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Sergiu64 posted:Finally some good news: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/ruble-s-fall-checks-expansion-of-pro-kremlin-media-abroad/514846.html That's one thing I was hoping for. Russia has to be robbed of it's strength.
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Jan 23, 2015 22:48
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Sergiu64 posted:Finally some good news: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/ruble-s-fall-checks-expansion-of-pro-kremlin-media-abroad/514846.html It'll actually be quite interesting to see which Western outlets and alternative media drop the Russian line once the RT petrobucks dry up.
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Jan 23, 2015 22:57
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A lot of people really want to believe Russia stands against the capitalist imperialists of the West, so I'm not expecting a huge change. RT is a succor to this viewpoint but not its origin.
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Jan 23, 2015 23:20
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Sergiu64 posted:Finally some good news: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/ruble-s-fall-checks-expansion-of-pro-kremlin-media-abroad/514846.html What's stopping them from cutting something like healthcare even more to keep their propaganda war going?
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Jan 23, 2015 23:21
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Finlander posted:What's stopping them from cutting something like healthcare even more to keep their propaganda war going? They already cut healthcare. e: Did you just ninja edit that or did I miss the "even more"?
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Jan 23, 2015 23:22
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Sergiu64 posted:Finally some good news: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/ruble-s-fall-checks-expansion-of-pro-kremlin-media-abroad/514846.html 
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Jan 23, 2015 23:22
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Best Friends posted:A lot of people really want to believe Russia stands against the capitalist imperialists of the West, so I'm not expecting a huge change. RT is a succor to this viewpoint but not its origin. RT makes Roger Ailes and Fox News in the US look like amateurs in the entertainment cleverly disguised as news.
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Jan 23, 2015 23:24
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:I don't think we'll ever see any pacific countries in NATO, at least, not ones with out Atlantic shores. Especially since the charter of NATO is explicitly North Atlantic/Europe. That's why the Falkland Islands didn't fall under NATO protection in 1982.
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Jan 23, 2015 23:48
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11365730/Litvinenko-inquiry-the-proof-Russia-was-involved-in-dissidents-murder.htmlquote:American spies secretly intercepted communications between those involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and provided the key evidence that he was killed in a Russian-backed “state execution”, The Telegraph can disclose.
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Jan 24, 2015 01:14
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OddObserver posted:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11365730/Litvinenko-inquiry-the-proof-Russia-was-involved-in-dissidents-murder.html Stay safe Brown Moses
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Jan 24, 2015 01:19
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That video of Donetsk airport is incredible. That must have been some unbelievably fierce fighting. Everything is blown completely to poo poo. The main building is gutted and it looks like there's a 100 meter ring of rubble around it. There's a loving tank turret stuck up on a second or third floor.
Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 01:29
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Dolash posted:Also, I don't like arguments that begin "we can't do anything about Russia, they have nukes." Why shouldn't Russia be the ones to not do anything because we have nukes? Nuclear diplomacy can't work on unilaterally capitulating because you're afraid of provoking a standoff, otherwise tomorrow Russia could just demand America hand over their nukes. Not that you have to start parachuting in American soldiers on top of Donetsk with orders to shoot every Russian-speaker they see, either, but there's probably a fine balance where the West can at least keep pace with Putin's provocations. Nuclear diplomacy is basically a game of chicken though, i.e. the only kind where being (or seeming) suicidally insane is an advantage. If you can convince the other guy that you're crazy enough to push the button, you get concessions. I can't tell whether Putin is actually crazy (probably not), but he's pretty good at making that impression, especially with the hamfisted rhetoric about making sacrifices for the sake of glorious motherland etc. The general spirit of nihilism in Russian society means that "we'll take you down with us if we have to, but we'll prove nobody fucks with us" sadly goes over well with some segments of the voting public. Meanwhile America is already pretty war-weary and similar posturing would be political suicide. Dolash posted:If America started "losing" weapons and armor the same way the Russians have been, maybe some Polish NATO maneauvers gone astray, I don't think it would immediately lead to WW3 and it can't make the diplomatic situation any worse - Russia's already cried wolf on that particular point. Hey how about not making us into a loving patsy so Uncle Sam can wash his hands, say "wasn't us, go kick Poland instead" and walk away whistling, thanks
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Jan 24, 2015 01:55
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I think Poland has enough to worry about right now, what with the great Eastern Bear rearing its head back up hungrily towards Europe, combined with the fact that Western Europe has a pretty bad track-record of actually keeping its promises to Poland. They don't need to be our proxies and, besides, a bunch of russians in russian-speaking Ukraine stands out a lot less than a bunch of foreigners in ukraine.
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Jan 24, 2015 03:18
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Out of curiosity, and this might not be the thread for this, but why are nukes still so dangerous? It's been 70 years since the US dropped the bombs on Japan. 75 years since missile tech was developed enough to become a stable launching platform for V1/V2 rockets. How the hell haven't' we come up with a good way of handling nuclear attacks yet? Looking at what we've accomplished since that time ( including LANDING ON THE MOON ), it seems crazy we haven't come up with a single stable solution to the problem of people launching rockets at us. Or is it more a case of "We actually have those measures in place, but if even 1 nuclear rocket gets past it's bad news, and the chance of a rocket slipping by is way to high."
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Jan 24, 2015 03:31
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Rookersh posted:How the hell haven't' we come up with a good way of handling nuclear attacks yet? Because they're very big explosions and the main players can throw thousands at each other?
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Jan 24, 2015 03:34
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Rookersh posted:Out of curiosity, and this might not be the thread for this, but why are nukes still so dangerous? It is hard to shoot down ballistic missiles, and the ABM treaty was a thing until the US withdrew in 2002.
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Jan 24, 2015 03:35
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Rookersh posted:Out of curiosity, and this might not be the thread for this, but why are nukes still so dangerous? You'd have to develop it and fully deploy it in secret, or your enemy will just build more weapons to overwhelm your defenses. Mustard gas has been around for a century, but we don't have our cities impervious to it, and it's a lot cheaper and easier to make sure every citizen has a gas mask than it is to build a working SDI defense. Hell, you might as well ask why we don't have a good way of handling people shooting up cities, or any number of things. Yeah, sure, you can shoot down a missile. You can stop a gas attack. You can make bullet proof vests, but that doesn't mean the threat from those things has been dealt with.
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Jan 24, 2015 04:42
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Nuclear weapons and the missiles that deliver them have also continued to advance since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The V2 has nothing on wacky stuff like MIRVs.
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Jan 24, 2015 04:46
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Yeah, back in the fifties nuclear warfare (would have been) conducted via subsonic bombers dropping ww2-style gravity bombs. These bombs tended to have a much higher yield than the warheads in use today, although it should be noted that the total MIRV payload of a modern ICBM easily equals the destructive potential of one of the old-style multi-megaton bombs. The major way in which they (the icbms) are more 'humane' is in the reduction of fallout due to the lower-yield blasts and lack of a ground burst (ground bursts kick up a great deal more radioactive dust than air bursts) and the fact that they're somewhat more precise, if you're aiming for industry/military bases instead of just population centers. Needless to say near-total destruction of the belligerents happens either way. current ABM systems will never be effective at neutralizing nuclear arsenals on the scale of the US and russia's. The only possibility would be some completely new technology that renders ICBMs obsolete and pointless no matter how many more of them you build, but I have no idea what that could possibly be. Shark Mafia fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 05:12
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Shark Mafia posted:current ABM systems will never be effective at neutralizing nuclear arsenals on the scale of the US and russia's. The only possibility would be some completely new technology that renders ICBMs obsolete and pointless no matter how many more of them you build, but I have no idea what that could possibly be. You mean like Brilliant Pebbles or just Kessler-loving everything in low earth orbit just prior to a mass strike?
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Jan 24, 2015 05:16
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Yeah and even then nuclear-armed cruise missiles launched from stealth subs would be fairly effective at accomplishing the same thing, although not quite in the 'instant doomsday' capacity of icbms. Missile technology is pretty versatile and hard to counter! Maybe we will do it some day but it seems like nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament is a much better long-term strategy to avoid blowing ourselves the gently caress up, even if at this exact moment more treaties in that direction seem unlikely!
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Jan 24, 2015 05:41
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Shark Mafia posted:Yeah, back in the fifties nuclear warfare (would have been) conducted via subsonic bombers dropping ww2-style gravity bombs. These bombs tended to have a much higher yield than the warheads in use today, although it should be noted that the total MIRV payload of a modern ICBM easily equals the destructive potential of one of the old-style multi-megaton bombs. The major way in which they (the icbms) are more 'humane' is in the reduction of fallout due to the lower-yield blasts and lack of a ground burst (ground bursts kick up a great deal more radioactive dust than air bursts) and the fact that they're somewhat more precise, if you're aiming for industry/military bases instead of just population centers. WW2 bombs were on the order of 20 kilotons, modern bombs are measured in megatons, I'm not sure where you're getting this "WW2 bombs were bigger" thing.
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Jan 24, 2015 05:53
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WW2-style in the sense that they were dropped from planes, as gravity bombs. Obviously the yield of the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs was tiny. Modern nuclear warheads, the kinds we use in our icbms, are variable yield, but that yield is measured in hundreds of kilotons at the most, generally. It is simply not possible to miniaturize a nuclear explosive with the yield of, say, castle bravo enough for it to fit on an ICBM. The destructive power of IBCMs comes from the fact that a series of lower-yield blasts will cover just as much ground, if not more, as one very large one. compare the yield of the W88 mirv, used on the trident SLBM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W88) to the mark 36 nuclear bomb, used in the fifties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_36_nuclear_bomb) Shark Mafia fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 06:03
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Yeah, you get quite quickly diminishing returns on larger and larger bombs, since pressure waves can only go so far.
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Jan 24, 2015 06:06
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Clearly we just need a few more tech points to make this a reality
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Jan 24, 2015 09:09
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Shark Mafia posted:Yeah and even then nuclear-armed cruise missiles launched from stealth subs would be fairly effective at accomplishing the same thing, although not quite in the 'instant doomsday' capacity of icbms. Eh, it's not exactly certain that disarmament is any safer than MAD. One relies on the rationality and ... humanity of humans. The other relies on everyone being ready to murder everyone else, which is probably a more rational assumption to make of people. edit: Also, the smaller yield bombs are more of an American thing. Killer-of-Lawyers fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 09:24
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:You'd have to develop it and fully deploy it in secret, or your enemy will just build more weapons to overwhelm your defenses. Nintendo Kid posted:Yeah, you get quite quickly diminishing returns on larger and larger bombs, since pressure waves can only go so far. Killer-of-Lawyers posted:edit: Also, the smaller yield bombs are more of an American thing.
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Jan 24, 2015 09:34
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Shark Mafia posted:Yeah and even then nuclear-armed cruise missiles launched from stealth subs would be fairly effective at accomplishing the same thing, although not quite in the 'instant doomsday' capacity of icbms. Of course, one of the big problems is that nobody wants to be the first to give up their nukes because then MAD equilibrium disappears.
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Jan 24, 2015 09:36
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Or nuke you while they still have the capability. That's really the thing, a fully functional ABM shield is not so much a defensive measure as it's unlocking your offensive measures, meaning everyone else pretty much have to capitulate to you unless they manage to set up their own. Yeah, and that's the issue. I mean, on the minor scale I don't have an issue with it, but on the large scale, as crazy as Russia is, and as pro-USA as I am as a Texan and all that jazz, I wouldn't want to see the US be able to get away with a first strike. We aren't to far removed from the generals that'd nuke the soviets if we had 2 left and they only had one. A Buttery Pastry posted:Because Russian guidance systems suck, comparatively. Yep. It's a two fold advantage. Smaller nukes over a wide area can cause a lot of over pressure, and you also don't miss so you can use a smaller nuke. It's also why Russia has twice the warheads we do. We can tie a hand behind our back and still maintain a pretty hard advantage. Nuclear politics are funny like that.
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Jan 24, 2015 09:46
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Nukes will only stop existing once a one world government is established.
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Jan 24, 2015 09:51
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Which won't ever happen, but even if it did, we'd still keep nukes. They're useful.
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Jan 24, 2015 09:53
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Fojar38 posted:Of course, one of the big problems is that nobody wants to be the first to give up their nukes because then MAD equilibrium disappears. And of course what happens to a nation that does give up MAD was so beautifully demonstrated by Russia last year completely defacating on the Budapest Memorandum
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Jan 24, 2015 09:54
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Which won't ever happen, but even if it did, we'd still keep nukes. They're useful.
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Jan 24, 2015 09:57
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Yeah, they're useful against killer asteroids, and for landscaping. Actually, nuking a killer Asteroid would most likely only create a lot of smaller killer asteroids. 
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Jan 24, 2015 10:01
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Honj Steak posted:Actually, nuking a killer Asteroid would most likely only create a lot of smaller killer asteroids. Which while an amazing scifi trope, would still be less devastating than one giant rock due to a larger surface area to burn up. They're also useful for making insane element breeding reactors, and a lot of other crazy projects (Like longshot.). Never mind the fact that if a one world government isn't going to give up their guns, they're not going to give up their nukes.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:04
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Orthanc6 posted:And of course what happens to a nation that does give up MAD was so beautifully demonstrated by Russia last year completely defacating on the Budapest Memorandum Basically this. Russia's complete disregard for an international agreement that nuclear disarmament would involve indefinite guarantee of sovereignty will result in a long-term twofold effect: Nations that have nukes have now learned a valuable lesson about what it means to not have nukes when other countries do. Nations that aren't attempting to acquire nuclear weapons now have an increased incentive to develop them. Nukes are REALLY good at protecting your interests. Not having them if someone else does(and there are a number of countries that do, never forget) leaves you absurdly vulnerable to external intervention. I mean is there any dispute that if Ukraine still had a handful of nukes that Russia would be willing to put them into this sort of existential crisis?
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Jan 24, 2015 10:07
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Possibly a new offensive on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, but it's unclear. Separatists fired a round of Grad rockets into the city this morning, killing up to 10 according to unconfirmed reports. Here's non-graphic footage of some damage. https://youtube.com/watch?v=NKAq9nmm93A Edit: rumors of Stelkov skates to give a press conference. Seems like the separatists might be gearing up for an offensive, but we will see. MothraAttack fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 10:33
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Honj Steak posted:Actually, nuking a killer Asteroid would most likely only create a lot of smaller killer asteroids.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:39
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Actually, those tiny killer asteroids would end up on a different trajectory, most likely making them not-killer asteroids. And, as noted above, if you have to choose, it's tremendously better to deal with a bunch of smaller impacts than one gigantic impact.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:50
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Cuntpunch posted:Basically this. Russia's complete disregard for an international agreement that nuclear disarmament would involve indefinite guarantee of sovereignty will result in a long-term twofold effect: I don't think any new lesson is being taught here with regards to the advantages of being a nuclear superpower and Russia is definitely a nuclear superpower even if they are not a superpower in any other conventional or economic way. It is not easy for a nation to decide they want nuclear weapons and then develop that capability to the same threat level as Russia poses. It takes a long time and a lot of money during which most of the world will be doing whatever they can to stop it. I mean look at China, they have nuclear weapons with a population 10 times the size of Russia and 5 times the GDP but as of now Russia is a much greater threat as a nuclear power.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:51
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