1. Does N. Korea have IC or SR Ballistic Missiles?

2. Will Kim Jong Il use them if not threatened?

3. Will he use them if threatened?

4. Will China help if N. Korea and The United States of America duke it out?

5. In a no-holds barred slugfest, who would win?

5. No one would win. Everybody would lose. The Koreans would have the biggest price to pay. And Japan and China would propably suffer too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2992011.stm

Seoul and Tokyo are keen that the stand-off with the North is resolved peacefully, and have said that they do not support sanctions against Pyongyang.

Both countries want to take part in any future negotiations with North Korea. Japan has issues of its own to resolve with the Stalinist state.



[ May 09, 2003, 00:23: Message edited by: Yago ]

5.) Radiation in the atmosphere sucks. One or two will get diluted out. "The solution to pollution is dilution."

But when it's 500 or 600 megatonnes, it's not diluted. And you can't dilute it, unless you pull the moon down. In which case, the pollution will be secondary to atmospheric integrity.

It's like, some kind of wicked cycle. That involves everyone, whether they care to be involved or not. It's not like the Swiss in World War II. Where you could trade gold with anyone, and still not be invaded. You're going to get owned if you sit there. You're going to get owned if you choose a side.

This is the basis for Mutually Assured Destruction. Although, since 1960, I think the term "Mutually Assured Global Destruction" is the more accurate term.

Prevent it from happening. Or prevent it from happening ever again.

[edit: Whoa. Lapsed into leet-speak, a little bit.]

[ May 09, 2003, 06:47: Message edited by: ejsmith ]

There is only one person on this planet who could even possibly answer questions 2 and 3 and he certainly wouldn't.
As to question 4 no one could say that. People (governments or what ever) can say what they think they would do but who knows what they would really do.
And then question 5 is pointless. No one will win a nuclear war. As Einstein said I don't know what the third world war will be fought with, but the forth will be with sticks and stones I think that hits the 5th question directly.

NK HAS nucleair weapons, but their rockettechnology is not yet so far that they can threaten everyone they want.

And i agree with Yago on this. If there would be a war with NK, China and the US involved, there would be no winner, only losers. The whole world would suffer from this. That doesn't mean that i'm not convinced that the US would kick NK's butt, but this could really get out of hand, with a very high number of casualties on both sides.

Pac man,
as NK prefers to develop their waepons in secrecy it is not known *that* they have nukes.

It is known they have a secret nuclear program. It can be concluded from type and the known performance of their reactor how much fissile material they could have produced. Calculating based on that, it can be guessed how much fissile material they might have and for how many nukes that would be sufficient. Mind that depending on skill and material the quantity required differs.
This is made more difficult by the possibility that they (or maybe not) could have unknown underground facilities for uranium or plutonium enrichment - as the north koreans are great tunneldiggers.

You need less plutonium for a bomb than uranium for example. As we don't know what North Korea has - plutonium or uranium - it is difficult to estimate how much fissile material they have. Therfor it is hard to say how many nukes they might have been able to build.

It also is unknown how far they progressed in building nukes. The first atom bombs were in the 5ton weight class. Physically it's not that difficult to build a nuke, however, more skill and effort might be necessary to integrate a nuke in a missile or make it safe to handle even.

Actually we don't really know before they tested one. They sure have the potential for building nukes. It is highly possible that NK has nukes, but it is not proven.

Interesting article about "beeing blind" about it: http://www.fas.org/ssp/docs/030324-newrep.htm

Thanks for the link, very interresting.

NK may have nukes although they deny it and their nuclear programm is not sosecret as the whole world knows it exists and the CIA is having nightmares with it as for the president of NK he is a real enigma to most diplomats in the world since he is secretive and noone knows him too well to answer Nr 2, 3.
And i don't think that China will involve if USA and NK start fighting each other i think they will stand aside and watch in order to learn more for both militarys :eek:

yes I think the last post is right China will not destroy its economy for NK