The Kiss Your Arse Goodbye Thread

[weltweit]

I do actually worry about it probably more than is healthy TBH. I mean there's fuck all any of us can do about it obviously anyway.

Well I responded to general flood risk by buying a house on a hill. Then I felt a little smug when the river in the valley flooded and broke its banks and the valley was inundated. (shouldn't grin at others sorrows!)

I now find myself renting next to a river that floods most years infallible I aint The only upside is that I live on a first floor which so far hasn't been immersed. Tho it has been close.

I suppose if you had Sarah Connor levels of paranoia you could calculate the safest place in the UK which might be in the Highlands of Scotland, and go live there and tool up in preparation for Armageddon!

 

[maomao]

I wouldn't worry about it. IF they used the Satan2 thing, with it's multiple warheads, the entire UK would be destroyed. Tridant subs would retaliate and most of Europe if not the entire northern hemisphere would be a bit... unviable.

Top tip: Don't read about nuclear weapons in the early hours of the morning...

Satan2 won't be ready for at least a couple of years if ever. Not that they couldn't achieve pretty devastating results with a Topol. I've had incredible anxiety about it since mid Feb but have managed to persuade myself that it's unlikely because I'm not sure Russia could guarantee complete destruction of the west with the state their arsenal is probably in whereas they'd be flattened several times over.

Plus they've rather obviously not responded to any of the Ukrainian cross border attacks so I'm not sure they do want a nuclear war after all. That obnoxious wanker who keeps threatening us on Russian TV is probably doing it because he knows it's all over Twitter.

 

[philosophical]

What is a battlefield nuclear weapon supposed to be?
A fucking nasty indiscriminate dirty bomb dipped in Fairy Liquid?
Surely any nuke is going to mess things up in the place it lands for hundreds and hundreds of years?

 

[nogojones]

I believe that the Russian embassy in Ireland has been "begging" the government to stop protesters at the gates.
Not sure they got any heating oil either.

A nuclear response is clearly the only way forward after such awful injustices.

 

[nogojones]

I'm in a nuclear free zone apart from the Drill hall on dyke Road.
Apprantly in the 80s Brighton Council demanded Reassurance from the MoD that no nuclear weapons were storied at the Territorial Army Units in Brighton.
After various people stopped laughing the offical response was the MoD does not comment on the location of nuclear weapons and defence policy is not governed by local councils

and now you're breaking the OSA by telling us that Brighton is not the central hub for our nukes.

Loose lips...

 

[steeplejack]

Well I responded to general flood risk by buying a house on a hill. Then I felt a little smug when the river in the valley flooded and broke its banks and the valley was inundated. (shouldn't grin at others sorrows!)

I now find myself renting next to a river that floods most years infallible I aint The only upside is that I live on a first floor which so far hasn't been immersed. Tho it has been close.

I suppose if you had Sarah Connor levels of paranoia you could calculate the safest place in the UK which might be in the Highlands of Scotland, and go live there and tool up in preparation for Armageddon!

The remote north west highlands or the western isles would be best. But seriously, anyone moving there because "Vlad's totes going to fire a quantum torpedo at us that will cause a 500 metre tidal wave" needs their head examined.

who wants to survive an all-out nuclear conflagration, anyway?

 

[maomao]

What is a battlefield nuclear weapon supposed to be?
A fucking nasty indiscriminate dirty bomb dipped in Fairy Liquid?
Surely any nuke is going to mess things up in the place it lands for hundreds and hundreds of years?

Most of them aren't designed to land. They do maximum damage a few hundred metres (or higher if big) off the ground and air bursts don't make that much fallout. Most radiation sickness would be the result of being irradiated in the blast. You'll notice that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not only perfectly habitable but have been since right after the war. The ground zeros are memorials and visited by tourists from all over.

 

[weltweit]

..
who wants to survive an all-out nuclear conflagration, anyway?

I like life I want my life to continue as long as reasonably possible!

 

[T & P]

Who the fuck do they think they’re kidding anyway? Never mind their fanciful non-existent new weapons, their existing nuclear arsenal would be sufficient to obliterate Britain. But then again, any nuclear attack on the UK, whether by imaginary Thunderbird weaponry or the bog standard systems already in place, would invariably result in a nuclear retaliatory response that Russia would not be able to stop, and result in a similar obliteration of their society as they know it.

The M.A.D principle that has worked pretty successfully since the advent of nuclear weapons still applies here. Would Russia be willing to sign their own death sentence by launching a nuclear strike on the UK that would 100% trigger a massive retaliatory nuclear strike they absolutely couldn’t defend against? All for the sake of a Western country interfering in a war that at worst will cost nothing more than pride if Russia loses it?

Would they fuck.

 

[weltweit]

..

The M.A.D principle that has worked pretty successfully since the advent of nuclear weapons still applies here. Would Russia be willing to sign their own death sentence by launching a nuclear strike on the UK that would 100% trigger a massive retaliatory nuclear strike they absolutely couldn’t defend against? All for the sake of a Western country interfering in a war that at worst will cost nothing more than pride if Russia loses it?

MAD only works with sane and reasonable actors, the rumours swirling around Putin are worrying ..

 

[T & P]

MAD only works with sane and reasonable actors, the rumours swirling around Putin are worrying ..

Well yeah, there’s always that I guess. But the bottom line imo is that such threats/ propaganda from the Russian media or military are still preposterous. Nobody needs to be reminded of the consequences of a nuclear attack on any territory, and such stunts in Russian TV will not be intimidating or fooling any Western powers. Good propaganda for their own population though.

 

[maomao]

Well yeah, there’s always that I guess. But the bottom line imo is that such threats/ propaganda from the Russian media or military are still preposterous. Nobody needs to be reminded of the consequences of a nuclear attack on any territory, and such stunts in Russian TV will not be intimidating or fooling any Western powers. Good propaganda for their own population though.

Is it? If The One Show was promising death and destruction with the government's blessing on a nightly basis I'd be trying my best to join an armed insurrection. The Russian people must be bags of nerves. They know about MAD too.

 

[Pickman's model]

Who the fuck do they think they’re kidding anyway? Never mind their fanciful non-existent new weapons, their existing nuclear arsenal would be sufficient to obliterate Britain. But then again, any nuclear attack on the UK, whether by imaginary Thunderbird weaponry or the bog standard systems already in place, would invariably result in a nuclear retaliatory response that Russia would not be able to stop, and result in a similar obliteration of their society as they know it.

The M.A.D principle that has worked pretty successfully since the advent of nuclear weapons still applies here. Would Russia be willing to sign their own death sentence by launching a nuclear strike on the UK that would 100% trigger a massive retaliatory nuclear strike they absolutely couldn’t defend against? All for the sake of a Western country interfering in a war that at worst will cost nothing more than pride if Russia loses it?

Would they fuck.

We're far beyond the costing nothing more than pride stage

 

[steeplejack]

Who the fuck do they think they’re kidding anyway? Never mind their fanciful non-existent new weapons, their existing nuclear arsenal would be sufficient to obliterate Britain. But then again, any nuclear attack on the UK, whether by imaginary Thunderbird weaponry or the bog standard systems already in place, would invariably result in a nuclear retaliatory response that Russia would not be able to stop, and result in a similar obliteration of their society as they know it.

It's important not to under-estimate the nihilistic tendency amongst the top echelons in Russia. I doubt they are much exercised by the obliteration of their countrymen. In their eyes, if the world cannot be dominated by Russia, why have a world at all? The idea that people capable of ordering the mass destruction of cities and civilians populations (this didn't begin in Ukraine) give a single shite about the fate of Magnitogorsk or Murmansk in the event of a nuclear attack is for the birds.

That said, there are "breaks" in the system...everyone involved in firing has to agree, assuming that the mechanisms all work and haven't been pilfered / sold off for parts. The shoddy army that Russia currently has is the product of an atomised, alienated, selfish and self interested society that has learned well not to say or do anything too "political" in this century and to focus on individual pleasures and advancement. The Chinese will also act as a restrainer I feel on any deranged nuclear plans.

I get that it's not comfortable returning to the 1980s in terms of the nuclear threat. It's not comfortable to hear TV presenters blithely talking about the destruction of an entire country, salivating as though they are discussing knocking down an old factory and building apartments. But it's important to keep it in context, and not to over-react / panic.

The threat of nuclear war is more than zero, but it is neither likely nor imminent.

 

[weltweit]

..
The threat of nuclear war is more than zero, but it is neither likely nor imminent.

I am going to hold you to that!

Don't forget that they have a possibly isolated potential lone and paranoid madman in charge, and we have an idiot who can't help himself but blurt things out on TV that should have remained secret.

If we can't trust him not to have parties when he just banned them himself, what chance of his negotiating assisting Ukraine without crossing a line, a line that is quite nuanced. Can dickhead do nuanced can he fuck!

 

[WouldBe]

.
Somebody decided to equip the Royal.artillery unit with towed 155m howitzer and load a surprised TA officer on the NATO special weapons course

Holy shit. Things must be getting really serious if they are using 155m howitzers.

 

[WouldBe]

I do actually worry about it probably more than is healthy TBH. I mean there's fuck all any of us can do about it obviously anyway.

Move to Russia?

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Move to Russia?

Just make sure you don't live in Sheffield - clearly the most dangerous place in the event of a nuclear war.

 

[Sue]

SHoyland

The remote north west highlands or the western isles would be best. But seriously, anyone moving there because "Vlad's totes going to fire a quantum torpedo at us that will cause a 500 metre tidal wave" needs their head examined.

who wants to survive an all-out nuclear conflagration, anyway?

Shetland might also work. Also both good on the global warming front...

 

[WouldBe]

Just make sure you don't live in Sheffield - clearly the most dangerous place in the event of a nuclear war.

I'm about 15 miles away.

 

[Dystopiary]

There was a guy who survived both bombs dropped on Japan and lived to an old age:

The Man Who Survived Two Atomic Bombs | HISTORY

Some 260,000 people survived the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—Tsutomu Yamaguchi was one of the very few who endured the horror of both.

www.history.com

I've always considered myself a bit unlucky, but I got nothing on this guy.

That's really interesting. Nearly 94 when he died despite everything he'd been through, and the coincidence about his wife and child. Quite extraordinary really.

 

[likesfish]

Holy shit. Things must be getting really serious if they are using 155m howitzers.

There was only ever on TA unit armed with 155mm towed guns it was Brighton

 

[farmerbarleymow]

This is a good video showing the effects of a city being nuked. From the Nobel people so understandably goes on to cover the various treaties, etc., and where we stand.

I'm close enough to a target to be killed almost immediately - good enough for me.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

This is even more cheerful

 

[Ax^]

do you want a link to threads if you want something cheery Farmers

 

[farmerbarleymow]

do you want a link to threads if you want something cheery Farmers

I watched it last night as it happened - felt like watching something cheery.

 

[RD2003]

Prescient article from 2015: How World War III became possible

'
That problem is this: Putin's Russia is weak. It can no longer stand toe to toe with the US. It no longer has Europe divided in a stalemate; rather, it sees the continent as dominated by an ever-encroaching anti-Russian alliance. In the Russian view, the country's weakness leaves it at imminent risk, vulnerable to a hostile West bent on subjugating or outright destroying Russia as it did to Iraq and Libya.

This is made more urgent for Putin by his political problems at home. In 2012, during his reelection, popular protests and accusations of fraud weakened his sense of political legitimacy. The problem worsened with Russia's 2014 economic collapse; Putin's implicit bargain with the Russian people had been that he would deliver economic growth and they would let him erode basic rights. Without the economy, what did he have to offer them?

Putin's answer has been to assert Russian power beyond its actual strength — and, in the process, to recast himself as a national hero guarding against foreign enemies. Without a world-power-class military or economy at his disposal, he is instead wielding confusion and uncertainty — which Soviet leaders rightly avoided as existential dangers — as weapons against the West.

Unable to overtly control Eastern Europe, he has fomented risks and crises there, sponsoring separatists in Ukraine and conducting dangerous military activity along NATO airspace and coastal borders, giving Russia more leverage there. Reasserting a Russian sphere of influence over Eastern Europe, he apparently believes, will finally give Russia security from the hostile West — and make Russia a great power once more.

Knowing his military is outmatched against the Americans, he is blurring the distinction between war and peace, deploying tactics that exist in, and thus widen, the gray between: militia violence, propaganda, cyberattacks, under a new rubric the Russian military sometimes calls "hybrid war." '

 

[RD2003]

The problem is that this time 'the west' is not facing a mere regional dictator it can quite easily bully (once he stopped being an ally), but a not until recently outright dictator, still popular at home, and, to a certain extent abroad, armed with nuclear weapons.

We are being dragged to the brink, and there isn't a thing we can do about it.

 

[RD2003]

Russia practises nuclear-capable missile strikes, ministry says​

Russia has said its forces practised simulated nuclear-capable missile strikes in the western enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania along the Baltic Coast.

Russia practised simulated “electronic launches” of nuclear-capable Iskander mobile ballistic missile systems on Wednesday, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The Russian forces practised single and multiple strikes at targets imitating launchers of missile systems, airfields, protected infrastructure, military equipment and command posts of a mock enemy, AFP cited the statement as saying.

After performing the “electronic” launches, the military personnel carried out a manoeuvre to change their position in order to avoid “a possible retaliatory strike,” the defence ministry added.

The combat units also practised “actions in conditions of radiation and chemical contamination”.

The drills reportedly involved more than 100 servicemen.

Russia placed nuclear forces on high alert shortly after Putin sent troops to Ukraine on 24 February and the Russian President has hinted at deploying tactical nuclear weapons, warning of a “lightning fast” retaliation if the west directly intervenes in the Ukraine conflict.

Russia’s state television has attempted to make nuclear weapons use more palatable to the public, according to some who spoke to AFP.

“For two weeks now, we have been hearing from our television screens that nuclear silos should be opened,” Russian newspaper edito

 

[Humberto]

He's a murderer.