Asteroid 'Near Miss', NK Atomic test, Verbal Spats and German Bomb Disposal

Speckled Wood

Asteroid Florence made a close fly-by the Earth over the pass few days, with a 145 million mile margin, still quite close in astronomical terms. If it had hit, it would likely have wiped out life on our planet as we know it.

In an attempt to compensate for this failure, Kim Jong-un ordered the explosion of a hydrogen bomb, causing an earthquake of magnitude 6 on the Richter scale. Shaking was felt both in China and South Korea.

This obviously has both South Korea and Japan deeply concerned. The the former with city of millions, Seoul, just 50 km from the border. The latter, within range, and being the one country that has experienced the horror of being at the receiving end of the only two atomic bombs dropped in anger.

But apparently, Kim Jong-un still has the US in his sights. As his country's demi-god, he might believe the retaliation is survivable. The USA has 430+ nuclear ICBMs with 481 atomic warheads and 230 SLBMs (Submarine launched ballistic missiles), with 920 atomic warheads.  They could effectively obliterate the whole Korean peninsula and initiate a global nuclear winter.

Currently, there is still a flurry of diplomatic activity. Yet, with the increase in heated rhetoric, it could take just a small thing to initiate a catastrophic outcome. This might be an unwelcome demonstration of the 'butterfly effect' (small incident - causing dramatic effect). US Defense Secretary James Mattis warned of "a massive military response" to any threat from North Korea against the United States or its allies.

The fallout from last weeks strained Brexit negotiations continues to rumble, with David Davis using humour to disparage criticism by his counterpart Michel Barnier as appearing a bit "silly". Michel in turn commented that the UK needed to be educated in the real consequences of Brexit. Tellingly he said that Europe and European unity were more important than Brexit.

We had a quiet day, pottering.

Perhaps the aposite other news of the day was the evacuation of over 60,000 people in the city of Frankfurt and the successful defusion of a large unexploded conventional bomb, left over from the second world war. There are an anticipated 250,000 unexploded bombs in Germany alone, dropped by the Allies and the country has a dedicated bomb disposal team. As the Spiegel stated in a 2008 article:
"In the whole of Germany, more than 2,000 tons of American and British aerial bombs and all sorts of munitions ranging from German hand grenades and tank mines to Russian artillery shells are recovered each year. Barely a week goes by without a city street or motorway being cordoned off or even evacuated in Germany due to an unexploded bomb being discovered."  - more than 70 years after the end of that conflict.