North Korean nuclear test - could it be a bluff ?

[whiffey]

The only evidence we have, I am guessing, is seismographic. Could this have been produced by a very large amount of conventional explosive ? Just to raise political stakes, court the USA.

Either way, assuming NK is aware of Mutually Assured Destruction, does it really matter that they have potentially a deliverable nuclear weapon.

Much worse in the hands of Iran surely ? (Bye Bye Tel Aviv)

[LazyGun]

ALL the sabre rattling carried out by NK over the last few months is all for one purpose... to remind the IC and in particular the US that they are there, and to extract as much no strings attached aid as they possibly can, without any changes in their regime.

As to whether or not they actually carried out a nuclear test I dont know... but everyone seems to accept that they have, so whatever evidence they have must be pretty conclusive I would have thought. I do know that the americans had dispatched a plane capable of detecting radioactive traces to monitor the area.

[whiffey]

A corollary to this. Would a limited nuclear exchange between X and Y necessarily be a global disaster ?

I read The Third World War, by Sir John Hackett, which visualises a limited nuclear exchange between the Soviet bloc and the West. A nuclear bomb on Birmingham and Croydon :( I think. The final hypothesised outcome of just a few warheads was a global climate catastrophe, affecting even the Australian outback.

So, can we (the rest of the world) just leave North Korea to get on with it ?

[Big Al1st]

Hi Whiffey, Agree with you upto a point. Certainly if NK, or Iran, let off some Nukes they would probably be wiped out by the other nations and thousands of their people would be killed, and they would have achieved very little.
I think the problem is if they handed over Nukes to other organisations then that would cause problems.
For example, if Iran gave weapons to Al Quaida, and they were used on Israel, where would the Western Nations retaliate. Half the time we dont know where these organisations are, and if you did attack them you would probably only cut off a couple of fimgers from the entire body.
That I think is the most worrying aspect Rgds Al

[jno]

the only people NK might want to nuke are the Japanese, which it sees (correctly) as US allies. As for mutually assured destruction, I don't know if you've seen the film Fog of War. In it, Robert McNamara, who was US defence secretary during the Cuban nuclear crisis, says he met Castro much later and asked if he'd ever have advised the Soviets to use their nukes. Castro said he not only would, he had. He didn't care about wiping out Cuba, he thought it would be a price worth paying to wipe out half of the USA.