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Home Articles Flashpoints WAR WITH DPRK COULD KILL MILLIONS

WAR WITH DPRK COULD KILL MILLIONS

Tuesday, 15 August 2017 16:18 John Hallam
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 15 AUG 2017

PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

WAR WITH DPRK COULD KILL MILLIONS

ANZUS IS NO REASON FOR US TO BLINDLY FOLLOW TRUMP INTO CATASTROPHE

PROTEST AGAINST WAR WITH NORTH KOREA 10AM SATURDAY 19TH AUG TOWN HALL SQUARE
A protest against the possibility of war with North Korea (DPRK) is to be held at 10am Saturday 19th Aug, in Town Hall Square. (For inquiries re the protest contact Hannah on 0418 668 098 )

According to People for Nuclear Disarmament's UN nuclear weapons campaigner John Hallam:

“War with the DPRK could be catastrophic, even though its likely – assuming that no other countries get involved, which could indeed happen – that the DPRK would eventually lose.”

“Even if we limit considerations to the purely conventional, the DPRK has arrayed thousands of artillery batteries just north of the DMZ, just north of Seoul. Even without use of a limited stock of maybe not very reliable nuclear weapons, these would level Seoul, a city of over 20 million. That would create at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of casualties.”

“If we assume that the DPRK tries to use its stock of possibly around 30 Hiroshima – sized nuclear weapons, a number of possibilities arise.”
“The most likely is that it will use them against relatively close – in targets including Seoul and maybe Tokyo, using its intermediate – range Nodong missiles, a technology it has shared with the Pakistanis, so we are in little doubt as it its ability to lob a nuclear warhead.”

“This already gives us a body-count rising into the millions.”

“Its also likely to make an actual nuclear attack on US military bases in both Guam and in Okinawa. The US will try to use the THAAD system to protect against this, but THAAD is untried and may be completely unsuitable for defense against intermediate range and ballistic missiles.”

“Finally its possible, though in my view much less likely, that the DPRK may try to hit west coast US cities. It may or may not be able to do this right now, though in a year or two we'd expect it to be able to do this with some reliability. This would in turn kill millions of US citizens. If the DPRK can hit the US west coast, its also likely to be able to hit parts of Australia in which case it might try to hit Pine Gap, or perhaps, an Australian city, though this seems currently to be the least likely eventuality.”

“Finally of course, the US will want to turn the DPRK into rubble, and there isn't the slightest doubt about their ability to do that. If they do so, then much of the DPRK population will be incinerated, and the fallout will drift over faithful US allies South Korea and Japan. If we had to pluck a figure out of the air we might guesstimate a body count of somewhere over 10 million for this.”

“Things get much more complicated however, if the conflict is not limited to the US and the DPRK. We already suggested that the DPRK might attack Tokyo, or US bases on Japanese territory. China has intimated that if the DPRK is attacked, China will defend it. China has massive missiles with 5Mt nuclear warheads that are capable of completely paralyzing both the US – and Australia- with electromagnetic pulse with just one shot 400Km out in space. In that eventuality, the US Congress concluded in a 2010 report that most US citizens would starve to death even if nothing further took place.”

“Finally, the involvement of Russia, with whom the US has terrible relations, could – if the worst possible event – sequence took place – bring about the deaths of most humans and the end of what we call civilization”

“To forecast 'doomsday' given a certain event sequence does not at all mean that this is for sure what will happen, or even that this is the most likely outcome. We have choices, and the actual outcomes depend on the choices we make. We could choose instead to take the path of low- key, tweet-less, negotiations that would first of all halt the momentum toward catastrophe and take down the temperature, and would then move toward either a solution or a temporary modus vivendi. This is precisely what we urge should be done.”

“The Australian Government should, instead of proclaiming its willingness to follow Donald Trump over a cliff, take the lead in urging such a solution to the current crisis. It should then take the lead in another closely related matter, reverse its opposition to the nuclear weapons prohibition treaty, and announce its intention to sign this coming September. If anything shows the peril of maintaining nuclear weapons, surely the current crisis does.”

John Hallam
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61-411-854-612 h 61-2-9810-2598