moonbuggy

‘This thing is friggin awesome. This guy custom built a paintball gatling gun that shoots balls out at 1200 psi.’

see it here »

`During his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Gates mentioned why Iran might be seeking the means to build an atomic bomb: “They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf,” he said.

The remark led Israeli news bulletins. State-run radio suggested Gates may have breached a U.S. “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that dates back to the late 1960s.

“It’s quite unprecedented,” a retired Israeli diplomat told Reuters on Thursday when asked about Gates’s testimony. “I can only assume he has yet to get to grips with the understandings that exist between us and the Americans.”‘

`A man who mailed a bomb to a doctor because he was angry about how his penis enlargement surgery turned out was sentenced Tuesday to four years and 10 months in prison.

Blake Steidler, 25, of Reamstown, put the bomb in the mail on Feb. 11, 2005, in North Bloomfield, Ohio, addressed to the doctor in Chicago. After returning home, he called 911 and told police what he had done. The bomb was retrieved from the mail and destroyed; no one was injured.

Steidler pleaded guilty in April to use of a weapon of mass destruction and other charges. Defense lawyer Luis A. Ortiz said at the time of the plea that his client was mentally ill.’

Seriously tho.. Weapons of mass destruction?

`Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war.

The Bush administration did so under pressure from congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say present a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.’

`Do you believe in Iraqi “WMD”? Did Saddam Hussein’s government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.

People tend to become “independent of reality” in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.’

`On Tuesday morning, a retired Catholic priest and two veterans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear missile launch facility, and began beating the silo cover with hammers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III missile off-line. Seriously. [..]

The activists used bolt-cutters to get into the E-9 Minuteman II facility, located just northwest of the White Shield, North Dakota. “Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access to the warhead and they hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300 kiloton nuclear warhead,” the group said in a statement. “The activists painted ‘It’s a sin to build a nuclear weapon’ on the face of the 110-ton hardened silo cover and the peace activists poured their blood on the missile lid.”

This was all done while wearing face paint, dunce caps, misfitting overalls, and bright yellow wigs.’

`In the Cold War arms race, scientists rushed to build thousands of warheads to counter the Soviet Union. Today, those scientists are racing once again, but this time to rebuild an aging nuclear stockpile.

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are locked in an intense competition with rivals at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area to design the nation’s first new nuclear bomb in two decades. [..]

By law, the new weapons would pack the same explosive power as existing warheads and be suitable only for the same kinds of military targets as those of the weapons they replace. Unlike past proposals for new atomic weapons, the project has captured bipartisan support in Congress.’

followup to: Lab officials excited by new H-bomb project

`Speaking in Atlanta today, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was sharply questioned about his pre-war claims about WMD in Iraq. An audience member confronted Rumsfeld with his 2003 claim about WMD, “We know where they are.” Rumsfeld falsely claimed he never said it. The audience member then read Rumsfeld’s quote back to him, leaving the defense secretary speechless.’

(5.7meg Quicktime)

`Located about 1 1/2 hrs from Spokane, 4 hrs. from Seattle, 5 hrs. from Portland.

360 Degree Views. Private water system. High Power lines on sight.

Hardened buildings built to withstand One megaton nuclear blast within three thousand feet!!

Wall thicknesses up to fourteen feet.

Three 155′ tall missile silos.

A dozen other large to huge buildings underground.

Thousands of feet of connecting tunnels.’

`US President George W. Bush made clear to British Prime Minister Tony Blair in January 2003 that he was determined to invade Iraq without a UN resolution and even if UN arms inspectors failed to find weapons of mass destruction in the country, The New York Times reported.

Citing a confidential British memorandum, the newspaper said the president was certain that war was inevitable and made his view known during a private two-hour meeting with Blair in the Oval Office on January 31, 2003. [..]

“‘The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March,’ Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. ‘This was when the bombing would begin’,” the paper continued.

The timetable came at an important diplomatic moment, the paper said.

Five days after the Bush-Blair meeting, then US secretary of state Colin Powell was scheduled to appear before the United Nations to present evidence that Iraq posed a threat to world security by hiding unconventional weapons.’

`In the 1950s, the Seventh-day Adventist Church struck an extraordinary deal with the US Army. It would provide test subjects for experiments on biological weapons at the Fort Detrick research centre near Washington DC.

The volunteers were conscientious objectors who agreed to be infected with debilitating pathogens. In return, they were exempted from frontline warfare.

Fort Detrick was working on weapons it could use in an offensive capacity as well as ways of defending its troops and citizens.’

`6. Total number and types of nuclear warheads and bombs built, 1945-1990: more than 70,000/65 types [..]

8. Number of nuclear warheads requested by the Army in 1956 and 1957: 151,000 [..]

13. Fissile material produced: 104 metric tons of plutonium and 994 metric tons of highly-enriched
uranium [..]

41. Volume in cubic meters of radioactive waste resulting from weapons activities: 104,000,000 [..]’

`For the first time in more than 20 years, U.S. nuclear-weapons scientists are designing a new H-bomb, the first of probably several new nuclear explosives on the drawing boards.

If they succeed, in perhaps 20 or 25 more years, the United States would have an entirely new nuclear arsenal, and a highly automated fac- tory capable of turning out more warheads as needed, as well as new kinds of warheads.

“We are on the verge of an exciting time,” the nation’s top nuclear weapons executive, Linton Brooks, said last week at Lawrence Livermore weapons design laboratory.’

followup to: US scientists designing new generation of nuclear arms

`The warhead of a long-range missile test-fired by North Korea was found in the U.S. state of Alaska, a report to the National Assembly revealed yesterday.

“According to a U.S. document, the last piece of a missile warhead fired by North Korea was found in Alaska,” former Japanese foreign minister Taro Nakayama was quoted as saying in the report. “Washington, as well as Tokyo, has so far underrated Pyongyang’s missile capabilities.”‘

`There is a “very high” probability that a terrorist group will strike using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said in comments published Tuesday.

“I rate the probability of terror groups using (weapons of mass destruction) as very high,” U.S. State Department counterterrorism coordinator Henry Crumpton was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph newspaper. “It is simply a question of time.”‘

Must be an election coming up or something. Time to get everyone all scared.

`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.’

`Perhaps investing in better lab equipment becomes pointless when (a) it might blow up at any moment, and (b) the police can seize all of it at any time. Individuals busted for developing in-house meth labs now face the same scrutiny as captured sex offenders: in December of 2005, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation launched an Internet Registry of convicted methamphetamine manufacturers.

In North Carolina, crystal meth is considered a weapon of mass destruction, invoked in accordance with the Patriot Act under the state’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons Act. Under the law, a meth conviction results in a sentence ranging from 12 years to life in prison on each count.’

‘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.’

`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.”‘

Some British MP at a senate enquiry in the US talking about Iraq. It’s very cool, he lays into them and pretty much tells them they’re all cunts.

(5.7meg Flash video)

see it here »

`What you are looking at is Zil 135 Frog (Free Range Over Ground) – 7 short range Russian Missile launcher. This is definately not for the faint hearted, powered by TWO mighty big block V8 Ural Petrol Engines, it is best described as a monster truck. These are extremely rare, and most sort after by the US military for destroying. The Taliban had two of these and alot of Northern aliance and US special forces were used in tracking them down and destroying as they were a credible threat. These were commonly used by the Iraqi forces in the first Iraq war.’

`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.’

`Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an “aphrodisiac” chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” blow to morale, the proposal says.

Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. [..]’

More on biological weapons at The Sunshine Project.

`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.’