moonbuggy

`Kazakhstan is on a nationwide hunt for dozens of “radioactive dollars” circulating in the country’s financial system.

The Kazakh central bank said in a letter to financial institutions the radiation level of the U.S. dollar notes was 100 times above normal. A Kazakh citizen brought them into the country in November, it said.

“(The dollars) pose a direct threat to people’s health,” said the letter, obtained by Reuters Wednesday.’

`The USS Ronald Reagan can single-handedly take on a nation’s armed forces but met its match in Moreton Bay’s jellyfish.

The slimy invertebrates were being sucked into the 97,000 tonne ship at such a rate generators were constantly switched over and local fire crews placed on stand-by as the creatures disabled full on-board capacities. [..]

The world’s largest aircraft carrier was due to leave Brisbane at 8am today after the 6000 crew enjoyed five days of shore leave.

The jellyfish have exposed the giant ship’s weakness, a humble button, screw or piece of litter can bring the 332-metre behemoth to a standstill. ‘

`Retired Russian colonel Stanislav Petrov received a special World Citizen Award at a UN meeting in New York on Thursday. Petrov was honored as the “Man Who Averted Nuclear War”. [..]

Petrov was highly aware that Cold War tensions were acute, as USSR fighters had shot down a Korean airliner on Sept. 1. But he was completely shocked when the warning siren began to wail and two lights on his desk console began flashing MISSILE ATTACK and START. “Start” was the instruction to launch, irreversibly, all 5,000 or so Soviet missiles and obliterate America.

A new, unproven Soviet satellite system had picked up a flash in Montana near a Minuteman II silo. Then another — five, all told.

Petrov recalls his legs were “like cotton,” as they say in Russian. He stared at the huge electronic wall map of the United States in terror and disbelief. As his staff gawked upward at him from the floor, he had the thought, “Who would order an attack with only five missiles? That big an idiot has not been born yet, not even in the U.S.”’

`A full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in Hefei, capital city of east China’s Anhui Province.

Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments prove successful, China will become the first country in the world to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed “artificial sun”, experts here said.’

`French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it.

Speaking at a nuclear submarine base in north-western France, Mr Chirac said a French response “could be conventional. It could also be of another nature.”

He said France’s nuclear forces had been configured for such an event.’

`Take any good nuclear Armageddon movie, from Dr. Strangelove, to Fail Safe, to The Sum of All Fears, there’s always a scene in which the erstwhile lightly engaged president is either tendered an urgent note or handed a telephone by his top aide. Cut to a closeup on the president’s face. His expression changes immediately, the color drains from his face, followed by a sound-on-sound slash cut that takes the viewer to an underground bunker, deep under a Virginia mountain. There, a collection of grim faced, high-ranking military men work determinedly to avoid a global catastrophe. . .

What words are written on that note, what could it say that can make the President go white in an instant? What are the words that the president never wants to see on a note thrust into his hand while he is busy giving a speech? I believe the answer is “PINNACLE/NUCFLASH”.’

`Automatic Camera situated 7 miles from blast with 10 foot lens. Shutter speed equaled 1/1000,000,000 of-a-second exposure. [..]

Note: the electric like energy that runs down the towers guide wires.’

This is the Tsar Bomba, a 50MT thermonuclear weapon.

(6.7meg Google video)
see it here »

‘Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became literally invisible – but more frequent: the United States conducted a further 723 underground tests until 1992. 100 SUNS documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with 100 photographs drawn by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen, and still photographers were sworn to secrecy.’

`The United States has backed a plan by Australia to sell uranium to China for nuclear power as long as there are strict safeguards to stop it falling into the hands of terrorists.

US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman gave the backing as he attended a major international climate change conference in Sydney. [..]

While Australia remains cagey about whether it will adopt nuclear power, Mr Bodman said the US had no problem with the federal government selling uranium to China.’

Wow, how generous of the US to give us their blessing to do as we wish with our own natural resources. I feel obliged to reciprocate. So, I hereby offer my official backing for the US plan to be a pack of war-mongering, greedy, oil-hungry cunts.

Not to say that I think we should send all our uranium to China. We should keep some for ourselves and get a few gigawatts of nuclear power reactors cooking.

`ABC News has learned that Iran intends to begin enriching uranium — the critical step in making material for nuclear weapons — a move European diplomats and officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, have tried to prevent over the past three years.

Sources with knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program tell ABC News that a senior Iranian official notified the IAEA verbally over the weekend of its intention to introduce uranium hexafluoride gas, or UF6, into centrifuges at a facility in Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran.’

`Cabinet papers from 1975 detailing the government’s plans in the event of nuclear war are among new documents released by the National Archives. [..]

TV was to close down, and the BBC to begin a wartime service on radio.

The prime minister would be taken to his bunker but there were no plans at that time to evacuate civilians. [..]

However, the papers showed art treasures from London and Edinburgh would be saved by being sent to slate mines in Wales.

The information is among a raft of unseen material that has been revealed in government records from 1975, now released to the public at the National Archives in Kew, south-west London.’

`Israeli overseas intelligence service Mossad chief Meir Dagan said on Tuesday that Iran is seeking more than one nuclear bomb and it will attain technological independence within a number of months.

Dagan told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset (parliament) that it’s just a matter of time for Iran to make a nuclear bomb, but he refused to predict when Iran will be able to produce such a bomb.

“There exists a strategic Iranian decision to reach nuclear independence and the capability to produce bombs,” Dagan said in an annual assessment presented to the Knesset panel.

“Iran’s chances of attaining the necessary technology depends on whether its plans will be thwarted by outside actors or whether it will be able to advance the uranium enrichment process,” Dagan stressed.’

‘HYDESim maps overpressure radii generated by a ground-level detonation; these radii are an indicator of structural damage to buildings. No other effects, such as thermal damage or fallout levels, are included in this tool. Note that the displayed rings are “idealized”; that is, no account is taken of terrain, urban density, ground type, weather conditions, and so on.’

Kinda cool little application, if you like that sorta thing. I couldn’t sleep particularly well the other night and since I didn’t have much else to do at 5am I used this simulator to roughly calculate how the recent fuel depot explosion in England compared to the atomic weapons dropped on Japan in World War II.

And how did it compare, you ask? Pretty fucken well. 🙂

`Out of the sun a black, cigar-shaped object falls toward the earth. At the edge of town a filling station attendant sees it cross the slice of sky between the car above him and the edge of his grease pit. The center fielder of the visiting baseball team sees the moving spot, then looks back toward the batter, impatient for the third out. A woman in the park hears a strange, thin whistle and looks up, shading her eyes.

At a point 2,000 feet above the ground, the first atomic rocket of World War III explodes over your city. In one vast flash of light, equal to 100 suns, the buildings are etched against a sky of fire. A blinding ball of flame leaps from the point where the rocket exploded.’

I love this retro nuclear war stuff. It’s great. 🙂 What other official documents would have lines like the following?

`If and when an atom bomb ever does fall near you, you will be scared. There is no doubt about that. If you are normal, you will be plenty scared.’

`Welcome to Cold War City (population: 4). It covers 240 acres and has 60 miles of roads and its own railway station. It even includes a pub called the Rose and Crown.

The most underpopulated town in Britain is being put on the market. But there will be no estate agent’s blurb extolling the marvellous views of the town for sale: true, it has a Wiltshire address, but it is 120ft underground.

The subterranean complex that was built in the 1950s to house the Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan’s cabinet and 4,000 civil servants in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack is being thrown open to commercial use. Just four maintenance men are left.’

`A Pentagon planning document being updated to reflect the doctrine of pre-emption declared by President Bush in 2002 envisions the use of nuclear weapons to deter terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its allies.

The “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations,” which was last updated 10 years ago, makes clear that “the decision to employ nuclear weapons at any level requires explicit orders from the president.” [..]

“However, the continuing proliferation of WMD along with the means to deliver them increases the probability that someday a state/nonstate actor nation/terrorist may, through miscaluation or by deliberate choice, use those weapons. In such cases, deterrence, even based on the threat of massive destruction, may fail and the United States must be prepared to use nuclear weapons if necessary.”‘

`Russia and Iran signed a nuclear fuel supply deal long opposed by Washington today, paving the way for Tehran to start up its first atomic power plant next year, state media reported.

The agreement, signed by the two countries’ nuclear energy chiefs at the Bushehr atomic reactor in southern Iran, came as Tehran faced heightened pressure from the United States, which accuses it of secretly developing nuclear weapons.’

`US scientists are quietly starting work on a new generation of nuclear arms meant to be more rugged and reliable than warheads in the existing arsenal.

About nine million dollars have been allocated so far for weapons designers at the three US nuclear weapons laboratories, the New York Times reported Monday, citing government officials and experts.

The initiative is expected to grow and could produce finished designs in five to 10 years.’

`The nuns were convicted by a federal jury in April sabotaging the national defense and damaging government property. The nuns cut a fence and walked onto a Minuteman III silo site in October, swinging hammers and using their blood to paint a cross on the structure.’

`US Senate candidate Barack Obama says that if President Pervez Musharraf loses power in a coup, the United States may consider military strikes to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

In an interview published in the Chicago Tribune, the Democratic Party’s Senate candidate said he believed that Islamic extremist elements might take over if President Musharraf was overthrown, adding that in such a situation, America would have to consider going in and taking nuclear bombs out.’

`Soviet scientists considered the Moon to be a very good place for a strategic headquarters as nuclear strikes on its surface would lose most of their destructive force. As the moon has no atmosphere, no shockwave could spread there and the radioactive dust would immediately fall out back on the surface without an atmosphere to carry it.’

‘Convinced he needed discipline, David’s father, Ken, felt the solution lay in a goal that he didn’t himself achieve, Eagle Scout, which requires 21 merit badges. David earned a merit badge in Atomic Energy in May 1991, five months shy of his 15th birthday. By now, though, he had grander ambitions.

He was determined to irradiate anything he could, and decided to build a neutron “gun.” To obtain radioactive materials, David used a number of cover stories and concocted a new identity.’

‘A huge explosion rocked North Korea three days ago but U.S. and South Korean officials said on Sunday it was unlikely to have been a nuclear weapons test despite a report the blast produced a mushroom cloud.

[..] in Washington, U.S. officials said there was no definitive explanation yet, although Thursday’s blast did not appear to be nuclear.’

more here:

‘North Korea is believed to be developing nuclear weapons. International experts would likely have been able to detect a test if one had occurred several days ago.

“We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 3.5 to 4 kilometers (2.1 to 2.5 miles) in diameter was monitored during the explosion,” the source in Seoul told Yonhap.’

followup to Report: Mushroom Cloud Seen After N.Korea Explosion and Reports May Indicate N.Korea Nuclear Test.

‘The Bush administration has received recent intelligence reports that some experts believe could indicate North Korea is preparing to conduct its first nuclear weapons test explosion, [..]’

I wonder if this is related to the previous link.