North Korea was able to protect itself in time; otherwise, it would be in a situation similar to Iran.
Posted by ArchitectMary@reddit | EndlessWar | View on Reddit | 17 comments
SDL68@reddit
North Korea isn't a threat. Nobody wants the country, they have nothing to offer. The regime needs to sell fear or its people might wake up and wonder why they are still living within its prison walls.
Plenty of Russian vloggers who have travel there freely take videos and comment on the dystopian vibes. Lots of them on youtube
ZhukovWonWWII@reddit
North Korea sits on something like 15 or 20 trillion dollars worth of rare earths that it exports to China and Russia only.
SDL68@reddit
Rare earths are not rare. Lots of countries have them. It's the ability to extract them that's lacking but China has the expertise.
ZhukovWonWWII@reddit
Seems like english is too hard for you. You are unable to comprehend what rare means.
SDL68@reddit
You are misinformed. Again rare earth metals are abundant. What's rare, is the ability to extract them and China has a leg up on everybody. They are mostly a bi product of industrial mining.
ZhukovWonWWII@reddit
You are completely backwards. You are thinking of diamonds which are abundant. Rare earths are actually rare because they are found in a few places in the world where they are concentrated.
That's like saying gold is abundant but hard to extract. It is about concentration of a rare earth in a small are which makes the mining a profitable location. If you dig around random places in US you might find some locations where a little bit of gold or coal is but no one is going to process ten tons of dirt for one ounce of coal even if it is anthracite coal.
Cobalt is primarily sourced from Africa and has nothing to do with China. It is dug by hand using African slaves. They can only do that because they found such rich veins of it.
Every country in the world technically has SOME oil and gas in the ground but it is cost prohibitive to invest a lot for such small returns.
SDL68@reddit
I'm well aware of the economics of mining.
From Google...Geologically speaking, rare earth elements are relatively abundant. Many of these 17 elements (like cerium) are as common in the Earth's crust as copper or nickel, and even the rarest ones are more prevalent than gold.
So rare earths are more common than gold. Up to a decade ago, some were considered waste products from mining other minerals
ZhukovWonWWII@reddit
Prevalent means they could be scattered. Mining economics rely on finding veins of an element. North Korea sits on high concentrations of rare earths.
For example US has SOME anthracite but it has to import high grade anthracite. On the other hand Canada has a huge vein of high grade anthracite which is why US wanted to go in there and get their hands on it.
So rare earths are more common than gold. Up to a decade ago, some were considered waste products from mining other minerals
That's the whole point. They were found in trace amounts and considered by products. Not anywhere comparable where a mine extracts them in mass amounts.
WalnutNode@reddit
So far Iran has come out of this more powerful than before the war. The US failed every war objective they had.
reddit_is_geh@reddit
Out of curiosity, I just looked it up. It costs 20m a year simply to maintain a single nuke. Kind of crazy. No idea it was so expensive just to make sure they are live and ready.
WhoTheHeckKnowsWhy@reddit
tbf even assuming north korea was paying western labour rates, (which dictate the figure you brought up)...: That's a trivial amount of money for them to maintain a sizable nuclear defence shield.
reddit_is_geh@reddit
Oh for sure... I was just thinking more about the USA's massively unnecessary large stockpile of active warheads. It costs us 80b a year just to maintain that many.
Inevitable-Regret411@reddit
The size of the US arsenal is mostly a reflection of the fact it was designed to fight the Soviet Union, which was a very large country with a lot of potential targets. The Russian arsenal is a similar size for the same reason, the vast number of potential targets across the US and NATO.
reddit_is_geh@reddit
3000 nuclear warheads, is more than enough to destroy the whole world, many times over. It's a vestige of prestige military force, where you just go big for the sake of displaying power... It's useless in a modern context.
Terrorphin@reddit
No it's not.
Inevitable-Regret411@reddit
You also need to take into account that since there's always a small chance of a warhead or the delivery system malfunctioning, some high priority targets like silos are going to be assigned multiple warheads to ensure their destruction. There's always going to be two or three times as many warheads as there are targets for that very reason.
In addition, the more warheads you have the harder it is for the enemy to destroy them all on the ground in a suprise attack, making your deterrent more credible.
WhoTheHeckKnowsWhy@reddit
for the usa and their solid fuel minutemen. if you are not paying property bubble economy rates for labours its probably just a sizable fraction of that. And then theirs north korea which operates in its own universe.