Nothing to worry since we have the Rational, compassionate one with our Nuke Codes.

But it being bs is the best hope.. would be nice to have Clinton as POTUS.

at night...

or Palin

That's expected. Readings take a bit of time. Follow @mhanham and @ArmsControlWonk

China, Republic of Korea and Japan seem to concur.

Given that it was at exactly noon, DPRK time... Yeah, it's what we think it is.

Dear Jim Mattis and John Kelly -- now is the time to be the warrior monks. Flush the goddam phone and duct tape him to a chair.

or a made for TV disaster flick, nukes are simply not that powerful.

The seismic activity from a nuclear detonation is often the first indicator of such a test.

Given the increased strength of this one (6.3 when previous nuclear earthquakes in NK never topped 5), it looks like this may have been a hydrogen bomb.

and they're calling it an explosion.

Looks like they finally got one to work, and work well. Best case scenario: it worked too well and wiped out the whole facility.

One wonders if any seismic experts will validate that this is a nuclear detonation.

Somebody call CalTech and ask them.

at some point if a guy says he wants to destroy your country and is working at breakneck speed to make it a reality, you have to defend yourself.

I think he barely has a fission bomb, and maybe this is the first clear evidence of it, if somebody can validate that the seismic evidence has the requisite nuclear detonation signature.

A bombs are difficult enough. H bombs are entirely different. There is no way Kim goes from crude fission bomb to fusion bomb in such a short time.

plus, a 6.3 earthquake speaks for itself.

No hair on fire here yet.

Fusion bombs are monumentally complex and difficult. Fission bombs are bad enough.

Nothing I have seen of DPRK in the past couple years indicate to me that they are a nuclear threat. Today's data is worrisome, but it is a fucking far reach between fission device to fusion device. And the evidence for a DPRK fission device is really, really shitty, until possibly this. It took USA and USSR years to develop fusion weapons. It's just not something you make with Lego bricks. And knowing how is not much help. It's really, really difficult.

Putin? I doubt it.
China? No fucking way!!!
Ukraine has no nukes.

No peace for the wicked as the saying goes ...

"A seismic tremor detected at 12:36 p.m., emanating from the Punggye-ri underground nuclear test in northwestern North Korea, set off a scramble to determine whether the North had carried out another test. The South’s military soon confirmed that it had."

Or something to that effect. That went over well with Kim Jong Un.

on the Richter Scales. No radioactive material was released. It was hydrogen and now N Korea can make bombs with materials that they have in their country already.

Shaking intensity matters little in the situation of a recorded explosion. It's the total energy output that really matters.

An increase of 1 magnitude corresponds to a release of energy 31.6 times than that released by the lesser earthquake. This means that, for instance, an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 releases 31.6 times as much energy as an earthquake of magnitude 5.3.

You are right, this is likely hydrogen. This event is consistent with a megaton scale detonation.

Also, we don't use the Richter Scale anymore. That was phased out in the 1970s.


1 megaton blast radius:

selling nukes to the best offer.