"Pentagon Papers"-Leaker Warns, US Is "Close To Nuclear Armageddon"

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon papers which exposed the government’s lies during the Vietnam war is vocalizing a warning. He says the United States is really close to a nuclear Armageddon.

Ellsberg, now 86-years-old, leaked the Pentagon papers back in 1969 and he’s now got a new book out which serves a warning to those who care to listen.

According to the Daily Mail, Ellsberg’s 7,000-page report was the WikiLeaks disclosure of its time, a sensational breach of government confidentiality that shook Richard Nixon’s presidency and prompted a Supreme Court fight that was supposed to advance press freedom.

In his new book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, Ellsberg details how easy nuclear bombs can be triggered and shot off on a false alarm – and that the president isn’t the only who can launch the nukes, as we are often told. 

Low-level military commanders are capable of launching nuclear weapons too...

“All out-nuclear war - an irreversible, unprecedented and almost unimaginable calamity for civilization and most life on earth  - has been, like the disasters of Chernobyl, Katrina, the Gulf oil spill, Fukushima Daiichi, and before these, World War I, a catastrophe waiting to happen, on a scale infinitely greater than any of these,” writes Ellsberg in his new book.

Adding to fears of a nuclear armageddon is North Korea’s insistence on building a nuclear weapon.  This has created a mass panic in nations all around the globe.  Not to mention, last month, President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that allows the US to impose more sanctions and risks inflaming tension over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.

North Korea then denounced Trump’s decision to relist it as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling the move a “serious provocation and violent infringement,” as the rogue nation sentenced the US president to death, saying he “hurt the dignity” of the “supreme leadership.” All of this is alarming, according to Ellsberg, who believes a nuclear war can be started simply by a false alarm.

Nuclear bombs “are susceptible to being triggered on a false alarm, a terrorist action, unauthorized launch or a desperate decision to escalate,” Ellsberg wrote in his book.

 

“They would kill billions of humans, perhaps ending complex life on earth. This is true even though the Cold War that rationalized their existence and hair-trigger status - and their supposed necessity to national security - ended 30 years ago.”

Many US citizens falsely believe that only the US president, in this case, Donald Trump can order the use of nuclear weapons. But Trump isn’t the only military commander authorized to launch nuclear weapons, according to the New York Post.

“There has to be a delegation of authority and capability to launch retaliatory strikes, not only to officials outside the Oval Office but outside Washington too,” Ellsberg wrote.

Ellsberg says that the only way to avoid a nuclear holocaust is full disarmament by the United States and Russia.

“The risk that one city will be destroyed by a single (perhaps terrorist) weapon in the next year or the next decade cannot, unfortunately, be reduced to zero,” Ellsberg writes.

 

“But the danger of near-extinction of humanity - a continuous possibility for the past 65 years - can be reduced to zero by the dismantlement of most existing weapons in both the United States and Russia.”

"The Threat Is Real" - Millions In Tokyo Join Nuclear Strike Evacuation Drills

Earlier this week, Hawaii reportedly tested its system of nuclear sirens for the first time since the 1960s as the state’s governor warned that he was taking North Korea’s threats of nuclear annihilation extremely seriously. Today, the Telegraph is reporting that the paranoia has spread to Japan, where millions of Tokyo residents will participate in evacuation drills meant to simulate their response to North Korean nuclear strike.

And Tokyo isn’t the first city to conduct these types of large scale drills: Towns facing the Korean Peninsula have conducted similar drills in recent months.

The national and city governments are to carry out a series of exercises between January and March to prepare for a potential attack on Tokyo, the Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported, the first time that a major Japanese city will have carried out responses to a simulated attack.

 

Towns facing the Korean Peninsula have in recent months conducted similar drills, with residents instructed to seek shelter in response to sirens warning of an imminent missile strike.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called on local governments throughout the country to identify underground facilities or buildings that are sufficiently sturdy to withstand a missile attack and to designate those facilities as shelters.

Many ordinary Japanese believe the evacuation drills are an important precaution. One Tokyo resident said he participates because he believes that, if North Korea chose to attack, Tokyo would be the logical target.

"I believe the threat is very real and that war could break out at any time", said Ken Kato, a human rights campaigner who lives in Tokyo. Nearly 9.3 million people live in the city, with millions more travelling into the metropolis every day for work.

 

"I also believe that the average Japanese person does not want to think about the worst-case scenario because it is simply too unpleasant, but we cannot keep our heads in the sand any longer", he told The Telegraph.

 

"Evacuation drills are a sensible precaution that would help to minimize casualties, in much the same way as we practice what to do in the event of a major earthquake", he said.

 

"And if war did break out, then I think it is unfortunately inevitable that North Korea would target Tokyo", he added. "The US has a major military base at Yokota, to the west of the city, and its main naval base in the region is at Yokosuka, to the southwest. 

 

"It is hard to believe they would not want to strike those military concentrations," he said, adding that it is unlikely that the North Korean regime would be particularly concerned about casualties among civilians living nearby.

Last week, North Korea launched its ne Hwasong-15 ICBM, the country’s first missile test in more than two months. The missile’s peak height and flight time have led experts to suspect that it could probably strike anywhere on the Continental US – though perhaps not with the highest degree of accuracy.

Like the US, Japan is also at risk of an airburst – the detonation of a nuclear weapon far above the earth’s surface that could knock out the country’s power grid, indirectly killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Local Chinese Newspaper On North Korean Border Shares Some Advice On Surviving A Nuclear Attack

Just yesterday the Russian foreign ministry issued a stark warning to the international community that"the situation on the Korean Peninsula is on the brink of war," adding that "Kim seeks to raise the stakes before any talks." 

Of course, these warnings followed the announcement earlier this week that the US and South Korea launched their largest aerial drills yet, less than a week after North Korea tested its new Hwasong-15 missile which military observers said has the capacity to strike Washington DC, or nearly any other location in the continental US.

As we reported Sunday, the annual US-South Korean drills, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday. Six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters will be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part. Not surprisingly, the North has condemned the exercises as yet another provocation.

And while continuous warnings such as these go mostly unnoticed by Americans, at least one local newspaper in the Jilin province of China on North Korea"s northeastern border figures its better to be safe than sorry and issued a helpful guide on what residents should do in the event of a nuclear attack.  Per Bloomberg:

An official Chinese newspaper near North Korea has published a page of articles on coping with nuclear attacks, in a sign of growing anxiety over Kim Jong Un’s weapons program.

 

The Jilin Daily -- the government newspaper of Jilin province on North Korea’s northeastern border -- published articles on page 5 explaining how nuclear weapons work and the damage they cause. The paper used cartoons to offer advice on what residents can do about radiation exposure and provided instructions on how to respond during an attack.

 

One article listed essential items for emergency kits, including fire extinguishers and breathing masks. Another warned that air raids could mean nuclear, chemical and biological attacks, and used the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima as an example.

 

The cartoon images illustrated how residents should clean their bodies, boots and coats after being exposed to radiation. They suggested taking iodine tablets, if there is radiation nearby.

Meanwhile, the paper even offered some helpful cartoons for residents looking to prep for the nuclear apocalypse.  And while our Mandarin is not great, the cartoons seem to imply that so long as you cover your face with a cloth and down some iodine tablets...you"ll be just fine.

And, for those who like to be extra safe, the Jilin Daily also provides these helpful tips which presumably suggest you should clean your ears, take a shower and vomit as necessary.

Then again, we hear that taking "giant panic breaths" of pure oxygen also works well for scenarios such as these...

For The First Time In 26 Years, US To Put Nuclear Bombers On 24 Hour Alert

The unexpected decision by President Trump to amend an emergency Sept 11 order signed by George W Bush, allowing the Air Force to recall up to 1,000 retired air force pilots to address what the Pentagon has decribed as "an acute shortage of pilots" caught us by surprise. After all, this was the first time we have heard of this particular labor shortage - perhaps there was more to this executive order than meets the eye. Indeed, a just released report may help explain the reasoning behind this presidential decision.

According to Defense One, the US Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.

 That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of Barksdale Air Force Base"s 11,000-foot runway — dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings — could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice.

“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, told the publication in an interview during his six-day tour of Barksdale and other U.S. Air Force bases that support the nuclear mission. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”

Quoted by Defense One, Goldfein and other senior defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given, but that preparations were under way in anticipation that it might come. That decision would be made by Gen. John Hyten, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, or Gen. Lori Robinson, the head of U.S. Northern Command. STRATCOM is in charge of the military’s nuclear forces and NORTHCOM is in charge of defending North America.

Putting the B-52s back on alert is just one of many decisions facing the Air Force as the U.S. military responds to a changing geopolitical environment that includes North Korea’s rapidly advancing nuclear arsenal, President Trump’s confrontational approach to Pyongyang, and Russia’s increasingly potent and active armed forces.

Goldfein, who is the Air Force’s top officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is asking his force to think about new ways that nuclear weapons could be used for deterrence, or even combat.

Quoted by Def One, he said that “the world is a dangerous place and we’ve got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons. It’s no longer a bipolar world where it’s just us and the Soviet Union. We’ve got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It’s never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right.” During his trip across the country last week, Goldfein encouraged airmen to think beyond Cold War uses for ICBMs, bombers and nuclear cruise missiles.

“I’ve challenged…Air Force Global Strike Command to help lead the dialog, help with this discussion about ‘What does conventional conflict look like with a nuclear element?’ and ‘Do we respond as a global force if that were to occur?’ and ‘What are the options?’” he said. “How do we think about it — how do we think about deterrence in that environment?”

Asked if placing B-52s back on alert — as they were for decades — would help with deterrence, Goldfein said it’s hard to say.

“Really it depends on who, what kind of behavior are we talking about, and whether they’re paying attention to our readiness status,” he said.

Meanwhile, various improvements have already been made to prepare Barksdale — home to the 2d Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the service’s nuclear forces — to return B-52s to an alert posture. Near the alert pads, an old concrete building — where B-52 crews during the Cold War would sleep, ready to run to their aircraft and take off at a moment’s notice — is being renovated.

Inside, beds are being installed for more than 100 crew members, more than enough room for the crews that would man bombers positioned on the nine alert pads outside. There’s a recreation room, with a pool table, TVs and a shuffleboard table. Large paintings of the patches for each squadron at Barksdale adorn the walls of a large stairway.

 

One painting — a symbol of the Cold War — depicts a silhouette of a B-52 with the words “Peace The Old Fashioned Way,” written underneath. At the bottom of the stairwell, there is a Strategic Air Command logo, yet another reminder of the Cold War days when American B-52s sat at the ready on the runway outside.

 

Those long-empty B-52 parking spaces will soon get visits by two nuclear command planes, the E-4B Nightwatch and E-6B Mercury, both which will occasionally sit alert there. During a nuclear war, the planes would become the flying command posts of the defense secretary and STRATCOM commander, respectively. If a strike order is given by the president, the planes would be used to transmit launch codes to bombers, ICBMs and submarines. At least one of the four nuclear-hardened E-4Bs — formally called the National Airborne Operations Center, but commonly known as the Doomsday Plane — is always on 24-hour alert.

Barksdale and other bases with nuclear bombers are preparing to build storage facilities for a new nuclear cruise missile that is under development. During his trip, Goldfein received updates on the preliminary work for a proposed replacement for the 400-plus Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the new long-range cruise missile.

“Our job is options,” Goldfein told Defense One"s Marcus Weisgerber. “We provide best military advice and options for the commander and chief and the secretary of defense. Should the STRATCOM commander require or the NORTHCOM commander require us to [be on] a higher state of readiness to defend the homeland, then we have to have a place to put those forces."

And now that the US is preparing for immediate nuclear war readiness, all it needs is a provocation, one which a world which has never been more on edge over a stray tweet, may have little difficulty in finding...

Monitor Releases Simulation Of What Nuclear Strike On North Korea Would Look Like

A scientist tasked with monitoring the proliferation of nuclear weapons has published what he described as a “rough simulation” of what would happen if North Korea follows through with threats to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

The upshot of the simulation – which was published by Lassina Zerbo, the head of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization - is that such an “atmospheric burst” could spread a “radio-isotope cloud” of radiation across the planet, potentially leading to the catastrophic loss of life. 

In response to inquiries: Rough simulation (Sept15-29) of #radio-isotope cloud from hypothetical atmospheric burst over Pacific: #CTBT #IMS pic.twitter.com/361ZBkoUy7

— Lassina Zerbo (@SinaZerbo) September 28, 2017

Simply a rough simulation of potential cloud that cld carry isotopes! In response to specific inquiries and nothing more.

— Lassina Zerbo (@SinaZerbo) September 28, 2017

To be sure, some criticized the graphic as misleading, arguing that such a test probably wouldn’t lead to a world-wide cataclysm.

This is very misleading. Folks will interpret as cataclysmic. Localized rad levels and global fallout totally different.

— Tucker Murray (@TJM11291) September 28, 2017

A Harvard PhD professor said that people “will confuse it with the kinds of fallout clouds they are used to reading about” the “shelter in place for two weeks kind.”

They will confuse it with the kinds of fallout clouds they are used to reading about, the "take shelter for 2 weeks" kind. pic.twitter.com/JEvIhbe97L

— Alex Wellerstein (@wellerstein) September 28, 2017

US President Donald Trump warned earlier this week, North Korea’s nuclear weapons threaten “the entire world with unthinkable loss of life,” adding that the US has several “devastating” military options to choose from in dealing with North Korea.  

Last week, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told the UN General Assembly in New York that the US had effectively “declared war” on North Korea, and that the isolated country wouldn’t hesitate to retaliate with a nuclear strike. Since then, there have been reports that the North could be planning another show of force – and possibly its seventh nuclear test – to coincide with a local holiday next month.

According to Ri, the “most powerful detonation of an H-bomb” would be one of the North’s “highest-level” actions against the US, as Russia Today reports.

“It could be the most powerful detonation of a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific,” Ri told Yonhap while in New York. “We have no idea about what actions could be taken, as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un.”

North Korea completed its sixth successful nuclear test earlier this month when it tested what’s believed to have been a hydrogen bomb. However, it’s unclear if the country has developed a thermonuclear warhead small enough to fit inside the tip of one of it’s ICBMs. Monitoring groups estimate the explosion caused by the Sept. 3 test was 16 times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Yesterday, China announced that it had ordered all North Korean businesses operating within its borders to close, part of its obligations under the latest round of UN Security Council sanctions that were passed earlier this month.

Ultimately, Russia and China have called on both the US and North Korea to sit down for diplomatic talks. The two countries even proposed a peace plan where North would agree to suspend its nuclear and ballistic missile tests in exchange for the US halting its military drills with the South Koreans. However, neither the US nor North Korea have expressed much interest in talks.

Fearful Californians Prepare For A Nuclear Attack: "A Lot Of People Will Be Killed"

With each passing day and each new ICBM launch from a seemingly unhinged North Korean dictator, the fears of an attack on the U.S. mainland, though faint, increasingly weigh on the hearts and minds of Americans, particularly those in California.  As The Guardian points out today, those fears have even prompted a group of California public health officials and emergency responders to gather for a strategy session with Hal Kempfer, a retired marine lieutenant colonel, to discuss which areas are the most likely targets and how citizens should respond to an attack.

Hal Kempfer, a noted international security expert, is getting a roomful of California public health officials and emergency responders to think about the unthinkable – a nuclear bomb exploding at the port of Long Beach, about four miles away.

“A lot of people will be killed,” he said, “but a large percentage of the population will survive. They will be at risk and they will need help.”

“If you want to mess up southern California, if you want to mess up the west coast, if you want to mess up our country – where do you attack?” Kempfer asks. “If I’m sitting in North Korea and looking at possible targets, I’m going to be looking at Long Beach very closely.”

He talks about the port and downtown Long Beach being “toast” – no exaggeration, since the blast wave is likely to vaporize everything in its immediate path. But the city health department, the Long Beach airport and fire department might not be; they are all somewhat protected by a hilly area that is likely to halt the initial blast wave. And so the city can, tentatively, think about setting up a center of emergency operations.

Of course, the radioactive fallout created as the explosion gathers up tremendous quantities of dust and ocean water and spits them into the atmosphere would represent a secondary grave risk, especially in the first hours after an attack.

Not to mention the electromagnetic pulse that is likely to knock out electronic systems including phones and computers, the pile-ups expected on the freeways as drivers are blinded by the flash of the explosion, the rush for food, water and gasoline as millions of Angelenos attempt to drive out of the region, and the terror triggered by even the idea of a second, follow-up attack.

Meanwhile, lest you think this was all just a creative way for some public employees to skip work for a day, Ventura County, located just northwest of Los Angeles, has even taken the unusual step of prepping a 250-page plan on how to respond to the humanitarian crisis that would result from a nuclear attack in Los Angeles. 

In fact, their efforts even include this truly bizarre public service announcement that instructs folks to shelter in place and cover windows with plastic.

Of course, as we pointed out back in August, while a global nuclear confrontation is generally viewed as a bad thing, for Ron Hubbard, President of Atlas Survival Shelters in Los Angeles, it has resulted in an economic windfall as a staggering number of Californians have suddenly turned into doomsday preppers.

“It’s crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ron Hubbard, president of Atlas Survival Shelters, told Fox11. “It’s all over the country. I sold shelters today in North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, California.”

The company, based in Montebello in eastern Los Angeles, sells shelters priced from $10,000 to $100,000. Hubbard told the station that the shelters are designed to be buried 20 feet below ground and can sustain survivors for up to one year, depending on the size and model.

He told the station he had sold more than 30 units in recent days, including to customers in Japan.

All that said, Kempfer points out that there is a silver lining here because any attack from North Korea likely wouldn"t result in "your traditional nuclear apocalypse scenario" because Kim Jong-Un probably only has weapons capable of destroying about 1 square mile at a time.

Rather, it’s likely to be a Hiroshima-sized bomb – large enough to obliterate everything within a square-mile radius and kill tens of thousands of people, either immediately or through the lingering effects of radiation. But still leaving millions of survivors across the region who would need help.

“We’re talking about smaller North Korean things,” Kempfer emphasized, though the word “smaller” sounds very far from reassuring. “This is not your traditional nuclear apocalypse scenario.”

So, Californians at least have that going for them, which is nice.

South Korean Credit Risk Spikes Above China's As Kim Chooses "Path Of No Return"

For the first time in four years, the credit market sees more risk of a South Korean sovereign default/devaluation than China.

After months of hit money flows in EM stocks sending KOSPI to record highs in the face of rising nuclear tensions with its neighbor, this week saw investors crack as Daiwa analysts warned "Kim looks to have chosen a path of no return."

As a North Korea war potential approaches, with the regime said to have attack ready nuclear missiles, Daiwa analysts Kevin Lai and Olivia Xai note the awkward position the US military and diplomatic corps finds itself.

“It seems the US has miscalculated the possibility and time needed for North Korea to make a program deliverable,” they wrote, and there is a sense the point of no return is passing.

“The window for the US to ‘denuclearise’ the North has almost shut.”

Escalating tensions over North Korea have also sent the dollar surging against the won to test a critical downtrend line resistance in a triangle formation.

The situation looks tenuous, Daiwa notes:

By making such a promise, Kim looks to have chosen a path of no return. If he delivers the plan, the US will almost certainly respond aggressively with a range of military options — and the situation will escalate to a major military conflict involving several more parties, including South Korea and Japan. There would be little room for either side to step back. If Kim doesn’t deliver, he risks creating a political crisis for himself and permanently weakening his regime. He is now in a position similar to the one Saddam Hussein was in before Desert Storm. His primary goal is regime survival. Giving up nuclear weapons would mean abandoning that goal; bending to US pressure would leave him politically vulnerable at home.

While a nuclear war appears a distinct possibility, stock markets are acting rather benign.

“Korean assets have seen a modest ‘risk off’ over the past two weeks, but this most likely reflects a modest cooling in global growth data,” observed Goldman Sachs analysts Charles Himmelberg, Goohoon Kwon and James Weldon in an August 9 report.

The South Korean KOSPI stock exchange, while trading lower since July 24, remains near all-time highs.

They think too little geopolitical risk has been priced into the market.

“We still suspect that investors are more concerned than markets reveal,” the Goldman report mused.

“Even though tensions continue to mount and North Korea’s nuclear program continues to advance, it appears markets have yet to see enough evidence that this time is different.”

As The Wall Street Journal notes, so far, markets have shown a muted impact.

“The small size of the moves (on a historic basis) is reflective of the extreme difficulty the market faces in pricing in the ramifications of a nuclear confrontation,” said analysts at Rabobank in a note Friday.

In recent years repeated flareups between the U.S. and North Korea have been resolved, or at least not escalated, and market reactions have reversed relatively quickly.

“For decades, complacency has been the ‘right trade,’ when it comes to North Korea,” said global markets analysts at Goldman Sachs in a note this week. “More often than not, market participants have been rewarded for fading negative price moves rather than hedging them.”

“The market’s view is likely too sanguine in short term,” according to analysts at Citi. “This reflects investors’ experience that geopolitical rhetoric can quieten as quickly as it escalates, and a pervasive belief that the true risk of military confrontation is minimal.”

There are different endgames, with the US simply tolerating North Korea possessing nuclear weapons and moving forward a distinct probability path. Regardless of the outcomes, the markets may be mispricing the situation, particularly if it turns negative.

“Financial markets aren’t good at thinking about geopolitical risks,” the Daiwa report noted. “If this crisis escalates further, markets could well find themselves in a state of shock.”

Bomb Shelter Sales "Skyrocket" In California As Nuclear Fears Spike

Equity investors today failed to follow through on initial efforts to "Buy The Fucking Fire and Fury Dip" but they are apparently rushing out to buy their very own doomsday bunkers on the off chance that President Trump wasn"t joking yesterday when he offered the following warning to North Korea:

President Trump: If North Korea makes any more threats to the U.S., "they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen" pic.twitter.com/8dQed79L1W

— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 8, 2017

Apparently the comments have spooked some folks on America"s west coast who are thought to be within Kim Jong Un"s nuclear strike radius. And while a global nuclear confrontation is generally viewed as a bad thing, for Ron Hubbard, President of Atlas Survival Shelters in Los Angeles, it has resulted in an economic windfall.  Here"s more from The Sacramento Bee:

“It’s crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ron Hubbard, president of Atlas Survival Shelters, told Fox11. “It’s all over the country. I sold shelters today in North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, California.”

The company, based in Montebello in eastern Los Angeles, sells shelters priced from $10,000 to $100,000. Hubbard told the station that the shelters are designed to be buried 20 feet below ground and can sustain survivors for up to one year, depending on the size and model.

He told the station he had sold more than 30 units in recent days, including to customers in Japan.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Vivos, another shelter manufacturer in Del Mar, Calif., near San Diego, also has experienced a spike in business.

“Japan’s going hog wild right now,” said Ron Hubbard, owner of Atlas Survival. The Montebello, California-based company makes about a dozen different underground refuge models intended to be inhabitable for six months to a year, some outfitted with escape tunnels, decontamination rooms and bulletproof hatches.

“People are getting off the fence – we’ve got thousands and thousands of applications,” said Robert Vicino, founder and chief executive officer of Vivos, Spanish for “alive.”

Vivos sells models for individual and communal use, and the company has built subterranean survival communities in the U.S. and Europe. The latest, xPoint, covers 9,000 acres in South Dakota with 575 off-grid dugouts. Planned amenities include a community theater, hydroponic gardens, shooting ranges, restaurant and bar. Shelters in the community are available for lease with an up-front cost of $25,000. Vicino told Bloomberg about 50 units have been leased or reserved.

Of course, for now we can only speculate that Trump and Putin must have colluded in efforts to spark a global nuclear confrontation while quietly buying up bunker manufacturers behind the scenes to make a little extra cash.  We demand that Special Counsel Mueller expand his investigation to look into this rather suspicious development immediately. 

Top Geopolitical Expert Issues Dire Warning: ‘Beware of False Flag’ Blamed on North Korea

After years of threatening to carry out a nuclear attack on the United States, North Korea is finally closer than it has ever been to fulfilling its notorious threat—according to politicians and mainstream media outlets across the country. But according to one geopolitical analyst, Americans should be more concerned about the possibility of a false flag attack.

In a report for Asia Times, analyst Pepe Escobar noted that the same people who are now saying that North Korea has created a miniaturized nuclear warhead capable of fitting its recently tested ICBM are the people who sold the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“Western corporate media would hardly refrain from metastasizing pure speculation into a ‘North Korea has miniaturized nuclear weapons’ frenzy consuming the cable news cycle/ newspaper headlines,” Escobar wrote, noting that the latest rumors about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities stem from a recent report from Japan’s Defense Ministry that is based entirely on speculation. 

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“So let’s look at the agendas in play. The War Party in the US, with its myriad connections in the industrial-military-media complex, obviously wants/needs war to keep the machinery oiled. Tokyo, for its part, would much appreciate a pre-emptive US military attack—and damn the inevitable, massive South Korean casualties that would result from Pyongyang’s counterpunch. 

It’s quite enlightening that Tokyo, for all practical purposes, considers China as a ‘threat’ as serious as North Korea; Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera went straight to the point when he said, ‘North Korea’s missiles represent a deepening threat. That, along with China’s continued threatening behavior in the East China Sea and South China Sea, is a major concern for Japan.’ Beijing’s response was swift.”

One of the most important points Escobar makes is that “The War Party,” or the U.S. military industrial complex, “wants/needs war to keep the machinery oiled.” Because of this, Escobar warned that Americans should “Beware of an engineered false flag, to be blamed on Pyongyang; that would be the perfect pretext for war.”

Indeed, the war drums are already having a steroid-like effect on the bottom lines of weapons companies with Lockheed Martin breaking all time stock market records.

READ MORE:  Trump Flip-Flops on 5 Key Campaign Promises in a Day — War Spending Now Priority

In addition to being a large opium producer, Escobar also noted that North Korea ”holds trillions of US dollars in unexplored mineral wealth.” He warned that Americans should “Watch the shadow play by candidates bound to profit from such juicy loot.”

Hogwash! If N. Korea is Trump"s defining moment, then the banksters that want into that country will be happy!… https://t.co/r8PzqRUUru

— Cynthia McKinney PhD (@cynthiamckinney) August 9, 2017

As The Free Thought Project reported, another important aspect to note is that while North Korea has been threatening to show the world its true nuclear power for more than a decade, the U.S. has enabled and funded the nation’s actions for more than half a century. As a result, “if North Korea does ever launch a nuke, it will be because the U.S. government and its assets helped to put it in their hands.”

 The fact that the U.S. government and the mainstream media have come together to promote the “imminent threat” of North Korea carrying out a nuclear attack on the U.S., serves a reminder of another time when the two entities united to push a propaganda campaign that got the U.S. into a war it is still fighting 14 years later.

Despite dire warnings from both politicians and MSM pundits that Hussein had weapons of mass destructions in Iraq, a classified report that was leaked in January 2016 confirmed that there was absolutely no evidence of WMDs. It also served as a reminder of the “utter deception carried out on the American people to support the invasion.”  

At the end of the day, if the U.S. was truly concerned about North Korea launching a nuclear attack, then it would not have been funding the nation’s actions in the first place, and the supposed imminent threats would be based on more than just speculative reports. If there are reports of such an attack, it is important to remember how well false flags—such as Iraq’s WMDs—have worked for the U.S. War Machine in the past.

Meanwhile, Somewhere In The Pentagon...

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The decision to launch nuclear weapons is political, not military.

As North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un declares that "The Entire US Territory Is Now Within Our ICBM Range", somewhere in the Pentagon, operational plans to neutralize North Korean nuclear and long-range missile capabilities are being refined.

There are undoubtedly two sets of operational plans: one deploying conventional weapons, and the second for deployment of nuclear weapons.

Nothing personal, Mr. Kim Jong Un, it"s just business. A core duty of planners in the Pentagon is to ask "What if" and draw up a range of scenarios and operational plans to carry out the civilian leadership"s policies and decisions.

One such scenario is "what if North Korea launches a ballistic missile that is tracking to strike U.S. territory?"

One response option in this scenario would be to wait and see if the North Korean missile hits the U.S. and if it is armed with a nuclear weapon, and if so, if the warhead detonates.

Another option is to respond immediately with a nuclear strike that neutralizes North Korea"s ability to launch any more nuclear-armed missiles.

The U.S. Armed Forces does not declare war or make the decision to launch a nuclear strike--that is the perogative and responsibility of the nation"s civilian elected leadership. The duty of the U.S. Armed Forces is to be prepared to execute the decisions and policies of the elected civilian leadership.

The ethical considerations of such a decision are not the Pentagon"s purview--those considerations rest with the elected civilian leadership. If North Korea is poised to kill 2 million Americans, South Koreans, Japanese, etc., then isn"t erasing North Korea"s capability to kill millions at the cost of 50,000 North Korean lives in a limited nuclear strike the more ethical choice?

Those considerations are not part of operational plans. The purpose of operational plans is to get the assigned job done. Limiting civilian casualties might well be part of the assigned mission. But it"s not the Pentagon planners" job to make those mission decisions.

There are no small nuclear explosions, but there are smaller explosions and variations that have profoundly different consequences. Ground-burst detonations carve out craters and send shock waves through the earth that crumple tunnels, bunkers, elevator shafts, etc. Ground-burst detonations generate vast quantities of radioactive particles. Since it"s well known that North Korea has buried its most precious nuclear resources deep underground, ground-burst detonations would be the only way to disrupt the access routes to bunkers deep underground.

Air-burst nuclear detonations generate field effects, i.e. electromagnetic pulses across the spectrum. These can be "tuned" to some degree. Thus a neutron-type weapon is designed to sicken and kill enemy soldiers while leaving buildings and equipment intact. This might be the weapon of choice to neutralize any attempt by the North Korean Army to launch a devastating artillery attack on South Korea in retaliation for the destruction of North Korea"s missile and nuclear capabilities.

Air-burst field effects often include massive disruption of electronic equipment. This might limit the operational plans for air-burst nuclear detonations near ther DMZ, as technologically advanced South Korea might well suffer significant economic losses from an air burst near the border with North Korea.

By the same token, an air-burst nuclear detonation over North Korean military communications headquarters might be considered essential to distrupt the North Koreans" command and control capabilities.

My point here is that operational plans to decapitate North Korean nuclear and ICBM capabilities exist and are constantly being revised and refined in light of new intelligence. It"s not the planners" job to make the geopolitical or ethical calculations that inform such a drastic decision. It"s the planners" job to make sure a strike ordered by the elected civilian leadership of the nation achieves its goal, i.e. eliminates North Korea"s nuclear and missile delivery capabilities completely.

It"s easy to say nuclear weapons should never be used, but what if conventional weapons can"t do the job, or create greater risks? Would you consider it a good ethical trade-off to wait for millions to die before killing thousands? That"s a political choice, and one that will always be second-guessed or disputed. But making such decisions is the purpose of elected civilian government.

The planners job is much more direct. If the elected civilian government orders the neutralization of North Korea"s ability to kill millions of civilians in South Korea, Japan or the U.S., then the job boils down to aligning existing resources and reckoning how many resources will be needed to get the job done in the most effective way available.

A conventional-weapons strike would likely require hundreds (and possibly thousands) of aircraft sorties, and all that such a monumental effort entails. It would also requires a significant amount of time to execute. A nuclear strike requires far fewer resources but has consequences far beyond those of conventional weapons.

There have been no nuclear weapons detonated with the express intention of destroying civilians since 1945. The stakes are high, and nobody wants to launch a nuclear attack unless it is in retaliation for a nuclear attack. But by then it"s too late to save the millions killed by the initial attack.

We all hope deterrence works. But deterrence very nearly failed a number of times in the Cold War between the USSR and the US. Given the possibility that deterrence might fail--over-ridden by a commander with launch authority, or a dozen other possibilities of miscalculation or impulse-- plans must be made for a first-strike designed to neutralize a nuclear missile capability.

The decision to launch nuclear weapons is political, not military - but achieving the goal is the duty of the military.

It"s nothing personal, folks--it"s just a peculiar business.

Chechnya's Leader Claims "Russian Doomsday Device" Is Activated

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, gave a rare interview to a media outlet in the United States that aired Tuesday, and what he said is taking many aback...

While speaking to HBO’s Real Sports, Kadyrov denied that gay people are humans, that they exist in his region, and that his government regularly detains or tortures them, despite ample reports to the contrary. But that isn’t the news that’s riling up the masses, even though it is concerning that Kadyrov is more than likely committing human rights violations. He also made a troubling comment about his country’s nuclear arsenal and a Russian doomsday device.

Kadyrov said,

“America is not really a strong enough state for us to regard it as an enemy of Russia. We have a strong government and are a nuclear state.

Even if our government was completely destroyed, our nuclear missiles would be automatically deployed. We will put the whole world on its knees and screw it from behind.”

That comment certainly puts the left’s insistence on a war with Russia in perspective.  And Kadyrov is probably being more accurate than not in that statement.

According to The New York Times, Russia built a system in the 1980s that could do what Kadyrov described, known as the Perimeter System. Bruce Blair, the former US nuclear officer who broke the story of the Perimeter System for The New York Times in 1993, told Business Insider that the system works when it detects nuclear explosions. Only a small crew, deep in a bunker, has a hand in the otherwise automated system, according to Blair.

Essentially, if another country conducted a nuclear attack that would destroy the government of Russia or anything a 1980s-era system would perceive as a nuclear attack, an automated system would empty Russia’s missile silos in an immediate counterattack. Blaire’s concern is the automation of such a system. 

“One concern is that it’s highly automated, and cyber attacks, for example, or other phenomena, natural or man-made, could set it off,” Blair said. “It poses a risk of accidental nuclear attack by Russia.”

But there has yet to be an accidental nuclear attack and it’s been over 30 years since the system was first activated. But could the 1980’s technology pose a problem and cause an all out nuclear war? It’s hard to say, and experts are not sure either. “This was designed to retaliate massively against the US. What the specific targets are in this plan no one really knows, but it can be safely assumed it’s large-scale,” Blair said, adding that it would destroy most Americans and most large US cities.

This is troublesome to many Americans, considering the US president is supposed to sign off on any nuclear attack to prevent accidental strikes, and the left is continuing to push the former Soviet Union increasing tensions with Russia. If Washington were incapacitated by a nuclear strike, it’s unclear whether it could respond at all. The US’s nuclear weapons are code-locked and absent the president and a backup in the Pentagon, the US may not be able to respond. Moscow code-locks its weapons as well, but this system would allow it to retaliate even after a nuclear decapitation.

The Government's Plan To Survive Nuclear War Doesn't Include You

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Once again this week, the United States teetered a little closer towards war with the Russians. On Sunday, the US military shot down a Syrian jet that was allegedly targeting US backed forces. The Russians have since claimed that the aircraft was engaging ISIS, and have revealed that their air defense systems will now track any of our aircraft that happen to fly over Western Syria. They also suspended a hotline between the US and Russia that was in place to prevent mid-air collisions over the crowded skies of Syria.

Amid incidents like this, you have to wonder what our government is thinking. For most Americans, Syria must seem inconsequential. Why is our military involved in a country, where we are brushing shoulders with a nuclear armed nation? If it’s to fight ISIS, then we could easily sit back and let Russian and Syrian forces wipe them out. If it’s to affect regime change, then clearly our government hasn’t learned anything from Iraq or Afghanistan. Why are we risking a war with the Russians just to influence the outcome of a regional civil war that has little bearing on the daily lives of most Americans?

The answer to that question could probably fill a novel, but there is one reason that the elites in Washington will never admit to. They can afford to make careless decisions because they are insulated from the results. If there is a war with Russia, which could easily turn into a nuclear war, they’ll have plenty of spacious bunkers to hide out in while the rest of America burns. And that’s been our government’s plan in regards to nuclear war since the beginning of the Cold War.

That’s the main takeaway from a new book called Raven Rock: The Story of the US Government’s Plan to Save Itself. Our government has spent decades building sprawling bunkers, like Raven Rock, that high ranking officials can flee to in the event of a nuclear war.

The idea for Raven Rock was to have a military base that would function as an alternative to the Pentagon and would be dug out of a mountain and deep enough to survive any Russian attack.

 

A site was chosen six miles from Camp David, the Presidential retreat in Maryland, and work began in 1951 on the $17 million project

 

Some 300 men worked round the clock in three shifts to carve a 3,100ft tunnel out of the granite; engineers invented technology as they went along including blast doors and blast valves.

 

Inside the facility there was 100,000sq/ft of office space in five parallel caverns big enough to hold a three story building in each.

 

The entire facility could fit 1,400 people and was placed on giant springs to reduce the impact of a blast.

Via Daily Mail

Meanwhile, as they were building these bunkers and trying to convince Americans that nuclear war could be easily survivable, behind the scenes they knew it would be a bloodbath for civilians.

At the end of the 1950s, the FCDA created ‘Battleground USA’, a grim 120-page report on how cities should manage civil defense operations in the event of an attack.

 

It said that the area should be divided into ‘mortuary zones’ with ‘collection teams’ in charge of identifying bodies.

Post Office mail trucks would ferry the wounded to one of 900 improvised hospitals set up near attack sites in places like federal prisons.

 

In Kansas officials planned to confiscate household vitamins for use by the general population.

 

Planners estimated they could assemble two million pounds of food after an attack from their own reserves and from stores.

They could also could find 11 million ‘man-days’ of food in the forests and plains in rabbit meat, 10 million ‘man-days of wild birds and five million ‘man-days’ of fish.

 

Most chillingly they budgeted nearly 20 million ‘man-days’ of meat in residential pets.

 

It was disturbing reading and a view of the world that summed up by Eisenhower in one meeting: ‘The destruction might be such that we might ultimately have to go back to bows and arrows’

 

During another meeting Eisenhower admitted that nation didn’t have ‘enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the street’ in the event of a nuclear strike’.

And as we all know, our government didn’t take many measures to protect civilians from the potential carnage that would be inflicted by a nuclear war. They didn’t build many bunkers for the rest of us.

At first glance that may sound like an impossible task, but it’s not. Take Switzerland for instance. Despite not having any nuclear weapons, they’ve built enough fallout shelters to house every Swiss citizen. You might say that we could never afford that many shelters, but it’s not a question of cost. Switzerland’s GDP per capita is similar to America’s.

The truth of the matter, is that our leaders don’t give a damn about what happens to American civilians. As long as they have their bunkers, they feel safe while antagonizing nuclear armed nations like Russia. They know that if there’s a war, they’ll survive while the rest of us burn and starve.

Make no mistake, if there’s ever a war with Russia, you’ll be on your own. Whether or not you survive depends entirely on your willingness and ability to prepare now.

Ever Closer To War

Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has warned that the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear war is closer than since 1953. As explained by the Bulletin, in 1947 it devised the Doomsday Clock «using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet».

Each year «the decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates». In 1953 the Clock was at two minutes to midnight. In the worst years of the cold war it was at 3 minutes to midnight when, in 1984 it was recorded that «US-Soviet relations reach their iciest point in decades. Dialogue between the two superpowers virtually stops. Every channel of communications has been constricted or shut down; every form of contact has been attenuated or cut off...»

And now, in 2017, it is apparent that channels of communication with Russia are being deliberately cut off — and the hands of the Doomsday Clock have been placed at just two-and-a-half minutes from midnight.

Disaster looms.

And as it looms, the United States Senate is heightening its global confrontational approach and announced that it intends to penalise Russia for a number of supposed misdemeanours.

Senator Lindsey Graham told CBS News that the Senate will «punish Russia for interfering in our elections» — concerning which allegation there has not been one shred of proof provided by anyone. All-embracing inquiries are under way, of course, but be assured that if there were the slightest, tiniest, most microscopic morsel of actual proof of any interference, it would by now have been leaked to the media and made headline news.

Senator Graham excelled himself by telling President Trump, via CBS News, that «You’re the commander in chief. You need to stand up to Russia. We’re never going to reset our relationship with Russia until we punish them for trying to destroy democracy. And that starts with more sanctions».

Then the CBS interviewer brought up the subject of the many inquiries into allegations of Trump-Russia plotting and mentioned that a Democrat had said the investigations were a «fishing expedition... What’s your response to that?»

The Senator replied «That’s not your, none of your business. We’re going to do what we think is best. The Russians interfered in our election. They’re doing it all over the world. No evidence yet that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. I don’t believe the president colluded with the Russians, just because of the way he behaves. There"s zero evidence that President Trump did anything wrong with the Russians. There’s overwhelming evidence that Russia is trying to destroy democracy here and abroad. And if you forgive and forget with Putin, you’re going to get more of the same and you’re going to entice Iran and China to come in 2018 and 2020».

The US Senate believes there is «zero evidence» that President Trump had help from Russia in his election campaign — which is true — but also thinks there is «overwhelming evidence» that Russia is trying to influence voting in America, although there is not a shred of proof to that effect.

The Senator spoke with the authority, force and majesty of the US Senate, and the world has to accept that his pronouncements represent the wishes of the legislators of his mighty nation which is intent on imposing harsher sanctions on Russia. As observed by Forbes, the new Bill «punishes Russian oil and gas firms even more than the current sanctions regime... Russia has no friends on Capitol Hill».

It is intriguing that the sanctions focus on oil and gas production, and Bloomberg reported that Germany and Austria consider «the measures sought to bolster US economic interests and included an unacceptable intervention in the region’s energy sector». In an unprecedented expression — indeed, explosion — of disapproval, Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austria’s Chancellor Christian Kern said in a joint statement that «Europe’s energy supply is a matter for Europe, not the United States of America... instruments for political sanctions should not be tied to economic interests» and that the Senate’s amendment heralded a »new and very negative quality in European-American relations».

As London’s Financial Times reported, «the Russia sanctions outline opposition to Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that will double capacity for Gazprom... to supply gas to Europe under the Baltic Sea. The measures could affect European energy companies, including Shell, Engie and OMV, which are financing the pipeline. Shares in all four companies tumbled on Thursday».

Washington’s mission of lucrative destruction was partly achieved, but that’s where we come to the essence of the matter. The part of the Sanctions Bill involving Russia was an add-on to a series of vindictive measures against Iran, but it seemed a good idea to also sanction Russia’s oil and gas production, because nobody would benefit more than the oil and gas companies of the United States.

Bloomberg explained that the Nord Stream pipeline «would compete with US exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe». And the Senate made it plain that the US government «should prioritize the export of United States energy resources in order to create American jobs, help United States allies and partners, and strengthen United States foreign policy».

It’s difficult to see how the Senate’s arrogant dabbling might «help allies and partners,» but those in America who own energy resources and want to continue making vast profits continue to help their allies and partners in the Senate and the House. Without their financial support, many legislators would never have got to Washington.

As recorded by Open Secrets, companies closely associated with oil and gas production gave US politicians over fifty million dollars in 2015-2016 to help their democratic election:

Top Contributors, 2015-2016

Source: By kind permission of the Center for Responsive Politics

And Senator Lindsay Graham was given a bundle by many commercial organisations, headed by Nelson, Mullins, whose $254,247 in 1993-2016 no doubt helped him along the way. Nelson Mullins, incidentally, has attorneys who «have experience in advising electrical and pipeline providers on legal matters». Then he got $175,605 from SCANA, which is «a $9 billion energy-based holding company, based in Cayce, South Carolina... Its businesses include... natural gas utility operations and other energy-related businesses». Another of Senator Graham’s generous sponsors is the Fluor Corporation ($94,801) which «understands the critical success factors driving onshore oil and gas production and terminal businesses, providing practical solutions to maximize project investment».

It doesn’t matter to these people, or to the legislators they’ve bought with their donations, that the Doomsday Clock has ticked closer to the midnight of Armageddon, and that the hostile approach of the United States is alienating a proud nation that can take only so much before it reacts against Washington’s aggressive confrontation. The sleazy hypocrisy of US legislators is legendary, but it is their ignorance greed and arrogance that are worrying.

While Senator Graham was dancing to the tune of his oil angels, the Washington Post reported that seven percent of American adults believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows. That is «16.4 million misinformed, milk-drinking people». The representative of FoodCorps which encourages sensible nourishment said this was unfortunate, and «We still get kids who are surprised that a French fry comes from a potato, or that a pickle is a cucumber. Knowledge is power. Without it, we can’t make informed decisions».

Just like the US Senate.

Putin Warns Of "Hot War" And Nuclear Holocaust: "I Don't Think Anyone Would Survive"

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

With tensions among the world’s super powers mounting in places like Ukraine, Syria, North Korea and  most recently Qatar and Iran, it may only be a matter of time before someone pushes the red button.

When they do, all bets are off, and as we’ve learned from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in June of 1914, once the trigger is pulled there’s no going back and hundreds of millions of lives, perhaps billions, will hang in the balance.

Considering that Russia is closely allied with Syrian President Assad, has a direct interest in maintaining control of Ukraine’s former Crimea region, and its ties to Iran, ignoring the possibility of a global war in coming years could be a devastating oversight.

We are, in fact, at war right now. But just as was the case from the 1960’s through the end of the 1980’s, it is a “cold war.” There have been no direct troop engagements that we know of between the Russians and the United States. But look to cyber space and it should be clear that there is a battle taking place on a daily basis. Moreover, as we’ve previously reported, nuclear war may well be on the horizon, because the confrontations taking place on the geo-political stage are no longer just talk.

Action has already been taken by both sides:

Putin and the Russian people believe the U.S.’s actions are going to lead to a nuclear conflict initiated by the United States.  The leadership of the U.S. is made up of politicians who began their careers as Marxist-Socialists.  Traitors now have their fingers on the triggers of the nuclear warheads, aided by “yes-men” of the general staffs who will not remember their oaths to the Constitution of the United States and the American people.  They will ignore that these charges take precedence above any orders given by a petty, dope-smoking, Marxist community organizer of dubious citizenship who was “emplaced” into office to destroy the country.

Instead of statesmen and diplomats, we now have self-interested, politically-motivated belligerents backing Russia and other nations into corners and pushing them toward war.  How long the war of words will be continued is unknown; however, when the missiles begin to fly you can be certain of something.  You can rest assured that the men who spoke those words will be in bunkers and other safe places and out of harm’s way…paid for by the American taxpayer.

Full Report: Nuclear War Is On The Horizon: “This Is Not Just Talk… Action Has Been Taken”

Indeed, those who push the buttons will likely be in bunkers well before the missiles hit their targets. That’ll likely be the case on both sides.

For the rest of us?

Vladimir Putin has made clear how it will play out:

The Putin Interviews between the Russian leader and the Oscar-winning director, which will be screened on Showtime, were shot between summer 2015 and February this year and give an extraordinary insight into one of the most powerful men in the world.

 

Stone asked Putin whether the US would be ‘dominant’ in the event of a ‘hot war’ between the two nuclear powers.

 

‘I don’t think anyone would survive such a conflict,’ Putin said.

Earlier this year the hacking collective Anonymous issued a frightening warning about World War III, highlighting the fact that while we are all busy enjoying the good times, elite Deep State insiders are planning for what comes next:

All the signs of a looming war on the Korean Peninsula are surfacing… we’re watching as each country moves strategic pieces into place… but unlike past world wars… although there will be ground troops the battle is likely to be fierce, brutal and quick.

It will also be globally devastating on the environmental and economic levels.

…

This is a real war with real global consequences… With three super powers drawn into the mix… Other nations will be coerced into choosing sides.

…

The citizen will be the last to know…

Video

And because the citizen will be the last to know, now may be a good time to review your nuclear war preparedness strategies and stock up on survival essentials that should include FDA approved anti-radiation pills and NBC rated tactical gas masks.

The elite will have plenty to go around in their bunkers, but you can be 100% assured that none of the supplies they’ve been stockpiling for the last decade will ever make their way to the general population.

Prepare accordingly.

British Think Tank Warns Hackers Could Access Nuclear Subs, Fears "Catastrophic Exchange Of Warheads"

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Cyber security has become a preeminent issue in the modern world. That’s because so much of our standard of living is now reliant on computers that can often be easily hacked. Computers may make our lives easier, but they’ve given our civilization a whole new vulnerability to worry about. Our privacy, our infrastructure, and our financial systems are now at the mercy of hackers.

But those threats pale in comparison the vulnerability of our nuclear arsenals. Yes, you read that correctly. You’d think that the nuclear arsenals fielded by Western governments would have levels of security that are so tight, that they’d be virtually impossible to hack, but that’s not the case. According to the British American Security Information Council think tank, the UK’s Trident nuclear submarines are certainly vulnerable to hackers, contrary to the claims of the government.

“Submarines on patrol are clearly air-gapped, not being connected to the internet or other networks, except when receiving (very simple) data from outside. As a consequence, it has sometimes been claimed by officials that Trident is safe from hacking. But this is patently false and complacent,” they say in the report.

Even if it were true that a submarine at sea could not be attacked digitally, the report points out that the vessels are only at sea part of the time and are vulnerable to the introduction of malware at other points, such as during maintenance while docked at the Faslane naval base in Scotland.

The report says: “Trident’s sensitive cyber systems are not connected to the internet or any other civilian network. Nevertheless, the vessel, missiles, warheads and all the various support systems rely on networked computers, devices and software, and each of these have to be designed and programmed. All of them incorporate unique data and must be regularly upgraded, reconfigured and patched.”

Fortunately, this kind of cyber attack couldn’t be committed by just any old yahoo with a computer. It would require the resources that governments typically have access to. Still, this threat is sobering when you consider that these submarines apparently utilize the same Windows software that is used by Britain’s National Health Service, which was thoroughly infiltrated by the WannaCry malware last month.

So if someone did manage to hack these missiles, what could they do with them? Let’s just say that what could be done with these missiles will keep you up at night.

Hackers could take control of Britain’s atomic weapons and use them to start a “catastrophic” global nuclear war, tech experts have warned.

In a report published today, the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) said that cyber-spies could commandeer the systems which power the nation’s Trident submarines and then launch devastating attacks.

“A successful attack could neutralise operations, lead to loss of life, defeat or perhaps even the catastrophic exchange of nuclear warheads,” the report warned.

Back in the Cold War, people used to worry about the wrong people having access to “the red button.” But now nuclear war appears to be “just a click away.”