핵 비상! (Hang Bisang!)

Okay, Okay, I Shall Translate

That's Korean for "Nuclear Emergency!" which you are, of course - obviously! - interpreting incorrectly.  No, it's not about The Only Fat Man In North Korea pressing the button and launching nukes at Seoul.  For one thing, Conrad strongly suspects that South Canada has a SLBM or SSGN submarine in international waters off the Korean peninsula, with orders to keep a weather eye on TOMFINK and his button-pressing activities.  Art!

Say hello to my little friend.  And his 144 cruise missiles.

     No, today's title comes from a fascinating, not to say alarming, sideline on the BBC News website, written by Jean McKenzie, their Seoul Correspondent.

     To put it succinctly, South Korea wants nuclear weapons.  

     Currently the nation is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, from which they can withdraw at any time, should they choose to do so.  It would seem that the Sorks tried to carry out a covert nuclear weapons program in the Seventies, which got shut down by the South Canadians: they offered the protection of their conventional and nuclear umbrella, which was a deal worth making at the time.  There are a couple of provisos to that agreement as of now.  Art!

     DJ Sepia had a worryingly close relationship with TOFMINK , and also threatened to withdraw South Canadian forces from the peninsula.  Plus, the Nork missile program has developed over the past fifty years.

     So the Sorks are aware that the South Canadian guarantee of support depends very much on who gets into the White House, and that Nork missiles have the potential (very theoretically!) to reach the American mainland.  That makes the guarantee of support even wobblier: risk San Francisco for Seoul?  Art!

     Yes, that hilarious map of the peninsula.  It's a dramatic illustration of the difference in technology between the Norks and the Sorks.  So yes, the Norks do have a nuclear arsenal, BUT it's taken them over sixty years to acquire it, and the evidence that they even have effective fusion warheads is lacking.  Y'know, fusion warheads, the ones you can build as big as you like. Art!

     This is the Wolseong nuclear power plant in South Korea, one of 25 such power plants.  The Norks have a single nuclear power plant at Yongbon, which doesn't generate any energy as it's only there to provide fissile material.  And it's nearly sixty years old, being constructed by the Sinister Union, so there won't be any technical back-up from there.  That's the kind of technological gap that exists between the two states, as wide as that night map shows.

     So, the question 'Could the Sorks create nuclear weapons?' is less relevant than 'How long would it take the Sorks to create nuclear weapons?'  Art!

Israeli nukes.  What could possibly go wrong!

     FYI, Israel began nuclear weapons research as soon as the country was established (1948) and they had basic fission bombs by 1967.  So, say about twenty years.  By 1985 they had fusion warheads.

     During the early Seventies, Pakistan began it's own nuclear weapons program, starting in 1972.  Art!

     They had fission warheads by 1988, so the cycle was down to sixteen years.  

     If the Sorks begin their nuclear weapons program right now and assuming that they, too, reduce the cycle by four years, then they could have fission warheads by 2035.  More likely the cycle would be reduced by more than four years as we're looking at technology fifty years on from Pakistan's.  These would be totally independent of external control, at which point China is going to start getting nervous, worrying about pre-emptive strikes and so on.  FOTMINK is going to lose weight thanks to his diet-by-stress.

     Nuclear proliferation is never a good thing, but according to Ms. McKenzie, over three-quarters of the Sork population want nukes, so it may very well happen.  

     There's an old Scottish curse: "May you live in interesting times" and we certainly are.  Hang Bisang!

Sork cuisine, to end on a more positive note

Roll On The Roel!

Roel <Googles> Konijnendijk must have students queueing up for his lectures at Oxford, he comes across so engagingly in his 'Insider' Youtube presentations.  Today we look at his review of - Art!

     Conrad has no idea what this one's about.  Romans versus European barbarians?  Ah no, Romans versus British barbarians.  Well, yes, we always bring a touch of class to any ruckus we get involved with.  Art!

     Roel's not too happy with this formation, as it lacks any kind of depth and if a single soldier in the circle falls, that's it, game over.  The next scene shows a Roman 'Testudo' or 'Tortoise' formation, where the soldiers march in a unit, completely covered by their shields.  Art!

     "Like a zombie horde" is his description of this attack, and he's not wrong.  Apparently the 'barbarian/zombie horde' stereotype goes all the way back to the Romans, and indeed the Greeks before them - it was they who came up with the word 'Barbarians' for anyone unfortunate enough to not be Greek.

     Next up we have a chariot charge.  Art!

     A la Roel, this scene conflates two different types of chariot.  In the upper picture these war-chariots would carry archers or spear-chuckers, who would be heavily armoured themselves, and who would operate at a distance from the enemy.  The lower picture shows a scythe-chariot, which sound great in the script, and look cool on a storyboard, but which rarely worked in real life.  Art!

Fair enough

A Bit Of A Fairy-Tale

As we all know, Conrad is no fan of the ballfoot game, but this one caught my eye a couple of weeks ago.  Wrexham have been out of the Football League for 15 years, which, I understand, means a lack of access to finances that is granted to members.  Art!

Club owners Rob McElhenny and Ryan Reynolds celebrate

     Well, now they're back in the FL, thanks to winning a play-off (stop me if I get too technical) against Boreham 3:1.  Predictably the fans were excited.  Art!

     Wrexham have also been made famous by a documentary the two owners did for Disney +, "We Are Wrexham" so Conrad confidently predicts that sponsors are going to be lining up and throwing money at the club.  Nice to see the underdog on the winning side.

     

"The Sea Of Sand"

A revolution is underway on Wastelandworld, and everyone's favourite Gallifreyan is right in there mixing it up with the best of them.  A giant mass of water, one hundred and twenty thousand tons of it, has just appeared on the loyalist-held trans-mat platform.

Out into the sands beyond rolled the tidal wave, onto the glass moat, cooling and cracking it amidst gigantic clouds of steam.  Behind it, buildings collapsed under the weight of water, or when their foundations were washed away.

          Those few scattered defenders who remained upright, and conscious, and aware, were then hit by stun rays and glass darts coming from the heavens, as forty three microlight gliders swooped in from the darkness and onto the trans-mat platform, arriving in a tumult of glass fragments and broken poles.  These airborne commandoes stormed the trans-mat controls (abandoned when the technicians there had been swept away) and various buildings across the complex.  From beyond the dunes, gradually getting closer, the sound of cheering, yelling Farmers could be heard as the besiegers broke from cover and joined in the capture of the complex.

          Listening intently as he jogged closer, the Doctor couldn’t help grinning foolishly in delight that his plan had worked.  Recalling that bio-vores interpreted the humanoid grin as a threat, he reverted to a satisfied smirk.  The half dozen bio-vores jogging alongside him as an escort felt happier when that feral grimace vanished.

          Thanks be to Sorbusa, reflected the Doctor.  If he hadn’t mentioned that the complex on Target Fourteen fell into the sea, matters would have been far more difficult.  The hang-gliders were a precaution, just in case the water got shut off too soon.  Four had crashed along the way after taking off from the highest point of Lord Sur’s castle, the penalty you paid for a primitive lighter than air craft with minimal crew training.

     Take that!

Finally -

Conrad has to be up early tomorrow, for then I begin 2 weeks training at Serco in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.  Assemble at 08:45 for a 09:00 start, which means getting up at 07:00 with my bag already packed and a lunch already arranged.  Thankfully the dress policy is smart casual, no need for a suit <hack> or tie <hack hack>.  It'll be a bit strange, after two and a half months of getting up whenever I felt like it.  O well.