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There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

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Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#291

Post by nradov »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #227
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is enough pain for the US that they wouldn't actually attack Pakistan These are the states whose Senators are in play this year [1]. Let's say Trump decides it's fuck-around-with-Islamabad-o'clock. He fucks around. Pakistan nukes at India. How many of those Senate seats flip as a result? I'm going to guess none. Let's go one step further. Pakistan nukes Al Udeid and Camp Arifjan (both theoretically within ran…

> Let's say Trump decides it's fuck-around-with-Islamabad-o'clock. He fucks around. Pakistan nukes at India. How many of those Senate seats flip as a result? I'm going to guess none. If America does something to pakistan, then pakistan wouldn't bomb India but rather America In your scenario India did literally nothing. I know the rivalry but even then India has its own nukes and if India wasn't part of the plan then…

Huh? How would Pakistan do that exactly? They have zero capability to strike the US homeland. In theory they might be able to hit a US military base in the region but even doing that successfully would require an extraordinary level of luck.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#292

Post by the_af »

jojobas wrote: post #284
anonymous908213 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a bold assertion to make considering China literally did retaliate against the US in North Korea once already, to the tune of war. Kidnapping heads of states is an act of war. Venezuela can't defend itself, but China certainly will do whatever is necessary to secure its vassal if the alternative is NK collapsing and having US military bases on its border. You also rule out the possibility of an invasion of Se…

Other than by launching nukes (and getting 10x on themselves) China has no capability to attack the US. I don't think attacking SK is unlikely because it's "unfair", but rather because there's no incentive to do so. The concept of "if you attack Cuba we'll attack Europe" is an old playbook for the commies, and I think was always a bluff.

My point is that since in this scenario SK would likely be involved in some capacity (granting safe passage, harboring US planes, etc) they would suffer retaliation by NK and possibly China.

I don't see what's unlikely about this, it's basically NK's defense strategy.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#293

Post by the_af »

ericmay wrote: post #270
the_af wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The estimated range of US military deaths from an invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall) was 250,000 to 1,000,000, and another 5 to 10 million Japanese. I've read convincing arguments (sorry, I cannot find them now) that this reasoning is mostly bogus. One, the decision of dropping the bombs wasn't coordinated with planners of Operation Downfall, so casualties weren't a consideration. As such, it cannot be "civiliz…

On the other hand, it doesn’t matter how off the estimates were because they’re our people and their lives matter more. It seems rather immoral to a high degree to send some Americans to their deaths unnecessarily because we didn’t want to use a weapon we had in our possession to end a war that we did not start.

> On the other hand, it doesn’t matter how off the estimates were because they’re our people and their lives matter more.

"Our" people?

That kind of moral calculus simply doesn't track with me: I'm neither from the US nor Japan, plus I think considerations of "civilization" fly out the window once you start thinking like this.

But also, it's a kind of goalpost shifting. Either the calculations were the justification, in which case it matters whether they were right, or they weren't. It's not right to argue "well, the actual numbers don't matter because...".

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#294

Post by JasonADrury »

nostrademons wrote: post #288
erxam wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The DPRK was right from the start. They always were. For the longest time I thought they'd gone too far, but now we're the clowns putting on a show.

Note that MAD only works when there are a small number of players. Once it gets up past around 12, a.) it becomes too easy to detonate a nuclear weapon and then blame somebody else to take the fall and b.) the chance of somebody doing something crazy and irrational becomes high. Same reason that oligopolies can have steady profit but once you have ~10-12 market players you enter perfect competition and inevitably get…

>There are 9 nuclear-armed states today. Likely this has set us on a path where nuclear war is inevitable.

It's really hard to guess how retaliation would happen in practice, a large-scale nuclear war certainly isn't inevitable.

The most likely targets for nuclear strikes right now are also non-nuclear states.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#295

Post by somenameforme »

delichon wrote: post #229
yakbarber wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a fair argument to make that a nation that drops a nuclear bomb on a city isn't "civilized"

The high end of the range of death estimates by the two atomic bombs is around 246,000. The estimated range of US military deaths from an invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall) was 250,000 to 1,000,000, and another 5 to 10 million Japanese. Dropping nukes was both barbaric and the more civilized option. Oppenheimer et al. deserve their acclaim. Japan attacked the US first, and by Hiroshima the US had 110,000 dead in…

The US had already secretly intercepted cables from Japan with it looking to "terminate the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan" as far back as July 12th 1945 in which they also expressed a willingness to relinquish all claimed territories. [1] The only condition they were seeking is that the Emperor be able to remain as a figurehead.

That urgency and willingness to surrender was before Japan knew that the USSR had already agreed with the allies to declare war on them at the Yalta conference in February. The USSR committed to declaring war on Japan "two or three" months after Germany fell, which happened on May 8th. They declared war on Japan on August 8th.

We did not forward any of this information onto the other allies. Instead we chose to nuke Japan on August 6th. The Emperor was allowed to remain as a figurehead.

[1] - https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28458-document-39b-magic-...

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#296

Post by bandrami »

delichon wrote: post #28

I assume that nuclear capability would rule out a target from this kind of snatch operation, and that this event will add pressure to proliferate.

The reporting suggests there was some kind of deal struck between the US and elements of the VZ administration, and even nuclear capability doesn't prevent that

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#298

Post by defrost »

ericmay wrote: post #270
the_af wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The estimated range of US military deaths from an invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall) was 250,000 to 1,000,000, and another 5 to 10 million Japanese. I've read convincing arguments (sorry, I cannot find them now) that this reasoning is mostly bogus. One, the decision of dropping the bombs wasn't coordinated with planners of Operation Downfall, so casualties weren't a consideration. As such, it cannot be "civiliz…

On the other hand, it doesn’t matter how off the estimates were because they’re our people and their lives matter more. It seems rather immoral to a high degree to send some Americans to their deaths unnecessarily because we didn’t want to use a weapon we had in our possession to end a war that we did not start.

The history on this is pretty sound ... a major bombing campaign was started much earlier to avoid any invasion or boots on the ground.

Seventy two Japanese cities, including Tokyo, were already completely destroyed before the two atomic bombs were dropped. The two cities destroyed by atomic bombs were on a list to be destroyed regardless.

To the people killed, injured, or left in the shell of a city with no food or water it made very little real difference whether the cause was HE+incendiaries OR high burst shockwave from atomic bomb - the M&M statistics (death and injury, both immediate and following) were similar in either case.

The greatest military imperative to drop the atomic bombs were pragmatic .. they were developed at vast expanse for use on Germany but were not ready until after Germany surrended .. to close off an R&D program without a live target test on targets already targetted for destruction just seemed ... wasteful.

After the bombs were dropped, everything changed. Public awareness and perception. The need for post war PR. The start of the Cold War race with soviets over atomics. The pressing need for auto biographies and centre staging from actors late to the story, etc.

Much of the "justification" for dropping atomic bombs was retconned after the fact.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#299

Post by JasonADrury »

nradov wrote: post #291
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's say Trump decides it's fuck-around-with-Islamabad-o'clock. He fucks around. Pakistan nukes at India. How many of those Senate seats flip as a result? I'm going to guess none. If America does something to pakistan, then pakistan wouldn't bomb India but rather America In your scenario India did literally nothing. I know the rivalry but even then India has its own nukes and if India wasn't part of the plan then…

Huh? How would Pakistan do that exactly? They have zero capability to strike the US homeland. In theory they might be able to hit a US military base in the region but even doing that successfully would require an extraordinary level of luck.

>but even doing that successfully would require an extraordinary level of luck.

On a normal day it'd probably not be a huge problem for Pakistani ballistic missiles to penetrate those bases’ own air defenses. However if the US was planning a strike, there'd certainly be Aegis BMD coverage there, which would be a problem. It's possible they'd even deploy THAAD to protect some bases.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#300

Post by ridgeguy »

fooker wrote: post #245
mandevil wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US built a lot of bunkers like this back in the 1950's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Weather_Emergency_Operat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Rock_Mountain_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex With the rise of solid fuel ICBM and then MIRV leading to the truly massive number of warheads pointed at the US, the US switched t…

Where will the planes land?

Dry lake beds abound in the US West. See Edwards AFB (big dry lake bed on which nearly everything, including the Space Shuttle, has landed). See also Groom Lake. These are enormous and couldn't be wrecked by conventional runway denial weapons.
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