Yeah, that was kinda stupid phrasing on my part, I’ll admit. :smack:
But still, give me the warning so I can dive to the bottom of the pool and breathe through a hose for a few minutes.
Yea, but does Kim know this? I just watched a PBS special about this before Christmas. I am glad they are gone. Somebody get the word to Kim, so he won’t point it this way. Seriously, Isn’t there missile defense systems used if there really was a missile coming toward us? They are the ones who need a 15 minute warning, not me.
Just to clarify, I’m quite certain that our ballistic missile defense systems are relying on things like radar and infrared detection systems to identify launches, not waiting for a public emergency alert text / radio / TV message. I wouldn’t let that lull you into complacency either though, because our ballistic missile defense capabilities are rather limited and rudimentary. Our real capability to actually shoot an incoming Nork nuke is probably some confidence-shatteringly low percentage.
With the Navy Base, Joint Air Base Charleston and the harbor all right here, Charleston has to be considered a high priority target.
On the other hand…I live about 25-30 miles north and west of the city. If the bomb isn’t a monster and it’s on target I’ve got a chance of living through it. Prevailing winds are out to sea so most of the fall out should be going away from me as well.
Mind you, it would suck, but it’s survivable. And I’ve got kids. So long as one of them is alive I have to try to live.
And, just for ‘fun’…
Seems I was right. With an 800 KT blast I’d be 20+ miles outside the firestorm.
I have more than enough anxiety on a day when there is no nuclear attack. I don’t want my last 15 minutes on this planet to be filled with even more anxiety than that.
… at my current location I will be inside several overlapping rings of obliteration.
If it’s just Kimmie Boy popping off, OTOH, then who knows where will it hit or whether it will go off at some point, and sure, taking cover will likely be worth it.
No warning. And I hope I’m very close to the point of impact and am instantly vaporized. I have no desire to survive a nuclear attack.
Even if it were just on Hawaii, or Guam?
I want the warning so I can get to the roof for a front-row seat.
And if the Shithole in Chief manages to tantrum his way into a hot war with NK, Tokyo is pretty likely to get hit.
My problem is I doubt NK could do it.
First and ICBM would have to find the 7 island chain located in empty ocean thousands of miles away. Then hit say one island (like Oahu). Then hit something important on that 597 square mile island (Honolulu). Then hit it with enough force and power to actually cause major damage.
Now the Russians could rain down missles from afar as well as launch them from subs and bombers but I dont see the US and Russia ever doing that.
So I think 15 minutes would just be unneeded chaos.
Given comments like the quoted, I am wondering whether North Korea’s rulers are feeling like they must launch a live ICBM at some harmless target in the middle of the Pacific, in order to prove to other countries that they actually have a viable deterrent. We’ve only done it once (the Frigate Bird test during Operation Dominic, in 1962) and the Soviets did it a few times with their SLBMs, though the US does shoot inert ICBMs from time to time from Vandenberg to Kwajalein Atoll.
Even in back in the late 50s/early 60s, first-generation storable hypergolic liquid-fueled Soviet ICBMs like the R-16/SS-7 had a circular error probable of 2-3 km, with 11,000 km range. Double or triple that, and it’s still more than sufficient to break things and set them on irradiated fire in Honolulu, assuming the ~150 kt yield test device is able to be deployed atop an ICBM.
FWIW, per Glasstone, the 5 PSI overpressure radius for a 150 kt surface burst is around 2.4 Km. 3.75 km if airbursted at optimum height. As a rough estimate for planning casualties from a nuclear detonation, half the people within the 5 PSI overpressure circle die. My guess is that any detonations will be groundbursts; fuzing seems like it would be easier for the North Koreans to manage, and fallout will be nastier long term for the target country to deal with than would doubling the damaged area and casualties by utilizing an optimum airburst.
So, if North Korea completely loses its mind and launches a nuke-tipped ICBM at, e.g., Honolulu, they probably can’t hit exactly where they’d like. But assuming they’re as competent as the 1960 Soviet Union was in rocketry and nuclear weapons, their misses aren’t likely to be bad enough to spare the city they were shooting at.
If your in the area, ultimately it doesnt matter, the only people the 15 minutes would matter to would be dead, so whos going to be around having regrets about their last 15 minutes?
Living on Oahu, I take some assurance from all the military bases nearby. If anyone can protect us, it’s Pearl Harbor, Hickam AFB, Schofield Barracks, Wheeler AAF, Fort Shafter, Camp Smith, Kaneohe MCAS…
And if not, we’re a small island, I probably wouldn’t even know if it hit us. “What’s that bright li-”
They decommissioned the missile silos [del]years[/del] decades ago. Heck, before they sold off that property and buried them, we would go out there and mess around in them as teens.
Isn’t the hypothetical of the OP that the warning is coming for an attack in your area? Otherwise, what difference would it make? Why would I even need to consider “grabbing my survival kit and running to the basement” if the attack were occurring thousands of miles away?
We’re in sort of a similar situation with our ballistic missile defense program. Some have suggested we try to intercept a North Korean missile, to prove that we can. The biggest obstacle seems to be that we’re not entirely sure we can. It’s a high-risk, high-reward scenario, just like if the North Koreans tried to, for example, hit a target ship in the Pacific. They might miss, or the missile might fail in flight, or the nuke might not detonate, etc. High risk, high reward.
ETA: there’s also a pretty real possibility that launching a test nuke into the Pacific triggers a hot war with the US
ETA2: My favorite quote about the North Korean missile program is “No one, not even the North Koreans, knows the CEP of the HS-12”
It’s really, really hard to intercept an incoming ballistic missile, especially an ICBM. To give an idea of how hard, back when we were seriously planning on doing so, the only weapons which could plausibly pull it off would be… more nukes. If you’re going to intercept an ICBM, you want to do it during the boost phase, near the launch site, not near the target site.
And a lot of people are saying that if you’re too close, the warning won’t matter. But the key is that a little warning can turn “too close” into “not too close”. You can turn the instant death into lingering death, or the lingering death into cancer-decades-from-now, or cancer-decades-from-now into no problem, if you’re near the edges of those zones. And for all you know, you might be.