North Korea claims it could wipe out Manhattan with a hydrogen bomb

[jpak]

Source: Washington Post

SEOUL — North Korea claimed Sunday that it could wipe out Manhattan by sending a hydrogen bomb on a ballistic missile to the heart of New York, the latest in a string of brazen threats.

Although there are many reasons to believe that Kim Jong Un’s regime is exaggerating its technical capabilities, the near-daily drumbeat of boasts and warnings from Pyongyang underlines North Korea’s anger at efforts to thwart its ambitions.

“Our hydrogen bomb is much bigger than the one developed by the Soviet Union,” DPRK Today, a state-run outlet that uses the official acronym for North Korea, reported Sunday.

“If this H-bomb were to be mounted on an inter-continental ballistic missile and fall on Manhattan in New York City, all the people there would be killed immediately and the city would burn down to ashes,” the report said, citing a nuclear scientist named Cho Hyong Il.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korea-claims-it-could-wipe-out-manhattan-with-a-hydrogen-bomb/2016/03/13/3834cd54-e919-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html

[hobbit709]

1. I got a better chance of winning the Powerball than of that happening.

[Baobab]

52. Their UN office is just a block or two from Times Square

Seriously. They already have a presence there in NYC.

[Kelvin Mace]

2. And I can wipe out Pyongyang

with my orbiting Klingon Battle Cruiser.

[Codeine]

3. My paladin has a+5 Holy Avenger and 18/00 strength. nt

[Feeling the Bern]

45. Yeah, well my neutral good ranger with 17 constitution and 16 strength

took out a green dragon by himself, so there! I can beat Jabba the Kim better than you, lawful good goody-two-shoes paladin.

[lastlib]

4. I'm getting a little weary of this tinhorn pipsqueak.

Can we do something to close his silly pie-hole?

[Feeling the Bern]

46. Food doesn't work. IT just makes him fatter.

[Liberalagogo]

5. That's nice, dear.

n/t

[onehandle]

6. North Korea became a nuclear power under Bush's watch. nt

[Botany]

14. Bingo!

Under Clinton we talked to N. Korea and they didn't build a bomb but
under w we refused to talk to N. Korea and so they built a bomb.

[GummyBearz]

25. Do you really think it only took them 5.5 years to build a nuke from scratch?

They don't have Einstein and Oppenheimer working for them... they were obviously working on it for a while before 2000, and had help from China or Russia

[Botany]

30. an atomic bomb is 70 year old technology

The hard part is getting enough bomb grade materials.

[Botany]

32. The rocket technology is much harder then building an a-bomb (if you have the bomb grade materials)

If North Korea was dumb enough to place a missile with a warhead on line
that missile and much of North Korea would be wiped of the map.

I really feel bad for the people of N. Korea who are starving and living under tough
conditions.

[GummyBearz]

35. Is that why everyone in the world has one?

70 year old technology or not, you don't build one from scratch in 5.5 years. Ask Iran

[elljay]

39. They didn't build it from scratch

Our allies and foreign aid partner, Pakistan, stole centrifuge plans from the Netherlands and used them to develop their bomb. They then helped North Korea, Syria, Libya and Iran with their nuclear development programs. The Israelis took out the Syrian facility, Gaddhafi decided to voluntarily terminate his program, the Iranians signed the recent agreement regarding their program (their compliance remains to be seen), and the North Koreans are testing merrily away. Your tax dollars at work.

[GummyBearz]

48. Thanks for the additional info.

After a bit of googling it looks like nuclear secrets were being traded between Pakistan and North Korea in 1993 and possibly much sooner... going to my point, it takes a lot longer than 5.5 years to make a nuke, even when you are getting a lot of help.

[lastlib]

54. A Princeton U. junior physics major designed one....

... back in the '70s or '80s for an honors project--mostly using info from de-classified Pentagon files. It ain't as hard as people think. As others here point out, the hard part is getting the fissionable materials and the tools to process them.

[GummyBearz]

57. Unless he actually built it and set it off it means nothing

The theory is all there. Anyone can copy Einstein's notes and claim their design would work. Until you test it and verify it, all you have is an honors project on a piece of paper. That is the difference between theory and reality. Theory predicted transistors long before IBM finally was able to make the transistor a reality. Same with any high tech device. I can draw a 10,000 story skyscraper on a piece of paper and just say "make the foundation this strong and it will work". At the end of the day, reality isn't a piece of paper submitted as a junior's honors project.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. I stopped reading after

"Soviet Union".

[LiberalArkie]

8. I wonder where that mini-sub disappeared to during the battle games?

Normally NK can't slip anything out of the area due to SK having hydrophones every where.

[C_U_L8R]

9. They're seemingly the Donald Trump of rogue nations

Weird hairdo's and whackadoodleness.

[MowCowWhoHow III]

10. Shiny bauble for Lil'Kim

[Feeling the Bern]

47. Jung un has one gigantic ball

Jung Il had two but they were small.
Il Sung had hardly any
And Zedong had no balls at all.

(sung to the tune of the Bridge Over the River Kwai theme)

[lastlib]

55. "But WE've got the biggest..."

"...Balls of them all!"

. . .

[Feeling the Bern]

56. it's my belief that our big balls should be held every night!

[Akamai]

11. Who does Un think he is to make such threats? Donald Trump?

[MrScorpio]

12. How cute. nt

[Gregorian]

13. They would love Donald Trump.

If Trump were president, he could just buy the whole country. That would shut them up. Haha. How can I laugh about nuclear war?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

21. Hair DrumpFührer's penis is at least as big as Dear Leader's. He told us himself on national TV. nt

[NickB79]

15. Bigger than Tsar Bomba? That'd be quite the trick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

The Tsar Bomba was a three-stage bomb with Trutnev-Babaev[6] second and third stage design,[7] with a yield of 50 to 58 megatons of TNT (210 to 240 PJ).[8] This is equivalent to about 1,350–1,570 times the combined energy of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki,[9] 10 times the combined energy of all the conventional explosives used in World War II, one quarter of the estimated yield of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, and 10% of the combined yield of all nuclear tests to date. A three-stage H-bomb uses a fission bomb primary to compress a thermonuclear secondary, as in most H-bombs, and then uses energy from the resulting explosion to compress a much larger additional thermonuclear stage. There is evidence that the Tsar Bomba had several third stages rather than a single very large one.[10]

And good luck mounting that on one of your puny missiles:

The bomb, weighing 27 metric tons, was so large (8 metres (26 ft) long by 2 metres (6.6 ft) in diameter) that the Tu-95V had to have its bomb bay doors and fuselage fuel tanks removed.

[Stuart G]

16. Why talk like that ????

[Fuddnik]

17. I could too!

Except

1) I don't want to.

2) I don't have one either.

[Skwmom]

18. That is why I want Bernie sitting in the oval office. n/t

[bemildred]

19. Kim the Third is not too bright, is he? nt

[Shemp Howard]

20. Kim is a joke, but...

...that goofy guy with the Charlie Chaplin mustache was once considered a joke as well.

I'm not worried about an intercontinental missile hitting New York City. I'm worried about a tramp steamer with a dirty bomb sailing into New York City. But I think the Fed's are on top of such things (I hope).

Side note: W (Bush II) set the world on fire. Much of what we see today is a direct result of his policies. W was the worst US president, ever.

[awoke_in_2003]

22. Bye Felicia. nt

[wilsonbooks]

23. yes and they are loading it onto a bicycle as we speak.

[LiberalElite]

24. I have lots of things to worry about - North Korea's "bomb"

isnt' on my list. Everybody wants to bomb NYC. It's getting tedious.

[awake]

26. North Korea is a lot like Trump they will do and say anything to get attention.

Fortunately North Korea does not now have the capability to carry out their threat, lets hope that Trump will never get his short stubby finger near a Nuclear button.

[krispos42]

27. And if my aunt had a penis she'd be my uncle

Your point, Little Kim?

[Jeb Bartlet]

28. Do you want to be assasinated?

Cause threatening to nuke Manhattan is how you get assassinated.

[FairWinds]

29. The real threat here is from modern nationalism . .

Allow me to explain:

People think nothing of it when US officials threaten to use nuclear weapons,
but are totally outraged when the US is on the receiving end of the threats.

"Our" threats are just as outrageous, and "our" nukes are equally threatening.

Veterans For Peace

[TipTok]

43. Ours actually work...

[FairWinds]

49. If by "working" you mean injuring and killing . .

about a million American down winders, atomic vets, nuke plant workers, etc.

contaminating huge swaths of the environment.

costing us about $ ten trillion since WWII

not to mention our collective mental illness in which we think these weapons are OK

IS THAT WHAT YOU MEAN BY 'WORKING'?

[TipTok]

62. No...

I was referring to the 'boom' part...

[FairWinds]

64. Sure, Tipster "ours" will probably mostly go off . .

just the way Prez Trumph intends.

So you trust him to be a responsible steward of those mass
massacre machines?

Really?

Veterans For Peace

[TipTok]

65. Only in the same sense that I 'trust' other nutjobs with nukes...

I have faith in their desire for self preservation.

[Le Taz Hot]

53. When did we threaten to use nuclear weapons?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't get any warnings, we just did it. But when did the United States government threaten to annihilate a country by use of nuclear weapons?

[FairWinds]

58. I guess that the US State Dept. might be a source . .

that you would accept, although other scholars have compiled a
far more lengthy list.

As per most clever propagandists, the USDS uses a euphemistic such as "atomic diplomacy."

Isn't North Korea merely engaging in atomic diplomacy as well?

And I would point out that you are supporting my thesis. Which is that US hyper-nationalism
means that we see other country's nukes and threats as ultra-evil;
while we totally ignore our own (actually more frequent and serious)
threats.

Once you start thinking of other people and countries as equally valuable
to the US, the scales will start to fall from your eyes.

Veterans For Peace

[Le Taz Hot]

59. Get back to me when you can offer up something other than a word salad

void of any evidence.

[FairWinds]

60. The US has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons .

None are so blind as those who will not see . .

https://www.quora.com/How-many-times-did-the-U-S-and-the-U-S-S-R-threaten-to-nuke-China

Again, you got your jingoism goin' on.

I understand that this is shocking information to many americans -
but it happens to be true.

Veterans For Peace

[Le Taz Hot]

61. Alright, Ace,

whatever you say.

[FairWinds]

63. I understand that it is hard to grasp . .

the magnitude of the lies that we have grown up with.

But the US threatening to use nukes is really commonly accepted . .

You won't accept the US State Dept. as a source? Really?

I can give you dozens of others.

May you find peace . .

Veterans For Peace (Vietnam in my case)

[EX500rider]

67. Those threat happened during a actual war and was about 60 years ago..

.....any recent examples of the US threatening to nuke a city and naming which city and which weapon? (ie a "hydrogen warhead on multi-stage ICBM)

[EX500rider]

66. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't get any warnings.." Actually they did:

Leaflets dropped on cities in Japan warning civilians about the atomic bomb, dropped c. August 6, 1945:

TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE:
America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet.

We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.

We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city.

Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better and peace-loving Japan.

You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.

EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.

ATTENTION JAPANESE PEOPLE. EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.
Because your military leaders have rejected the thirteen part surrender declaration, two momentous events have occurred in the last few days.

The Soviet Union, because of this rejection on the part of the military has notified your Ambassador Sato that it has declared war on your nation. Thus, all powerful countries of the world are now at war with you.

Also, because of your leaders' refusal to accept the surrender declaration that would enable Japan to honorably end this useless war, we have employed our atomic bomb.

A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s could have carried on a single mission. Radio Tokyo has told you that with the first use of this weapon of total destruction, Hiroshima was virtually destroyed.

Before we use this bomb again and again to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, petition the emperor now to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better, and peace-loving Japan.

Act at once or we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.

EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/truman-leaflets/

[Le Taz Hot]

68. Well, damn!

Learn something new every day. Thanks!

[daleo]

34. They are too bombastic, excuse the pun, when they make these statements

But we are too dis-arming, when we airily dismiss their weaponry, as being a joke.

[Journeyman]

36. "If . . ."

“If this H-bomb were to be mounted on an inter-continental ballistic missile and fall on Manhattan in New York City, all the people there would be killed immediately and the city would burn down to ashes,” the report said, citing a nuclear scientist named Cho Hyong Il.

[jmowreader]

37. He misses one tiny little problem

North Korea KNOWS we could wipe out North Korea with nuclear weapons, and in the summertime the prevailing winds on the Korean Peninsula blow away from South Korea. KJU loves saber rattling but his generals would be extremely hesitant to try a suicide move like that.

[Kablooie]

38. They are such masters at the art of sophisticated subtlety.

And that little stunt would be followed with 7000 nuclear missles converging on North Korea.

[Zira]

40. As unbalanced as Donald Trump.

But they don't let Kim Jong Un have real nukes. Let hope they won't let Donald Trump.

[elljay]

41. We laugh

because we look at the facts and know that this would be a stupid move if they actually ever developed the capability to do it. However, we're not psychopathic narcissists like Kim. Who knows what that man thinks? For all we know, he really believes what he is saying. I sincerely doubt there is anyone in NK who would tell him otherwise, unless they like the idea of being executed with an anti-aircraft missile, like their former Defense Minister.

[Zira]

42. This man is craaaaazy

"Our hydrogen bomb is much bigger than the one developed by the Soviet Union,” DPRK Today, a state-run outlet that uses the official acronym for North Korea, reported Sunday.

“If this H-bomb were to be mounted on an inter-continental ballistic missile and fall on Manhattan in New York City, all the people there would be killed immediately and the city would burn down to ashes,” the report said, citing a nuclear scientist named Cho Hyong Il.
"

I wonder if people in his country are so isolated that they think this would be a good thing. Or even just the threats to other countries.

If I were there I would be like, "the Supreme leader is insane, lets take our chances getting across that river to China before we have to drink the punch or he actually launches something."

[GP6971]

50. Crazy and unstable. n/t

[Canadian Interloper]

44. North Korea Can't Keep a Submarine Afloat

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141376542

[saltpoint]

51. The government in N. Korea

is known to the world as wildly exaggerating liars and as ruthless and repressive brutes to their own citizenry.

If government officials in that country would like to be taken seriously, it might be suggested to them that they grow the fuck up on the first count and resolve to treat their own people with dignity on the second.