Comments on: Did North Korea Really Detonate A Nuclear Weapon?

By: Unsatisfied LG DACOM

Unsatisfied LG DACOM — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:39:33 +0000

Just like the question of whether the Chinese deliberately crashed their sub into the US sonar, this question is pretty ridiculous. It's a shame that they're even being asked.

There's no way for North Korea to simulate such a large explosion with conventional munitions. No way. That said, just because they did it doesn't mean that they did it well.

By: JoeC

JoeC — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:37:42 +0000

correction: phone = phony

By: JoeC

JoeC — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:31:54 +0000

Hmm. Some crude internet research tells me that the Oklahoma City truck bomb was the equivalent of 500 pounds of TNT (0.25 tons). A military 2000 pound bomb has the explosive capacity of about 1000 pounds of TNT (0.5 tons). A conventional explosion of 10 kilotons is 40,000 or 20,000 times as large as each of those respectively.

That seems like an incredible expense of munitions just to rig a phone test. Plus the movement of all of that material would very likely have been noticed by reconnaissance.

By: Stafford

Stafford — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:21:03 +0000

10 Kilotons of TNT would do it.

By: gerry

gerry — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:17:08 +0000

What are the sources of the "many reports" and how are they worded. Many reports from sources outside special monitoring use information given in different ways that seem to grow as the media report. Unidentified, unofficial, and inside sources, are not credible sources. Politicians are always suspect, unless given as official information. (even then, given their reputation for distortion, one must be suspect) Most any source should have corroborating information from other sources.

There has been little of this, yet the media, politicians, and others seem to want to jump on the band wagon of nukes in North Korea.

I am fairly certain North Korea has plutonium as advertised.(Its been seen and held in the hands of investigators in North Korea.) Maybe they set off a crude nuke. Debatable, radioactivity was found by the 'Russians'. No other source.

Many explosives would be required to fake a nuclear explosion. Huge amounts. But not impossible amounts. North Korea has huge amounts of old munitions that perhaps could be enough to con the world. Ridiculas assumption? Not when dealing with North Korea.