[Steve_American]

Anyway, it seems such a war would be terrible.
Likely, a million or more dead in Asia right off.
At least 1 Atomic bomb set off in or near a US city.
Maybe an EMP attack that smashes all the electric things over a multi-state area. Imagine no power for months (including all backup systems in hospitals, etc.), so no water coming out of the pipes. Your car will not start. The roads are blocked by stalled cars. All the tow trucks don't run. You can't get into a grocery store. You can't get money out of a bank for months. Etc.
This would lead to millions of dead Americans from thirst and starvation.

Some links, copied from that thread.
vox.com/world/2018/2/7/16974772/north-korea-war-trump-kim-nuclear-weapon …
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/07/asia/nor ... -hao-fan...
http://www.newsweek.com/russia-develops ... lear-tor...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwi ... 1/protec...
https://fas.org/irp/congress/2008_hr/emp.pdf (PDF: non-.gov hosting of Congressional EMP report/hearings)
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32544.pdf (PDF: Congressional Research Service report)

I'm not sure if others have another thread about this here.

It seems like a terrible idea to me.

[Suntzu]

You need to do some research on what happened in the last war in Korea.

[Saeko]

You are confused friend. PoFo is the only forum on the internet.

[B0ycey]

Yes such an event would be bad. But America need not worry about it. Any missle flying over the largest ocean on the planet would get shot down -unless its a very large volley which I doubt NK could ever provide.

NK nuclear program is clearly defensive. Unless provoked nothing will happen because if they wanted total destruction they would have done the unthinkable by now. You have been reading too many Trump tweets.

[Steve_American]

Suntze, the last war doesn't count at all.
The US was the only nation with A-bombs, now NK has them.
The NK Army was a lot less powerful then and we had troops in Japan to sent quickly.
We let them drive us to the SE corner of SK, and then invaded at Puson [now Buson] in the NW corner of SK. This was weakly defended and way behind most of the NK Army. We almost cut it off before it could get back into NK.

B0ycey, I don't read Trumps tweets.
Most of the comments in the other forum came from anti-Trump people.
They said NK owns several freighters that are under flags of convieniance so we may not know which ones they are. A freighter could deliver an A-bomb to any US port city.
A missile from NK to NY, NY would not cross the Pacific and the whole US; it would cross the Arctic and Canada.

[B0ycey]

Do you think an unchartered vessel can dock? Also the satellites surveillance of NK would be great. If NK was planning such an event, I suspect the US would know. It serves the US government an advantage to make their citizens think there is a threat with NK so if they did indeed go to war, they could justify it.

As for a nuclear missle, it would mainly go into the stratosphere via the Pacific. But even if it did need to be shot down over Canada, there is no great danger in terms of a chain reaction. The plutonium deposits would be a headache though. But the quantity of it perhaps should be manageable in term of clean up I suspect.

[Crantag]

The status of the Korean peninsula is geo-politically anomalous. The United States lost the Korean War, when China (at tremendous cost of lives) beat the Americans back to the 48th parallel. The Chinese may have kept pushing the US into the sea, if not for the American nuclear option. Thus, a truce was called, and the de facto divider remained at that arbitrary point where the World War 2 armies stopped.

[Steve_American]

B0ycey, I'am no expert, but try this plan out in your mind.
NK owns say 10 freighters, 2 of which it is sure the US does not know it owns.
NK loads an A-bomb into a shipping container and ships it toward the Indian Ocean.
In the Ind. O. it meets with a freighter the US doesn't know is NK's and the shipping container is loaded onto the 2nd freighter.
The 2nd Fr. takes it to a point off NY harbor and drops it onto the sea floor in 150 ft of water.
The 2nd Fr. moves away.
A day later the A-bomb explodes which creates a vast tsunami [tidal wave] maybe 150 ft high. [I have no idea how high it would be, though. Look at the links for expert opinions.] It then crashes onto shore all along the east coast of the US.
It also crosses the Atlantic to flood [but smaller] the coasts of Europe and Africa, etc.

So, it doesn't need to dock in a US port at all.
Deterence is the current answer, not war.
War just makes NK have nothing to lose, thus increasing the chances of an A-bomb attack on the US.

Crantag, actually, the UN led by the US won the Korean War. The war was mostly fought for 2 reasons. Both of which were achieved, neither of which was to occupy all of NK.
1] To show the aggressor nations [here the USSR and China mostly] that the western Allies were willing to fight wars to contain them. That is do what they should have done vi sa vi Hitler in 1936 or 37; show him we mean to fight if necessary.
2] Keep the huge tungstun mine in S. Korea in Western hands. It produced about 90% of the free world's tungstun each year, so we needed to keep it.

[B0ycey]

@Steve_American, I too am not an expert on nuclear technology but there are certain things I do know. Firstly, as nuclear tests have been detonated in the ocean, I suspect an artificial tsunami is almost impossible. Second, a chain reaction takes place before the warhead hits land to get maximum destruction. A dock explosion would be a major incident but not catastrophic. And thirdly and most importantly, NK have opened dialogue and friendship to SK yesterday and seem more interested in opening up to the world again rather than taking suicide attacks against the US.

You can sleep easy today I assure you.

[B0ycey]

Also, point four, any major tsunami that would create major flooding on the east coast of the Pacific could also effect the west coast too. NK probably would do self harm in that regards.

[Atlantis]

NK doesn't have a nuclear arsenal. The missiles it parades are mostly dummies and the missiles it fires are crude devices assembled with parts from decommissioned Russian and Chinese missiles. The nuclear device they have is not small enough to fit onto a missile, and even if it did, it wouldn't be precise enough to hit a target.

NK doesn't need nuclear-armed missiles to do an awful lot of damage. Millions of South Koreans in and around Seoul could be killed within a very short time of any outbreak of hostility because they are in easy reach of NK artillery.

That's why South Korea wants deescalation. If there is a military conflict, the US will have started it. It is hard to say what would happen, but China and Russia would have to react if the US hit NK.

The only way to solve the problem is for the US to give a security guarantee to Kim (some sort of non-aggression pact). Under threat from the US, Kim has no choice but to develop a nuclear capacity. The lessons from Saddam's and Qaddafi's fall are clear.

Edit: In the meantime, the escalation of the conflict with NK is very useful to the US because it gives Japan a pretext for re-militarization.

[Steve_American]

B0ycey, I sleep just fine because I don't live in the US any more. I live in SE Asia, now.

But, thanks for the update on relations between NK and SK. I do have family still in the US.

Mostly they like Trump, I detest him. Only cancelling the TPP treaty did I like.

PS, B0ycey, I said NY and Atlantic. I knew a tsunami in the Pacific would hit NK too.
But, after the US nukes NK would anyone survive there to notice a tsunami?

[Suntzu]

A few points:

There is no/little doubt that North Korea has carried out nuclear detonations.

There is good evidence that they have developed miniature nuclear warheads.

It would be simple to smuggle a nuclear device in or out of just about any port in the world. Probably less than 1% are checked. And with the space available in a cargo container, the device wouldn't even have to use weapons grade uranium, reactor fuel would work.

We can't shoot down ballistic missiles.

Just like last time, China will not allow us to invade North Korea . . . and they have nuclear weapons, too.

[B0ycey]

We can't shoot down ballistic missiles.

Interesting.

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/30/politics/us-successfully-tests-shooting-down-ballistic-missile/index.html

[Thunderhawk]

Why would the Americans let a war escalate to such a degree, at a speed not of their choosing?
I suspect they would just missile strike Kim Jung-un and a handful of other contentious officials. They would then offer deals to the politicians/generals/powerful families.

[fuser]

It seems like that DPRK is a country that can actually fight, so US Army will probably just run away, its kinda tougher to fight a enemy that fights back considerably tougher than bombing helpless children.

[skinster]

[Suntzu]

Interesting.

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/30/politics/us-successfully-tests-shooting-down-ballistic-missile/index.html

Probably only five or ten years from being operational.

[B0ycey]

Probably only five or ten years from being operational.

So shorter than NK's ballistic program then.

[ThirdTerm]

It's part of the maximum pressure campaign, by which the Trump administration keeps taking about the military option, hoping that North Korea would change its course voluntarily. The new nuclear policy the Pentagon calls for the reintroduction of submarine-launched nuclear cruise missiles and new “low-yield” nuclear warheads to put on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which would cause roughly as much damage as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. These low-yield nuclear warheads put on submarine-launched ballistic missiles would be the best fit to flatten Pyongyang if necessary.