Nuclear Showdown

According to this article straight off the AP wire, "the U.S. Air Force says it has successfully launched an unarmed Minuteman 3 ICBM, or intercontinental ballistic missiles, from a California base; firing it to targets in the Pacific Ocean." The Kwajalein Atol, a giant coral deposit within the Marshall Islands, has long been used as a nuclear testing site by the U.S. for decades ever since the end of World War II. It gets interesting when you figure how close the Marshall Islands are to... North Korea. The distance from California to the Marshall Islands is 4200 miles and the firing range of a Minuteman 3 ICBM is 8100 miles. Furthermore, look at my map, edited in Paintbrush, of the Pacific Ocean; North Korea is circled in red and the Marshall Islands in black. Essentially, this missile test was not a purposeless, routine check up. It was a response to North Korea's threat to wipe us off the map and their prolonged missile testing that started earlier this year.

Just because the U.S. has 10,000 nukes, as absurd as it may be, does not make us any safer in a nuclear war. I'm sure your history teachers have probably reinforced to you the principle of mutually assured destruction, which basically states that in a full scale nuclear war, both the attacker and the defender will both be completely annihilated. The only humor in this situation is in imagining the Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting, which decided the testing location to be the Kwajalein Atol. It must have been like the Man Law conference from those old Miller Lite commercials- the underlying message being, "let's remind North Korea that we still have the biggest dick in the world." It really makes me a proud American.