A lot of people I know, online and off, seem to be a bit preoccupied with the realization that North Korea could possibly have a nuclear ICBM that might reach America. I would like to try and alleviate some of this media-fueled paranoia. Ratings are not everything.
Keep calm! Great leader — probably a huge fraud.
It is important, if you want to stay calm and not be too paranoid, that you become familiar with the source of your fear. So we’ll examine North Korea in this instance. North Korea has been under the dictatorship of the Kim Family since 1948.
So for nearly 70 years, they have been almost completely cut off from the rest of the civilized world. This is true except for the few remaining communist regimes. Continually under sanctions by the United States, South Korea, Japan, and the European Union the country has struggled both financially and culturally.
Meanwhile, the Kim family remains rich while all of it’s citizens suffer. The people are banned from any contact with the outside world. The only media they ever experience is that produced by the North Korean regime. They are forced to revere and worship the Kim family as gods. Can you imagine what that must be like? If you are religious, I imagine you can. The threat posed by this dictator to his subjects is much more substantial than those of mythical gods though.
His people revere him, not because he is a great guy — he’s not. They revere him, because if they do not revere him they and/or their entire family will be sent to hard labor camps, if they’re lucky. So, North Korea is understandably demoralized and malnourished. North Korea has a GDP (gross domestic product) of 28.5 billion.
To put that into perspective America has a GDP of about 75.5 trillion.
Yearly, North Korea spends hundreds of millions of dollars on their missile program. They spend heavily on their military while starving their citizens. Over a million North Koreans died in the 1990’s as a result of Pyongyang’s horrible economic policies and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
If we were to invade North Korea today with a fleet of Korean Roach Coaches, I imagine that all of the citizens and likely even the soldiers, would surrender for food. And that’s only if one assumes that the citizens are not so thoroughly dumbed down and/or brainwashed as to actually believe Kim Jong Un is a god. The picture begins to look very different.
Don’t worry, be happy!
Not to worry friends! We have an extensive missile defense system. We have effective Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) which consists of ground based interceptor missiles (GBI) and radar in Alaska. These would intercept ballistic missiles coming from space. There are about forty GBI’s in operation in the United States with 14 more in the 2017 budget.
The US navy has the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system. Destroyers are fitted with Sm3 missiles to serve this function. There are at least 21 destroyers currently in the United States Navy and those of Japan and Australia are participating in this American defense plan.
The Army has Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) batteries deployed worldwide, but specifically around North Korea. Each battery has six launcher vehicles with eight missiles in each. THAAD radar can interoperate with the Army’s Patriot missile systems and with the US Navy’s Aegis systems.
In addition to these missile defense systems there is multilateral and international participation. So there is a web of ballistic missile defense across the globe.
It’s being perpetually upgraded, updated, and monitored. Which is why I won’t begin to get into it here. Suffice it to say that one ‘lil ole’ missile from Lil Kim is not likely to accomplish its intended goal, unless people are not rational or armed with information. Because fear is the only thing to fear.
Let us, in this time of media hype and resultant angst, not forget to stay focused on the elephant in the room. Donald Trump is destroying the fabric on which the Constitution of the United States was written! We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis. And our world is being distracted by naked and petulant emperors and their sociopathic, prepubescent games.
