...a dud. Which gives, some, but not much, comfort. It's nice to know that neither their missiles or their bombs work. So far.

That doesn't, of course, mean that we should ignore it. I've always thought that a sincere attempt at murder, even if incompetent, would merit the same punishment as achieving one.

I blame Clinton.

Which is why I believe that we should officially say that it was a small nuclear explosion. Yet continue to freely talk about what it really was - a nuclear explosion attempt. That way we get to talk tough about the situation during negotiation. All the while we know, they know, and they know we know it was just a dud. That gives us the ability to take on a smarmy character during talks. How does Korea react to that? Do they stay tough on claiming succes and risk exaggerated sanctions being imposed. Or do they lose their bluff and come out and admit failure and risk being degenerated as a joke even more so. The result of tougher sanctions would be fitting in that they get what they deserved to begin with. If the latter occured this would fly in the face of logic people are starting to throw out there that this Axis of Evil business should have been started from the other end.

My question is how can you get 4.0 on the richter without burning some fission material? Assuming this was a nuclear test and not a shipload of conventional stuff. I mean the ol Davy Crockett had a similar yield, and that was a nuke.

My question is how can you get 4.0 on the richter without burning some fission material?

1000kg of HNIW would do the trick.

More like 250 tonnes, not that that's impossible. Lots of speculation about this; if they set off a real nuke in a suitable cav*ity, its signature would be greatly dampened. If they set it off in the right kind of rock, the chamber it excavated wouldn't collapse and there would be no chimney to vent radiation. Best course is probably to act as if it was real and, whaddaya know, actually do something about it.

* misspelling deliberate due to comment submission error

You're right, that should have been tonnes.

I'm too tired, getting megagrams confused with kilograms.

My theory is that we're hyping the 'it was a dud' story in an attempt to get Dear Leader to kill his nuke scientists -- making future bombs less likely.

Also, I can't include a link to my blog*spot blog?

I agree, 3.82 on the richter scale is a lot of pounds of TNT. Pretty good hoax if it's a dud.

Just so we keep the facts on track. Now it looks like it wasn't a dud, nor a hoax.