Earlier this evening North Korea announced it has conducted a nuclear test. At 11:10 PM, Fox News reports that the USGeological Survey tells it "some seismic activity is coming in". Magnitude of 3.58 is the report. This may confirm the NK report.
This may even move the Foley story to Page 2, and will have major national security implications. It will pit the Carter Albright Clinton US-NK bilateral approach against the 6 party talks of the current administration.
Watch China and Japan in the next few hours.
Tomorrow should be interesting.
Update: Keep an eye on Knighthawk on Polipundit for , his great work on top of this story.
Fox news now reports at 11:56 that the US has confirmed the detonation from a "Senior Bush Administration Official" and the 3.5 Richter scale measurement is consistent with a detonation having less power than the 400 kiloton explosion they were hoping for.
5 comments:
USGS had data up on this test here
Earthquake Details
Magnitude 4.2 (Light)
Date-Time Monday, October 9, 2006 at 01:35:27 (UTC)
= Coordinated Universal Time
Monday, October 9, 2006 at 10:35:27 AM
= local time at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location 41.311°N, 129.114°E
Depth 0 km (~0 mile) set by location program
Region NORTH KOREA
Distances 70 km (45 miles) N of Kimchaek, North Korea
90 km (55 miles) SW of Chongjin, North Korea
180 km (110 miles) S of Yanji, Jilin, China
385 km (240 miles) NE of PYONGYANG, North Korea
Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 14.9 km (9.3 miles); depth fixed by location program
Parameters Nst= 9, Nph= 9, Dmin=369.4 km, Rmss=1.13 sec, Gp= 97°,
M-type=body magnitude (Mb), Version=6
Source USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID ustqab
Click on the earthquake box for more details.
Well maybe now we can stop talking about Foley.
I note that some folks are trying to assess blame for this test. Why not blame NK? If NK was intent on having the bomb there was really nothing short of invasion or total embargo that would have stopped it. Unwilling to take those steps? Deal with it. The most deceptive meme over the last 15 years has been the idea that lesser measures would have any impact. The same holds for Iran.
So, we are entering an age of proliferation. Following proliferation there will be use, that is in the nature of things. We need to figure out how to live in such a world. In particular we also need to figure out when we will use our own nuclear weapons. Note the nuclear bombs aren't surgical weapons useful in battle, they are obliterative weapons.
lurker:
Not much, the earth is very large, and naturally produces shocks this large hundreds of times a day (even if the 4.2 estimate is correct), and occasionally much larger. The radiation (if this was, in fact, a nuclear blast) is also no more than a brief buzz in the context of a planet containing trillions of tons of uranium (just in the crust), all giving off radiation naturally, and bombarded by radiation from space all day long, every day.
So don't worry about ol' Mother Earth. She'll be just fine.
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