If any of you have kept up with the news concerning China and North Korea in the past few years, you will begin to realize that China is not as close to NK as everybody thinks. They are tired of the North's saber rattling, and they will not risk losing significant economic benefits to ally with NK, if and when, they decide to wage a war against the US. It doesn't make sense economically (going against the US), and politically (China is in the UN, and will face significant sanctions if they go against UN's stance).

If anything, there's a higher chance of China allying with the West to get rid of NK than vice versa.

If they do engage in a war, China will remain neutral, until they are pressured into a situation where they need to get involved politically or through warfare by the US/UN.

North Korea wouldn't be able to do much damage at all. The US spent a fortune on the accuracy of their missiles. Why? Because even with the destructive power of a nuke you still have to get it on target. People seem to think you can miss by a few miles and it's OK because it's a nuke. That isn't true. They aren't some "magic weapon" that will obliterate your opponent. They need to be delivered to a precise location, something North Korea isn't even close to accomplishing.

North Korea might be able to cause a lot of damage, but they aren't going to "level" anything. In the last 100 years there have been several earthquakes and tsunamis that have inflicted more damage and caused more deaths than what a North Korean nuke could do. Again it's this misconception that a rogue state setting off a nuke is the end of the world. It would be bad, no doubt, but also manageable.



Here's a couple pics I whipped up. They show Seoul Korea getting hit by a North Korean nuke and by a US nuke.

In the first pic, a North Korean nuke would destroy a small portion of Seoul, but most of the city would remain intact and functional. Emergency services could seal off this area and contain the fires to prevent the spread of destruction. It would be a disaster, but a disaster that could be dealt with. Even if they managed to land a couple, Seoul would still survive.

This is, of course, assuming that North Korea coult actually send a nuke accurately enough to hit their target. If they miss by only a few miles then the damage could be substantially reduced.


The second pic shows a single Trident missile with four warheads fired from a US sub. Pretty self explanatory. Most of Seoul is completely destroyed and the destruction would overwhelm any emergency services left allowing fires to spread at will throughout the region. Seoul would cease to exist.

And the US warheads will hit their intended target. Keep in mind this represents a single Trident missile. Each Ohio class sub carries 24 of these and they have 14 of these subs giving them a total of 336 of these missiles.


http://dangonay.com/images/korea1.jpg

http://dangonay.com/images/korea2.jpg

what about the thousands of artillery pointed at seoul?

imagine hours of constant bombardment from every single artillery.
let's just say each artillery can lob 3 shells per minute... and you give them 3 hours.
and there's 5000 artillery teams. that's almost 3 million shells (lets assume they have that much ammo).

you don't need a nuke to "level" something...

and that's giving them 3 hours. they probably will have a lot longer than 3 hours.

^ You think the US would actually let something like that take place? How many minutes before the first shells landed before a few cruise missiles "motivated" them to change their mind?

I think the USA has some sort of protocol that they need to fulfill before engaging in an all out bombardment of a nation. I think North Korea could still do some serious damage before a counter attack/counter measure could be launched by the South or the States
Posted via RS Mobile

I think you're giving too much credit to the US response and effectiveness and yet, over the shear brute force NK has and the proximity it has to SK/Japan, you give no credit

you make it sound as if NK isn't a threat or concern at all and i just cant see that




As for precision of NK nukes if they tried launching one stateside I agree that is a concern, Im concerned it'll miss the target drastically and hit us instead ;) and let's not forget about the fallout

^ nk is no threat... all talk.. and china uses them as such.

they know that they will be wiped out if a launch is detected. with a hot core...

launching a nuke is not a problem, what is more of an issue is designing a re-entry mech. (for icbm) and mating core with it and/or missile.. nk is quite far from designing one.

Tell that to the US when they invaded Iraq. They basically went against opposition.

A good article on that subject

North Korea

Another thing people seem to be missing is South Korean capabilities. Everyone is talking like North Korea is facing a helpless Seoul who would simply sit back and let the North walk over them.

While the North has superior numbers the South has superior equipment. Many military analysts have studied both sides and consider it to be a draw - neither is capable of invading the other successfully and casualties would be high on both sides. North and South Korea are in a conventional weapons version of the US/Soviet Union nuclear stalemate.

Even without the US, South Korea can inflict some serious conventional damage on North Korea. For example, while North Korea has placed it's heavy artillery and rockets along the DMZ (so they are in range of Seoul, for example), North Korea still only has a "reach" of about 50-60km's. Meanwhile, South Korea has missiles purchased from the US that can reach almost 500km's into North Korea. They have the ability to strike critical infrastructure anywhere they want while North Korea can only "lob a few over the wall".

Further, North Korea can't open fire with all their artillery/rockets at the same time. This would expose their positions to South Korean forces who could then target those weapons. It's ridiculous to think an artillery position is going to be able to fire continually for hours without coming under fire itself. So levelling Seoul in a few hours is highly unlikely.