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[Flying Dice]

What?

Not training for nuclear war doesn't preclude training for conventional war.

[Helgoland]

North Korea's foreign minister said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press that his country is ready to halt its nuclear tests if the United States suspends its annual military exercises with South Korea.

Source.

So yeah, it's more like 'reduce your readiness for conventional combat, and we'll reduce our efforts to create a nuclear deterrent'. Which... actually is reasonable if NK actually believes that the US and SK might start a war - and if we consider the NK leadership to be sane enough to not start a war themselves, it might actually be worth trying in order to start a disarmament process (of conventional forces).


Do note however that this is NK asking for the US to make the first step - it has little to do with a possible nuclear war.

[GiglameshDespair]

The training exercises are also for conventional strategic warfare, FD, and they're being asked to scrap those.

[Culise]

Arguably, they're not only also, but rather primarily for conventional conflict.  I'm not sure people generally expect a sustained nuclear exchange to come out of the DPRK in spite of their occasional tests, while the million-strong Korean People's Army Ground Force is still going to be something of a concern in the early days before joint air force strikes rip its 1970s tech to shreds and ROK mobilization comes into play.  I'd imagine the nuclear preparation work is much more ancillary than the conventional side, actually. 

[smjjames]

Sustained? It'll probably be followed by NK lobbing a nuke at someone and then the US striking with airpower because if we nuke NK, any soldiers we send will have to be wearing hazmat radiation suits in the hot zones. Basically, lobbing a nuke at them would just make the job more difficult.

Don't now how 'dirty' modern nukes are compared to the older ones used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki though.

[Culise]

Sorry, I was not very clear; I shouldn't have used the word exchange at all.  By "sustained," I meant the DPRK lobbing more than one or two nuclear weapons with both successful launches and detonations, either by artillery (at Seoul) or missile (at staging grounds in South Korea and Japan).  Certainly, the US could keep up a sustained attack if they were willing, but I doubt any one, including their own allies in South Korea and Japan, will thank the USA for nuking North Korea even if it were done in retaliation for something like a nuclear attack on Seoul; hence, I doubt it would actually happen.  Any nuclear launch would likely be from North to Japan, with North to South coming a close second.  Actually, I'd say that Fat Man/Little Boy weapons will be closer to what we see coming out of North Korea than any modern weapon, so those may well be a good baseline for comparison. 

[Flying Dice]

The training exercises are also for conventional strategic warfare, FD, and they're being asked to scrap those.

Yeah, that's what I was asking about (and not getting a clear answer on), whether it was that or just anti-nuclear exercises. Because I couldn't into foreign-ese.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Don't now how 'dirty' modern nukes are compared to the older ones used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki though.

Technically less, unless you want it to be a dirty bomb. Contaminant spread and explosive yield are inversely proportional, because the latter results in more fissile material being "rapidly and energetically altered".

However, modern nukes also use more material than the WWII ones, and that increased yield would spread whatever contaminants remain over far greater distances.

[Amperzand]

At this point, we use higher-yield nukes, detonated in midair.

What that means is that they don't pull up much debris to irradiate, so the main part of fallout is the bomb itself. Then the fallout itself is thrown into the stratosphere, where it can spread out and hang around for weeks or months, giving the worst of the isotopes time to decay.

For this reason, and because it increases area of effect for both flash and blast at a small cost to small-target obliterative capability, nuclear weapons deployed by a properly equipped power will be detonated anywhere from several hundred feet up to the edge of space, depending on desired results.

[Said edge-of-space bombs are used to create an EMP, rather than for their blast, at least unless they're some kind of gigaton-yield doomsday device.]

[TheDarkStar]

Assuming that nukes scale up linearly with the cube root of explosive yield, a one-gigaton nuke would only kill everything in a ~600 kilometer area. It's more effective to conduct nuclear carpet-bombing with a few hundred multi-megaton warheads warheads, which is completely possible today.

Of course, if you want to EMP a large area, you only need a handful of nukes for a given continent.

[Amperzand]

Yep.

Of course, if you want to only need one bomb, a single multi-gigaton bomb is going to basically light half the planet on fire.

To be clear, such a weapon is entirely possible, and has been ever since we figured out thermonukes. Fission/fusion hybrid bombs, you see, scale their yield indefinitely. Keep piling lithium deuteride and plutonium 239 on one another, and you keep getting more bang, it's not particularly complex by the standards of such things. It's just that something like that requires a confluence of lots and lots of money with the kind of batshit insanity that wants to burn half a planet with one bomb.

[smjjames]

We stopped doing nuke tests with the actual payload back in the early 1990's.

Anyways, Obama says: Offer, REJECTED!

[Amperzand]

I don't believe anybody's done surface nuclear testing in a very long while, but the yield of weapons hasn't changed much. Down from the old days, if anything. We don't need Titan IIs or 20-megaton plane-bombs to kill a city anymore, the Minuteman is accurate enough to make the difference.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

In keeping with established policy towards the imperialist dogs of General Discussion, I am now retaliating against LW's shameful neocolonialist appropriation of DPRK Thread by assimilating his British Independence. All proud soldiers of DPRK Thread are to engage in discussion of the Brexit only within the revolutionary mindset of DPRK Thread, peace be upon me, MetalSlimeHunt.

Ciao darlings, and remember, it's not really coercion if the alternative is death! : D

[Egan_BW]

something something britain independence american no can euuuro politic
praise be the dprk thread