North Korean Nuke Test Dud or Not?

I have waited until now to post on the North Korean Nuke Test over the weekend, in order to get second and third wave reports and analysis, because the first wave is almost always off the mark.
Initial reports placed the yield at between 5 kiltons and 15 kilotons. Later reports placed the yield at between 550 tons and 800 tons, or 1.1 million and 1.6 million pounds.

First, you may ask what is up with the kiltons and tons yield?

kilotons is a shorthand for saying thousands of tons, and expressing the yield of a nuclear device in tons is a comparison of the warhead to an equivalent amount of TNT, or dynamite, so non-technical people can get their heads around the immediate destructive capabilities of these weapons.

A lot of the people I have talked to, and read, seem quite pleased with the apparent fizzle of the nuke test. They believe that something either went wrong with the test, or the North Koreans packed an underground tunnel with the equivalent of over a million pounds of TNT.

I have one major objection to the use of high explosives to simulate a nuclear detonation.
First, the underground facility would have to be packed with the equivalent of over a million pounds of TNT, something on the order of around a 100,000 pounds, or 50 tons.
Second, the stuff would have to be wired with detonators to simultaneously detonate at the same time.
Third, conventional explosives have detonations that are slow, measured in thousands of feet per second, whereas nuclear explosions are orders of magnitude faster. No comparison.

Another concern about the apparent fizzle. Was it?

There is a class of nukes called ADMs, or Atomic Demolition Munitions that are typically in the low kiloton to sub-kiloton range.

My thinking is that the North Koreans have inherited most of the products of the A.Q. Khan network and the Pakistani nuclear program from the ISI of Pakistan.
This test could be a demonstration for either a client state or terrorist group of a device that could be loadeable onto a truck, or a small pleasure boat and detonated as part of a suicide attack.
Imagine how much money such a device would bring the cash-starved Dog Eating, Pot-Bellied, Elvis Impersonating Dictator of North Korea?

I have some sofrtware designed to simulate the effects of fission devices, and the prompt radiation is 450 rads at 0.52 miles. That means a 50% survival rate with no medical care, and the level drops to 1 thousandth of a rad at 1.84 miles.

The Blast Effects would be worse than the radiation with such a decie, and it is not reccomended to be within a quarter mile of such a device.
That being said, you would not want such a device to be detonated in our country, or near our troops in Iraq.

My view is that our response should have been an immediate attack, whatever the cost...because our lukewarm response has emboldened the enemy. I would suggest you begin your preparations for having enough food, water, and fuel for at least a month to ride out any temporary disruptions caused by such a device being used inside our country. You have six mopnths, as that is what I view as the possible time frame of covert transport of such a device into our country from North Korea undetected.

I will begin a series of posts to help you decide what to get, and the philosophy behind my preparations. I am not saying an attack is imminent, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.




Here is a view of a 15 kiloton explosion from 6 miles away.
Will we be seeing a smaller version from one of our cities?