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The US built a lot of bunkers like this back in the 1950's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Weather_Emergency_Operations_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

The US built a lot of bunkers like this back in the 1950's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Weather_Emergency_Operations_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Weather_Emergency_Operat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Rock_Mountain_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_Rock_Mountain_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Complex With the rise of solid fuel ICBM and then MIRV leading to the truly massive number of warheads pointed at the US, the US switched to airplanes for the most important continuity of government issues, figuring that the skies 30,000 above the US will largely be secure (presuming the plane is appropriately EMP shielded) due to the many US geographic advantages, and so it is the best place to ride out the initial attack and then take stock, get to somewhere safe, and figure out what to do from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Looking_Glass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Looking_Glass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACAMO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACAMO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-6_Mercury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-6_Mercury But the North Koreans can have no illusion that the skies above their country will be safe: there are several major enemy airbases a few minutes from their border, their entire airspace is routinely surveilled and powers hostile to them have made large investments in stealthy air superiority fighters, so the air is not a safe place for the DPRK continuity of government plans. The DPRK does have trains but I would not consider those safe in the event of a major war, since rails are difficult to keep secret. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taeyangho_armoured_train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taeyangho_armoured_train So bunkers are the best they can do, given their circumstances.

themafia 9mo ago
Watching a civilized nation drop a nuclear bomb on an enemy really got into peoples heads. What's worse is.. it worked.
- yakbarber 9mo ago
  there's a fair argument to make that a nation that drops a nuclear bomb on a city isn't "civilized"
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - mandevil 9mo ago
    I think that lesson from World War Two is that civilization is all the things we do to prevent another World War Two from happening. And that what we owe to all the people in Hiroshima, Tokyo, Nanjing, the Warsaw Ghetto, Katyn, Bengal, Manzanar, and a thousand other places is to prevent anything like that from happening again.
    - CamperBob2 9mo ago
      Exactly... and frankly, we're starting to fall asleep on the job.
  - delichon 9mo ago
    The high end of the range of death estimates by the two atomic bombs is around 246,000. The estimated range of US military deaths from an invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall) was 250,000 to 1,000,000, and another 5 to 10 million Japanese. Dropping nukes was both barbaric and the more civilized option. Oppenheimer et al. deserve their acclaim. Japan attacked the US first, and by Hiroshima the US had 110,000 dead in the Pacific theater. Imagine living through that before judging them.
    - throw0101d 9mo ago
      > Dropping nukes was both barbaric and the more civilized option. Also perhaps worth noting that after the first bomb the Japanese government was not planning to surrender. The second dropping moved things to a deadlock where half of the ministers—both in the small war council, and the larger full government—wanted to the surrender and the other half did not. The Emperor had to be called in—an almost unprecedented action—to break the tie. Then, even after the Emperor had made his decision, there was a coup attempt to prevent the "surrender"† broadcast: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident I do not know how anyone can think that Japan would have stopped fighting without the bombings when two bombings barely got things over the line. The book 140 days to Hiroshima by David Dean Barrett goes over the meeting minutes / deliberations and interviews to outline the timeline, and it was not a sure thing that the surrender was going to happen: the hardliners really wanted to keep fighting, and they were ready to go to great lengths to get their way (see Kyūjō above). The Japanese knew for a year before the bombings that they could not win the war, but they figured that by holding out—causing more causalities of Japanese, Americans, Chinese, Filipinos, etc—the US would lose their resolve and terms could be negotiated so that Japan could (e.g.) keep the land they conquered in Manchuria, etc. † A word not actually used by the Japanese in the broadcast.
- squidsoup 9mo ago
  You should read Blood Meridian.
fooker 9mo ago
Where will the planes land?
- tejtm 9mo ago
  Those interstate highways are starting to look pretty good as the fuel guage drops
  - AceyMan 9mo ago
    I'd always been told this was planned into the implementation of the US Interstate Highway System. There are dead straight and level sections ever so many linear miles or per some gridsquare measure to serve as ad hoc landing strips in a national crisis. That's been 35+ years ago that I heard it and I haven't sought any supporting documentation since the dawn of the Internet. Any insight would be appreciated.
    - 4ggr0 9mo ago
      even a small country like Switzerland uses its highways to land fighterjets[0], wouldn't be weird to me if the US with their humongous highways uses them for the same reason. difference is that the swiss have to remove the middle crash barriers before landing, so less spontaneous. [0]https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-air-force-lands-fighter-planes-on-motorway-in-training-exercise/79740111 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-air-force-lands-fighter-p...
- denkmoon 9mo ago
  Given the extent of planning that went into these types of doomsday survival scenarios, I wouldn't be surprised to find there are pre-prepared discreet runways in obscure locations unlikely to be targeted. Not full concrete runways, just a strip of prepared land that would see a 747 land without exploding into a ball of fire.
- ridgeguy 9mo ago
  Dry lake beds abound in the US West. See Edwards AFB (big dry lake bed on which nearly everything, including the Space Shuttle, has landed). See also Groom Lake. These are enormous and couldn't be wrecked by conventional runway denial weapons.

themafia 9mo ago

Watching a civilized nation drop a nuclear bomb on an enemy really got into peoples heads. What's worse is.. it worked.

yakbarber 9mo ago
there's a fair argument to make that a nation that drops a nuclear bomb on a city isn't "civilized"
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- mandevil 9mo ago
  I think that lesson from World War Two is that civilization is all the things we do to prevent another World War Two from happening. And that what we owe to all the people in Hiroshima, Tokyo, Nanjing, the Warsaw Ghetto, Katyn, Bengal, Manzanar, and a thousand other places is to prevent anything like that from happening again.
  - CamperBob2 9mo ago
    Exactly... and frankly, we're starting to fall asleep on the job.
- delichon 9mo ago
  The high end of the range of death estimates by the two atomic bombs is around 246,000. The estimated range of US military deaths from an invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall) was 250,000 to 1,000,000, and another 5 to 10 million Japanese. Dropping nukes was both barbaric and the more civilized option. Oppenheimer et al. deserve their acclaim. Japan attacked the US first, and by Hiroshima the US had 110,000 dead in the Pacific theater. Imagine living through that before judging them.
  - throw0101d 9mo ago
    > Dropping nukes was both barbaric and the more civilized option. Also perhaps worth noting that after the first bomb the Japanese government was not planning to surrender. The second dropping moved things to a deadlock where half of the ministers—both in the small war council, and the larger full government—wanted to the surrender and the other half did not. The Emperor had to be called in—an almost unprecedented action—to break the tie. Then, even after the Emperor had made his decision, there was a coup attempt to prevent the "surrender"† broadcast: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident I do not know how anyone can think that Japan would have stopped fighting without the bombings when two bombings barely got things over the line. The book 140 days to Hiroshima by David Dean Barrett goes over the meeting minutes / deliberations and interviews to outline the timeline, and it was not a sure thing that the surrender was going to happen: the hardliners really wanted to keep fighting, and they were ready to go to great lengths to get their way (see Kyūjō above). The Japanese knew for a year before the bombings that they could not win the war, but they figured that by holding out—causing more causalities of Japanese, Americans, Chinese, Filipinos, etc—the US would lose their resolve and terms could be negotiated so that Japan could (e.g.) keep the land they conquered in Manchuria, etc. † A word not actually used by the Japanese in the broadcast.
squidsoup 9mo ago
You should read Blood Meridian.

fooker 9mo ago

Where will the planes land?

tejtm 9mo ago
Those interstate highways are starting to look pretty good as the fuel guage drops
- AceyMan 9mo ago
  I'd always been told this was planned into the implementation of the US Interstate Highway System. There are dead straight and level sections ever so many linear miles or per some gridsquare measure to serve as ad hoc landing strips in a national crisis. That's been 35+ years ago that I heard it and I haven't sought any supporting documentation since the dawn of the Internet. Any insight would be appreciated.
  - 4ggr0 9mo ago
    even a small country like Switzerland uses its highways to land fighterjets[0], wouldn't be weird to me if the US with their humongous highways uses them for the same reason. difference is that the swiss have to remove the middle crash barriers before landing, so less spontaneous. [0]https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-air-force-lands-fighter-planes-on-motorway-in-training-exercise/79740111 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-air-force-lands-fighter-p...
denkmoon 9mo ago
Given the extent of planning that went into these types of doomsday survival scenarios, I wouldn't be surprised to find there are pre-prepared discreet runways in obscure locations unlikely to be targeted. Not full concrete runways, just a strip of prepared land that would see a 747 land without exploding into a ball of fire.
ridgeguy 9mo ago
Dry lake beds abound in the US West. See Edwards AFB (big dry lake bed on which nearly everything, including the Space Shuttle, has landed). See also Groom Lake. These are enormous and couldn't be wrecked by conventional runway denial weapons.