The Oxymoron Of Surviving The First Nuclear Attack (Revelation 8)

Surviving a “Nuclear attack”

What if a war breaks out?

Dr Shoukat KhanSrinagar, Publish Date: Oct 30 2016 10:51PM | Updated Date: Oct 30 2016 10:51PMOn a late September night I had barely closed my eyes when my cell phone rang, Hello! It’s me said my mother in law, Can I talk to Rose, She asked. I was more than happy to handover my mobile phone to my wife. For the next ten minutes I heard my wife arguing with her mother on the issue of us moving to the relative safety of their house which is about 4 Kilometers from where we live in immediate proximity to the Srinagar Airport, a high value target in any war. My mother in law was sensing immediate hostilities between two sibling nations in a perpetual M.A.D (mutually assured destruction) state since seven decades of their independence from the British in August 1947. What if this place is bombed tonight my wife asked me. I asked her to go to sleep but not before she added, what if it is a nuclear attack? In that case, we will not survive! I answered straight. What I remember hearing last before I slept that night was my wife reciting verses of “Ayat Al Kursi” from the Holy Quran.In the contemporary times Kashmir, North Korea and Middle East have often been seen as potential nuclear flash points on account of unresolved political conflicts. The nuclear buildup that started in the USA and USSR is now a looming threat over the conflict zones of Asia. In 1945 United States of America developed a Nuclear weapon with the sole aim of promoting peace and ending the atrocities and horrors of the Second World War. The Atom bombs “ Little boy” weighing about 10-13 kilotons were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing about 250,000 people besides causing injuries and destruction on a large scale. Ironically! The Second World War ended after this first ever nuclear attack and the only one till date. The global nuclear arsenal witnessed tremendous build up between 1949 to 1985 with almost 65,000 nuclear warheads shared amongst the seven nation nuclear club. 95 percent of this dreadful nuclear stockpile belonged to arch cold war adversaries’ United States of America and the erstwhile Soviet Union. The super power nuclear arms race brought the human civilization nearly to the brink of planetary catastrophe. After 1985 a significant number of nuclear stockpiles were decommissioned leaving approximately 21,000 nuclear warheads with the nuclear club nations that now included India and Pakistan. After the breakup of Soviet Union in 1991 the idea of a full fledged nuclear war seems remote but the possibility of an isolated nuclear attack is possible. The global nuclear weapons stockpile is not completely secure making availability of fissionable materials like enriched Uranium and Plutonium possible. International atomic energy agency (IAEA) has recorded 175 nuclear thefts with 18 involving highly enriched Uranium between 1993 and 2006. Out of the global 1300-2100 metric tons of highly enriched Uranium, 100 metric tons are insecure. It takes 75 lbs to make the likes of “Little boy” nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. The possibility of nations using the nuclear option is remote and mostly rhetorical. In the world of statistical possibilities anything can happen if not at the hands of States but through the hands of non state actors. The Nuclear “Know How” technology is freely accessible. An undergraduate degree in nuclear physics will allow you to assemble a nuclear weapon, may be a dirty or a suit case bomb.

Should, there be a nuclear attack, what is the likely fallout? Within a radius of less than 1 km, the likely scenario in case of a more than 10 kiloton  nuclear bomb detonation, chances of survival are slim, 90% you will not make it, just vaporized by the tens of millions Fahrenheit heat, the blast effects and acute radiation sickness. This reality makes me shiver as I share a boundary wall with the Srinagar Airport. In a radius of 3 Kms from the chances of survival are 50% and beyond within 13 Kms the chances of survival are 80% and more. If you survive the initial impact don’t look towards the bombing site since this is likely to blind you temporarily or permanently. You have just 10-20 minutes to get away from the site of blast before the radiation fallout from the mushroom cloud of the bomb starts, which usually peaks by 24 hours. Move away at least 2-3 Kms from the site in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the wind. Keep your mouth, nose, skin covered. As soon as you reach at a distance of 2-3 Kms or more decontaminate yourself by removing your clothes and taking a shower if possible. Seek a medical advice if available. Get into a shelter (preferably deep underground) for the next 48-72 hours and come out only when advised by safety response team which may even take weeks depending on the weight of the bomb. Should you not be able to move away immediately from the site, immediately duck and cover yourself behind a barrier which can be a wall, sand bags, or get into any shelter or room. At the earliest opportunity move away from the blast site. Radiation cloud usually settles down within a radius of 20 miles and may take days to weeks. The key to surviving a nuclear blast is getting out of and not going into harm’s way. Farther away you are from the blast site, longer it is in time from initial blast, and more separation between you and the outside atmosphere increases your chances of surviving a nuclear attack. Make sure you carry the bare minimum survival supplies inside the shelter and come out only when the ambient atmospheric levels of radiation levels are within normal permissible limits. Seek institutional medical advice on exit. Pregnant women, children and older people need to be on medical surveillance for a longer period of time. In a city like Delhi with a high population density the scenario is likely to be chaotic if panic sets in. People need to be sensitized to such situations beforehand. How does one know if the blast is nuclear or not? The scientists find it through radiation detectors and seismographic patterns but for a common person any deafening sound that you have never heard before accompanied by shaking of earth, light flashes and a mushroom shaped cloud could be a nuclear detonation.

Don’t leave the emergency response in the event of nuclear war on the state, you will be disappointed as State sponsored emergency response teams are themselves overwhelmed by the possibilities and consequences of a nuclear disaster. No American city has developed an effective or fool proof plan to deal with a nuclear detonation disaster or a meaningful organized state preparedness to an all out nuclear war. We can minimize the fatalities of a nuclear disaster by education and citizen participation. The only effective way to avoid the horrific consequences of nuclear disaster is by way of abolition of nuclear weapons. An all out Nuclear War is less likely than before but by no means out of question so prudence merits some amount of preparedness  for the sad possibility. In a place like Kashmir there are hardly many houses with basements where one can run for shelter. Till we have them the best option is to run away as quickly and as far from the site of nuclear blast and stay there till it is safe. I hope and pray we don’t get to experience such a calamity. My mother in laws apprehensions on that September night were not totally baseless may be just a little melodramatic, but that is what love for life is all about.

Scarlet Woman Already Threatening North Korea (Rev 17)

Hillary’s Hawks Are Threatening Escalation Against North Korea

They’re talking about cyber war, intensified sanctions, and preemptive military strikes

By Tim Shorrock

October 28, 2016

South Korean protesters stage a rally to oppose deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, in Seoul, South Korea, September 9, 2016. (AP Photo / Ahn Young-joon)

Over the past two weeks, South Korea has been obsessed with a huge scandal involving its president, Park Geun-hye. Highly unpopular, she faces fierce criticism and protests over her mysterious relationship with a religious cultist without any position in government who apparently edited Park’s speeches and may have made critical decisions concerning North Korea.

But in Washington, where foreign-policy elites generally ignore the politics of South Korea, the obsession was over North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un. He has built a small arsenal of nuclear weapons and—claiming that his country’s survival is at stake—is moving relentlessly to develop missiles capable of reaching not only South Korea and Japan but even the United States.

On October 24, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, essentially threw up his hands over Kim, expressing exasperation over the failure of economic sanctions to slow his weapons program. ““I think the notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearize is probably a lost cause,” he said in a speech in New York.

That same week, John Hamre, a former Pentagon official and the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, admitted in a conference on Korea at the conservative Heritage Foundation that many in Washington are embracing a more militaristic approach. “I’ve been at meetings with senior US officials who say we need to change policy to formally embrace regime change,” he said. Hamre argued that such a policy would be counterproductive because it would lose China’s support for denuclearization.

So what will the next US president—widely believed to be Hillary Clinton—do about Korea? It just so happens that, as November 8 draws near, she has quietly mapped out hawkish positions on North Korea and China that would go well beyond President Obama’s policy mix of military pressure and economic sanctions.

“There’s no doubt she’ll be a far more hawkish president than Obama,” historian Andrew Bacevich said in a Washington speech at the New America Foundation on October 19, speaking specifically of Clinton’s approach to Asia and the Pacific.

Clinton’s offensive has been shaped by two of her senior foreign policy advisers, both of whom are veterans of Obama’s first term: Kurt Campbell, Clinton’s former assistant secretary of state for Asia, and Michèle Flournoy, who was assistant secretary of defense for policy. They are the co-founders of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a pro-military think tank founded in 2007. Campbell currently serves as co-chairman and Flournoy is the CEO. In recent days, both Campbell and Flournoy have told Korean audiences that all options, including preemptive military strikes, would be on the table when it comes to Kim.

To prevent the North from developing nukes, “we’re going to ring China with missile defense,” Clinton said.

Strangely, despite the growing tensions, North Korea hasn’t figured large in the three presidential debates. Instead, Clinton has focused largely on Donald Trump’s cavalier suggestion in September that South Korea and Japan develop their own nuclear weapons to counter the North.

Clinton, eager to show her fealty to traditional US policy, has argued instead for maintaining US alliances with Seoul and Tokyo and keeping the US “nuclear umbrella” over them. “I would work with our allies in Asia, in Europe, in the Middle East, and elsewhere,” she said in the final debate on October 19. “That’s the only way we’re going to be able to keep the peace.”

The Clinton team’s new thinking for Korea began to emerge on September 9, when North Korea tested its fifth nuclear device since 2006. That day, she declared US policy, particularly the Obama administration’s plan to lean on China to curb Kim and his military, dead in the water.

“It’s clear that the increasing threat posed by North Korea requires not only a rethinking of the strategy, but an urgent effort to convince the neighbors, most particularly China, that this is not just a US issue,” Clinton said after she convened a group of her national security advisers.

The public got another glimpse into her thinking two weeks ago, when WikiLeaks released three Clinton speeches delivered to Goldman Sachs in 2013 (the texts were included in hacked e-mails from former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta).

To prevent the North from developing nukes, Clinton said in one talk to her banker friends, “we’re going to ring China with missile defense. We’re going to put more of our fleet in the area. So, China, come on, you either control them or we’re going to have to defend against them.”

Clinton’s private militance was on public display on October 17, when retired Admiral James Stavridis, a top Clinton adviser, told an NPR affiliate in Boston that North Korea was “the most dangerous country in the world,” and mapped out a provocative plan to counter its nuclear program with cyber war and preemptive military strikes.

Stavridis, the former commander of the US European Command who was briefly considered by Clinton as a running mate, said her administration would go beyond sanctions with a “significant effort in the cyber world to try and neutralize [Kim’s] progress.” He endorsed developing US military contingencies “capable of reaching into that regime and blunting their abilities to use those weapons.”

Retired admiral James Stavridis is talking about “a short, sharp conflict” that would lead to “thousands of deaths.”

If there was “credible intelligence” that Kim was planning to use his arsenal, “you would launch a preemptive strike,” said Stavridis. Even though this would spark a war, he played down the potential impact. “Unfortunately we’d be in for a short, sharp conflict on the Korean peninsula” that would lead to “thousands of deaths,” he said. But “I’m confident South Korea and the United States would easily surmount North Korea.”

Stavridis is well-acquainted with US capabilities from his military career and his current role as chair of the international advisory board of Northrop Grumman, the nation’s second-largest military contractor. But it seems insulting to tell Koreans—who lost nearly 4 million people in the Korean War, one of the most devastating in modern history—that another war would be “easy.” Nearly 37,000 US soldiers died as well.

To be sure, Obama’s own policies are also fairly hawkish. In recent months, his administration has tightened economic sanctions against Pyongyang and announced the imminent deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile-defense battery, known as THAAD, to the peninsula.

To back up US concerns about Kim’s nuclear and missile programs, the Pentagon has sent B-1B strategic bombers capable of nuclear strikes into Korean airspace, most recently on September 13. And two weeks ago, Daniel Russel, Obama’s top diplomat for Asia, boasted that Kim would “immediately die” if he managed to succeed in building nuclear-capable missiles.

Still, Obama has refrained from antagonizing China—as Clinton’s “ring of missile defense” surely would—in the hopes that Chinese leaders might prod Kim to end his nuclear program. The THAAD missile-defense deployment, however, has stirred strong political opposition within South Korea. Many Koreans feel Obama’s actions could deepen the standoff with the North, and would prefer to see a return to negotiations and diplomacy.

Many Americans who have worked on Korea agree. Over the weekend of October 22, three former US diplomats met in Malaysia with a delegation from North Korea’s foreign ministry for two days of informal talks. According to the South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo, the North was represented by Han Song-ryol, a foreign vice minister, and four other senior-level diplomats:

Among the participants, who gathered at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, was Robert Gallucci, who was part of a U.S. negotiation team in 1994 that reached a landmark deal with Pyongyang on freezing its nuclear-weapons program in return for economic incentives. Joseph DeTrani, a former U.S. deputy envoy for the long-stalled six party talks aimed at dissuading the North from its nuclear weapons program, and Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, were also there.

While details of the two-day meeting remain unknown, Sigal told reporters there that the North Korean team demanded that the two sides begin talks for a “peace treaty” that would establish diplomatic relations between the two.

Both the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign made clear that the three men did not speak for them. After the meeting, sources told the daily Hankyoreh that US attendees “were not assigned any authority to negotiate by the Barack Obama administration or by the camp of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who is likely to win the election next month.”

Former defense secretary William Perry and former Congresswoman Jane Harman call for direct US negotiations with the North.

Other US policy experts, including William Perry, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, and Jane Harman, the former congresswoman, have called for direct US negotiations with North Korea.

“The United States has an underappreciated ace in its deck: North Korea has been trying to talk to us since 1974,” Harman wrote in a September 30 op-ed in The Washington Post.

Citing the ineffectiveness of sanctions and the limits of Chinese influence, Harman urged a future administration “to enter into talks with Pyongyang with the stated goal of negotiating a freeze of all North Korean nuclear and long-range missile tests and a return of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. Realistically, this can only be achieved through direct talks with North Korea.”

But the Clinton team has flatly rejected that approach, arguing that North Korea must first agree to denuclearize before talking. In the days leading up to her final debate with Donald Trump, both Campbell and Flournoy mapped out a strategy to pressure Kim Jong-un—as Stavridis suggested—with threats of military strikes.

Campbell laid out Clinton’s potential stance in a joint appearance in Washington on October 11 with Peter Hoekstra, a former Republican lawmaker advising Trump. In his talk, Campbell rejected the idea of dialogue with the North. “Let’s focus now on the activation of a much more engaged, purposeful sanctions regime,” he said.

Asked about a preemptive strike, he replied that Clinton was “not going to take any options off the table at this time.” He noted that Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate, and Wendy Sherman, another Clinton adviser, have staked out similar ground. Hoekstra, speaking for Trump, agreed with Campbell on the strikes, and said the Republican candidate, if elected, would not talk directly to Kim, as he had promised early in the campaign.

Antiwar groups are stepping up demands for peace talks and calling on Obama to cancel planned anti-missile deployments.

Flournoy, who is widely expected to be named defense secretary in the next Clinton administration, chose the Korean government-owned Yonhap News to make her stand. “Negotiations are a waste of time unless you have those signals” from the North that they have denuclearized, she said in an interview with the news service published on October 16. And when it comes to dealing with Kim, “Flournoy said that all options are on the table, including preemptive military action,” Yonhap reported. Flournoy was in Seoul that week with a delegation from her think tank.

In response to the growing tensions, antiwar groups in the United States are stepping up their demands for peace talks and de-escalation. Over 70 individuals and 84 organizations from around the world, including Noam Chomsky, have signed a global petition requesting that the Obama administration cancel the THAAD deployment in South Korea.

The missile-defense strategy, the petition states, “intensifies regional military tensions, fuels a new arms race, and increases the possibility of a new war on the Korean peninsula. In doing so, it also undermines the national sovereignty and democratic aspirations of people in other countries, in this instance those in South Korea.”

Last weekend, antiwar and Korea solidarity groups in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC, staged candlelight vigils to protest the THAAD deployment. They were organized in part to support the vigils that have taken place for weeks in South Korea. In Seongju Township, where the missile-defense battery may be located, the rallies have been going on for 100 days straight, Hankyoreh reported on October 21.

“Whether it takes 200 days or 300 days, we’ll keep holding the candles and continuing the struggle until the THAAD deployment plans are scrapped,” Kim Chung-hwan, the chair of the regional action committee, declared at one rally.

The Pakistani Nuclear Triad (Daniel 8:8)

Pakistan Is Getting Eight Submarines From China

October 31, 2016

The port of Karachi.

And in 12 years the nuclear-armed state could have a formidable deterrent under the Indian Ocean. This is how long it will take for the present arrangement, where four diesel-electric submarines are assembled in China and an additional four are built at a Karachi shipyard, to join the Pakistan Navy as commissioned vessels. Their arrival marks a huge leap forward for both the Pakistan Navy, whose own abilities are rather modest, and Islamabad’s cozy relationship with Beijing–its armorer of choice for the past 30 years.

On October 16, 2016, Chinese media outlet People.cn confirmed the deal by citing the chief executive of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC). People.cn did mention two crucial details. The first was the ballpark figure for how much eight submarines are going to cost. This was put “between 4 billion to 5 billion USD.” The second is citing a Reuters story from April 2015 that first broke the news.

What People.cn didn’t report was the designation of the “attack submarines.” It was a photo of a scale model above the article labeled “S-20” that suggested what the Pakistan Navy has its sights on: China’s latest diesel-electric attack submarine.

For Pakistan to seek out Chinese submarines isn’t as groundbreaking as it sounds. Since the 2000s Pakistan’s navy has been turning into a collection of Made in China warships. Its largest surface combatants for example, the Zulfiqar-class frigates, are Chinese designed anti-submarine warfare platforms.

Long-reliant on French, German, Turkish, and American suppliers, the large order of Chinese submarines comes at a time when the Pakistan Navy’s current fleet is both aging and nearly obsolete. With just five submarines alongside a collection of littoral “fast attack craft,” having quiet diesel electrics at its disposal would better prepare the branch for a serious confrontation with India.

A multi-billion dollar deal of this magnitude adds perspective to the Pakistan Navy’s years of false leads and negotiations with European navies for surplus vessels.

When reports first broke about Pakistan’s quest for diesel-electric submarines in mid-2015 it was immediately known these were a batch of S-20 or Yuan-class, a.k.a. Type 41, vessels. Very little is known about the Yuan-class except its reputation as an analog of the Russian Kilo-class or Project 636 submarine.

What is certain among various analysis of the Yuan-class is its conventional Air-Independent Propulsion (AIP) system allows it to travel undetected in shallow waters for longer periods. Normally, most diesel-electrics divide their time between running on batteries and then switching to diesel propulsion. There are some, however, who have claimed the AIP for these exported Yuan-class submarines won’t be included.

AIP or not, what Pakistan gains with its Yuan-class submarines is a boost for its local shipyards and a medium-term ability to maraud neighboring coastlines

Russian Nuclear Submarines Approach Aleppo

EXCLUSIVE: Russian submarines spotted off BRITISH COAST in latest Putin offensive
RUSSIA is sending three powerful submarines capable of bombing the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.

By Marco Giannangeli, Exclusive

PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sun, Oct 30, 2016 | UPDATED: 21:21, Sun, Oct 30, 2016

Russian submarines have been spotted on their way to join action against rebels in Aleppo

While the world condemns the flotilla of Russian surface battleships on its way to the east Mediterranean, it is the submarines that will unleash deadly metal rain on Syria’s last rebel stronghold, experts warn.

The news comes as tensions between London and Moscow escalate following Britain’s decision to deploy tanks, fighter aircraft and up to 800 troops to Baltic war games.

A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was last night tracking two of the boats in the Irish Sea.

They are expected to join the task force, headed by Russia’s only aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, on Monday.

It is not the first time Russia has used its silent weapons of destruction to attack Syrian soil.

In December last year its Military Maritime Fleet successfully trialled the first firing of cruise missiles from a submarine, when the Kilo-class ‘Rostov-on-Don’ launched four Kalibr missiles, with a 4,000 km range, on ISIS targets.

It is not ISIS, however, that is expected to be the target of this newest deployment, but rather Aleppo, where 270,000 civilians remain trapped with no hope of escape.

Sources revealed that two Akula-class attack submarines, armed with the same Kalibr land attack cruise missile system, were “pinged” by a Royal Navy Trafalgar-class submarine as they sailed through the Irish Sea.

The boats, made famous by the blockbuster “Hunt for Red October” starring Sean Connery, are usually based at Severmorsk, near Murmansk.

They sail as part of the Northern Fleet, formerly known as the “Red Banner” fleet after an honour it was bestowed during the height of the Cold War in 1965.

Submarines are passing through the Irish Sea to reach the Syrian city of Aleppo

A third, a Kilo-class submarine from the same fleet, crept through the English Channel after being spotted by a Norwegian P3 Maritime Patrol aircraft while it surfaced.

While slower than their nuclear-powered counterparts , Russia’s Kilo class submarines are said to be the quietest diesel-electric submarines in the world, and are primarily designed for anti-submarine warfare.

All three have been shadowed off the South West approaches by the Royal Navy submarine, which boasts Russian-speaking technicians in its crew and tracked them in a six-hour contact.

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

Earthquakes May Endanger New York More Than Thought, Says Study

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.

The Nuclear Psychosis of the Scarlet Woman (Rev 17)

The Nuclear Option — Wikileaks Reveals Even Hillary’s Own Staff Knows Truth: She’s Psychotic

Turns out the Clintons have been right all along: Lying really does work.

Poring through all these purloined emails, you get the sense that these people spend every breathing second of their day either lying, plotting to tell lies or lying about lies they told in the past.

And each batch of stolen emails is worse than the last.

Hillary Clinton is a liar. She has terrible instincts. She doesn’t believe in anything. Her head is broken. She doesn’t know why she should be president. She is pathological. And she is psychotic.

Just ask everybody who works for her. Just ask campaign chairman John Podesta. Just ask the people working the hardest to get her elected president.

I mean, in her most rabid streak of attacks on Donald Trump’s alleged unfitness for office, Mrs. Clinton doesn’t call him “psychotic.”

Psychotic! That is what her campaign chairman called her.

Remember back when President Bill Clinton got into all that trouble molesting the young intern in his Oral Office? Remember the first thing the lying, conniving, dissembling commander-in-cheek did?

Take a poll. And he found out that he could skate by on even this — even this! But first — the poll told him — he had to stall for time. He had to lie about it for as long as he possibly could before coming clean.

And that was exactly what he did. And he survived.

And good thing he survived so he could go on to haunt America another 15 years later.

In the latest batch of leaked emails, one top Democratic operative is still grappling with “WJC Issues.”

“How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?” Ron Klain asks in a list of questions worth posing to Mrs. Clinton.

“You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused him?”

And, perhaps the best: “Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies?”

Answer: Not likely.

Never apologize. Never admit. And always keep lying.

That is the very heart of the ethos of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Lie about everything. Lie all the time.

Lie about emails. Lie about servers. Lie about national security. Lie about who knew what when. Lie about spilling classified secrets. Lie about dead soldiers.

Exhaust the people with lies. And then, very flippantly, after months or years of lying, say whatever you have to say to make the press go away.

“I am sorry you were confused.”

“I have already said I wish I had done it differently.”

“What difference, at this point, does it make?”

It is all so shameless and dirty and befuddling that it would make Niccolo Machiavelli blush.

• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.

Approaching The Nuclear Prelude (Revelation 8)

Two Nuclear Powers Are One Skirmish Away From All Out War

SAAGAR ENJETI
1:52 PM 10/29/2016

India and Pakistan each expelled a high-ranking opposing diplomat Thursday amid increasing tensions over the disputed northern territory of Kashmir.

India expelled the Pakistani diplomat on charges of “espionage activities” on India’s security capabilities on the Kashmiri border. Pakistan angrily responded that the charges were “false and unsubstantiated” before itself expelling a member of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

Tensions between the two countries skyrocketed after India suppressed a civilian uprising in Kashmir, culminating in the Indian killing of Kashmiri militant leader Burhan Wani. Wani was a major agitator against Indian administration of Kashmir, and frequently posted social media videos calling for violent uprising. His death sparked widespread protests across Kashmir, and was strongly condemned by the Pakistani government.

As angry rhetoric about terrorist sponsorship increased on both sides, a border clash between the two security forces erupted Sept. 17. Islamist militants stormed into an Indian Army base and gunned down 17 Indian soldiers, which the Indian government immediately blamed on Pakistan. “I am deeply disappointed with Pakistan’s continued and direct support to terrorism and terrorist groups,” India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Twitter after the attack.

The Indian government claimed two weeks later Oct. 3 to have conducted “surgical strikes” by special forces across the Pakistani line of control in Kashmir. Indian incursion into Pakistan without prior notice again inflamed tensions to higher levels. The Pakistani government denies any such raid took place.

Experts say Pakistan’s government insists the strikes did not took place, because if they did so they would be forced to respond. “The Pakistani military would be forced to retaliate in the event of a more prominent strike,” retired Indian Army Col. Ajai Shukla wrote in a New Delhi paper.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even pulled out of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation scheduled for November. Modi then went so far as to denounce Pakistan as the “mothership of terrorism” at a Oct. 26 meeting with Russian, Chinese and Brazilian heads of state. Modi’s escalation rhetoric is meant to put pressure on Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to crackdown on terrorist militant groups operating inside his borders.

The problem is Sharif has a limited amount of authority over the Pakistani Army, which is seen as the main sponsor of the militant groups. “Prime Minister Sharif knows better than most that there are limits to how far he can push the army without the army pushing him out the door,” he elaborated. Sharif was ousted in a 1999 coup d’état by Pakistani Army Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

The tensions even extend to the cultural realm. Nationalist fervor is sweeping India in the wake of the September attacks, as prominent Indian film directors came out pledging not to hire Pakistani actors, or screen films with Pakistani cast members. Pakistan angrily responded by banning all Indian radio and television shows from the country, despite their widespread popularity.

While nationalist fervor and strong rhetoric is good for Modi domestically, it is amplifying support for the army in Pakistan, according to Myra MacDonald’s, author of “Defeat Is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War.”

“When we get to the next terror attack, which is probably only a matter of time, the prime minister has boxed himself in, and he can’t take the route his predecessors did and choose to use solely diplomatic alternatives without some loss of face,” Brookings Institution fellow Bruce Riedel told The New York Times Oct. 23.

The History Of New York Earthquakes: Before The Sixth Seal (Rev 6:12)

 

The Historic Earthquakes
Near New York City, New York
1884 08 10 19:07 UTC
Magnitude 5.5
Intensity VII

New York historic earthquakes

USGS.gov

This severe earthquake affected an area roughly extending along the Atlantic Coast from southern Maine to central Virginia and westward to Cleveland, Ohio. Chimneys were knocked down and walls were cracked in several States, including Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Many towns from Hartford, Connecticut, to West Chester,Pennsylvania.

Property damage was severe at Amityville and Jamaica, New York, where several chimneys were "overturned" and large cracks formed in walls. Two chimneys were thrown down and bricks were shaken from other chimneys at Stratford (Fairfield County), Conn.; water in the Housatonic River was agitated violently. At Bloomfield, N.J., and Chester, Pa., several chimneys were downed and crockery was broken. Chimneys also were damaged at Mount Vernon, N.Y., and Allentown, Easton, and Philadelphia, Pa. Three shocks occurred, the second of which was most violent. This earthquake also was reported felt in Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Several slight aftershocks were reported on August 11.

The Camadian Nuclear Horn (Daniel 7)

Canada votes against nuclear disarmament resolution at United Nations

BY DAVID PUGLIESE, OTTAWA CITIZEN
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: OCT 28, 2016O

Thursday at the United Nations there was a vote on establishing negotiations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons. 123 nations voted in favour of the resolution.

But those nations with nuclear weapons, including the U.S., Russia, China, North Korea, France and others voted against it, Bloomberg news service noted in its article. Canada also voted against the resolution (38 nations, including many NATO nations, opposed the effort to ban nuclear weapons….16 others abstained).Co-sponsored by 57 nations, the resolution calls for a conference next year “to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.”

“Opposing its call for a nuclear-free world is awkward for world leaders, and none more so than U.S. President Barack Obama,” Bloomberg news service noted in its article. “He’s preparing to leave office seven years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in large part for what the award panel called his ‘vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.’ ”

Peggy Mason, Former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament to the UN, now President of the Rideau Institute released the following statement after Canada’s UN vote today against Resolution L.41:

“The First Committee on Disarmament and International Security of the UN General Assembly today passed an historic resolution, mandating the launch in 2017 of negotiations for a legally binding instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons. Such a ban would reinforce customary international law against the threat or use of nuclear weapons and pave the way for further negotiations on their verifiable destruction and ultimate elimination.

Tensions between Russia and the USA are dangerously high. Massive nuclear weapons modernization programmes are underway. The negotiation to be launched by this resolution is the best hope the international community has to move away from the nuclear brink.

Canada’s vote against this resolution puts this country, quite simply, on the wrong side of history. Canada was one of only a handful of countries to vote NO. In so doing we joined with most other NATO member states, in blatant contradiction of our legal obligation under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) Article VI to enter into good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. This is the exact opposite of what Canada should be doing. We should be working as hard as we can to reduce NATO’s unconscionable and unnecessary reliance on nuclear weapons, not using that reliance as a reason for opposing nuclear disarmament negotiations at the UN. In that regard, we note that fellow NATO member, Netherlands, withstood American pressure and abstained rather than voting no.

Canada has another opportunity to put this right when the General Assembly votes on this resolution in early December. We call on Canada to change its vote ideally to a YES but, at a minimum, to an abstention and at the same time to signal its intent to contribute constructively to the negotiation, once launched. These actions would be worthy of a country seeking to be elected to the UN Security Council in 2021.”