A Trident missile the Navy tested off Southern California Nov 7, 2015 shown from the Fourth Street bridge over 110 Freeway in Los
Angeles. Photographer Preston Newman was on a photo shoot at the time. (Photo courtesy Preston Newman Photography, on Instagram at @Newman_Photos)
"Nuclear War and Daily Life
Most of the
time, nuclear weapons and nuclear war are out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
For one day,
millions of Americans were reminded that they live in the edge of nuclear
chaos. A Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile fired on November 7 from
offshore Los Angeles set ordinary folks abuzz all the way to Nevada.
…Strategic
Command put out a press release fairly quickly stating that it was ours and not
to worry. At least about UFOs. They fired another Trident from
the same launch site two days later, this time in daylight, and STRATCOM
released more information. This was an operational-shakedown test for an Ohio
class submarine, [USS Kentucky (SSBN-737)] that is normally
hidden deep mid-Pacific carrying its load of nuclear warheads when it’s not in
its home port in Bangor, Washington.
...After a long
overhaul and refueling of its reactor, [a US SSBN] has to fire two missiles
(without warheads) before it is certified as able to put to sea and ready to
fire nuclear-armed [Trident II D5] missiles. All very banal—just another day in
ensuring the United States is ready for the full “spectrum of conflict with
nuclear adversary” as the briefing aboard the submarine relates in a photo released four
days later by STRATCOM.
Pre-test missile launch briefing session on an Ohio class SSBN.
---
These tests have
been going on for decades, and the plan is to keep this missile in service for
more decades. Each missile carries up to 4 thermonuclear warheads ranging from
100 to about 500 kilotons…that’s about 8 to 42 times the size of the nuclear
weapon that destroyed the city of Hiroshima in 1945. And each Ohio [SSBN] submarine
has 24 launch tubes…
Why the launch
took place at night was not stated. It might have been due to atmospheric
conditions above the target zone at Kwajalein Atoll, or some other operational
consideration in the Western Test Range as explained in this video by Northrop Grumman, one of
the companies involved in the business of preparing for nuclear war.
Approximate path of test missiles from Southern California Range Complex to Kwajalein Atoll target area (close to or at red star)
---
...If social media
is any indication, it appears that many Americans will see the start of a nuclear
war announced by missile liftoff as the invasion of aliens. Many others
apparently will welcome the resulting apocalypse as the start of the long-overdue end-times from
the Book of Revelations.
…They will also
see a lot of incoming re-entry vehicles and it will look very different to the
eerily beautiful missile plume at night.
Marshall
Islanders have been looking at this end of Gravity’s Rainbow for
decades, watching multiple re-entry vehicles flash
out of the sky to smash into the instrumented atoll on their
former home at Kwajalein—except if this were nuclear war, they would also see
gigantic nuclear explosions in the millisecond before they were blinded and
then vaporized, pulverized, incinerated, and irradiated.
…Not to be
outdone, on November 15, the Russians night-fired two Bulava missiles
from the Borey class submarine Vladimir Monomakh from near
Kola, hitting the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East.
…These days,
social media may be the first warning that the Americans, Russians, Chinese, or
North Koreans receive of missile lift-off heading in their direction. In 2013,
the United States postponed a Minuteman missile test due to concern that North
Korea might “mis-perceive” such a firing as aimed at them, or sending too
strong a nuclear threat against North Korea that might lead to North Korean
response.
Thus, how
instantaneous social media reports of submarine, bomber, missile, and other
indicators of nuclear attack will play into the nuclear command-and-control
systems and decisions of nine nuclear-armed states is a good
question—especially as these contagious reports may give false positives, false
negatives, or simply miss the action altogether."
Pete
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