Norks

[Rumpshot]

It appears they are threatening LA, DC, and Austin, TX.

Choice of targets, 2 out of 3 seem to make sense...

Armchair quarterback time. What are the odds that they can actually hit their targets? That the nukes will actually go bang? How dirty would they be? How large a "kill" zone would each inflict? Would they fling one at each city or multiples?

I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. Don't know how real tech savvy they might be. Would expect one missile per city due to expense/budget issues. I would expect accuracy to be problematic as well as reliability of the payload.

The million dollar question would be what exactly do they expect to gain. Assuming the absolute worst, that they annihilate each target city, they must understand that North Korea would cease to exist. I would expect both China and Russia, unless they are a party to the crime, to stomp just as hard as we do.

[Captain Wheelgun]

AUSTIN???

WTF, Over ???

There are probably more communists here than there are in North Korea

[Dinochrome]

I've pondered this, too. It didn't look like the NorKs would be able to successfully launch anything that would reach the U.S.A., but after they actually put up a satellite that achieved polar-orbit I had to reconsider. If you can make orbit, you can hit any spot on the planet.

I still think Kim's missiles are a diversion. He warns, "Watch out for my mighty missiles!" and sends a primitive refrigerator-sized fission bomb to a coastal city in a rusty freighter with a suicide crew. It would just need to get within a half-mile of land. An ocean-surface burst would shower the shore with radioactive seawater and the blast-wave would raise a tsunami. Targets on the west coast could be Seattle in Puget Sound, San Francisco between the bridges, Long Beach inside the breakwater, and San Diego under the Coronado bridge. If Kim III had enough fissionable material and a fleet of innocent-looking commercial ships, he could hit all of them at once and claim his missiles did it.

[Bullspit]

Obviously Austin is a target because:

1. Capitol of Texas. After DC is gone Texas will take its rightful place as the center of the new country.

2. Home of a lot of US corporate offices of South Korean businesses? This is just a guess on my part.

3. Un hates Texas blues.

[randy]

What Chris said. Same Shit, Different Day

[Aglifter]

If it were real, because those are the towns where the Norkd have operatives w chemical weapons

[bubblewhip]

I don't think that exactly will stop their great leader from the like of launching one of those things like a Katyusha rocket in the hopes it will hit "something."

This is 3 generations of crazy we're talking about here. Hilariously two of those locations are near the sea and one of them is on land surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. If it even DOES work, There's probably over a 50% chance it will hit some water or desert, and basically a nil chance it will hit anything substantial that is greater than a suburban area

Of course there is more than one way to deliver a nuke.

You could do it by boat, but certainly any military boat will be detected even a sub by the South Koreans and reported back. You could do it by civilian, but that would also be reported by the SK pretty quickly. Military Air is completely out of the picture, it would be completely obvious. Civilian air? Possible, but when I mean possible I mean there is a percent chance or two that you can bounce from NK to China, and to the United States, but completely unlikely because China doesn't want anything to do with NK at this time, hell less of a chance of being partially responsible for sending a bomb to the US.

[Netpackrat]

I don't find myself objecting very strenuously to his target list. Since Alaska is probably one of the places he can actually hit, I'd just as soon he be flinging shit elsewhere, and those are not horrible locations for a little urban renewal. If I could make any revisions to his list, I'd substitute NYC or maybe Sacramento for Austin though.

[randy]

and one of them is on land surrounded by a whole lot of nothing.

You haven't been in the Austin area in say, the last 100 years or so, have you?

You could do it by boat, but certainly any military boat will be detected even a sub by the South Koreans and reported back.

No, it's not "certainly". Surface craft, likely, but a ROMEO or WHISKEY class sub is damned hard to detect from what I understand. One of those stripped and provisioned for a one-way mission could reach the US West coast.

You could do it by civilian, but that would also be reported by the SK pretty quickly.

You've got a hell of a lot more confidence in the KCIA than I ever did.

Military Air is completely out of the picture, it would be completely obvious. Civilian air? Possible, but when I mean possible I mean there is a percent chance or two that you can bounce from NK to China, and to the United States, but completely unlikely because China doesn't want anything to do with NK at this time, hell less of a chance of being partially responsible for sending a bomb to the US.

Probably true, but they could always fly in from somewhere else, staging from say Venezuela without having a direct path back to home-base. The host country wouldn't even need to know anything about it.

Point is, the world ain't safe. There's always a way, so I don't waste a lot of time worrying about it. Based on previous experience, the louder Son of Dopey and Grandson of Lumpy postures, the less likely he is to actually do anything. It's when they're quiet you gotta start worrying.

[Jered]

Isn't he shooting missiles that can miss entire countries?