(My second Canada-related post today. Have no idea how this theme developed …)
On the CBS movie “Fail Safe” Monday night (which actually was pretty good), at the end they listed the countries that have nuclear weapon capabilities. Canada wasn’t listed.
One of our closest allies doesn’t have nukes? I had no idea.
Is this correct?
“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi
That movie was, of course, Sunday night. (Trying to get Monday over with, I guess.)
“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi
That’s correct, Milo. We don’t have the bomb.
Don’t need one. We’re next door to most powerful nation on earth. And we’re friends.
Does the U.S. have nukes stationed in Canada?
{the USA throws up its hands in surrender to the Terrifying Bug-Eyed Monsters from Space}
“Do what you like with Canada, just leave us alone!”
I don’t think that is right.
Living under the shadow of NORAD, we have a lot of Canadian Air Force that live in town.
I toured NORAD with my family about 13 years ago and were able to get a more exclusive access because the 3 ranked Canadian AF commander lives next door to one of my dad’s friends.
Anyhow, I can’t imagine that Canada doesn’t have nukes, wouldn’t make sense if they have their AF working side-by-side with our AF.
Even though the Canadian AF flies along with the USAF sometimes, the Canadians aren’t carrying any nukes. Who would have the authority to tell them to use them if they had them?
I can’t see the reason why Canada would want to have the reponsibility.
Recently, there was a scandal (sort of) in the papers which involved accusations by the provincial government that American ships were bringing nuclear and nuclear capable weapons to Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island. The official word is that nuclear weapons are not supposed to be on Canadian territory, but for security reasons American warships won’t reveal nuclear cargo (whether or not one exists).
Canadian policy is strongly anti-nuke. See: [url=http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/nucchallenge/POLICY-e.htm
Damn. I’ll try again:
Canadian policy on nuclear weapons
Canada has nuclear capability. We could put together a bangbang if we had to. We just don’t.
Re NORAD, it’s a joint North American defensive measure. Has nothing to do with the two countries’ nuclear arsenal or lack thereof. It keeps watch, it doesn’t launch anything.
The US had nukes stationed on Canadian soil for many years, at several sites throughout the country. Some of this stationing was open and known to the public, but a lot of it was not. A lot of nukes transited via Canadian air bases as well, and on one occasion a (disarmed) bomb ended up on the bottom of the St. Lawrence.
Dee da dee da dee dee do do / Dee ba ditty doh / Deedle dooby doo ba dee um bee ooby / Be doodle oodle doodle dee doh http://members.xoom.com/labradorian/
As far as I know, there are no longer any nuclear weapons on Canadian soil. The U.S. Navy, as a matter of policy, refuses to divulge whether its ships, which may dock in friendly countries, are carrying nukes. I believe this refusal to divulge was the downfall of the ANZUS treaty (a NATO-inspired mutual defense pact between the US, Australia, and New Zealand, which was dissolved in the Reagan years.)
There were US nukes in Canada during at least part of the Cold War. See the fascinating site http://starheart.net/mad.html
An Oct. 1999 report in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reveals that we stored nukes in the following countries (among others): Canada, Cuba (pre-Castro), Iceland, Japan, Morocco (when it was a French colony), the Philippines, Spain, South Korea, and Taiwan. The government of Iceland was not aware of our storing nukes there.
Countries where we currently store nukes: ¨ Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. The U.S. is the only country that currently stores nukes outside its own borders. The vast majority of US warheads are stored inside the US.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)
Huh. I visited the Starheart site, and I came up with this little nugget:
Ain’t that funky now? Nuclear-capable bombs minus radioactives? Isn’t that a big empty box with a small high-explosive charge in it? I’m wondering what the point would be.
I’m not saying it isn’t true, it’s just that I’d have thought nukes were the kinds of thing you’d want in an individually wrapped package, no fuss, no muss, no transporting uranium and/or plutonium in non-bomb packages when you got nervous. Sure, you don’t want complete weapons in just any old ally, but I can’t figure out how prepositioning the hollow bombs would be economical. Maybe the bombs are really big and the nuclear guts are really small…?
I’ve asked similar questions regarding Canada’s armed forces and other countries nuke abilities.
Most of the industrialized countries in the world could most likely put together a bomb they chose not to.
I can imagine the USA gives them some benefits NOT to develope a program. This seems to be the case with Argentina and Brazil.
Canada don’t need no stinkin’ nukes. They’re all set to take over the world with out them. See this site for all the details.
(While everyone’s laughing, they sneak in and take over…)
Dan Tilque
Boris: Actually, the non-radioactive part of the bomb is the part that’s really hard to build, and which contains the most secrets. Anybody knows that you get a radioactive boom by compressing enough radioactive mass past the critical threshold. It’s being able to do it in a way that yields more than a stick or two of TNT in explosive force that’s really tough.
There was a really good book written by a Ph.D candidate who got in mucho hot water for designing a bomb as his thesis. The book goes into pretty good detail about how tough it is to get the right explosives, tampers, detonators, etc. in the right combination to do the job right.