Saturday, April 30, 2016

The Truth About The Nuclear End (Revelation 15)


We should be more afraid of asteroids, pandemics, and Terminators
By Michael Harthorne, Newser Staff
Posted Apr 29, 2016 5:50 PM CDT



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A mushroom cloud billows about one hour after a nuclear bomb was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan.   (AP Photo/U.S. Army via Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
(Newser) – Pandemics, super-volcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, asteroids, and murderous artificial intelligence. You’re not more likely to die from any one of those things than in a car crash. But put all those things together, and, well, that changes things a bit, the Atlantic reports. According to the annual Global Catastrophic Risks report from the Global Challenges Foundation, the average American is more than five times more likely to die in a “human extinction event” than in a car crash. Human extinction events are considered events in which 10% or more of the human population is killed off, and they’ve happened before, the Mirror reports.
A different report cited by the Atlantic puts the chance of a human extinction event happening in the next 100 years at 9.5%. That means you’re nearly 12 times more likely to be killed by, say, a Terminator or a super-virus than in a car crash during your lifetime. “The international community needs to work together and do more to address these threats,” Sebastian Farquhar, director of the Global Priorities Project, writes for the Huffington Post. “Doing nothing is not an option. Some of these threats seem unlikely, and they probably will not hit us tomorrow or the day after. But it only takes one to change the world we live in forever.”

The Ramapo Fault and the Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12)

Living on the Fault Line

A major earthquake isn’t likely here, but if it comes, watch out.
Posted June 15, 2010 by Wayne J. Guglielmo
Ramapo_Fault_Line
This chart shows the location of the Ramapo Fault System, the longest and one of the oldest systems of cracks in the earth’s crust in the Northeast. It also shows the location of all earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater in New Jersey during the last 50 years. The circle in blue indicates the largest known Jersey quake.

The couple checked with Burns’s parents, who live in nearby Basking Ridge, and they, too, had heard and felt something, which they thought might have been an earthquake. A call by Burns some 20 minutes later to the Bernardsville Police Department—one of many curious and occasionally panicky inquiries that Sunday morning, according to the officer in charge, Sergeant John Remian—confirmed their suspicion: A magnitude 2.6 earthquake, its epicenter in Peapack/Gladstone, about seven miles from Bernardsville, had hit the area. A smaller aftershock followed about two and a half hours later.
After this year’s epic earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Mexico, Indonesia, and China, the 2.6 quake and aftershock that shook parts of New Jersey in February may seem minor league, even to the Somerset County residents who experienced them. On the exponential Richter Scale, a magnitude 7.0 quake like the one that hit Haiti in January is almost 4 million times stronger than a quake of 2.6 magnitude. But comparisons of magnitude don’t tell the whole story.

Northern New Jersey straddles the Ramapo Fault, a significant ancient crack in the earth’s crust. The longest fault in the Northeast, it begins in Pennsylvania and moves into New Jersey, trending northeast through Hunterdon, Somerset, Morris, Passaic, and Bergen counties before terminating in New York’s Westchester County, not far from the Indian Point Energy Center, a nuclear power plant. And though scientists dispute how active this roughly 200 million-year-old fault really is, many earthquakes in the state’s surprisingly varied seismic history are believed to have occurred on or near it. The fault line is visible at ground level and likely extends as deep as nine miles below the surface.
During the past 230 years or so, New Jersey has been at the epicenter of nearly 170 earthquakes, according to data compiled by the New Jersey Geological Survey, part of the United States Department of Environmental Protection. The largest known quake struck in 1783, somewhere west of New York City, perhaps in Sussex County. It’s typically listed as 5.3 in magnitude, though that’s an estimate by seismologists who are quick to point out that the concept of magnitude—measuring the relative size of an earthquake—was not introduced until 1935 by Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg. Still, for quakes prior to that, scientists are not just guessing.

“We can figure out the damage at the time by going back to old records and newspaper accounts,” says Won-Young Kim, a senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, directly across the New Jersey border. “Once the amount and extent of contemporary damage has been established,” Kim says, “we’re then able to gauge the pattern of ground shaking or intensity of the event—and from there extrapolate its probable magnitude.”

Other earthquakes of magnitude 5 or higher have been felt in New Jersey, although their epicenters laying near New York City. One—which took place in 1737 and was said to have been felt as far north as Boston and as far south as northern Delaware—was probably in the 5 to 5.5 range. In 1884, an earthquake of similar magnitude occurred off New York’s Rockaway Beach. This well-documented event pulled houses off their foundations and caused steeples to topple as far west as Rahway. The shock wave, scientists believe, was felt over 70,000 square miles, from Vermont to Maryland.

Among the largest sub-5 magnitude earthquakes with epicenters in New Jersey, two (a 3.8 and a 4.0) took place on the same day in 1938 in the Lakehurst area in Ocean County. On August 26, 2003, a 3.5 magnitude quake shook the Frenchtown/Milford area in Hunterdon County. On February 3 of last year, a 3.0 magnitude quake occurred in the Morris County town of Mendham. “A lot of people felt this one because of the intense shaking, although the area of intensity wasn’t very wide,” says Lamont-Doherty’s Kim, who visited the site after the event.

After examining the known historical and geological record, Kim and other seismologists have found no clear evidence that an earthquake of greater than 5.3 to 5.5 magnitude has taken place in this area going back to 1737. This doesn’t mean, of course, that one did not take place in the more remote past or that one will not occur in the future; it simply means that a very large quake is less likely to occur here than in other places in the east where the seismic hazard is greater, including areas in South Carolina and northeastern New York State.

But no area on the East Coast is as densely populated or as heavily built-up as parts of New Jersey and its neighbors. For this reason, scientists refer to the Greater New York City-Philadelphia area, which includes New Jersey’s biggest cities, as one of “low earthquake hazard but high vulnerability.” Put simply, the Big One isn’t likely here—but if it comes, especially in certain locations, watch out.
Given this low-hazard, high-vulnerability scenario, how far along are scientists in their efforts to predict larger magnitude earthquakes in the New Jersey area? The answer is complex, complicated by the state’s geographical position, its unique geological history, the state of seismology itself, and the continuing debate over the exact nature and activity of the Ramapo Fault.
Over millions of years, New Jersey developed four distinct physiographic provinces or regions, which divide the state into a series of diagonal slices, each with its own terrain, rock type, and geological landforms.

The northernmost slice is the Valley and Ridge, comprising major portions of Sussex and Warren counties. The southernmost slice is the Coastal Plain, a huge expanse that covers some three-fifths of the state, including all of the Shore counties. Dividing the rest of the state are the Highlands, an area for the most part of solid but brittle rock right below the Valley and Ridge, and the lower lands of the Piedmont, which occupy all of Essex, Hudson, and Union counties, most of Bergen, Hunterdon, and Somerset, and parts of Middlesex, Morris, and Passaic.

For earthquake monitors and scientists, the formation of these last two provinces—the Highlands and the Piedmont—are of special interest. To understand why, consider that prior to the appearance of the Atlantic Ocean, today’s Africa was snuggled cozily up against North America and surrounded by a single enormous ocean. “At that point, you could have had exits off the New Jersey Turnpike for Morocco,” says Alexander Gates, professor of geology and chair of the department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Rutgers-Newark.

Under the pressure of circulating material within the Earth’s super-hot middle layer, or mantle, what was once a single continent—one that is thought to have included today’s other continents as well—began to stretch and eventually break, producing numerous cracks or faults and ultimately separating to form what became the Atlantic Ocean. In our area, the longest and most active of these many cracks was the Ramapo Fault, which, through a process known as normal faulting, caused one side of the earth’s crust to slip lower—the Piedmont—relative to the other side—the Highlands. “All this occurred about 225 million years ago,” says Gates. “Back then, you were talking about thousands of feet between the Highlands and the Piedmont and a very active Ramapo Fault.”

The Earth’s crust, which is 20 to 25 miles thick, is not a single, solid shell, but is broken into seven vast tectonic plates, which drift atop the soft, underlying mantle. Although the northeast-trending Ramapo Fault neatly divides two of New Jersey’s four physiographic provinces, it does not form a so-called plate boundary, as does California’s infamous San Andreas Fault. As many Californians know all too well, this giant fault forms the boundary between two plates—to the west, the Pacific Plate, and to the east, the North American Plate; these rub up against each other, producing huge stresses and a regularly repeating pattern of larger earthquakes.

The Ramapo Fault sits on the North American Plate, which extends past the East Coast to the middle of the Atlantic, where it meets the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an underwater mountain range in constant flux. The consequences of this intraplate setting are huge: First, as Gates points out, “The predictability of bigger earthquakes on…[such] settings is exceedingly poor, because they don’t occur very often.” Second, the intraplate setting makes it more difficult to link our earthquakes to a major cause or fault, as monitors in California can often do.

This second bit of uncertainty is especially troubling for some people, including some in the media who want a neat story. To get around it, they ignore the differences between plate settings and link all of New Jersey’s earthquakes, either directly or implicitly, to the Ramapo Fault. In effect, such people want the Ramapo Fault “to look like the San Andreas Fault,” says Gates. “They want to be able to point to one big fault that’s causing all of our earthquakes.”

Gates does not think that’s the case, and he has been working with colleagues for a number of years to prove it. “What we have found is that there are smaller faults that generally cut from east to west across the northeast-trending Ramapo Fault,” he explains. “These much smaller faults are all over the place, and they’re actually the ones that are the active faults in the area.”

But what mechanisms are responsible for the formation of these apparently active auxiliary faults? One such mechanism, say scientists, is the westward pressure the Atlantic Ocean exerts on the North American Plate, which for the most part resists any movement. “I think we are in an equilibrium state most of the time,” says Lamont-Doherty’s Kim.

Still, that continuous pressure on the plate we sit on causes stress, and when that stress builds up sufficiently, the earth’s crust has a tendency to break around any weak zones. In our area, the major weak zone is the Ramapo Fault—“an ancient zone of weakness,” as Kim calls it. That zone of weakness exacerbates the formation of auxiliary faults, and thereby the series of minor earthquakes the state has experienced over the years.

All this presupposes, of course, that any intraplate stress in this area will continue to be released gradually, in a series of relatively minor earthquakes or releases of energy. But what if that were not the case? What if the stress continued to build up, and the release of large amounts of energy came all at once? In crude terms, that’s part of the story behind the giant earthquakes that rocked what is now New Madrid, Missouri, between 1811 and 1812. Although estimates of their magnitude have been revised downward in recent years to less than magnitude 8, these earthquakes are generally regarded as among the largest intraplate events to have occurred in the continental United States.
For a number of reasons—including the relatively low odds that the kind of stored energy that unleashed the New Madrid events could ever build up here—earthquakes of plus-6 magnitude are probably not in our future. Still, says Kim, even a magnitude 6 earthquake in certain areas of the state could do considerable damage, especially if its intensity or ground shaking was of sufficient strength. In a state as geologically diverse and densely populated as New Jersey, this is a crucial wild card.
Part of the job of the experts at the New Jersey Geological Survey is to assess the seismic hazards in different parts of the state. To do this, they use a computer-simulation model developed under the direction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as HAZUS, for Hazards US. To assess the amount of ground shaking likely to occur in a given county during events ranging in magnitude from 5 to 7 on the Richter Scale, NJGS scientists enter three features of a county’s surface geology into their computer model. Two of these features relate to the tendency of soil in a given area to lose strength, liquefy, or slide downhill when shaken. The third and most crucial feature has to do with the depth and density of the soil itself and the type of bedrock lying below it; this is a key component in determining a region’s susceptibility to ground shaking and, therefore, in estimating the amount of building and structural damage that’s likely to occur in that region. Estimates for the various counties—nine to date have been studied—are sent to the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management, which provided partial funding for the project.
To appreciate why this element of ground geology is so crucial to earthquake modelers, consider the following: An earthquake’s intensity—which is measured on something called the Modified Mercalli Scale—is related to a number of factors. The amount of energy released or the magnitude of an event is clearly a big factor. But two earthquakes of the same magnitude can have very different levels of intensity; in fact, it’s quite possible for a lower magnitude event to generate more ground shaking than a higher magnitude one.
In addition to magnitude, other factors that affect intensity are the distance of the observer or structure from the epicenter, where intensity is the greatest; the depth beneath the surface of the initial rupture, with shallower ruptures producing more ground shaking than deeper ones; and, most significantly, the ground geology or material that the shock wave generated by the earthquake must pass through.
As a rule, softer materials like sand and gravel shake much more intensely than harder materials, because the softer materials are comparatively inefficient energy conductors, so whatever energy is released by the quake tends to be trapped, dispersing much more slowly. (Think of a bowl of Jell-O on a table that’s shaking.)
In contrast, harder materials, like the solid rock found widely in the Highlands, are brittle and break under pressure, but conduct energy well, so that even big shock waves disperse much more rapidly through them, thereby weakening the amount of ground shaking. “If you’ve read any stories about the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, you know the most intense damage was in those flat, low areas by the Bay, where the soil is soft, and not in the hilly, rocky areas above,” says Karl Muessig, state geologist and NJGS head.
The map that accompanies the online version of the NJGS’s Earthquake Loss Estimation Study divides the state’s surface geology into five seismic soil classes, ranging from Class A, or hard rock, to Class E, or soft soil (state.nj.us/dep/njgs/enviroed/hazus.htm).
Although the weakest soils are scattered throughout the state, including the Highlands, which besides harder rock also contains areas of glacial lakes, clays, and wetlands, they are most evident in the Piedmont and the Coastal Plain. “The largest expanses of them are in coastal areas where you have salt marshes or large glacial lakes, as in parts of the Passaic River basin,” says Scott Stanford, a research scientist with NJGS and lead author of the estimate. Some of the very weakest soils, Stanford adds, are in areas of filled marshland, including places along the Hudson waterfront, around Newark Bay and the Meadowlands, and along the Arthur Kill.
Faults in these areas—and in the coastal plain generally—are far below the ground, perhaps several hundred to a thousand feet down, making identification difficult. “There are numerous faults upon which you might get earthquake movement that we can’t see, because they’re covered by younger sediments,” Stanford says.
This combination of hidden faults and weak soils worries scientists, who are all too aware that parts of the coastal plain and Piedmont are among the most densely populated and developed areas in the state. (The HAZUS computer model also has a “built environment” component, which summarizes, among other things, types of buildings in a given area.) For this reason, such areas would be in the most jeopardy in the event of a large earthquake.

“Any vulnerable structure on these weak soils would have a higher failure hazard,” Stanford says. And the scary truth is that many structures in New Jersey’s largest cities, not to mention New York City, would be vulnerable, since they’re older and built before anyone gave much thought to earthquake-related engineering and construction codes.

For example, in the study’s loss estimate for Essex County, which includes Newark, the state’s largest city, a magnitude 6 event would result in damage to 81,600 buildings, including almost 10,000 extensively or completely; 36,000 people either displaced from their homes or forced to seek short-term shelter; almost $9 million in economic losses from property damage and business interruption; and close to 3,300 injuries and 50 fatalities. (The New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation has conducted a similar assessment for New York City, at nycem.org.)
All of this suggests the central irony of New Jersey geology: The upland areas that are most prone to earthquakes—the counties in or around the Ramapo Fault, which has spawned a network of splays, or auxiliary faults—are much less densely populated and sit, for the most part, on good bedrock. These areas are not invulnerable, certainly, but, by almost all measures, they would not sustain very severe damage, even in the event of a higher magnitude earthquake. The same can’t be said for other parts of the state, where the earthquake hazard is lower but the vulnerability far greater. Here, the best we can do is to prepare—both in terms of better building codes and a constantly improving emergency response.

Meanwhile, scientists like Rutgers’s Gates struggle to understand the Earth’s quirky seismic timetable: “The big thing with earthquakes is that you can commonly predict where they are going to occur,” Gates says. “When they’re going to come, well, we’re nowhere near being able to figure that out.”
***********************
Planning for the Big One
For the men and women of the state police who manage and support the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management (OEM), the response to some events, like hurricanes, can be marshalled in advance. But an earthquake is what responders call a no-notice event.
In New Jersey, even minor earthquakes—like the one that shook parts of Somerset County in February—attract the notice of local, county, and OEM officials, who continuously monitor events around the state from their Regional Operations and Intelligence Center (The ROIC) in West Trenton, a multimillion dollar command-and-control facility that has been built to withstand 125 mph winds and a 5.5 magnitude earthquake. In the event of a very large earthquake, during which local and county resources are apt to become quickly overwhelmed, command and control authority would almost instantly pass to West Trenton.

Here, officials from the state police, representatives of a galaxy of other state agencies, and a variety of communications and other experts would assemble in the cavernous and ultra-high tech Emergency Operations Center to oversee the state’s response. “A high-level earthquake would definitely cause the governor to declare a state of emergency,” says OEM public information officer Nicholas J. Morici. “And once that takes place, our emergency operations plan would be put in motion.”

Emergency officials have modeled that plan—one that can be adapted to any no-notice event, including a terrorist attack—on response methodologies developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. At its core is a series of seventeen emergency support functions, ranging from transportation to firefighting, debris removal, search and rescue, public health, and medical services. A high-magnitude event would likely activate all of these functions, says Morici, along with the human and physical resources needed to carry them out—cranes and heavy trucks for debris removal, fire trucks and teams for firefighting, doctors and EMTs for medical services, buses and personnel carriers for transportation, and so on.

This is where an expert like Tom Rafferty comes in. Rafferty is a Geographic Information Systems Specialist attached to the OEM. His job during an emergency is to keep track electronically of which resources are where in the state, so they can be deployed quickly to where they are needed. “We have a massive database called the Resource Directory Database in which we have geolocated municipal, county, and state assets to a very detailed map of New Jersey,” Rafferty says. “That way, if there is an emergency like an earthquake going on in one area, the emergency managers can quickly say to me, for instance, ‘We have major debris and damage on this spot of the map. Show us the location of the nearest heavy hauler. Show us the next closest location,’ and so on.”

A very large quake, Rafferty says, “could overwhelm resources that we have as a state.” In that event, OEM has the authority to reach out to FEMA for additional resources and assistance. It can also call upon the private sector—the Resource Directory has been expanded to include non-government assets—and to a network of volunteers. “No one has ever said, ‘We don’t want to help,’” Rafferty says. New Jersey officials can also request assistance through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), an agreement among the states to help each other in times of extreme crisis.
“You always plan for the worst,” Rafferty says, “and that way when the worst doesn’t happen, you feel you can handle it if and when it does.”

Contributing editor Wayne J. Guglielmo lives in M

The Nuclear Threat From Pakistan (Daniel 8:8)


Are Pakistan’s Nuclear Assets Under Threat?

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April 28, 2016

The fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit, held in Washington D.C. on March 31- April 1 2016, once again reiterated the apocalyptic threat of nuclear terrorism. Having over 1,000 atomic facilities across 50 odd countries, all having different standards of security, is bound to raise alarm bells in an age where terrorist organizations have expressed their intention of using the “absolute weapon.” The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) even asserted in the May 2015 issue of its propaganda magazine Dabiq that it can buy a nuclear bomb through links to corrupt officials in Pakistan. While there is no evidence of these alleged links, such statements are part of the group’s psychological war of spreading fear. They also accentuate the Islamic State’s interest in acquiring the bomb.

With al-Baghdadi’s group losing ground in both Syria and Iraq, ISIS is becoming more and more desperate to carry out spectacular attacks and reaffirm its strength. Already numerous reports have claimed that the Islamic State has enough radioactive material to make a dirty bomb and use it in Europe. The recent incident of a Belgian nuclear plant worker shot dead and his security pass stolen, alongside reports of two Belgian nuclear plant workers joining ISIS, signify the colossal threat confronting European states.

At the same time, some experts, journalists, and government officials have insinuated that Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile, especially its tactical weapons developed in response to India’s “Cold Start” doctrine, could be stolen by terrorists, including ISIS. President Barack Obama also mentioned in his speech at the Summit that “small, tactical nuclear weapons … could be at greater risk of theft.”

Do terrorist pose a threat to Pakistan’s nuclear assets? The answer is both yes and no.

Security of Pakistan’s Nuclear Assets

More than once, Pakistan has come under the limelight for not ensuring the security of its nuclear assets. For instance, in January 2001, Pakistani nuclear scientists with extremist sympathies created a what was supposedly a humanitarian nongovernmental organization, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN). Bashiruddin Mahmood, the former head of Pakistan’s Khushab plutonium reactor, was its chairman. In November 2001, at the request of the United States, Pakistan’s intelligence services arrested a number of UTN associates and members, including Mahmood. Mahmood later confessed that he met with Osama bin Laden and they discussed the possibility of developing a nuclear bomb.

Similarly, the discovery of the infamous AQ Khan network in 2004 almost jeopardized Pakistan’s entire nuclear program. The father of the country’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was found proliferating nuclear technology to other countries, including Libya, North Korea, and Iran. While members of al-Qaeda also tried to contact Khan’s associates for assistance with their weapons program, the AQ Khan network reportedly rejected them.

The aforementioned events, together with the General Headquarters attack in 2009 by Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP), underscore that Pakistan’s nuclear security might not be impregnable.

However, time and again Pakistan has expressed confidence in the security arrangements of its nuclear weapons. Even at the Nuclear Security Summit 2016, Pakistan reiterated that its nuclear assets are secure, and of a modest level, in accordance with the country’s doctrine of minimum deterrence. While the entire program is engulfed in secrecy, reports have ascertained that Pakistan is doing enough to prevent its weapons being used by rogue elements, including terrorists.

For instance, according to Dr. Samar Mubarakmand, who has been closely involved with the country’s nuclear program, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are stored in “three to four different parts at three to four different locations.” Therefore, they are stockpiled in component form, which means if the weapon is not about to be launched then it is not in an assembled form.

With the warheads disassembled, they cannot be used by terrorists. Similarly, Islamabad has improved the reliability of its nuclear personnel by making security clearance procedures more stringent, decreasing the likelihood of an insider threat. However, Islamabad recognizes more can be done to control its nuclear expertise. The Nuclear Security Summit has raised awareness and the sense of urgency of increasing nuclear security among all nuclear states. Pakistan, being part of the NSS, has also pledged to take the necessary steps.

ISIS in particular does not have a profound presence in Pakistan and exists only in the form of small, independent cells. It’s extremely doubtful it can steal Pakistan’s nuclear material. However, a threat does emanate from local militant groups who can exploit the already unstable security environment in South Asia. India’s Cold Start doctrine and Pakistan’s acquisition of battlefield nukes are a cause for concern, and can be exploited by terrorists.

Exploiting Cold Start Doctrine and Tactical Nuclear Weapons

The Cold Start doctrine was developed after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament. India claimed that the attacks were perpetrated by Pakistan-based militant groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, who were in cahoots with some institutions of Pakistan. In response, the Indian state initiated the largest military build-up since 1971. However, it took India three weeks to get to the international border. By that time Pakistan was able to counter-mobilize, which allowed for the United States to intervene and forestall the conflict from precipitating. Then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf also denounced terrorism, and promised a crackdown. This reduced India’s political justification for a military action.

Unsatisfied with this slow response, India developed the Cold Start doctrine. The said doctrine involves offensive operations, allowing India’s conventional forces to perform holding attacks in order to prevent a nuclear response from Pakistan. In reply to this, Pakistan developed tactical nuclear weapons to deter any military action from India.

This situation should raise concern. If terrorist attack is plotted against India from Pakistani soil and India operationalizes its doctrine, presumably, in reaction, Pakistan will deploy its tactical nuclear weapons. India too then is likely to use its conventional nuclear weapons, inviting a full-blown nuclear war between the two neighboring states.

As such, the combination of tactical nuclear weapons and the Cold Start doctrine provides an opportunity for terrorist elements to initiate a nuclear war. Both India and Pakistan need to work out a plan whereby India gives up its Cold Start doctrine in the event of a militant attack, and in response, Pakistan abandons its tactical nuclear weapons. Otherwise, there will always be room for militants to ensure a nuclear attack by conducting traditional acts of terror. If a terrorist can compel a nuclear war between two nations, how is that different from nuclear terrorism?

Shahzeb Ali Rathore is a Research Analyst at the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore.

Belgium Prepares For Nuclear Terrorism (Daniel 8:4)


Iodine pills help reduce radiation build-up in the thyroid gland
Iodine pills help reduce radiation build-up in the thyroid gland Credit: Rex 
The entire population of Belgium is to be issued with a ration of iodine tablets, months after warnings about the threat of Isil building a dirty bomb.

Iodine pills, which help reduce radiation build-up in the thyroid gland, had previously only been issued to people living within 20km (14 miles) of the Tihange and Doel nuclear plants.
Maggie De Block, the Health Minister, said that would be extended to 100km, covering the whole country of 11 million people, following advice from an expert council.

The pills will be sent to pharmacies, and the public would be ordered to collect their ration in the event of a meltdown. Children, pregnant women and those breast-feeding would be given priority.
It emerged following last month’s terrorist attacks that an Isil cell may have been plotting to kidnap a nuclear expert in order to build a “dirty bomb”. Eleven nuclear workers had their passes revoked.

Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui, the brothers behind the suicide strikes on Brussels airport and Metro, are believed to have been involve the plot to scatter radioactive material over a populated area.
A senior Belgian nuclear industry official was secretly filmed by jihadists late last year, according to the country’s nuclear authority, and the brothers were linked to the surveillance.


There are also concerns over Belgium’s ageing nuclear plants that have been subject to repeated safety warnings, including defects in pressure vessels and fires.

Last week Germany asked that the 40-year-old Tihange 2 and Doel 3 reactors be turned off “until the resolution of outstanding security issues”.
The reactor pressure vessels at both sites have shown signs of metal degradation, raising fears about their safety. They were temporarily closed but resumed service last December.

Belgium’s official nuclear safety agency (AFCN) rejected the German request, saying the two plants “respond to the strictest possible safety requirements.”

The key figure in the suspected dirty bomb plot is Mohammed Bakkali, 28, from Brussels, who was arrested in November on suspicion of helping to plan the Paris massacre. Police raided his wife’s flat and found a ten-hour video taken by a camera hidden opposite the home of an executive at the Centre for the Study of Nuclear Energy in Mol, northern Belgium. The executive had access to radioactive isotopes at the country’s national nuclear research centre.

Antichrist Has Coup Against Iraqi Government (Rev 13:18)


Muqtada al-Sadr’s supporters storm Iraq’s parliament

The unrest in Baghdad kicked off just after Sadr condemned the political deadlock in a press conference [Reuters]
The unrest in Baghdad kicked off just after Sadr condemned the political deadlock in a press conference [Reuters]
A state high alert has been declared in the Iraqi capital Baghdad after protesters broke into the fortified Green Zone and stormed the parliament building, shortly after politicians again failed to approve new ministers.

Saturday’s development was the climax of weeks of political turmoil in Iraq that has seen MPs hold a sit-in, clash in the parliament chamber and seek to dismiss the speaker, halting efforts by Haider al-Abadi, the prime minister, to replace party-affiliated ministers with technocrats.
The unrest also coincided with a blast that targeted Shia pilgrims near Baghdad, killing at least 23 people.
Muqtada al-Sadr’s role in Iraq
 
The Green Zone is the most secure part of the Iraqi capital, housing the parliament, the prime minister’s office and embassies.

“You are not staying here! This is your last day in the Green Zone,” shouted one protester as thousands broke into the central Baghdad area.

Protesters attached cables to the tops of heavy concrete blast walls that surround the Green Zone, pulling them down to create an opening, television footage showed.
They then headed to parliament, where some protesters ran around the building and broke into offices, while others shouted “peacefully, peacefully” and tried to contain the destruction, an AFP news agency reporter at the scene said.

Security forces were present but did not try to prevent the demonstrators from entering the parliament building, the reporter said.

Protesters pulled barbed wire across a road leading to one of the exits of the Green Zone, effectively preventing some scared lawmakers from fleeing the chaos.

Protesters attacked and damaged several vehicles they believed belonged to parliamentarians, sources told Al Jazeera.

Ministerial nominees

Parliament failed to reach a quorum on Saturday after approving some of Abadi’s ministerial nominees earlier in the week.

The Green Zone unrest kicked off minutes after Muqtada al-Sadr, the powerful Shia leader, ended a news conference in the holy city of Najaf during which he condemned the political deadlock.
Last month he had threatened that his supporters would storm the Green Zone, but he did not order them to enter the area in his Saturday address.
Sadr has led mass protests in support of the planned cabinet reshuffle [Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters]
The politicians “refused to end corruption and refused to end quotas”, Sadr said, adding that he and his supporters would not participate in “any political process in which there are any type… of political party quotas”.

Key government posts have for years been distributed based on political and sectarian quotas.
Abadi’s move to change the system has been opposed by powerful political parties that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds.

Baghdad bombing

Both the US and the UN have warned that the political crisis could distract from the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Iraqi government forces backed by US-led military assistance have regained significant ground from ISIL, which overran large expanses of the country in 2014.
Inside Story: Revenge and reprisals in Iraq?
 
But the group still controls a large part of western Iraq, and are able to carry out frequent attacks against both civilians and security forces in government-held areas, including Baghdad.
Saturday’s car bombing, which occurred in the city’s Nahrawan area, killed at least 23 people and wounded up to 38 others, security and medical officials said.

ISIL, which considers Shia to be heretics, claimed the attack and said it was carried out by a suicide bomber who detonated a vehicle laden with three tonnes of explosives.

The officials said the explosion struck a road used by Shia pilgrims who were walking to the shrine of Imam Musa Kadhim in northern Baghdad for annual commemorations.

Kadhim, the seventh of 12 imams revered in Shia Islam, died in 799 AD.

The pilgrimage has in recent years turned into a huge event that brings Baghdad to a standstill for days.
Saturday’s car bombing in Baghdad’s Nahrawan area was the latest in a continued wave of violence [Reuters]

More Nuclear Terrorism On The Loose (Daniel 8:4)



Georgia Arrests Uranium-Sellers

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Five people have been arrested in the former Soviet republic of Georgia for trying to sell more than a kilogram of uranium.

State Security Committee investigator Savle Motiashvili told a briefing Thursday that the 1.665 kilograms consisted mostly of U-238, the isotope most commonly found in nature, and only about 0.2 percent of it was U-235, which can be used in nuclear weapons and reactors.

The arrests were made in Kobuleti, he said.

The suspects aimed to sell the uranium for $3 million, but no potential buyer was specified. Although U-238 itself is not fissile, it can be used as a component in nuclear weapons.

It was the second such arrest this month. Georgia announced April 18 that six people were arrested for trying to sell uranium.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Pakistan Moves Nukes Closer To India (Daniel 8:8)


A Pakistani military complex has been established close to the international border in Punjab, according to a report in The Tribune.

Details have emerged on social media, about the base housing nuclear missiles at Rahwali Cantonment near Gujranwala. It reveals two transport-erector-launcher vehicles, assessed to be those of the Nasr short-range missile, along with support vehicles laid out for inspection.A satellite imagery expert posted images dated 27 January on his personal Twitter page, along with an assessment.

The complex is well-fortified and includes hardened shelters with blast doors, garages, ammunition bunkers, administrative and support areas. It is believed to have been constructed in August 2014.
According to experts, a missile base close to the border indicates that deployment of ‘low yield’ nuclear weapons could be employed to counter an Indian onslaught. The brief flight time of short range missiles makes them difficult to combat.

Babylon Tries To Stop The Antichrist (Ezekiel 17)


Biden presses Iraq to not let political chaos upend gains

Posted: Apr 28, 2016 7:27 AM MST Updated: Apr 28, 2016 3:47 PM MST
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By JOSH LEDERMAN
  Biden slipped into Baghdad on an unannounced trip, his first to Iraq in nearly five years. Officials said the stop was planned before Iraq’s political system descended into turmoil, hindering U.S.-led efforts to defeat extremists who control parts of both Iraq and Syria. Sitting down with Iraq’s beleaguered leaders, he praised them for working “very, very hard” to construct a new Cabinet and touted progress wresting back territory from IS.

“It’s real, it’s serious, and it’s committed,” Biden said as he met with Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri, a Sunni politician facing calls from his colleagues to resign.

Still, the anxious undertones of Biden’s brief visit were clear from the moment he stepped off a military transport plane into blistering heat after an overnight flight from Washington. White House staffers donned body armor and helmets as Biden was whisked by helicopter to the relative safety of the heavily fortified Green Zone, reminders of the dire security situation even in Iraq’s capital.
Biden’s roughly eight-hour visit came amid a wave of tense protests and demands for sweeping political reforms that have paralyzed a government already struggling to tackle a dire economic crisis and battle IS. The United States has deployed more troops and equipment in hopes of putting Iraq on a better path as President Barack Obama prepares to leave office in January.

Though there’s been progress in wresting back territory from IS and weakening its leadership, senior U.S. officials traveling with Biden said any lost momentum would likely be due to political unrest rather than military shortcomings. Chaotic politics are nothing new in Iraq, but the present infighting risks becoming a distraction, with politicians more focused on keeping their jobs than fighting IS, said the officials, who weren’t authorized to speak on the record.

While Obama and Biden came into office pledging to end the war – and did so in 2011 – U.S. troops returned here in 2014 amid the rise of IS violence.

Obama now acknowledges that his goal of defeating the militants won’t be realized during his presidency.

Still, this month Obama agreed to deploy more than 200 additional troops to Iraq, bringing the authorized total to just over 4,000, and to send Apache helicopters into the fight. Biden thanked some of those troops and American diplomats during a visit to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where he alluded to the deep sectarian divides still plaguing Iraq long after U.S.-led forces toppled the late dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.

“Think of all the places we are today trying to keep the peace, all the places we’ve sent you guys and women,” Biden said. “They’re places where because of history, we’ve drawn artificial lines, creating artificial states, made up of totally distinct ethnic, religious cultural groups and said, ‘Have at it. Live together.'”

Biden, as a U.S. senator in 2006, proposed dividing Iraq into semi-autonomous regions for Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis. Though that plan wasn’t adopted, the persistent strains among the groups that have flared recently in Iraq’s government illustrate the difficulty in holding the country together.
The current round of turmoil grew out of weeks of rallies by followers of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanding an end to pervasive corruption and mismanagement. Thousands have protested just outside Baghdad’s Green Zone, calling for politicians to be replaced by independent technocrats and for Iraq’s powerful Shiite militias to be brought into key ministries.

At the center of the crisis is Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a Shiite who met with Biden on Thursday at one of Saddam’s grandiose former palaces. Long overdue to deliver on his promises for reform, Al-Abadi is caught between ordinary Iraqis pleading for government accountability and entrenched political blocks that are reluctant to give up a powerful patronage system.

Last month, al-Abadi pulled troops fighting IS on the front lines to protect Baghdad amid the protests, and other Arab nations have declined to provide Iraq more financial support until it gets its political act together. An economic crisis spurred by collapsing oil prices has further compounded Iraq’s troubles.

Biden said he and al-Abadi discussed plans for retaking the key northern city of Mosul, an immense challenge for Iraqi forces and their U.S. backers. Biden said he was “very optimistic,” though U.S. officials predict a long road ahead.

“If you think about it, the history of the region is a nightmare from which everyone is trying to awake,” Biden said of Iraq and the Middle East, riffing on a passage from James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
While in Iraq, Biden also stopped briefly in Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s mostly autonomous northern Kurdish region, where he met with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani. Kurdish Peshmerga forces have been among the most effective forces battling Islamic State extremists, but the U.S. partnership with Kurdish forces in neighboring Syria has been a sore point with U.S. NATO ally Turkey.
Biden headed for Rome after leaving Iraq.
___
Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Earthquake Assessment For The Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12)


Earthquake Risk in New Jersey

by Daniel R. Dombroski, Jr.

by Daniel R. Dombroski, Jr.
A 10–fold increase in amplitude represents about a 32–fold increase in energy released for the same duration of shaking. The best known magnitude scale is one designed by C.F. Richter in 1935 for
west coast earthquakes.
An earthquake’s intensity is determined by observing its effects at a particular place on the Earth’s surface. Intensity depends on the earthquake’s magnitude, the distance from the epicenter, and local geology. These scales are based on reports of people awakening, felt movements, sounds, and visible effects on structures and landscapes. The most commonly used scale in the United States is the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale, and its values are usually reported in Roman numerals to distinguish them from magnitudes.
Past damage in New Jersey
New Jersey doesn’t get many earthquakes, but it does get some. Fortunately most are small. A few New Jersey earthquakes, as well as a few originating outside the state, have produced enough damage to warrant the concern of planners and emergency managers.
Damage in New Jersey from earthquakes has been minor: items knocked off shelves, cracked plaster and masonry, and fallen chimneys. Perhaps because no one was standing under a chimney when it fell, there are no recorded earthquake–related deaths in New Jersey. We will probably not be so fortunate in the future.
Area Affected by Eastern Earthquakes

Although the United States east of the Rocky Mountains has fewer and generally smaller earthquakes than the West, at least two factors  increase the earthquake risk in New Jersey and the East. Due to geologic differences, eastern earthquakes effect areas ten times larger than western ones of the same magnitude. Also, the eastern United States is more densely populated, and New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the nation.
Geologic Faults and Earthquakes in New Jersey
Although there are many faults in New Jersey, the Ramapo Fault, which separates the Piedmont and Highlands Physiographic Provinces, is the best known. In 1884 it was blamed for a damaging New York City earthquake simply because it was the only large fault mapped at the time. Subsequent investigations have shown the 1884 earthquake epicenter was actually located in Brooklyn, New York, at least 25 miles from the Ramapo Fault.
More recently, in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, earthquake risk along the Ramapo Fault received attention because of its proximity to the Indian Point, New York, Nuclear Power Generating Station. East of the Rocky Mountains (including New Jersey), earthquakes do not break the ground surface. Their focuses lie at least a few miles below the Earth’s surface, and their locations are determined by interpreting seismographic records. Geologic fault lines seen on the surface today are evidence of ancient events. The presence or absence of mapped faults (fault lines) does not denote either a seismic hazard or the lack of one, and earthquakes can occur anywhere in New Jersey.
Frequency of Damaging Earthquakes in New Jersey
Records for the New York City area, which have been kept for 300 years, provide good information
for estimating the frequency of earthquakes in New Jersey.
Earthquakes with a maximum intensity of VII (see table DamagingEarthquakes Felt in New Jersey )have occurred in the New York City area in 1737, 1783, and 1884. One intensity VI, four intensity V’s, and at least three intensity III shocks have also occurred in the New York area over the last 300 years.
Buildings and Earthquakes
The 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, is an example of what might happen in New Jersey in a similar quake. It registered a magnitude 7.2 on the Richter scale and produced widespread destruction. But it was the age of construction, soil and foundation condition, proximity to the fault, and type of structure that were the major determining factors in the performance of each building. Newer structures, built to the latest construction standards, appeared to perform relatively well, generally ensuring the life safety of occupants.
Structures have collapsed in New Jersey without earthquakes; an earthquake would trigger many more. Building and housing codes need to be updated and strictly enforced to properly prepare for inevitable future earthquakes.

Antichrist’s Men Protest Iraqi Government (Rev 13:18)


Thousands of Iraqis answer Sadr’s call to protest

BAGHDAD: Iraqi supporters of the Sadrist movement hold national flags and shout slogans during a demonstration to press for reforms yesterday at Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. — AFPBAGHDAD: Iraqi supporters of the Sadrist movement hold national flags and shout slogans during a demonstration to press for reforms yesterday at Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. — AFP
BAGHDAD: Thousands of supporters of powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr answered his call to demonstrate in Baghdad yesterday to pressure the Iraqi government to move forward with stalled reforms. Iraq has been hit by weeks of political turmoil surrounding Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi’s efforts to replace the cabinet of party-affiliated ministers with a government of technocrats.

The proposed changes have been opposed by powerful political parties that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds, and parliament has repeatedly failed to vote on a new cabinet list. The demonstrators, many of them carrying Iraqi flags, marched from Tahrir Square in central Baghdad to an entrance to the heavily-fortified Green Zone, where the government is headquartered, chanting that politicians “are all thieves.”

“Our participation in the demonstration aims to reject this government for being sectarian,” protester Abu Ali Al-Zaidi said. Key government posts have for years been shared out based on political and sectarian quotas, a practice demonstrators have called to end. The government “did not bring the country and Iraqis anything but poverty and killing,” said Zaidi, who travelled from Maysan province in southern Iraq to take part in the protest. “All Iraqis must protest to reject this government, which failed in all fields,” said Abu Mohammed Al-Sudani, a demonstrator from Baghdad.

Paralyzed parliament

“The political quotas and the parties that control everything are the reason for the failure of the government,” said Sudani, who carried an Iraqi flag. Sadr, the scion of a powerful clerical family who in earlier years raised a rebellion against US-led forces and commanded a feared militia, called for a mass demonstration in Baghdad yesterday to pressure the government to carry out reforms.

The protest came on the same day that parliament speaker Salim Al-Juburi was seeking to hold a session to vote on a new cabinet. Parliament has been paralyzed for weeks by the dispute over the cabinet, with MPs holding a sit-in, brawling in the chamber, seeking to sack the speaker and repeatedly failing to move forward on the issue of new ministers. Abadi called a week ago for parliament to put aside its differences and do its job, saying he hoped for a vote on a new cabinet within days-something that has yet to take place.

Abadi called in February for “fundamental” change to the cabinet so that it includes “professional and technocratic figures and academics”. That kicked off the latest chapter in a months-long saga of Abadi proposing various reforms that parties and politicians with interests in the existing system have sought to delay or undermine. The political crisis comes as Iraqi forces battle to regain more ground from the Islamic State group, and both the United Nations and Washington have warned that it could undermine the fight against the jihadists. Iraq has also been hit hard by the plummeting price of oil, revenues from which account for the vast majority of government funds._ AFP

Antichrist Sees New Cabinet Shuffle


Iraq’s Sadr welcomes Abadi cabinet reshuffle

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Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi
 
Al-Sadr said the people won following the dismissal of some corrupt ministers and their replacement them with technocrats.

He warned against delays in the completion of reforms, calling on his supporters to stay in the streets until all changes and reforms are complete.

“We swear to God, our young people and the army to continue the jihad on the battlefield against terrorists,” Al-Sadr said.

On Tuesday, thousands of Sadrist protesters withdrew from the Green Zone in central Baghdad after the Iraqi parliament voted on a number of new ministers.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Time For The Bowls Of Wrath (Revelation 15:2)


Nuclear threat now greater than during Cold War, say Nunn, Perry at UGA

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The threat of someone using a nuclear weapon is even greater now than it was during the Cold War, according to former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn and former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry.

No one has used nuclear weapons since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima 71 years ago — the only time a country has used nuclear weapons against its enemies.

But it’s not likely the world can go another 71 years without a nuclear weapon being used against people, Nunn said on the University of Georgia campus Tuesday.

“I would hope so, but the odds are against it,” Nunn said. Nine countries now have nuclear weapons, and two more, Iran and North Korea, have nuclear aspirations, Nunn told a large crowd in the auditorium of the university’s Russell Libraries Building, which houses UGA’s special library collections.

“The thing I worry about a great deal is that we’re in a new era where states no longer have the monopoly on nuclear weapons or material or knowledge,” he said.

The best defense against that reality is keeping nuclear materials out of their hands, Nunn said.
Perry joined the crowd on a big video screen via an Internet link from his faculty office at Stanford University as he and Nunn delivered UGA’s annual Charter Lecture. The lecture is named for the 1785 UGA charter, the first such charter granted in the new United States after the Revolution.

It’s at least partly by luck that the Soviet Union and the United States never launched nuclear missiles at each other, said Perry, secretary of defense from 1994-97 under President Bill Clinton.

The United States at least three times received false alarms when the military thought the Soviets had launched a nuclear attack, and “we know of at least two (false alarms) in the Soviet Union,” he said.
The dangers back then were twofold, he said — accidental war resulting from a false alarm, and a “war of miscalculation,” which was narrowly avoided during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
In each day of that 12-day period, “I truly believed it was going to be my last day on Earth,” Perry said.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union avoided war “as much by good luck as by good management” in 1962, he said.

We still have those two dangers today, plus two more, Perry said.

There’s a real danger a terrorist group such as ISIS could get hold of nuclear material and make a so-called “dirty bomb,” in which radioactive material is mixed with explosives and set off in a major city.

That wouldn’t kill a lot of people, compared to an atomic bomb, but it would render large areas uninhabitable, tremendously disrupt the economy and force a large migration of people, Nunn said.
“What it would do to the world economy, even one weapon, could be very destabilizing,” Nunn said. “The abandonment of a city would be a thing to behold.”

The second new danger is the possibility of a regional war, a possibility that didn’t exist during the Cold War, Perry said.

The “poster child” for this possibility is continuing conflicts between India and Pakistan, both of which have nuclear weapons, Perry said.

The United States and Russia must cooperate more than they have recently in order to keep nuclear material from getting into terrorists’ hands, Nunn said.

“Russia and the United States have 90 percent of the nuclear weapons. We have an obligation to work together. This is vital. This is existential,” Nunn said.

Russia has taken destabilizing actions recently, including violating the sovereignty of its neighbor, Ukraine, and “these are dangerous times,” Nunn said.

The most important way to prevent accidental war now is to get U.S. and Russian diplomatic relations back on track, Perry said.

Follow education reporter Lee Shearer at www.facebook.com/LeeShearerABH or https://twitter.com/LeeShearer.

Korean Horn Prepares For Another Launch (Daniel 7)


Yonhap: North Korea Preparing New Medium Range Missile Launch

On April 15, the North failed to launch what was likely a Musudan missile that could hit Japan and also theoretically the US territory of Guam.

The South’s Yonhap news agency on Tuesday quoted unidentified government sources as saying the North had readied a medium-range Musudan missile for an imminent test launch.

North Korea claimed Saturday it conducted a submarine-launched ballistic missile test personally supervised by Kim Jong Un. Hours before the announcement by North Korea’s state media Sunday, South Korean military officials said the North had fired what appeared to be a ballistic missile from a submarine off its eastern coast.

“It will not take too long before North Korea modifies their Sinpo-class submarine and increases the SLBM’s range to more than the current 30 kilometers, to threaten attacks on the USA military bases in South Korea, and as “strategic leverage” against Washington”, Kim said.

Kim Jong-Un is expected to use the event to cement his position as supreme leader and to take credit for pushing his country’s nuclear weapons program to new heights.

A South Korean expert said even if this launch was indeed a “failure”, as Seoul claims, it doesn’t change the fact that this technology will be a threat to Seoul and Washington.

On Tuesday, the US warned that they will come up with new sanctions or security steps should North Korea continue its ballistic missile testing.

The South Korean Defence Ministry predicts that the North will be able to deploy SLBMs within the next three to four years.

“Since the regime is already equipped with nuclear materials and a test site, another nuclear test wouldn’t incur in a lot of additional costs for North Korea”.

Since then, many countries joined efforts to pressure Pyongyang by banning North Korean ships from their ports, Mr Lee said.

North and South Korea remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, rather than a treaty.

Tensions have been running high on the divided Korean peninsula since the North’s last nuclear test in January, and Pyongyang has issued repeated threats of a direct attack on the Blue House, which houses President Park Geun-Hye’s offices and residence.

The standoff deepened earlier this year when North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch, which led to the United Nations slapping its toughest sanctions on North Korea in 20 years.

The crippling worldwide sanctions imposed on North Korea for its nuclear tests have been taking its toll on the country, as Kim announced in late March that North Korea could be headed for another starvation like the one that killed an estimated 3.5 million people in the 1990s.

Columbia University Warns Of Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12)


Earthquakes May Endanger New York More Than Thought, Says Study
New-York-Destroyed-300x224
A study by a group of prominent seismologists suggests that a pattern of subtle but active faults makes the risk of earthquakes to the New York City area substantially greater than formerly believed. Among other things, they say that the controversial Indian Point nuclear power plants, 24 miles north of the city, sit astride the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones. The paper appears in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

Many faults and a few mostly modest quakes have long been known around New York City, but the research casts them in a new light. The scientists say the insight comes from sophisticated analysis of past quakes, plus 34 years of new data on tremors, most of them perceptible only by modern seismic instruments. The evidence charts unseen but potentially powerful structures whose layout and dynamics are only now coming clearer, say the scientists. All are based at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which runs the network of seismometers that monitors most of the northeastern United States.

Lead author Lynn R. Sykes said the data show that large quakes are infrequent around New York compared to more active areas like California and Japan, but that the risk is high, because of the overwhelming concentration of people and infrastructure. “The research raises the perception both of how common these events are, and, specifically, where they may occur,” he said. “It’s an extremely populated area with very large assets.” Sykes, who has studied the region for four decades, is known for his early role in establishing the global theory of plate tectonics.

The authors compiled a catalog of all 383 known earthquakes from 1677 to 2007 in a 15,000-square-mile area around New York City. Coauthor John Armbruster estimated sizes and locations of dozens of events before 1930 by combing newspaper accounts and other records. The researchers say magnitude 5 quakes—strong enough to cause damage–occurred in 1737, 1783 and 1884. There was little settlement around to be hurt by the first two quakes, whose locations are vague due to a lack of good accounts; but the last, thought to be centered under the seabed somewhere between Brooklyn and Sandy Hook, toppled chimneys across the city and New Jersey, and panicked bathers at Coney Island. Based on this, the researchers say such quakes should be routinely expected, on average, about every 100 years. “Today, with so many more buildings and people, a magnitude 5 centered below the city would be extremely attention-getting,” said Armbruster. “We’d see billions in damage, with some brick buildings falling. People would probably be killed.”

Starting in the early 1970s Lamont began collecting data on quakes from dozens of newly deployed seismometers; these have revealed further potential, including distinct zones where earthquakes concentrate, and where larger ones could come. The Lamont network, now led by coauthor Won-Young Kim, has located hundreds of small events, including a magnitude 3 every few years, which can be felt by people at the surface, but is unlikely to cause damage. These small quakes tend to cluster along a series of small, old faults in harder rocks across the region. Many of the faults were discovered decades ago when subways, water tunnels and other excavations intersected them, but conventional wisdom said they were inactive remnants of continental collisions and rifting hundreds of millions of years ago. The results clearly show that they are active, and quite capable of generating damaging quakes, said Sykes.

One major previously known feature, the Ramapo Seismic Zone, runs from eastern Pennsylvania to the mid-Hudson Valley, passing within a mile or two northwest of Indian Point. The researchers found that this system is not so much a single fracture as a braid of smaller ones, where quakes emanate from a set of still ill-defined faults. East and south of the Ramapo zone—and possibly more significant in terms of hazard–is a set of nearly parallel northwest-southeast faults. These include Manhattan’s 125th Street fault, which seems to have generated two small 1981 quakes, and could have been the source of the big 1737 quake; the Dyckman Street fault, which carried a magnitude 2 in 1989; the Mosholu Parkway fault; and the Dobbs Ferry fault in suburban Westchester, which generated the largest recent shock, a surprising magnitude 4.1, in 1985. Fortunately, it did no damage. Given the pattern, Sykes says the big 1884 quake may have hit on a yet-undetected member of this parallel family further south.

The researchers say that frequent small quakes occur in predictable ratios to larger ones, and so can be used to project a rough time scale for damaging events. Based on the lengths of the faults, the detected tremors, and calculations of how stresses build in the crust, the researchers say that magnitude 6 quakes, or even 7—respectively 10 and 100 times bigger than magnitude 5–are quite possible on the active faults they describe. They calculate that magnitude 6 quakes take place in the area about every 670 years, and sevens, every 3,400 years. The corresponding probabilities of occurrence in any 50-year period would be 7% and 1.5%. After less specific hints of these possibilities appeared in previous research, a 2003 analysis by The New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation put the cost of quakes this size in the metro New York area at $39 billion to $197 billion. A separate 2001 analysis for northern New Jersey’s Bergen County estimates that a magnitude 7 would destroy 14,000 buildings and damage 180,000 in that area alone. The researchers point out that no one knows when the last such events occurred, and say no one can predict when they next might come.

“We need to step backward from the simple old model, where you worry about one large, obvious fault, like they do in California,” said coauthor Leonardo Seeber. “The problem here comes from many subtle faults. We now see there is earthquake activity on them. Each one is small, but when you add them up, they are probably more dangerous than we thought. We need to take a very close look.” Seeber says that because the faults are mostly invisible at the surface and move infrequently, a big quake could easily hit one not yet identified. “The probability is not zero, and the damage could be great,” he said. “It could be like something out of a Greek myth.”

The researchers found concrete evidence for one significant previously unknown structure: an active seismic zone running at least 25 miles from Stamford, Conn., to the Hudson Valley town of Peekskill, N.Y., where it passes less than a mile north of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. The Stamford-Peekskill line stands out sharply on the researchers’ earthquake map, with small events clustered along its length, and to its immediate southwest. Just to the north, there are no quakes, indicating that it represents some kind of underground boundary. It is parallel to the other faults beginning at 125th Street, so the researchers believe it is a fault in the same family. Like the others, they say it is probably capable of producing at least a magnitude 6 quake. Furthermore, a mile or so on, it intersects the Ramapo seismic zone.

Sykes said the existence of the Stamford-Peekskill line had been suggested before, because the Hudson takes a sudden unexplained bend just ot the north of Indian Point, and definite traces of an old fault can be along the north side of the bend. The seismic evidence confirms it, he said. “Indian Point is situated at the intersection of the two most striking linear features marking the seismicity and also in the midst of a large population that is at risk in case of an accident,” says the paper. “This is clearly one of the least favorable sites in our study area from an earthquake hazard and risk perspective.”

The findings comes at a time when Entergy, the owner of Indian Point, is trying to relicense the two operating plants for an additional 20 years—a move being fought by surrounding communities and the New York State Attorney General. Last fall the attorney general, alerted to the then-unpublished Lamont data, told a Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel in a filing: “New data developed in the last 20 years disclose a substantially higher likelihood of significant earthquake activity in the vicinity of [Indian Point] that could exceed the earthquake design for the facility.” The state alleges that Entergy has not presented new data on earthquakes past 1979. However, in a little-noticed decision this July 31, the panel rejected the argument on procedural grounds. A source at the attorney general’s office said the state is considering its options.

The characteristics of New York’s geology and human footprint may increase the problem. Unlike in California, many New York quakes occur near the surface—in the upper mile or so—and they occur not in the broken-up, more malleable formations common where quakes are frequent, but rather in the extremely hard, rigid rocks underlying Manhattan and much of the lower Hudson Valley. Such rocks can build large stresses, then suddenly and efficiently transmit energy over long distances. “It’s like putting a hard rock in a vise,” said Seeber. “Nothing happens for a while. Then it goes with a bang.” Earthquake-resistant building codes were not introduced to New York City until 1995, and are not in effect at all in many other communities. Sinuous skyscrapers and bridges might get by with minimal damage, said Sykes, but many older, unreinforced three- to six-story brick buildings could crumble.
Art Lerner-Lam, associate director of Lamont for seismology, geology and tectonophysics, pointed out that the region’s major highways including the New York State Thruway, commuter and long-distance rail lines, and the main gas, oil and power transmission lines all cross the parallel active faults, making them particularly vulnerable to being cut. Lerner-Lam, who was not involved in the research, said that the identification of the seismic line near Indian Point “is a major substantiation of a feature that bears on the long-term earthquake risk of the northeastern United States.” He called for policymakers to develop more information on the region’s vulnerability, to take a closer look at land use and development, and to make investments to strengthen critical infrastructure.

“This is a landmark study in many ways,” said Lerner-Lam. “It gives us the best possible evidence that we have an earthquake hazard here that should be a factor in any planning decision. It crystallizes the argument that this hazard is not random. There is a structure to the location and timing of the earthquakes. This enables us to contemplate risk in an entirely different way. And since we are able to do that, we should be required to do that.”

New York Earthquake Briefs and Quotes:

Existing U.S. Geological Survey seismic hazard maps show New York City as facing more hazard than many other eastern U.S. areas. Three areas are somewhat more active—northernmost New York State, New Hampshire and South Carolina—but they have much lower populations and fewer structures. The wider forces at work include pressure exerted from continuing expansion of the mid-Atlantic Ridge thousands of miles to the east; slow westward migration of the North American continent; and the area’s intricate labyrinth of old faults, sutures and zones of weakness caused by past collisions and rifting.

Due to New York’s past history, population density and fragile, interdependent infrastructure, a 2001 analysis by the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranks it the 11th most at-risk U.S. city for earthquake damage. Among those ahead: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. Behind: Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Anchorage.

New York’s first seismic station was set up at Fordham University in the 1920s. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in Palisades, N.Y., has operated stations since 1949, and now coordinates a network of about 40.

Dozens of small quakes have been felt in the New York area. A Jan. 17, 2001 magnitude 2.4, centered in the Upper East Side—the first ever detected in Manhattan itself–may have originated on the 125th Street fault. Some people thought it was an explosion, but no one was harmed.

The most recent felt quake, a magnitude 2.1 on July 28, 2008, was centered near Milford, N.J. Houses shook and a woman at St. Edward’s Church said she felt the building rise up under her feet—but no damage was done.

Questions about the seismic safety of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which lies amid a metropolitan area of more than 20 million people, were raised in previous scientific papers in 1978 and 1985.

Because the hard rocks under much of New York can build up a lot strain before breaking, researchers believe that modest faults as short as 1 to 10 kilometers can cause magnitude 5 or 6 quakes.

In general, magnitude 3 quakes occur about 10 times more often than magnitude fours; 100 times more than magnitude fives; and so on. This principle is called the Gutenberg-Richter relationship.