What do you mean? I see a ton of pictures in there of all kinds of things, that would certainly seem to be useful to historians

Like, 'Soldier picking berry from tree' does not seem to have a 'Retreat through mud carrying wounded' counterpart.

But yes the pictures are certainly fine and useful for historians.

Soldiers that are actively involved in fighting are less interested in fiddling around with 1930s era camera equipment, which I also have to imagine was less common in Finland than the relatively more wealthy imperial powers.

Also random soldiers interested in photography are probably doing it as an escape/hobby more than for historical reasons.

Keep in mind the purpose of these satellites often isn't to intercept the communications. A major use of ELINT to to detect and locate active radars. You don't actually care what the radar is detecting or anything like that, you are trying to identify where the radar is, what kind of radar system, maybe measure the frequency and power to get a sense of its performance, etc.

And when you are trying to actually collect communications, sometimes you can get a lot just from the metadata. Even if you don't know the content of the communications, you can know that at time T, emitter A sent a message on frequency F using protocol P, lasting for duration D and transmitting B bytes. Depending on the communication mechanism, you could also determine the intended destination as well. Even if that data is perfectly encrypted, there's a lot you can do with just traffic analysis, especially when you look at patterns over time and try to correlate this with known events.

Imagine if the US tested some classified missile over the ocean, and some unknown ship nearby broadcast something, and minutes later a bunch of encrypted transmissions are detected at various places in China, places that don't usually send communications at that particular time or that particular volume. That would be a clue that those locations are related to Chinese military intelligence. Comparing exact timestamps, and looking at what happened during similar tests in the past, you can narrow that down further.

And that's just in peacetime. In an active war, this information becomes far more useful. Anything transmitting a lot of data near the frontlines is probably something worth targetting. Maybe just an information relay point, or maybe the headquarters of an armored division. You can also look at the volume of traffic and try to discern intentions. A big spike in the amount of communications in a particular region, followed by near radio silence? That's probably the start of an offensive.

When you get credit card debt, does the credit card company choose what job you have to work at to pay it off? Do they choose where you have to live until you pay it off? Do they get to choose who, if anyone, you are allowed to marry? If you try to leave that place, does the credit card company chase you down, capture you, and beat you? Is the credit card company legally allowed to physically or sexually abuse you?

North Korea has successfully tested multiple missile launches on a lofted trajectory that demonstrated an intercontinental range. I believe both the hwasong 17 and 18 are capable of hitting the continental United States. Rentry vehicles have been demonstrated multiple times. Accuracy is a bit more of a concern, but with a thermonuclear weapon missing a city by 10 miles is still more than enough to cause millions of casualties.

The DPRK is absolutely a totalitarian, backwards, hermit kingdom. But we underestimate them at our peril.

DPRK does not seem too have the hydrogen bomb. Fission bombs on the kiloton range are too heavy to be mounted on ICBMs. I will not lose much sleep until there is credible information that DPRK has mastered the fusion bomb.

No, their last nuclear test was estimated at around 250 kilotons, which is indicative of a thermonuclear bomb. That was in 2017

Jesus, I hadn't realized they had come so far. Apparently NK gained the ability to hit the entire continental US with Hwasong 15. The latest iterations are suspected of being designed to contain MRVs or MIRVs, which would completely overwhelm US missile defenses. It is insane that we let them go down this road.

Even they know that if one launched from their end they would all cease to exist within minutes.

This is a deterrent until Kim Jong Un loses his marbles or receives a terminal diagnosis, or until some military commander makes a serious mistake. Now multiply this same risk times fifty or sixty and you’ll see why the major project of the 20th century was limiting the number of countries with nukes.

There’s a good chance they fail since our intelligence services are essentially watching everything they do internally in real time.

And a proper failure gives an opportunity to disappear them.

It’s been years since I’ve read the book or seen the movie, but I had the exact opposite impression of the book vs the movie. The book is very deep, I found it compared rather well to dystopian novels like 1984. The movie, by contrast, felt like a weird slasher film, more interested in gratuitous violence than telling a compelling story. The characters in the book felt more nuanced. For example, the main female antagonist (I can’t remember her name) was a victim of abuse, and her trauma motivates her drive to live and her lack of hesitation to manipulating others to survive. Maybe someone else who has read the book here has a different take away?

I read the book first and I've got the same impression as you, the movie felt lacking and certainly not as fruitful in fresh ideas as the book felt.

I'm very surprised the post's author finds the book shallow (he uses "lacking in depth" I think).

Also years for both for me (I probably read and watched them in 2003), but your impression of the two is the exact same as mine.

One saving grace is that nukes do have a shelf life. They require regular maintenance too. The radioactive core of plutonium or uranium can last for a while, but the various components will degrade. I heard once on the Arms Control Wonk podcast that this could be on the order of like 10 years. Someone could still salvage that to make a dirty bomb, of course, but there’s plenty of easier ways to make a dirty bomb from other radioactive materials

The Davy Crockett variant seems to just have had a yield of 20 tonnes. Per nukemap (https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ ) the fatal radiation range (of 500 rem) is like 500 meters. If you fire from, say, 5k the radiation exposure should be significantly lower. I don’t know how the radiation exposure scales over distance, but if it’s an inverse square law that means at 5k you’re getting like 5 rem. Which isn’t great, it’s like the equivalent of a CT scan

THAAD cannot intercept ICBMs…

> The fact is, the US has enough active missile defense that if all out nuclear war were to happen, the US would likely survive and Russia wouldn't

This is just blatantly false. GMD, on paper, could intercept maybe 10-20 missiles by design. And the accuracy and reliability of that system is severely in question. The Aegis Ballistic Missile defense really can’t be expected to intercept ICBMs either, outside of certain conditions.

If we're being completely honest here, neither you, I, nor the guy you replied to has any idea what missile defenses we have. They would be among the most secret of programs because they only work if your enemy doesn't actively work to evade them.

we've seen aircrafts drop out of the sky and also vanish

I actually don’t think that’s why Russia responded. The announcement about being able to us US missiles on Russian territory occurred too quickly for them to have launched this is response. I think this is Russias response to the opening of the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile shield in Poland, which has been in progress for years and just recently was made operational

> announcement about being able to us US missiles on Russian territory occurred too quickly for them to have launched this is response

Why? It’s a missile. It’s meant to be fired on short notice.

It’s a missile that has been developed in secret, for years. With a conventional payload, so that it could actually be used in a demonstration strike like this. That was apparently completed just in time to be used here. Makes sense that it is a reaction to the Aegis Ashore base in Poland, since that has been under way for years, the completion date could be predicted and planned for well in advance, and is of grave concern to the Russian state. Putin himself has constantly expressed concern about those missile defense bases, he’s very concerned that they could secretly loaded with nuclear-tipped tomahawk missiles and used for a sudden first strike.

It’s a bit academic, of course, why Russia decided to reveal the existence of this missile now, and employ it in Ukraine. It’s not like there’s only one reason why Russia did this.

Alternatively: it was a missile test aimed at a live target.

Aegis really can’t intercept ICBMs except in very niche circumstances.