OT: sweep space clean of radiation after nuclear attack

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Winfield Hill
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Surveys show that what the American population wants by an overwhelming bi-partisan majority is nuclear arms control, arms reduction or elimination, and the chances of nuclear weapon use reduced by successful treaty negotiation as the first line of defense.

Naturally government keep tossing money at the defense industry for whiz-bang projects and shove what the people actually asking for onto the back burner.

Reply to
bitrex

Preventing the norks from blowing up all of everybody's LEO satellites is probably a good thing.

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Phil Hobbs

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Phil Hobbs

"And so, without fanfare, defense scientists are trying to devise a cure."

Yea, cuz Dear Leader was supposed to get Dear Leader to submit and come up with a deal that made it unnecessary. Instead he came back with a big bunch of nothing. Now we can throw some more billions at NASA and the DoD to come up with a "solution" with about zero chance of ever working right. What a bunch of scam-artists...

Reply to
bitrex

I thought we had a lot of US voters who were opposed to any sort of weapon control? Oh, they don't mind other people's weapons being controlled, just not their own.

BTW, since North Korea aisn't a signatory to any arms limitation treaty, how would a nuclear weapon reduction or ban affect them?

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

All we need to do is get the North Korean population to demand the same.

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John Larkin

If you've got the yields and the delivery systems available seems like a hard thing to prevent after-the-fact if someone were very determined. I don't think they have the ability to launch megaton-sized warheads 400km up at this point they don't have any. How well would the system work vs. ten instead of one if they did

It's in the category of yeah-anything-could-happen-I-guess. Despite NK's regular bluster and being a reliable boogeyman one point in their favor is that when it comes to doing anything serious they've seemed to reliably "know their place" in the world for nearly 70 years. For an "irrational" nation there's been a long track-record of behaving rather rationally at least when it comes to military conflict. India and Pakistan's track records are more dubious.

Reply to
bitrex

The problem here is what the health of the upper atmosphere needs; we require an intact ionosphere, and the particle population changed violently during those old tests, staying out-of-normal for years. Everyone in the know agreed that it was too scary to continue, and the ban on testing in space has been a comfort for years.

No, there's no big money in the study; they're piggybacking onto existing antennas, and planning for contingency. It's exactly the public who benefits, and it IS defense, in depth, so 'defense industry' is the totally appropriate label.

The demands of the people aren't heard in the halls of power in North Korea, so that has to be a joke. Upper-atmosphere experimentation couild have major benefits down the road, if (as in the past) atmospheric chemistry goes awry.

Both the old space N-tests and the ozone hole remediation show that small human contributions can dominate the world situation in that rarified boundary region.

Reply to
whit3rd

With the amount of nuclear weapons in the world there are there are surely all sorts of things you could stay awake over a "nuclear Pearl Harbor" in space by North Korea is frankly one of the least-scary scenarios.

What Americans wanted was a deal that got them to disarm not throwing money at NASA to f*ck with the Van Allen belts in one more bullshit make-work project which anyone uninvolved could tell you has very close to zero chance of ever being good for providing any credible amount of real protection.

Reply to
bitrex

"After all, what nuclear power would want to pollute space with particles that could take out its own satellites, critical for communication, navigation, and surveillance?"

The idea that North Korea isn't just as reliant on that same infrastructure just because they don't have their own satellites is pretty flimsy. Sure, Kim Jong might shoot his own balls off one day, too. Anything could happen I guess.

Early research seems relatively low cost, anything that actually _does_ anything will not be.

Put North Korea on the proposal as the bogey-man and you can get most things rubber-stamped it seems.

Reply to
bitrex

I hope he does fwiw

Reply to
bitrex

Satellite and space-launch costs coming down all the time, it's not 1963 anymore they're becoming commodity hardware. By the time any Van Allen-sucking technology is ready to test they probably will be. Knock out some comms sats? Go ahead we'll just de-orbit or park those and toss some replacements up over the weekend.

Planning for yesterday's war...

Reply to
bitrex

it's a minority.

You have to cut a deal with them individually. Y'know, like the current administration was supposed to...

Reply to
bitrex

If it truly were a minority we would have had significant gun control by this point.

I think that is on the schedule for 2021.

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

Don't think that immediately follows. It's possible to construct a reasonable argument that having relative liberty in personal firearms ownership might make some individual citizen safer depending on circumstances. I don't agree with a number of them but you can construct ones that have some amount of logic to them.

In what way does having _more_ nuclear weapons in the world as opposed to fewer make any individual citizen "safer"? Pretty sure even plenty of gun-nuts could see the advantage with respect to one's own continued personal security and liberty of a less-is-more policy there.

I think it's likely that NRA members are somewhat smarter than the average person. Not by much, mind you, but could be.

Reply to
bitrex

ing

sful

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eapon control? Oh, they don't mind other people's weapons being controlled , just not their own.

y this point.

Actually, you can't, not valid arguments. Most of those here who are oppos ed to gun control can't actually discuss the issue rationally. I don't rec all anyone espouse a clear and logical argument for less gun control or eve n not having tighter controls. That would in no small way be evidenced by their insistence that I support gun control. I'm pretty sure I've never sa id that I do, at least not any major steps. I might have said I would supp ort an assault weapon ban, but I'm not lobbying for it either. I don't thi nk gun control will do much unless we do something to actually reduce the n umber of weapons in the hands of bad guys rather than just trying to reduce the flow. Kinda like CO2 and global warming. Small measures aren't going to be very effective.

That is the entire point of MAD. If anyone has a nuke, there has to be mor e than one to have them and in sufficient numbers to assure near total dest ruction of all sides. Then the logic says neither side will start such a w ar. If one or both sides don't have enough weapons to assure destruction o f the other, the chances of fighting a nuclear war are higher because it is survivable.

Insufficient evidence to be sure. One sign they aren't as sharp as the ave rage person is how easily they were led from being the national equivalent of a gun club to being a major lobbying force sponsored by the "gun club" d ues. I think people who simply appreciate and enjoy guns don't follow the logic of the NRA in having a zero tolerance policy toward gun control, incl uding bump stocks and silencers. I'm a bit surprised they haven't lobbied for personal nuclear weapons.

But then most people aren't too hard to influence. That's evident by the e ase with which advertising shapes elections, much like liquor and cigarette use. So maybe NRA members are no different from the other masses... excep t they likely have more guns.

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Rick C

That gun violence is a consequence of "societal issues" and not weapon availability is a valid point as far as it goes; you can imagine some generally more peace-and-love-oriented society where firearms are widely available for the legitimate purposes they have like hunting, sporting, and occasional personal defense or arming a citizen militia to potentially defend that way of life from outside aggression, but anyone actively wanting to go murder anyone with them out of malice is very rare, at least rare enough that what you lose by tight restrictions would seem heavy-handed with respect to the small amount of violence that occurs.

That that place is not America is at least, in the abstract, tangential to the fact that many people could imagine a society like that. The sticking point is that nobody reliably knows how to make America a place like that, not that it's an utterly invalid point, intrinsically.

Thinking "Shit man there are a ton of armed crazies out there and I have no idea how to change that or even if it could be, nobody listens to me anyway, I'm just gonna keep a gun in my car one in my house so I don't get caught out and jacked" I think is a cynical position but not an entirely irrational one once the number of guns in circulation reaches a certain mass. Particularly if you're say black and poor.

An untestable assumption that seems to check out until the day it doesn't and then there may not be anyone left to comment on where the "logic" broke down. There was a decent-sized chunk of history when there were some number of nuclear weapons in the world in possession of adversarial nations but not enough to implement a MAD-type scheme and a nuclear war was also not fought.

It's entirely possible a small number act as good a deterrent as a large number it's not like there isn't historical precedent for that situation also. Any idiot could see the best time to strike from a purely game-theory perspective is when you got the bombs and your opponent doesn't but it's never happened when the total number of available weapons in the world was greater than two.

Reply to
bitrex

"bad guys" is a silly term, everyone who owns a gun legally or illegally but has never done any harm with it is neither a "good guy" or a "bad guy" they all become a "bad guy" on the day they become that, but by that point the damage is often done. Like the phrase "he was a family man" yeah, well, what man with a family isn't a "family man" to some degree if you want to spin it that way?

Reply to
bitrex

weapon control? Oh, they don't mind other people's weapons being controll ed, just not their own.

by this point.

ct

pposed to gun control can't actually discuss the issue rationally. I don't recall anyone espouse a clear and logical argument for less gun control or even not having tighter controls. That would in no small way be evidenced by their insistence that I support gun control. I'm pretty sure I've neve r said that I do, at least not any major steps. I might have said I would support an assault weapon ban, but I'm not lobbying for it either. I don't think gun control will do much unless we do something to actually reduce t he number of weapons in the hands of bad guys rather than just trying to re duce the flow. Kinda like CO2 and global warming. Small measures aren't go ing to be very effective.

I stand by my statement about not hearing "a clear and logical argument for less gun control or even not having tighter controls."

of

more than one to have them and in sufficient numbers to assure near total destruction of all sides. Then the logic says neither side will start such a war. If one or both sides don't have enough weapons to assure destructi on of the other, the chances of fighting a nuclear war are higher because i t is survivable.

We were discussing probabilities, not eventualities, i.e. "safer".

I'm happy to listen to any historical precedent you care to relate to the i ssue. Otherwise I will point out that there are defenses against missiles and I believe they no longer consider aircraft a viable means of launch. I believe sub based nukes are the most deadly, but not so many of them. The large total number of nukes *assure* enough will reach the "enemy" so as t o destroy them in the event of an exchange. A lesser number actually encou rages a first strike once events reach a point where either side thinks the other may enact a first strike, so reduces the "safer" goal.

Why are we talking about nukew rather than guns? You brought it up as an a nalogy and I explained why it wasn't. Better to just drop it, no?

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Rick C

ct

pposed to gun control can't actually discuss the issue rationally. I don't recall anyone espouse a clear and logical argument for less gun control or even not having tighter controls. That would in no small way be evidenced by their insistence that I support gun control. I'm pretty sure I've neve r said that I do, at least not any major steps. I might have said I would support an assault weapon ban, but I'm not lobbying for it either. I don't think gun control will do much unless we do something to actually reduce t he number of weapons in the hands of bad guys rather than just trying to re duce the flow. Kinda like CO2 and global warming. Small measures aren't go ing to be very effective.

Nope, sorry, if you are breaking the law by owning a weapon illegally, by d efinition you are a bad guy. To become a bad guy you don't have to use a w eapon or even have one. Guns are not only bad. Just as illegal use and ow nership of guns aren't the only bad acts.

Construct a Venn diagram, that should make it clear.

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

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