Scott Ritter: one second to midnight

Submitted by Linda Wood on Sat, 01/28/2023 - 1:30pm

https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/90-seconds-to-midnight

90 Seconds to Midnight?

A clear signal to the US leadership that there will be no survivors in any nuclear exchange between the US and Russia

Scott Ritter
Jan 24

The Russian guided missile frigate, the Admiral Gorshkov, is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, ostensibly heading toward the east coast of the United States, part of a planned journey which began on 4 January 2023 and is expected to transit the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. The Admiral Gorshkov is outfitted with 16 vertical launch tubes, each of which, in theory, could be armed with nuclear-capable Zircon hypersonic missiles capable of covering 1,000 kilometers in less than 10 minutes.

To put it bluntly, soon Russia will be in a position where a single ship could, in a matter of minutes, fire 16 nuclear armed hypersonic missiles at the United States which not only cannot be intercepted by anything in the US arsenal, but also would impact their respective targets before any meaningful evacuation could be conducted. It is, literally, a decapitation weapon.

... The Admiral Gorshkov is sending a clear signal to the US leadership that there will be no survivors in any nuclear exchange between the US and Russia.

... The truth is the world is one second to midnight, and the clock can strike at any time, something the presence of the Admiral Gorshkov off the coast of the United States proves only too well.

I post this not to raise the fear level at this forum but to re-emphasize that Ritter and other military leaders like him understand that there would be no survivors of a nuclear "exchange." That is what Putin expressed in his talks with Oliver Stone. That's his understanding.

The problem is that Americans in this era of delusional propaganda do not seem to know this. It's not a matter of 16 warheads on one ship. Russia and the U.S. have over 4,000 each. Pencil that out on a map.

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Scott Ritter
Russia
nuclear war
Doomsday Clock
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Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Sat, 01/28/2023 - 2:33pm
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which allows the Conventional Narrative to twist his words.

What actually happened, as near as I can tell, is that the Kiev declarations of hostility against ethnic Russians stampeded the Crimeans into voting to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia - because the majority of Crimeans actually are ethnic Russians and have been since the late 18th century (and the various minorities didn't trust Kiev not to go after them too). Russia didn't "annex" Crimea as much as agree that Crimea could become Russian once again, effectively recognizing a fait accompli.

But just try to get all that into a few-second soundbite - and then try to get it out in public!

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Submitted by wouldsman on Sat, 01/28/2023 - 6:27pm

@TheOtherMaven Yes. 100%. This is a huge misunderstanding that many westerners have. Not understanding that Crimea is culturally Russian and has deep ties and history. The battles fought there during The Great Patriotic War (WW2) were hard and prolonged. Undoubtably these battles created even stronger connection to the motherland and greater hatred of Germans and Nazis.
In trying to understand this conflict better I have read and listened to many scholarly and diplomatic views that all confirm that at least 85-95% of Crimean's would want align with Russia. This is why we never seriously call for a fresh round of voting on the issue. It would be an embarrassment to the west to hold perfectly good elections and see 95% affirmation of Russian ties. Any attempt to take it by the west would require a genocidal removal of the current inhabitants.

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Submitted by humphrey on Sat, 01/28/2023 - 2:36pm

Here are a few examples.

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Submitted by Cassiodorus on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 4:48am
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at their own risk, whence a teeny-tiny whisper of "Don't Run Joe" in support of majority public opinion makes itself heard... one wonders what a nuclear exchange would do for Biden's prospects...

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Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 10:42am
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@Cassiodorus

or to vote for. Sad

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Submitted by QMS on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 12:57pm
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He is obviously gone to the nether lands
If the freakin' USA ever wants to get back on the
world stage, trumps and dementia joes just ain't
gonna cut it. Serioulsy

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Submitted by Battle of Blair... on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 1:18pm

And it's blown out of the water.
So Ritter's fear mongering is wasted with that example.

Neither side profits from nuclear war and both sides know it. Ritter is trying to undermine support in the US and Europe by playing that card.

NATO can't win in Ukraine and push on to conquer Russia so no existential threat exists.

This war strengthened Putin in power, not undermined him.

This conflict is just another phony war like Korea or Vietnam. Staged for profit.

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Submitted by Linda Wood on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 7:08pm

@Battle of Blair Mountain

because it raises several issues I haven't read anywhere else and also because I wish I could agree with you.

But our subs armed with nuclear weapons and Russia's subs armed with nuclear weapons launch nuclear weapons, they don't twitch. As an amateur reader of such issues, it's my understanding that the whole reason we have subs with nukes is that they're mobile launch sites and can't be targeted. I may be completely wrong. But I think Ritter and other military intelligence specialists would say Russia's subs with nukes are as vulnerable and as dangerous as ours.

Your point that NATO can't win a war with Russia, except with nukes, is what we're all talking about and debating. NATO/USA seems to think we can take out Russia's government, main population, command and control, and military response capability with a first strike launched 5-7 minutes from those targets, and that the short time span would prevent Russia from responding. Putin has repeatedly said that Russia WOULD respond on such a launch. That's why NATO nukes in Germany are one thing, but nukes in Ukraine are unacceptable.

The clear danger we are dealing with is that our foreign policy leadership doesn't care if Russia launches in response, which means they don't care if America is destroyed.

I agree with you that neither NATO/USA nor Russia can win a nuclear war. But George Herbert Walker Bush said that nuclear war was winnable and that more than 20% of the American people would survive. Scott Ritter is saying that's not true.

I feel that you are saying no one in our government would be stupid enough to risk nuclear war. If you read our Nuclear Posture Review, it straight out says we will do exactly that, launch a first strike that will assure the destruction of the United States.

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Submitted by soryang on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 9:14pm
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...lower the threshold for nuclear war

B61-12: new U.S. nuclear warheads coming to Europe
December 22, 2022 by International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) at MRonline

Boeing designed the bomb’s new guided-tailkit, giving it additional maneuverability and the appearance of more precision. But, it’s a nuclear weapon, and has different yields, from 0.3kt to 50kt. These bombs can detonate beneath the Earth’s surface, increasing their destructiveness against underground targets to the equivalent of a surface-burst weapon with a yield of 1,250 kilotons–the equivalent of 83 Hiroshima bombs.

These nuclear weapons are coming to Europe in a time of heightened nuclear tension on the continent, and even as the majority of people in European host countries want to remove nuclear weapons and join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

https://mronline.org/2023/01/27/b61-12-new-u-s-nuclear-warheads-coming-t...

It's the lower end yields that make their use so tempting. Their only a "little bit" nuclear. They make a transition to nuclear war more palatable. Just as one could have a "limited war" in Korea or Vietnam, I think planners could invent a rationalization to limit small nuclear strikes to Ukraine. Such weapons would be "ideal" for decapitation strategies the US already has for North Korea. During the Korean war, nuclear strikes were threatened against North Korea/China but never implemented. In lieu of that 635,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Korea. Approximately, 2,000,000 people were killed. This was more than was dropped in the entire Pacific theater during the war against Japan during WWII.

Another weapon that lowers the threshold for the outbreak of nuclear war, is the W76-2 low-yield Trident submarine warhead. Such weapons give war planners "flexibility and a wide range of options." W76-2 yield is estimated at about 5 kilotons making it an "escalate to deescalate weapon." From FAS:

US Deploys New Low-Yield Nuclear Submarine Warhead
January 29, 2020
By William M. Arkin* and Hans M. Kristensen
https://fas.org/blogs/security/2020/01/w76-2deployed/

“Prompt response” means that strategic Trident submarines in a W76-2 scenario would be used as tactical nuclear weapons, potentially in a first use scenario or immediately after Russia escalated, thus forming the United States’ own “escalate-to-deescalate” capability. The United States has refused to rule out first use of nuclear weapons.

Though almost all of the discussion about the new W76-2 has focused on Russia scenarios, it is much more likely that the new low-yield weapon is intended to facilitate first-use of nuclear weapons against North Korea or Iran. The National Security Strategy and the NPR both describe a role for nuclear weapons against “non-nuclear strategic attacks, and large-scale conventional aggression.”

(March 2017) Gen. Hyten:...So I’m very comfortable today with the flexibility of our response options. Whether the President of the United States and his team believes that that gives him enough flexibility is his call. So we’ll look at that in the Nuclear Posture Review. But I’ve said publicly in the past that our plans now are very flexible.

And the reason I was surprised when I got to STRATCOM about the flexibility, is because the last time I executed or was involved in the execution of the nuclear plan was about 20 years ago and there was no flexibility in the plan. It was big, it was huge, it was massively destructive. … We now have conventional responses all the way up to the nuclear responses, and I think that’s a very healthy thing. So I’m comfortable with where we are today, but we’ll look at it in the Nuclear Posture Review again.

The W76-2 was actually adopted after this discussion as the article points out.

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Submitted by QMS on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 9:23pm
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is just about the stupidest rationale one can imagine
12 yo playground bullies have more battle sense than that
doesn't the survival of the human race rate up there with
non-death and non-destruction of the world? or has that been demoted in the
Washington machine stink tanks also? Asking for a friend to wants
to live.

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Submitted by ban nock on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 9:34pm

tonight seems to be more widespread. Revolutionary Guard headquarters and military manufacturing complex. Many sources reporting.

Taking out drone production makes sense.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 10:12pm
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@ban nock

that make the equipment we’re sending to Ukraine? Good for the goose if it’s good for the gander right? Can’t believe anyone supports violence of any kind and yet here you are.

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Submitted by on the cusp on Sun, 01/29/2023 - 11:25pm

@ban nock of the expansion of killing and triggering WWIII?
Good to know, ban nock.

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Submitted by fire with fire on Mon, 01/30/2023 - 12:24am

It is pretty easy to mock and dismiss people like me and anybody else who participates on message boards and social media, discussing Big Issues like a pandemic or global climate change. Powerless individuals presuming to prescribe a wiser course of action for nation states and the whole world itself. This futility reaches the outer limit when it comes to the topic of nuclear war. We debate about the level of weirdness in the hearts and minds of god's children who happen to have a finger on The Button -- Are they really gonna do it to make some point?

There is only one way to find out. Wait and see. But what do we do in the mean time? Although we all know we are going to die someday, if we were to know for certain that some crazy fucker was going to blow our head off on some unknowable day within the next two years, it would have a major impact on how we live our lives in the meantime, and as this hypothetical assassin is just one bozo, we might realistically prepare for a fighting chance to fend him off. But we cannot realistically prepare for an effort to keep the shitheads who do have their fingers on the button from doing it.

So we have this cloud of uncertainty to contend with. One way is to stop worrying and love The Bomb, like Dr. Strangelove. Another way is to hope that all the bombs do not get detonated and those that do neither blow up near us nor render the planet uninhabitable. Of course, that is a mindset that is dangerous in itself-- if it gets into the heads of the fuckers who have the Nuclear Launch Codes. Another way to keep hold of your cookies is to convince yourself that the Powerful Decision Makers are not that kind of crazy.

My own take on it is to embrace fatalism and proceed with life as it there are no mushroom clouds in my future. There is no downside risk in harboring this fantasy.

Cheers, folks. I hope everybody can sleep without nightmares.

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Submitted by QMS on Mon, 01/30/2023 - 3:43pm
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that we are not comfortable with the militaristic tendencies of our leaders to
ponder suicide for the entire human race. If you want to end your life, OK,
that is your prerogative. When it comes to the lives of entire civilizations,
no - you do not have that privilege. We have a say in our future. And we
would much rather see life continue for the next generations.

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Submitted by Linda Wood on Mon, 01/30/2023 - 4:50pm

@QMS

I hope we can amplify it and make it absolutely clear to our so-called representatives.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 01/30/2023 - 5:36pm
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@QMS

We definitely should get a say on using weapons that can end all life on earth. But then we should also get a say on whether this country goes to war, but that will not happen. I was wondering what Biden would do if millions of us protested against putting boots on the ground in Ukraine. Well they ignored the millions that protested the Iraq war, but just maybe if enough people walked out of their work place and schools and shut the country down we’d get their attention. We couldn’t count on shitlibs joining us because their minds have been twisted so badly to see Russia as their mortal enemy they can’t come back from it. Obama started killing the anti war movement when he went into Libya and Syria and democrats killed the rest of it with Russia Russia Russia Russia….

I always thought that if the mainstream media came out and said that Russia gate was just a psyop designed by Hillary, Obama and the intelligence agencies they would finally wake up. But alas, the NYT has done just that and they are livid about them doing it. Check the wreck list today.

Even the Twitter files showing that Hamilton 68 lied to us they still believe that Putin put Trump in office and that a foreign government ran the presidency and the republicans were also in on it.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.