Code-named by
NATO: “Kanyon”
January 29, 2018, 17:49
A
Russian 100-megaton nuclear device designed to demolish the east and west
coasts of the United States in the event of a nuclear war.
Russia
appears to have responded to a US trillion dollar program to deploy an
anti-missile system that would negate Russia’s ballistic missile system.
‘Kanyon’
(as NATO calls it) is designed to detonate on the US west coast, destroying the
ports of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
While
we agonize over such life and death questions as clumsy men groping women and
the crucial need for gender and racial ‘inclusion,’ let me spare a few seconds
thought to something really important and scary: Russia’s doomsday
nuclear torpedo.
Code-named by
NATO ‘Kanyon,’ it’s reportedly something new and terrifying, a ‘third
strike’ weapon designed to obliterate the US east and west coasts in a nuclear
war. US intelligence seems to think this doomsday weapon is very
real indeed.
I
just re-watched for the umpteenth time the wonderful, 1964 Kubrick film, ‘Dr.
Strangelove’ and marveled anew at how prescient this razor-sharp satire
was. In the film, the Soviets admit they ran out of money to
keep up the nuclear arms race with the United States. Their answer was to
create a secret, automated doomsday nuclear device that would destroy the
entire planet in the event of a major war.
Now,
the Russians appear to have responded to a new, trillion dollar US
program to develop and deploy an anti-missile system that would negate their
ballistic missile system: the ‘Kanyon.’ Fact imitates fiction.
This
revelation comes just after the Trump administration has also embarked on
new programs to deploy an entire new generation of lower yield nuclear
weapons that can be used for tactical war-fighting purposes. North Korea
and Iran are the evident targets, as well as Afghanistan. But
there is now talk aplenty in Pentagon circles about waging a limited tactical
nuclear war against Russia. New US bomber and drone programs are
being speeded up. War talk is in the air. Military stocks are
booming.
‘Kanyon,’
according to the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a cheerleader for military
spending, is a mammoth 100-megaton nuclear device carried by an
unmanned submarine. This monster weapon is designed to detonate on the US
west coast, destroying the ports of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San
Francisco. The device is reportedly covered with cobalt, for maximum
radioactive effect.
A
similar device launched from the Atlantic Ocean would devastate the US East
coast, leaving it under a lethal shroud of radiation for generations.
If
these reports are true, any hopes that some US generals have
of fighting and winning a ‘limited’ nuclear exchange with Russia or China
(never mind India) are absurd. But in fact any serious nuclear
exchange between the great powers would be a death sentence for the entire
planet, wrapping us in a lethal shroud of nuclear winter.
One
US intelligence study done of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan
estimated two million immediate dead and 100 million deaths within weeks.
That was from a rather limited nuclear war using first generation
weapons. Today’s weapons have ten times the explosive power.
Russia has
a large and effective nuclear arsenal. The sharp decline of Russia’s
once-mighty conventional military forces after 1991 drove Moscow to place ever
greater reliance on nuclear weapons to defend its interests. Russia
has also begun introducing modernized nuclear weapons in strategic and tactical
versions. China is also slowly developing its nuclear forces to be able
to fight a thermonuclear war against the United States and India at the same
time.
President
Trump, who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War on spurious medical grounds,
appears infatuated by military affairs and the panoply of weapons that he
commands. In an act of historic irresponsibility, he has brought the US
to the edge of nuclear war against North Korea heedless of the dire
consequences of even a ‘small’ nuclear war in Asia.
Anyone
who thinks a nuclear war can be waged without permanently polluting our planet
should be put under psychiatric care. As crazy as this notion sounds,
there are some senior US generals who share this view and, most likely,
President Trump, the man with the big red button. Russia’s
marshals are more cautious. They still see the scars of World War
II, in which some 27 million Soviet civilians died, and know what war means.
Perhaps
leaks about this Russian monster weapon are clever disinformation spread by
Moscow to give the Americans a big scare. Let’s hope so because, if real,
they should scare the pants off all of us.
