Thanks for that!

One thing we have learned from the Podesta e-mails is that getting Hillary to publicly acknowledge a mistake is the second-hardest thing for her handlers. The hardest thing is to get her to apologize for anything. She never has, as far as I know.

A footnote to the Napoleonic debacle. At the beginnings of capitalism in England and occupied Ireland, the growing of crops for export - both out of country and to the English cities - was rapidly depleting the soil for growing crops. The first use of imported fertilizer was the exhumation of the war dead whose bones fertilized the soil. After this source was used up, the guano trade began. Marx and Engels documented this ecological rift and were among the first to publish the fact that along with crops, the farmers were also exporting soil fertility. It was part of what Marx termed the metabolic rift in nature and was early research into what became agronomy and ecology.

No one said we wouldn't get our hair mussed. Twenty million casualties -- tops!

This is older and does not include the global famine resulting from global crop failure/plant death and increased drought especially in essential rainforest - and oxygen deprivation - resulting from the dimming of the sun for a decade or more even from a localized nuclear exchange between two smaller countries, as shown by a study using modern computer simulations using, (if I recall correctly, posted this a while back now) the same data as previously used, only updated with new knowledge.

It has already been found that ocean currents have been slowing and that interdependent ecological die-off around the globe has been snowballing even more rapidly than thought, due to fossil-fuel/industrial/military pollution and destruction.

Complete ecological collapse means the loss of oxygen production with the loss of natural systems also capturing and containing fossil fuel and other industrial pollution at the cost of poisoning themselves, and a barren Earth incapable of supporting oxygen-dependent life. (Sorry, cockroaches, don't get your survival hopes up. )

Also, the nuclear industry/military has long down-played the hazards of radioactivity in general, although actual effects among both the exposed and their progeny, as well as independent studies of radon-exposed miners and those working with uranium or otherwise exposed, have long since indicated a much higher degree of hazard in a wider range that those profiting from such activities - and industry-funded/produced studies - wish to admit.

https://blog.nader.org/1982/12/07/nuclear-war-not-survivable/

Nuclear War Not Survivable

At 11 a.m. on Thursday, February 15, 1979, the five
Commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) heard a presentation from NRC engineer Demetrios L. Basdekas that must have chilled them into numbing inaction. At least that is the charitable view.

For had the NRC been less secretive and more forthright, the nuclear superhawks inside and outside the Reagan Administration would have been far less likely to peddle the mad fiction that a general nuclear war is survivable. And the builders of nuclear plants would not have gotten away with their smugness about the absence of national security perils that atomic power has brought to the United States.

Take the superhawks principal thesis–long ago rejected by the likes of Generals Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower–that a major nuclear exchange can be survived with a national civil defense system in place. After the bombs explode, after the firestorms and the destruction of all that is above ground, the superhawks say that life can once again emerge from the under­ground shelters because there is not that much radioactivity from the bombs to make the land uninhabitable.

Enter Demetrios L. Basdekas and his numerous NRC memoranda that he wrote to alert his agency. Basdekas was worried about the effects on the safety systems of nuclear plants when Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) is generated by a nuclear weapon’s explosion. There are over 70 atomic power plants operating now in the United States.

Here are Basdekas’ words from his memo of February 15, 1979:

“A single 3-4 megaton nuclear weapon exploded over the lower 48 States, somewhere say over Kansas City, at an altitude of 200-250 miles will produce a sufficiently strong EMP to affect every nuclear power plant operating anywhere in the lower 48 States. It is not known what the exact degree of these effects would be on each power plant affected. It will probably range, depending on location and design of the individual plant, from a shutdown to a catastrophic nuclear accident. ...

... EMP is not the only catastrophic by-product of nuclear explo­sions. Many others have been described in recent books ranging from effects on the Ozone layer to raging massive firestorms to vast epidemics. Such information is arousing the American people to demand mutual arms control and reduction. But what is unique about EMP is that it can occur, as Basdekas said, “even without a single hostile nuclear weapon penetrating the atmosphere over our air-space.”

Reagan’s arms control director, Eugene Rostow, may say that “the human race is very resilient,” when asked by Senator Claiborne Pell whether he believed a country would survive a full nuclear exchange. But the more accurate description comes from Nobel Prize physicist, Hans Bethe who declared: “If there is an all-out attack on the Soviet Union and the United States, there will afterwards be no United States nor a Soviet Union.”

The US military are, by the way, playing about with electromagnetic weapons, and I can only hope that the Clintons and others of their ilk will be prevented from attempting to set off nuclear power-plant melt-downs or other such catastrophes in any country.

http://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-the-terrifying-power-of-...

This chart shows the terrifying power of modern nuclear bombs

Ashley Lutz

Jun. 19, 2012

This infographic designed by Maximilian Bode and posted on fastcodesign.com illustrates the terrifying power of today's nuclear bombs. Each red block represents a ton of TNT.

It breaks down the difference between bombs of the past, such as the Little Boy dropped at Hiroshima, and ones more recently detonated by the US, including the Castle Bravo. ...

As you'll see at source, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, while Castle Bravo, the last bomb listed as detonated by the USA, was 15,000 kilotons.

http://www.ctbto.org/nuclear-testing/types-of-nuclear-weapons/

Types of Nuclear Weapons
Overview

Hiroshima devastated by a 13 kiloton nuclear explosion.

The power of fission and fusion can be unleashed in various ways to cause devastating explosions. The 13 and 21 kiloton explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 burned both cities to the ground, killing over 200,000 people instantly. Yet nuclear weapon States went on to develop far more destructive weapons that dwarf the power of these simple fission weapons. The reduced size and weight of these more advanced weapons also makes them much easier to deliver than earlier types.

STATES HAVE GONE ON TO DEVELOP WEAPONS THAT DWARF THE POWER OF THE BOMBS DROPPED ON HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI.

Each of the U.S. W87 warheads yields 300 kilotons.

At the height of the Cold War, thousands of U.S. and Soviet ballistic missiles on high alert were capable of delivering up to 10 independently targeted warheads at a time, each one twenty times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. Though decades of arms control agreements have slowly reduced the size of their arsenals, nuclear weapon States still possess the capability to destroy each other many times over. ...

... IN TODAY’S UNCERTAIN WORLD, BRINGING THE COMPREHENSIVE NUCLEAR-TEST-BAN TREATY INTO FORCE SHOULD BE AN URGENT PRIORITY. ...

... FUSION’S ENERGY OUTPUT PER KILOGRAM OF SOURCE MATERIAL IS MUCH HIGHER THAN THAT OF FISSION.

The neutron released by nuclear fusion is seven times more energetic than the average neutron released by fission (illustration from www.atomicarchive.com).

Fusion can be used inside a fission explosion to improve the efficiency of the weapon (boosting), or a large amount of fusion fuel can be triggered separately (thermonuclear weapon). The fusion of deuterium and tritium is initiated by the extremely high temperatures and radiation that result from fission.

(Fusion) boosted fission weapons

When fusion takes place in a fission weapon, the high-energy neutrons are more likely to collide with fissile atoms. Those higher-energy collisions release even more neutrons than simple fission, speeding up the chain reaction. This enables more material to fission before the device blows itself apart.

BOOSTING HAS LED TO A HUNDRED-FOLD INCREASE IN THE EFFICIENCY OF FISSION WEAPONS SINCE 1945, AND IT PLAYS A ROLE IN NEARLY EVERY NUCLEAR WEAPON DEPLOYED TODAY.

Basic design for a hydrogen bomb: a fission bomb uses radiation to compress and ignite a separate section of fusion fuel.

Boosted weapons are typically implosion devices with deuterium and tritium gas introduced into the hollow pit in the centre of the fissile pit. As fission begins, the high temperature causes fusion, and the high-energy neutrons released by fusion accelerate the fission chain reaction. Boosting has led to a hundred-fold increase in the efficiency of fission weapons since 1945, and it plays a role in nearly every nuclear weapon deployed today. Pakistan reportedly tested a boosted fission weapon in 1998.

Thermonuclear weapons (also called hydrogen bombs)

Thermonuclear bombs yield explosions in the megaton range, that is, orders of magnitude more powerful than the atomic bombs described above. The standard “Teller -Ulam design” uses a fission primary to trigger a powerful fusion secondary. The x-rays released from the primary explosion compress and ignite the secondary. The massive release of high-energy neutrons from the fusion reactions in the secondary causes even the U-238 tamper (not fissile) to fission, allowing for massive explosive yields. Using these design principles, an arbitrary number of additional stages could theoretically be added to create a “doomsday device” that would dwarf even the Tsar Bomba. However, the main threat posed by thermonuclear weapons is their ability to pack huge amounts of explosive power into small, light-weight packages that can be delivered by missiles.

Ivy Mike Nuclear test, the world's first thermonuclear test, which yielded 10,4 megatons, conducted by the United States on 1 November 1952.

The first U.S. thermonuclear test was “Ivy Mike” in 1952, which was carried out on the Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands. The Soviet Union responded with “Joe 19” in 1955, a bomb which was air-dropped over the Semipalatinsk test site. Britain and France have both tested devices with yields exceeding two megatons, Britain in 1957 at Christmas Island and France in 1968 at Fangataufa Atoll. China first tested a thermonuclear weapon at its Lop Nur site in 1967, less than three years after its initial atomic test.

According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Israel may possess boosted and possibly even thermonuclear weapons, but it has never confirmed this nor has it, to public knowledge, tested any explosive nuclear device. India claimed that its Shakti 1 test in 1998 was a successful reduced-yield thermonuclear bomb, though many outside experts remain skeptical.

MASTERING THERMONUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR COUNTRIES TO MINIATURIZE THEIR WEAPONS, ALLOWING FOR FLEXIBILITY IN DELIVERY AND YIELD.

The U.S. B83 gravity bomb (seen here in its components) has a "dial-a-yield" option for up to 1200 kilotons.

Mastering thermonuclear weapons technology makes it possible for countries to miniaturize their weapons, allowing for flexibility in delivery and yield. U.S. warheads such as the B83 can be adjusted on the battlefield for either a low sub-kiloton yield (primary only) or higher yields up to 1.2 megatons. Many of the missile-delivered warheads currently deployed by the nuclear weapon States are light-weight thermonuclear weapons that fall in the 100-300 kiloton range. Other types of nuclear weapons not believed to be currently deployed include neutron bombs; and cobalt bombs. ...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a23306/nuclear-bombs-powerful-t...

Today's Nukes Are Thousands of Times More Powerful Than WWII A-Bombs

With so much at stake, it's important to understand what these things are capable of.

By Jay Bennett
Oct 10, 2016

1.6k

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II—codenamed "Little Boy" and "Fat Man," respectively—caused widespread destruction, leveled cities, and killed between 90,000 and 166,000 people in Hiroshima (about 20,000 of which were soldiers), and between 39,000 and 80,000 in Nagasaki. These are the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, and let's hope it stays that way, because some of the nuclear weapons today are more than 3,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. ...

... The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, set off by the Soviet Union in 1961, produced an insane 50-megaton blast—about 3,333 times more powerful than the Little Boy bomb that leveled an entire city. The Tsar Bomba is the largest manmade explosion to date, sending a mushroom cloud up to more than 130,000 feet in altitude—about four and a half times the height of Mount Everest—as it sent shockwaves around the globe three times over.

If we wanted to, we could build a bomb even more powerful than the Tsar Bomba. Maybe it's time we start looking to use nuclear fusion for something else.

Better yet, what about moving away from toxic and hazardous materials and start going Green while there's still anything to salvage?

But Obama wants to invest a trillion taxpayer dollars in more powerful nuclear bombs, while Clinton and other crazed warmongers believe a 'limited' nuclear war is survivable - for them...

Vote Green, for life. The other 3 candidates (the corporate/billionaire corporate party ones and the Libertarian,) will all support the corporate coup and domestic law off-shored into corporate/billionaire control. They've been promised the world by traitors and are willing to blindly destroy 'it all' in order to 'have it all'.

It is amazing how NATO is emulating the Nazis in their assault. When Putin says no more wars on Russian homeland he is talking using nuclear weapons to prevent any invasion. The EU and NATO leaders act like the most serious book on history they read was Peter Pan.

have ended in 0 victories; 2 losses; and 7 no decisions.

I don't think they're preparing for war here, that would be insane. The U.S./NATO wouldn't be able to win a ground or air war in Russia, no way

The whole point is that they are insane. What would even 30,000 troops do against a Russian force that numbers ten times that amount fighting on its home turf? The risk is that such actions could quickly escalate into strategic nukes, a war that no one can win.

We are truly fucked if they continue these provocations

their DC 'Think Tanks' cannot WAIT for more profits from this.

on missile defence systems and other electronic warfare, but I wouldn't bet on it. I'd put the floor at five years, and soon as the US catches up sadly the two choices fo Russia become WW3 or become just another vassal of the US.

Herman Kahn, while a scholar at the Hudson Institute, also predicted that the most vexing problem for the industrial world in the 21st centruy would be how to spend our leisure time. I would not bet my life on Herman Kahn.

Snark noted.

envy the dead.

The Russians have seen war on their own lands. Our fucking insaniacs never have. They're talking out of their asses. Nuclear contamination will destroy the planet. It's not like each side is going to release only one bomb or something equally as stupid. It will be a planet killer and it will be the lucky ones that die immediately.

EDIT: deleted an inappropriate 'the'

stand just for a change of pace.

Dammit.

pretty much stay in their respective hemispheres...north and south. Until recently. Global warming has sent jet streams across the equator.

Also, ballistic missiles don't have the range to enter the southern hemisphere, there aren't many good targets there, anyway. So it might have been theoretically possible that only the northern hemisphere would be un-liveable.

it used to be that virtually any country importing oil had to pay for it in dollars, thus there remained a strong overseas demand for dollars. As more nations trade off of the dollar system, the demand and value of the dollar is affected. Nothing threatens the neocons more than non-dollar denominated trade clearance.