North Korea...

The last time I was in Preston was when I went to Britain to visit my family in 2005. We went to Preston and bought some stake knives in TK Maxx. The town really is a dump.

That said, if it "hasn't improved" since I left, that's better than Blackpool. From what my parents and my sister say, Blackpool's gone dramatically downhill over the last decade or so.

 

Wow. That really is impressively bad. I think the cars are like the nukes: NK thinks it must have its own car brand so that it can qualify as a proper country.

I'd have said that being able to feed your people was actually a better measure of proving that you're a proper country, but maybe that's because I grew up in a country whose largest domestically-owned car manufacturer is Morgan (800 cars! Suck on that, Pyeonghwa!), and now live in a country whose largest domestically-owned car manufacturer is Elfin, who made 70 cars between 1998 and 2007, and none in 2012.

 

I believe the town council of Blackpool couldn't arrange a **** up in a brewery or they couldn't run a bath. Remember all the positives of Blackpool such as the classic old trams etc? Well, they've got rid of them for new shiny ones at great expense, which is rather like London knocking down the Tower of London and replacing it with a shopping centre. I went to Blackpool last about 13 years ago and it was slipping badly then. It's got some erm, charms. It's a great place to go for a sleazy stag weekend or a brawl, but I can think of many other places I'd ever want to go than there. (my family originally came from Lancashire, so it's not just a modern day war of the roses - yorkshire bloke me

 

I'd say that this is the most worrying development so far. While the NK government was shouting about nukes but still letting South Koreans work in Kaesong every day, it was reasonable to assume that NK was just bluffing. But now that they've shut down their only productive relationship with SK, and now that they've shown that their willing to let the dispute cost them what little money they have, we need to start worrying.

I'd say the red bit could well happen, and the blue bit is highly unlikely.

As I've said before, China doesn't even like NK. The well-being of SK, the US and Japan are far more important to China's leaders than the well-being of NK. China isn't going to give NK any weapons. At the very worst, China will officially remain neutral while actually giving funding to SK to ensure that the SK economy doesn't collapse when war kicks off or unification happens. At best, as I said in my first post on this thread, China and the US could see sense and decide to openly work together on this.

Meanwhile... China and Japan are going to carry on shouting at each other about the Diaoyus. It's been going on for years. Shinzo Abe's election hasn't helped things, but the countries have too much in terms of common interest to allow anything to really kick off.

And China and Taiwan, while officially still at war, are huge trading partners and increasingly close friends. While, even ten years ago, you'd have been at risk of getting shot down for flying between the Mainland and Taiwan, now there are loads of direct flights across the Strait, Shanghai Airport is full of adverts saying "Taiwan! It's Fun!", and Mainland Chinese people are Taiwan's biggest tourist market. Nothing's going to happen there.

The US media does worry me a bit on this front. China sees the US as a slightly flaky trading partner that has made some very bad military decisions over the last 20 years; it does not see the US as an adversary. But the US media seems obsessed with painting China as The Enemy. And at some point, that's going to start causing problems.

 

So if NK starts bombing SK, will West Coast Americans temporarily relocate to the East Coast?

 

It would take lot more than that.

 

Perhaps a few people in Hiroshma said the same thing?

If the USA could not defend Alaska would they make that public knowledge?

 

NK would have better luck with Fedex as a pinpoint delivery system, rather than rely on their crappy rockets!
But I will bet the radar looking over the pole is being beefed up! I can imagine the pinpoint multiple response targeting parameters are already set to be loaded into a guidance system with our reply message!

 

1 of 2 THAAD was transfered from Fort Hood TX to Guam. That's the beef up. There are only 3 systems in the world now. One in Guam and one in Ft Hood,Texas, one in Israel. The USA agreed to build one for purchase by Saudi Arabia to cover a potential Iran situation. That unit is still being build by Lockhead. The Navy may have a seperate system.

Terminal High Altitude Area Defense - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

When infants are turning up obese, maybe it's something beside personal choices.

 

Visit Poland. Near my place is even located one of the first charging posts for plug-in EV's

 

Yeahh - and sending nuke-Wilsons with use of bamboo rafts...
Hope you are right - I feel uncomfortable suspecting that those Top-Secret-Hidden-Underground maniacs may have some surprise in the pocket.

 

Wait what!

Nah, no problem... we got lots of interceptor (cake) missiles up here with more on the way. Please send more ice cream.

 

Don't give them any ideas.

 

Polish girls I'm in

 

Cakes

BTW - this year again our Gdynia CL Team will join NBA events.

 

Look up "Probabilistic Risk Assessment" Wikipedia has an adequate description.

I agree having a nuclear weapon detonated on your head would ruin your whole day.

But:
(Probability of NK actually launching a nuke attack x probability of the launch working x probability of actually hitting the US x probability of hitting near enough to where I am that I would have to "duck and cover" x probability of their nuke working) = very close to 0.000 probability. I'm confident I have a better chance of dying in a car accident.

 

Is this a cake?



No - it's pizza Sir.

 

I spent a couple of weeks in Poland about 3 years ago. I really liked your country and the people.

You did pick a bad location to build a country though. No one in the right mind would build a country on an indefensible plain between Russia and Germany

Some of the Warsaw Military Museum aircraft restorers were more interesting than the aircraft.

I think that is a cake in the blue jump suit.