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.
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.