Comment by 7952
6 days ago
Sure, but there must always be a fear that the military and public would not want to die in a nuclear inferno to defend national sovereignty. And may tolerate a coupe instead. Which then reduces the madness and the deterrent effect. The extra step the Dprk have taken is to try and build bunkers so that the regime could survive the destruction of the country. A step further into madness that goes beyond what western countries have been willing to accept.
The US built a lot of bunkers like this back in the 1950's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Weather_Emergency_Operat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Rock_Mountain_Complex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex
With the rise of solid fuel ICBM and then MIRV leading to the truly massive number of warheads pointed at the US, the US switched to airplanes for the most important continuity of government issues, figuring that the skies 30,000 above the US will largely be secure (presuming the plane is appropriately EMP shielded) due to the many US geographic advantages, and so it is the best place to ride out the initial attack and then take stock, get to somewhere safe, and figure out what to do from there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Looking_Glass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACAMO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-6_Mercury
But the North Koreans can have no illusion that the skies above their country will be safe: there are several major enemy airbases a few minutes from their border, their entire airspace is routinely surveilled and powers hostile to them have made large investments in stealthy air superiority fighters, so the air is not a safe place for the DPRK continuity of government plans. The DPRK does have trains but I would not consider those safe in the event of a major war, since rails are difficult to keep secret.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taeyangho_armoured_train
So bunkers are the best they can do, given their circumstances.
Where will the planes land?
There are something like 20,000 airports and heliports across the US. While not all of them can handle 747s probably there are several thousand fields that can take one of them, especially if there is no need for it to fly again.
And even if all of those fields are destroyed in the US, the 747s modified for AF1 (VC-25s) are capable of in flight refueling, they can stay up for about three days before the oil needs to be changed on the engines and they are forced to land. So they can still reach Australia or some place far away from the US if the rest of the US is totally destroyed.
Given the extent of planning that went into these types of doomsday survival scenarios, I wouldn't be surprised to find there are pre-prepared discreet runways in obscure locations unlikely to be targeted. Not full concrete runways, just a strip of prepared land that would see a 747 land without exploding into a ball of fire.
Dry lake beds abound in the US West. See Edwards AFB (big dry lake bed on which nearly everything, including the Space Shuttle, has landed). See also Groom Lake. These are enormous and couldn't be wrecked by conventional runway denial weapons.
Those interstate highways are starting to look pretty good as the fuel guage drops
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Watching a civilized nation drop a nuclear bomb on an enemy really got into peoples heads.
What's worse is.. it worked.
there's a fair argument to make that a nation that drops a nuclear bomb on a city isn't "civilized"
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You should read Blood Meridian.
> And may tolerate a coupe instead
The US is vulnerable to that scenario as well, even though the military’s willingness to comply with literally textbook illegal orders is not encouraging.
Aren't there bunkers near dc for that reason though?
According to some deep dives into the budget figures for the East Wing Ballroom .. there are new bunkers going in as we type .. and likely being networked underground.
Feels like our politicians and MIC higher ups are preparing themselves for nuclear war but not building the rest of us any bunkers
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Not to mention the bunkers being built by various Silicon Valley billionaires, who by rights should be considered appendages of the U.S. state.
“And may tolerate a coupe instead.”
I could tolerate a coupe but I’d prefer a sports car :-/
> the military and public would not want to die in a nuclear inferno to defend national sovereignty
Erm, it's kind of demanded for people to go out and die to defend national sovereignty in nations that have a draft. For myself, I'd prefer to be vaporized than bleed out in a trench if it really comes down to it.
Realistically speaking you'll die of an infected and untreated burn wound though, the severe blast and burn area is just much much bigger than the fancy "everything just goes poof" core.
Realistically speaking you're going to die of starvation or get shot by marauding gangs, or die of cancer a few decades later from radiation in the food change. NukeMap [1] has good visualizations of the relative fireball vs. blast vs. thermal radiation vs. fallout radiuses. One thing that stands out: most of the suburbs is going to survive the initial nuclear exchange. At worst, they'll have a few broken windows.
The problem is that if you eliminate ~20% of a nation's population, supply chains, continuity of government, and the economy aren't going to last long. Social organization breaks down much more widely than people die. The resultant pullback of all the trapping of society - reliable food supply, clean water, transportation infrastructure, electricity, heat - is going to kill many more people than the nukes will.
[1] https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
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Yah, but you could enter the ruins of some shop, get some booze there, and walk straight into ground zero. Feeling the buzz. Getting tired...drifting away...
Vaporized is good with me. Not so keen to have my body melt over several days due to acute radiation exposure though...
Giving up is really very common in war.
coup