If I’m a World Leader[sup]TM[/sup], I offer pre-strike evacution/relocation assistance to the governement of the DPRK. I’m pretty sure it’ll be declined, so I prepare to move in and provide humanitarian assistance/disaster relief in the aftermath.
I’d also fast-track getting a UN Peace-Keeping force into the area as soon as the dust settles, because it’s gonna be a dystopian, armaggedonish, post-apoctalyptic nightmare of a hell-hole, what with people settling old scores and paying back grievances in the absence of law-enforcement, on top of trying to tend to the wounded, bury the dead and survive on less than nothing.
The government scientists have calculated the blast radius; they say the meteor will destroy about 1200 square miles. Now I didn’t say so in the OP, and it’s too late now, so I will not say that you have to accept it—but I’d think that they were giving the worst-case scenario–particularly in the case of the Japanese and Chinese scientists.
Wait, I’m confuzzled. Given your scenario, which seems likely to me, why not pony up the Danegeld?
I don’t think North Korea has anything to worry about. Kim Il-Dong Daddy invented the meteorite buster last week in between writing movements of his 100th opera, and He will protect the entire country, single-handed. As long as they worship Him enough beforehand. Kimmy is easy, so get down on your kneesies. There’s no time to lose.
Not really into chicken fajitas, now a full on turducken, maybe…
Sorry, no danegeld, and it will sick to be North Korea. Though to be honest, I would be willing to bet that Pudgy will mysteriously be out of his capitol conducting a very important inspection of something and get missed by the meteor. :dubious:
Their leaders may be an oppressive cadre but the average North Korean deserves our sympathy. They are propagandised into knowing nothing else but the party line their entire lives. If we were at war with North Korea I’d still act and destroy the meteor, not to do so would be a war crime. At peace, having the ability to but choosing not to because they are ‘the enemy’, the rationale of every genocidal dictator throughout history, would be a crime against humanity. How many women and children would die because they happened to live in the wrong country?
I don’t think it’s Danegeld either - that’s bribing someone not to attack you, which is not the case here.
The choice is theirs. We have fulfilled our duty if we inform them, and give them a choice. What their leaders choose to do is their choice. Maybe they have a leader somewhere in there that has half a brain?
OP Scenario is similar to Hiroshima decision: Kill 3 million to free 21 million and all of their descendants from a life in hell?
I don’t think the Korea problem will ever be solved without bloodshed. Either external or internal, it will take a loss of life to end that regime.
North Korea barely has a pot to piss in. Where will they get 50 billion dollars from for the enterprise? That’s more than its annual GDP. In any case, the average North Korean won’t know anything about it until they are a pile of ash. The regime would not invite rebellion by telling of impending catastrophe.
The resulting collapse of the regime combined with the loss of the capital/most populous city and its infrastructure would create freedom only in an anarchic sense. I doubt the denizens of Pyongyang, or North Korea in general are so miserable that they would prefer death. The population would approach zero if that were the case, since everyone knows where the exit is.
They can evacuate the population of the city in 4 days. Loss of life is their choice.
Exits they can only use if the regime is fallen. The only barrier to massive aid to the people of North Korea is their own regime. The only barrier to them all leaving is their own regime.
I rarely answer polls with personally identifiable results, and particularly not the Skald brand. But I made an exception for this. North Koreans are human beings exactly the same as us; it isn’t the ordinary people’s fault that their government stinks. To have the means to save their millions of lives and deliberately refuse would amount to a sort of genocide.
For the record, my policy on poll privacy is that any poll based on a real-life situation (what did you have for breakfast? Have you ever been robbed?) should have private results, whereas ridiculous hypotheticals are public.
My knee-jerk reaction is to say you’re right about it being morally compulsory to save the North Koreans. And though I can understand the hesitance of some for reasons given upthread (basically that saving them would only intensify the despots’ rule), I think we’d still have to do it, because letting them get pulverized when it was possible to save them would make us tons of enemies. Even some Japanese and South Koreans (the nations with the most reason to want NK neutralized) would think, “Wow. That really puts the lie to any notion of American exceptionalism or morality.”
The above reasoning was what made me pause before choosing “Let the asteroid hit”. My reasoning was this: If we allow the asteroid to hit, causing three million deaths, and probably millions more as the country descends into leaderless chaos before (hopefully) unifying with the South, we may think of that blood as on our hands. However, if we avert the asteroid, we may see 3 million people die of starvation, overwork in a prison camp, or simple firing squad next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. And so. And eventually, I realized that you will see fewer deaths overall, and a better standard of living overall, by letting the asteroid land.
It’s a bit like surgery for a cancerous tumor. Slicing open a living human being, ripping part of them out, and then sewing them back up sounds pretty horrific. But the alternative is a slow painful death. I’d pick the surgery for the same reason I’d pick the asteroid.
This thread seems to show that maybe the N Korean regime has a point about what they say about the outside world. Why is this even a question. If a meteor is heading anyway near earth no matter what the impact point, it needs to be taken down.
Both of which are the faults of the regime, not of the ordinary North Korean. By your logic we are remiss in not simply nuking the city as that will have the same results (and since North Korea isn’t the only oppressive regime in the world better grease up those silos).
But the logic is flawed, you aren’t saving the rest of North Korea by allowing the capital to die. A North Korean peasant farmer who has known nothing but the regime his entire life isn’t going to think “Now that the regime is gone, we can finally have human rights and representative democracy and all that other stuff I’ve never heard of”, he’s going to think “Millions of my countrymen are dead and now chaos reigns.”
If he finds out that we could have prevented it but didn’t, he’s not going to thank us for getting rid of the regime at horrendous cost, he’ll rightfully brand us mass-murderers.
This raises an interesting question Skald. When filling in your online “despotic regime annihilation request form” I noted that you have “nuke from orbit” as an option. One that you yourself recommend as, overall, the most effective.
Bearing in mind that an asteroid airburst is equal in force but not in physical properties. When choosing said option would I be certain get a bona fide nuclear device or merely a re-directed natural satellite?
I just want to be sure that I’m getting what I pay for. I don’t want you coming back with “never mind the radiation, feel the devastation” I’m paying for mushroom cloud, I’m getting mushroom cloud.
