What the hell is Russia doing?

Yup. He's a fierce humorist.

There's also this
He's funny as hell. And by funny I mean scary.

Wow, nuclear showdown with Russia. I'm having childhood flashbacks. Everything old is new again.

Of course, Putin's accusations against the US are more or less justified. It's just his image of himself in relation to them that's completely insane.

What the hell is the US doing*?

No, wait... It's still Bush.

*You do know that this started when the United States decided to install a missile shield and radar arrays in Eastern Europe. Which obviously were there to antagonise Russia, since las time i checked terrorists didn't have ICBMs. Or lived in Russia.

You're right.

But doesn't make Putin any less of a dictator not less psychopath. The whole missile shield is retarded, expensive and ineffective, but Putin is still not the nicest guy on Earth.

In my opinion the missile shield thing is much less serious than the whole campaign for stifling freedom of expression in Russia.

I hope you all remember that the Litvinenko thing started with a journalist getting killed for prying too much.


As far as the Moscow Missile Crisis goes, it's more of a case of Putin playing bad diplomacy. He's not a deranged mass murderer, he's just a totalitarian.

This is fantastic, I missed the first cold war becasue I was to young, but now I'm old enough to enjoy a new round of terror filled fun..I can't wait.

If the missiles were really a part of a defensive shield against Russia, then the Americans would let the Russians build it and run it themselves. And of course that's not going to happen.

Sequels are almost never as good as the original.

The only thing I really learned from the first Cold War was that hiding under my desk with my hands on my head will protect me not only from the explosion, but from the nuclear fallout as well.

More and more lately, I find myself hoping that it really works.

I just watched Terminator 2 last night so I'm willing to give this new cold war a chance.

Chances of a threesome ? Some new gal named China ?

More like Iran taking advantage of the confusion and throwing a couple of warhead into the mix.

Then looking the other way and casually whistling.

And let's not forget North Korea, there pretty crummy now,but give them some time and they could make things interesting.

War. War never changes.

The thing is, I can just picture Kissinger, addressing Bush in that monotonous voice of his, saying "don't be fooled by the Russians embracing capitalism mr. president, they remain as formidable a threat as they were during the cold war and the only language they understand is force".

And the slack-jawed idiot listening to that evil fossil and pissing away two decades of diplomatic progress.

North Korea have not enough resources to be dangerous on a wide scale. Iran... maybe, but they too are a bit limited. The thing is, I don't see the Chineses being friend with Russia again. It will be dangerously interesting.

On a world wide scale NK can't do much, but there in a prime location to fuck with Japan and South Korea,China (not that I think they would fuck with china, that would be suicide) and a lot of other important economic counties.But alas that's not a new cold war so I should probably shut up.

Haha, I love those games.

Man, Putin is so 60s. When is he going to get with the new world order?

Most of them contain more explosions....



....um, excuse me, I need to go to the gun store and then start digging my bomb shelter...

And more boobs.

So Bush made a very very half-hearted comment on how Russia should come on board. It felt like he was saying it was ok for Putin to come to his party, now that he knows about it.


Also, gotta love "I call him Vladimir"

Finally, an adversary we understand. ICBMs are so much easier to plan for than IEDs.

Russia will calm down as soon as we retrieve the circuit board for their suitcase nuke and return it to.........wait a second, I watch too much t.v.

Try watching T3 for the spoiler-filled ending to this debacle in the making.

I remember reading a while back that fifty nukes would be enough to extinguish life on Earth via nuclear winter and climate destruction. Why bother building a shield when everyone's going to die--even if they miss?

I'm pretty sure that they've test 'sploded more than 50 nukes worldwide. Maybe not all at the same time.

Eh.

Still, it wouldn't take a whole lot, either way.

Wow, I am ashamed at how excited I am at the thought of another cold war. Seriously...I'm a terrible person.

The stuff I read on this subject was read a long time ago, but the thrust of it was that a songle nuclear warhead exploding will kill a lot of people, and then leave a cloud of fallout behind. This cloud will grow to a certain point, and then depending on wind conditions move around a bit.

So, say if a nuke exploded in Germany. French and Italian people wouldn't die right away, but they would be packing their shit and moving out.

Obviously, such a cloud of death would bring holistic damage to the planet's environment, but nothing like extinction.


Also, stopping an ICBM on its tracks isn't that dangerous. For one thing, it'll detonate during sub-orbital trajectory, if it's hit, and for another it probably won't be rigged to explode until it reaches its target.

<wink>Of course, nuclear winter's just a theory.</wink>

Oh well. All it takes is for a supernova to explode close enough (cosmically speaking) to the Earth and we're all toast in a fraction of a second, so meh.

Drink up.

I think it would take longer than a fraction of a second.

I think it would also be painfully obvious that it was going to happen a LOOOONG time before it happened.

I don't know. Some time ago there was this news piece about how some scientific observation facility registered a wave of radiation close by to the earth, and when they tracked down its source they realised it had been a supernova exploding. A supernova they hadn't noticed.

Shit, I really wish I had kept the link or something, it was scary shit.

Basically there was some kind of rare event at the core of the supernova, and it made it not only explode sooner, but with ten times the intensity.

The gamma rays did not reach our planet, but that was the scariest thing I ever read.


PS - I do think it would take less than a fraction of a second. Can you imagine the speeds the radiation burst travels at after one of these explosions?

Can't seem to find gamma ray speeds, but stands to reason they should be about that fast too. If not at actually the speed of light because, you know, they're light.

Where are you getting that?

Random googling: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...A8809EC588EEDF

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0303/24chandra/

I really shouldn't be talking out of my ass though, I've taken up social and human studies in the education tree since I was 16.

The nearest star to Earth, besides our own, is 4.2 light years away. At one-tenth the speed of light, that means that it would take 40+ years for the material being projected from a supernova at that distance to reach our solar system. That star is also a red dwarf, so it's not going to go supernova.

In fact, I don't think any of the nearest stars are big enough to go supernova, Centauri A is only slightly bigger than our Sun.

Hell, the single largest star within 15 light years is Canis Majoris, and it's not big enough to supernova.

I think that the kind of supernova that you're talking about, the kind that's hard to detect or see coming, is the one that happens when white dwarfs explode. The closest white dwarf star system that they think might blow up is 150 light years away, and they're not expecting anything for about a millenia.

The closest regular supernova candidate is 427 light years away.

So, basically...you need to find that link you were talking about...I want to read that article.

ETA - Oh, and assuming that the supernova comes from at least...say...25 light years away, wouldn't that mean it would take about 250 years to reach us? And...after 250 years, you don't think we would have A) Become more acquainted with the sky and B) Developed better 'splodin'-star-detection technology?

Well, that's the thing. We could have a shitload of Gamma Rays coming our way ever since Jesus bit it.

But yeah, I'll see if I can find the thing.

Not what I was looking for, but:

http://www.armageddononline.org/supernova.php

Somebody didn't read my poooOOOOst.

Bush, Putin agree to cooperate on missile shield plan.

From CNN:

Finally, logic wins out over stubbornness.

Fallout come from low altitude burst, which throws up ash and dirt. The US has not really made system that use low altitude bursts since the 60s. As far as I know all our nukes are high altitude, and the only fall out they make is from the device casing it self. The only way I could possibly see only 50 nukes throwing up that much fall out would be if they were 100 megaton bombs, and thermal nuclear bombs are really wasted at low altitude any ways. You get much more direct damage from thermal nuclear bombs with high altitude burst.

I just hope I get the Game before the real thing hits my part o' town.

Russia says, "We're here to help."

Ladies and gentlemen, we have just witnessed a diplomatic masterstroke.

Holy crap that's sexy.

This would be surprising any other week where this hadn't already happened.

It's the dozens of burning cities that is the problem. All those fires coughing up vast amounts of toxic smoke that blot out the sun for a year or more will put a crimp into the bottom of the food chain.

Russia isn't worried about NATO or the US, they are worried about China. If the US deploys a decently effective shield, then the Chinese will build and deploy one. And the Russians are seriously afraid of a land war with China over Manchuria and those Siberian oilfields.

If we had any sense, we'd be afraid of China too. Not so much militarily, but economically. China and the EU represent growing economic superpowers. American arrogance prevents us from believing that our reign as the world's only remaining superpower may be coming to an end. But someone had best start thinking about it.

For some strange reason, your post made me think of this:

"You had best unfuck yourself or I will unscrew your head and shit down your neck!"