Russia Worried May Destroy United States by Mistake
Fri May 20, 2005 at 11:00:26 AM PDT
Nobel Peace Prize-winning Austrailian physicist Helen Caldicott claims in a
newly published interview:
None of the Russian early-warning satellites work. Therefore the Russians are acutely worried that the United States doctrine of pre-emptive war is a real threat to them and it makes them very paranoid, because their satellites to provide them with better warning just do not work.
And that's just the beginning. You might want to sit down, because the "nuclear option" you're currently focused on is a mere hangnail compared to the massive coronary BushCo has brought the world to the brink of...
The United States and the world came far closer to total nuclear catastrophe in 1995 than anyone seems to remember or realize, even though it was documented and reported in The New York Times. Norway launched a missile near a U.S. Trident submarine deployment. The Kremlin had been notified in advance that the missile would be fired, but just forgot the warning. The Russian radar picked up the Norwegian launch and concluded that they were under attack from a U.S. strategic nuclear missile submarine.
For the first time in history, Russian President Boris Yeltsin opened the "football," the suitcase containing the Russian nuclear launch codes, and he had three minutes to decide whether to authorize an all-out Russian nuclear response. Only 10 seconds before the three minutes ran out, the Norwegian missile veered off course and this was reported to Yeltsin. There had even been a general at his elbow urging a full retaliatory strike. America was just 10 seconds from annihilation. This story was reported on the back page of the New York Times when it should have been on the front page.
Question. Was this a freak scenario that could never happen again?
Dr. Caldicott: This could certainly happen again. A retired senior Russian military officer said to me recently, "Helen, we're so worried we could blow you up by mistake."
Okay, so we've lived in denial with this ludicrous, Strangelovian reality for 50 years. So what's new? Well, here's what's new: BushCo's plan to weaponize space:
Q. The United States is the dominant space-faring nation with more military satellites in orbit than every other nation combined. How difficult would it be to disrupt or destroy U.S. space-based systems?
A. Any nation. Military satellites are very vulnerable. As we learned at our conference the easiest way to paralyze the entire U.S. space satellite system in low Earth orbit is by detonating a nuclear weapon at that level above the Earth to produce radiation in the belt where the satellites orbit. The satellites built to function for 10 years will then all die a slow death over just a few weeks as they pass through the most irradiated areas.
And if you detonate a single nuclear weapon in the upper atmosphere you will produce an electric magnetic pulse, or EMP. One nuclear weapon detonated in near space would therefore melt down the entire electronic communications network of the United States.
This would of course ruin the U.S. economy and utterly disrupt society across the country. But it would have even more grave consequences. There are 103 nuclear power plants across the United States. They all rely on external electricity supply that powers their water-coolant systems. If these were all knocked out, you would run the risk of more than 100 Chernobyl-scale nuclear core meltdowns across the United States.
Nuclear war. Nuclear winter. 100 Chernobyls. End of the species. 10 seconds.
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