will leave the world, including Europe hungry for a decade….killing many hundred of millions due to global famine…a larger exchange will decimate our world food production for over a decade and would kill most of the population of the planet due to hunger..

Human civilisation and the 7 billion people on this planet are a stretch to the natural world beyond anything else seen we survive through a food production process which is very very at risk to even a few degrees of climate change up or down as well as changes in fresh water precipitation. We live on the edge…. just as example, the U.K. can support maybe 4 million souls without modern food production, so after level of significant nuclear exchange ( so those 500 warhead from Russia and a response from the west that destroyed crop production we would end up with that population.

Nuclear war between major powers is essentially an existential threat to not just civilisation but to the survival of the species. It would be a fools game to see if we have a working population after a decade of starvation.

Hi again Martin

This is a summary paper, it’s mot the seminal work on crop and black soot modelling but is does give a readers Digest Version if your not into reading peer reviewed science papers.

https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/two-billion-at-risk.pdf

its basically a summary of the modelling on a 100 warhead exchange between India and Pakistan. I personally think the 2billion starvation may be on the high side, as most of the papers I have read for the 100 warhead talk about a @0% loss of food over a decade… but what this paper points out is that we have a billion who are alway just off starvation so even a small reduction will cause them all to starve to death.

I disagree, I don’t think anyone in the west has the stomach for nuclear war Cold War style. We would dither and not use nuclear weapons to take out silos and road based weapons quick enough. Russia subs could be taken out easily but then unless you launch a first strike it’s very hard to know of a Russian sub is about to fire. Would all happen to fast for a response beyond retaliation. All projections of nuclear war suggest most countries would be fine in the medium term except Britain and Japan.

“The Astute” being the operative words 😎.

Don’t forget Sweden increased its spending last year!

CR