A false flag operation using radioactive warheads is reportedly aimed at spent nuclear fuel
Ukrainian forces have begun preparations to target nuclear waste storage sites at a Russian power plant with radioactive warheads and to then blame Moscow, according to intelligence received by Russia.
“Sources on the other side report that the [Ukrainians] are preparing a nuclear false flag – an explosion of a dirty atomic bomb,” military journalist Marat Khairullin said Friday on his Telegram channel. “They plan to strike the storage sites of spent nuclear fuel of a nuclear power plant.”
The special warheads intended for the attack have already been delivered to the Vostochny Mining and Processing plant in Zhovti Vody, in Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk Region, according to Khairullin.
As possible targets of the attack, Khairullin indicated either the Zaporozhye NPP in Energodar or the Kursk NPP in Kurchatov, noting that the Ukrainian government and its Western backers are “desperate and willing to try anything.”
A security official in the Russian Military Administration of Kharkov Region corroborated Khairullin’s claim to RIA Novosti on Friday. The attack is intended to use radioactive warheads to target spent fuel storage sites at a nuclear power plant, and the ammunition has already been delivered to Zhovti Vody.
Kiev’s intention is to accuse Moscow of a false flag so it could justify using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the security official said. The Ukrainian government has received orders from its Western backers to “escalate as much as possible,” he added.
According to the security official, the intelligence came from Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Sergey Lebedev, introduced as leader of the Nikolaev Region underground, who said the planned attack would be carried out with NATO weapons, with the consent of the West.
Lebedev pointed out that a large number of Western journalists have already arrived in the Sumy Region near Kursk, as well as the Ukrainian-controlled part of Zaporozhye, suggesting that this is part of Kiev’s preparations for the nuclear false flag.
Reasonable
Unnecessary, useless brinksmanship
Batshit, world-ending insanity that should permanently disqualify the speaker from holding any political office
Survival isn't useless
Obviously CRINK shouldn't first strike ever, but having the ability to wipe out the West is essential. Please see my calculations below on why China needs more nukes. Right now China is fully dependent on Russia for nuclear defense. Russia's nukes are better spent as EU deterrence. China's 500 warheads simply cannot kill more than 10% of the USA with its entire arsenal on a good day, while the USA can wipe China's entire population out. That is not deterrence.
Lmao what are you talking about
Say the U.S. could destroy 20% of Chinese nukes in a war (it can't). The remaining 400 nukes could do more than enough damage to the U.S. to make thr cost of starting a nuclear war too high -- that's deterrence, that's all you need. Hell, the DPRK's situation (a few nukes that can strike U.S. bases or take out a carrier group) is probably sufficient.
If push comes to shove, the loss of 10% of the US population in exchange for deleting all of China is not that bad of a trade for US capitalists. 0.6 megaton nukes are actually kind of small compared to the size of the USA.
In the case of the DPRK, the cost of getting California nuked is not worth the relatively tiny amount of resources the DPRK has. It wouldn't even pay for the damages. The same is not true for China. Taking over all of China would certainly be enough resources to rebuild the USA and profit massively for hundreds of years after, especially if the USA only loses ~10% of its population. The radioactive nuclides from nukes last barely a week, leaving the land empty and ready for colonization. Imagine Manifest Destiny 2.0 and white colonization of a 'pristine' land, empty of the 'yellow hordes', the size of another USA. A settler's wet dream.
Just the ability to hold onto US hegemony for another century would be worth the cost of 10% of the proles dying in the US and a few trillion in damages that need to be repaired to the bourgeoisie. I mean they stand to make or lose everything if they can't stop China. If they could nuke China and survive themselves they're looking at hegemony for the rest of this century and capitalism continuing well into next.
Even better for them and worse for us, as climate change accelerates it will turn the screws on most places that aren't the US. It will put at a permanent disadvantage all their major competitors/enemies such as India, the whole Asia region, etc. It will create masses of desperate people, empty land, death, and a suffering world whose desperation they can exploit even harder due to the worsened conditions making migration more common and migrants more desperate. The only other country that will sort of benefit like the US is Russia but frankly I don't see them rising as any kind of real challenge unless they go communist again and if the US takes out China they'll do their damnedest to prevent or blunt any type of communist revolution in Russia and prefer the status quo at at that point Russia will be encircled anyways waiting for the right moment where they can do a decapitating strike on its government and splinter it into pieces.
400 nukes would do far more damage. Just the 100 most populous U.S. cities have about 67 million people, or 20% of the U.S. population. And that itself dramatically understates the immediate effects of nuclear strikes on those cities, because a bunch of the next most populous U.S. cities are right by where the nukes would land (Frisco, TX, #101 on that list, would have a real bad time if nukes landed on Dallas, Ft. Worth, and Plano, all in the top 100).
And that still leaves 300 nukes to strike military bases, carrier groups, and smaller population centers (again, baking in the overgenerous assumption that the U.S. could shoot down 1 in 5 nukes). And there would be worldwide fallout and environmental destruction. And killing well probably closer to a third or half the U.S. population, in addition to losing every major economic hub, would likely end the country's ability to function anything like it does now.
In short, you aren't remotely close to the reality of a nuclear exchange. It just might be possible that the PRC's strategists have a better handle on effective deterrence than someone on the internet who thinks 500 nukes would be basically a bump in the road.
So what if the USA loses 20%? All it does it change the calculus for US capitalists a little bit. It is still a great deal for deleting China.
You are confusing the rather ambiguous definition of a "city" in the USA with the actual distribution of people in said "city". US city populations aren't distributed like Hiroshima/Nagasaki, they're much more spread out (Even then, the US's bombs weren't enough to kill everyone in the municipal city area). Because of US sprawl, it doesn't take just one 0.6 megaton warhead to eliminate a city's inhabitants, it takes 4+. For example, New York City technically has ~8 million residents, but it takes ~5 0.6 megaton nukes to cover the entire city. As cities get smaller populations in the USA, they get much more spread out, making this problem worse. As another example, take Virginia Beach, a "city" that is 100% suburbs. Just to kill all residents, it also takes another 4 nukes. At this rate, China will very quickly run out of nukes in a casualty v. casualty exchange with the USA. If we approximate that each city takes ~5 nukes, China can currently only eliminate 20% of the US population at maximum as you estimate.
The problem is that we can apply the same density-maximization to the US nuking China, in which case everything looks much worse. China's cities are much larger, much denser, and there are way more of them. Because China is denser, the US simply gets more bang-for-the-buck per nuke. In that sense, the US could cripple China much faster than the other way around by killing many more people with way fewer nukes.
In my calculations, I assume that both nations seek full elimination of the other. As I explained in my other post, over time there are diminishing returns per nuke as nations run out of dense population targets and trend toward sparser targets. That is why I calculated using average population density.
I have already addressed the environmental destruction / nuclear winter talking point below. In short, new research, experiences from the Kuwaiti oil well fires and various wildfires, and the switch from flammable wood to nonflammable concrete and steel in city buildings combine to show that nuclear winter simply would be nowhere as severe as initially predicted in the 1980s. Fallout from nuclear bombs only lasts around a week due to short half-lives. Assuming decent amounts of prior preparation of necessary supplies and tech in hardened bunkers (which major Cold War countries did kinda do before), it is survivable, especially if China only kills 20% of the US population in certain centralized cities. At current, there are plenty of Wyoming farmers who would survive unscathed, put up some greenhouses, and weather out the storm.
Previously, China could get away with low nuclear bomb counts because it could depend on Russia and/or court the West. Now they can't do that. Russia has its own worries in Europe, and the USA is hellbent on destroying China. The USSR has shown the number of nukes required to go against the USA alone. China is clearly responding to these concerns by building up to at least 1000 nukes, which should increase the cost to the US to ~30% of its population based on your estimates. I see no downsides with such an act.
You're on another planet lol
They have a point though. The capitalists primarily care about dollar signs and weapons
"Capitalists care about money above all else" is not a novel observation.
The point is that they are dramatically underestimating the damage 500 nuclear bombs would cause, and using that to argue for something that would make the world less safe (a new nuclear arms race).
Do you really think the capitalists themselves fully understand their inhumanity or evil or the destructive potential of even a single nuclear bomb? That's mostly or partially a rhetorical question than a literal one.
Building up nuclear weapons is to safeguard and reduce the chance of this conflict escalating, or at least scaring the imperialists into being slightly more reasonable.
War isn't a bed of roses, and obviously all of this will be incredibly dangerous and expensive and soul-wrenching.
But the west NEEDS the global south to agonize and belly-ache over the morality of all this, because if we don't, then we all but won already, given the superiority of socialism's drive and production over capitalism. Refusing to play their game gets us all killed, and I refuse to have the Global South be victim-blamed, when it's the imperialist nutjobs forcing us all into this situation.
No one is saying to approach this with no safeguards or extensive processes, but if we aren't collectively willing to do whatever it takes, we have already lost. Do you really think the bad guys aren't itching to obliterate all of humanity if they think they have no other option? They have to be beaten down and outmatched before they can strike.
Listen, your entire argument is fundamentally flawed from the get go. You are looking at nukes as if they only kill people. Your analysis does nothing to account for infrastructural damage. Primarily energy and communications. China wouldn't even need 100 nukes to land to wipe out 80% of the US population. They could do it with a dozen or so.
The energy grid of the US is so dilapidated that the destruction of 9 key substations would wipe out power for almost the entire country. Estimates that it would be 18 months before power was restored. In that time is estimated 80% of the population would die. The country would be in absolute chaos. They couldn't fight a war because the population would be tearing itself apart just trying to survive. Most people couldn't even cook a meal without electricity. Houses, stoves, etc. are designed for it anymore. Water treatment, refrigeration, etc. without power then manufacturing goes out the window.
Even if they didn't hit those exact substations, a couple hundred nukes would still do so much damage to the grid that it would take years to begin restoring electricity to the country in any reasonable level. When the country fall apart that bad the military itself will fall apart. Cut off supply to every ship and base outside of the US landmass and see how long they hold up. See if the USs vassal states stay loyal when the home country is literally ripping itself to pieces for their neighbors canned food.
You obsession with nuclear deterrents being solely about how many people die in the initial blasts has no basis on reality. People are not just little NPCs standing around waiting to be ordered to do a thing. They need infrastructure and resources to survive.
I think you're missing the point. Obviously people aren't NPC's and need resources, but having a huge arsenal of ready nuclear weapons is way more intimidating for the imperialists than a small group of 10.
Do you have some reading about those 9 key substations?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304020104579433670284061220
https://spectrum.ieee.org/attack-on-nine-substations-could-take-down-us-grid
Where in my comment did I say they needed to reduce their nuclear arsenal, or only have 10? I simply said they don't need as many as this person is claiming they need. That their argument is fundamentally flawed because they are looking at nuclear deterrents as only the direct impact to immediate population size. That if you can't turn the whole of the US into glass it somehow means you don't have enough nukes to defeat them. When, in fact, the ramifications of nuclear warheads is much greater then just immediate dead bodies. If you destroy enough infrastructure to cause 80% of the population to be gone in less than 2 years you have effectively destroyed that country. Especially a country like the US that can barely rebuild its infrastructure under its current situation. Let alone one in which it's been hit with multiple nuclear warheads.
I meant as a counterexample or a point of phrase, I'm aware that your argument wasn't to reduce China's nuclear arsenal, I was speaking to the character of your argument by a related hypothetical.
I'm also aware of the extreme ramifications of nuclear weapons, but my point was that when it comes to psychopaths like the bourgeoisie, what scares them is a force that hits them where it hurts that they understand.
In the same way that someone may be an evil monster that wants to wantonly murder people, the threat and efficacy of a socialist police force prevents them.
This is how you get useless arms races that suck up resources and manpower that could be used to support the population and economy.
How in the fuck is building up a method of attack and deterrence useless? I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm genuinely asking. When the very existence of human civilization, humanity itself, life on Earth, the biosphere, and practically everything humanity knows and loves is at stake, then fundamentally no price is too high.
I wager that China is large enough (as in population wise, labor-force wise, financially, natural resource-rich, and geopolitically allied with and has arguably the best and largest most skillfully-pat down scientists, technicians, and supply chains on Earth to accomplish this, and is almost definitely better able to than the Soviet Union was) take care of it's people's population and economy, build socialism, and produce en masse nuclear weapons.
Obviously this shouldn't be the main focus, and no plan for socialism, humanity or the future should hinge on a single plan, and preparing for war, especially nuclear conflict, is always a soul-wrenching experience, and no one hopes that it should come down to it, but how you anyone honestly say that this isn't a worthwhile possibility or a last resort?
The cold calculus of war is a harsh mistress, but avoiding all of this is stupid and wrong. It's incredibly unfair that China and the global south have to put this much forethought and agonizing and picking our battles, and it's bullshit and evil how badly the odds are stacked against us, but I feel that if socialist/anti-imperialist states don't take all of this into account, then we have already lost. We have a responsibility, even if it's unfair and dangerous and cruel, to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
I wager that it would cost more resources, willpower, money, time, and suffering if more nuclear weapons aren't built or if we collectively wait until we have no other option, and then it will be too late.
You have a slight point in regards to not exactly going tit for tat against the imperialists and the west, and not losing sight of the bigger picture, but that isn't an excuse to not do anything, especially when billions of souls and life on Earth are in danger.
You really think the U.S., Britain, France, NATO, and their ilk, aren't just all itching to obliterate all of humanity if the power of the capitalists is even slightly threatened in the coming years and decades?
I take no relish in saying any of this, I am unfortunately extremely sober, and this shit is fucking scary and inhumane, that we are all put in.
I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "the only way to win, is not to play?"
In this case, a better argument is "if the Global South collectively does nothing, then we almost automatically lose, so we have no choice but to play"
Of course the west wants the Global South to agonize over this, because the west are inhumane evil monsters. Having a conscience is extremely difficult, in regards to war. If China or the rest of humanity bellyaches and overly worries about right or wrong about whether or not to build up an arsenal of nuclear weapons, then the west has already one before the conflict has begun. The only way to win is to embrace the danger carefully and intelligently, lest all of our efforts are for nothing.
If I was an advisor or somehow had Xi Jinping's ear, I would explain all of this. China is already in efforts to massively scale up it's building/acquisition of nuclear weapons, to get at least several hundred more, which is a good start, but I think that can or should be kicked already into overdrive.
I'm open to discussion and I'm not saying I'm 100 percent right or immovable, and I don't presume to know more than Xi or the CPC or the Global South.
Edit: Wow, stepped on some toes.