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Thursday, June 06, 2019

North Korea’s Nuclear Bomb Is Much Bigger than Previously Thought

Scientists looking anew at a 2017 North Korean nuclear test discovered that the explosion was likely about two-thirds more powerful than U.S. officials previously thought.

Earlier data put the yield somewhere between 30 and 300 kilotons; the U.S. intelligence community said 140 kilotons. That was already the most powerful device tested by North Korea, topping a 2016 test by about an order of magnitude. But a new look at seismological data suggests that the blast was between 148 and 328 kilotons, and probably around 250 kilotons.

That’s the conclusion from a group of researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz; the Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica; and elsewhere, as published Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. The team combined sound-wave data recorded during the blast with information about North Korean nuclear tests since 2006 and plugged it all into models showing how sound would travel through various types of rock at an estimated depth of 430 to 710 meters.

A 250-kiloton weapon would be about 16 times more powerful than the one that leveled Hiroshima. Detonated over Washington, D.C., it would have knocked down virtually every residential structure in the downtown area and inflicted third-degree burns on everyone within a three-mile radius.

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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Translation:
Americans should be afraid.
Very afraid.

Anonymous said...

Besides the Democrats, who is surprised?

Anonymous said...

Would be the best days work this country has had in a long time as long as the President was not there.

Anonymous said...

Please let them drop it on DC right now! Bomb the Swamp!

Anonymous said...

This doesn't bode well for North Korea.

Anonymous said...

There is ZERO possibility NK would ever shoot one in our direction. If they did, it would -

A. Malfunction before it got here
B. Be shot down by us or one of our allies
C. It just wouldn't happen

Anonymous said...

Bomb the swamp while Trump is in France!

Anonymous said...

Great a cartoon dictator in one of the last bastions of unrealized Communism is armed and ready to protect WHAT ? A personal inherited and dynastic farce in the free world ? We should really take more seriously these backwards third world nations in Asia and the Middle East and what is left of Russia and put our foot down and make them comply to modern realities .