Insider says Vladimir Putin's evil plans all point to one date in May with war on world far from ove

[elleng]

Retired US general Wesley Clark said Vladimir Putin's objective is to invade the Baltic countries as well as eastern Europe

*And Putin wants to win in Ukraine by a specific date in May. US officials said the alleged war criminal wants to coincide a victory with the parade in Red Square on May 9, which is held to mark the Nazis' surrender in WWII.'

https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/insider-says-vladimir-putins-evil-26648598

[roamer65]

1. Not gonna happen.

Invasion of NATO countries means World War III.

[Sherman A1]

4. Yup,

He doesn’t have the army to do the job now. Invading a NATO country would not be In his best interest.

[Lovie777]

2. Evil monster . . .

[Kittycatkat]

3. The Ukraine and the NATO nations should blow Putin into hell on 4/20.

[BigmanPigman]

6. Why 4/20?

That is Pot Day.

[Victor_c3]

8. April 20th is also hitler's birthday

I never understood the connection between pot smoking and white power

[Celerity]

14. 4:20 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)

In 1971, five high school students in San Rafael, California, used the term "4:20" in connection with a plan to search for an abandoned cannabis crop, based on a treasure map made by the grower. Calling themselves the Waldos, because their typical hang-out spot "was a wall outside the school", the five students—Steve Capper, Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel, Larry Schwartz, and Mark Gravich—designated the Louis Pasteur statue on the grounds of San Rafael High School as their meeting place, and 4:20 pm as their meeting time. The Waldos referred to this plan with the phrase "4:20 Louis". After several failed attempts to find the crop, the group eventually shortened their phrase to "4:20", which ultimately evolved into a code-word the teens used to refer to consuming cannabis.

Louis Pasteur statue, San Rafael High School

[jcgoldie]

15. And then one of those kids became a roadie for the dead ...

...like 20 years later. And I'm so glad its that and not some fucking hitler shit.

[Celerity]

17. It never was Hitlerian in terms of the date. Germany (and most all of Europe) would write it 20/4

The US seems to have a predilection with being different on multiple fronts.

Here the month is always in the middle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_Europe

Official EU documents still tend to use DD.MM.YYYY but one document specifies the use of ISO 8601: "Dates should be formatted by the following format: YYYY-MM-DD."

[jcgoldie]

18. Thank You

What I loved about the 420 shit since college is that it coincided with Earth Day. And they could have a huge environmental symposium and talk to kids... who were mostly interested in getting high. But that was a good alliance with a higher cause.

[Boxerfan]

31. That is wrong from what I know.....

4:20 was the LAPD code for possession or use of Marijuana .

I lived in Marin and went to Tam High during that time period and never heard that story. And I sold a bunch of pot back then so I remember when 420 became code for weed. It was more in the 80's it became common and the code was still used by Los Angeles Police on radio.

[Celerity]

38. 420 is the radio code for homicide in both fact (the Las Vegas Police Department) and fiction (CSI)

https://www.laweekly.com/mythbusting-420-its-one-true-origin-and-a-whole-lot-of-false-ones/

That link goes through a tonne of things, and shows the Waldo story to be the source

Much more out there as well

[relayerbob]

19. More likely is that most people don't know that's Hitler's birthday

"420" was supposedly the radio code some police department used for marijuana arrests.

[lagomorph777]

33. Earth Day - that would be fitting. Shut down his fossil fuel production.

[Jim__]

5. After seeing how his army performed in Ukraine, it's hard to believe that Putin would ...

... try to take on NATO - unless he is really living in a huge bubble.

[lagomorph777]

35. A huge bubble with a 1km long table in it.

[kimbutgar]

7. I'm just scared he is going to use nUkes to start off the apocalyptic scenario that will

Destroy the planet. He is a madman and needs to be stopped.

[TreasonousBastard]

9. That is everyone's fear. The bigshots at NATO have not missed it.

[localroger]

12. Putin's nukes might not work any more

I wrote a long story which actually made the trending list over at the orange place speculating about this. Nukes need expensive maintenance, and like everything else in modern Russia those resources may have been looted instead of used to perform the service.

[relayerbob]

20. Enough of them will

No matter the condition of all of them, even if "only" a few hundred do work, they can really mess up the planet.

[localroger]

22. It's entirely possible that the number that will work is zero

Every ten years or so, a modern boosted nuke (long story but it's the technical term) needs an infusion of Tritium gas to keep it active. Tritium has a half life of a bit over 12 years and if the level gets too low, the bomb stops being a nuke. It is widely agreed by multiple sources that it takes 3 or 4 grams of Tritium gas to boost a fission trigger, and Tritium costs $30,000 per gram. Russia has to service about 2 bombs per day to maintain what Wikipedia claims their active stockpile is. When you refurb a bomb you have to put enough in to still be active after decay until the next service interval. That's like US$200,000+ twice a day. If the Russian military is being grifted at high enough levels to divert that, why would there be any working bombs at all? After all, it's a MAD world and if the bombs are ever used it's only because they failed in their primary reason for existence anyway. I think it would be easy to rationalize investing that money in a yacht since, if the bombs are ever needed, it means the world has already ended anyway.

[FakeNoose]

23. When you put it that way, maybe ours aren't going to detonate either

On the other hand, I have a lot more confidence in our SAMs, satellite surveillance and software/hardware updates and maintenance. The Russians have the advantage on worldwide SMS propaganda, and identifying the stupidly corruptible legislators.

[localroger]

24. My impression is that our grift works a little differently

Yes the slimeballs get rich off it but here they actually deliver product that works, or at least that they think will work, they just overcharge for it. Our troops aren't going into battle with MRE's that expired in 2008 though. We also have a lot more resources to put into controls to make sure shit gets done right. The Russians have always been sketchy on that. I think it might only take a few guys, with a top level general covering them, to steal all the Tritium. And Tritium is fungible -- it has a lot of other uses. Here in the US I suspect it would be a lot more difficult to set up such a diversion scheme just because there are more layers of security with more people involved.

[relayerbob]

25. The tritium may prevent the full effect of the weapon

But these are fission-fusion-fission bombs - the tritium fusion creates neutrons to cause fission in the secondary. As a physicist, I can assure you that that the primaries will mostly still work and some of the secondary will go with it - and create some VERY nasty byproducts. Note that blast radius is a cube function of explosive force, so a large percentage of whatever is targeted will still be seriouslt fried, just not as bad as planned. Sadly, It's more likely that most of them will work to some degree. The delivery systems are actually more likely to fail than the bombs themselves. The Russians will have set maintaining their primary weapons as a top priority. I applaud your hopefulness, but that's all it is, the physics of (fission) atom bombs are really not very difficult (fusion much moreso).

[localroger]

29. This is incorrect

The fission trigger is an atomic bomb. It has to generate a flux of gamma rays ahead of the blast which is used to compress the secondary; no neutrons from the primary are involved. The tritium is used to speed the fission reaction so that a smaller critical mass can be used for a smaller, lighter assembly. Without enough Tritium, the fission trigger won't react quickly enough or to completion, it won't compress the secondary, and the whole thing will just be a not very big chemical explosion (because the boosting also reduces the amount of compression needed for the fission implosion) and enough plutonium to create a radiological hazard for a few dozen meters radius.

[sir pball]

48. A fizzling primary, as bad as it is, won't do anything to the secondary

It's far, far too complex to get into here, but the incomparable Nuclear Weapons Archive has an incredibly in-depth (even for a credentialed physicist) explanation of Matter, Energy and Radiation Hydrodynamics and the Engineering and Design of Nuclear Weapons that lay out exactly how precisely and perfectly everything needs to function to get the secondary to ignite. A modern boosted primary that doesn't boost will lose the vast majority of its yield (fizzles are down in the several-hundred-ton range, which is nothing compared to even a small modern bomb) and would just blow the secondary to bits - there wouldn't be nearly enough compression to generate any meaningful fusion yield at all.

Of course, you'd still have a 2-300-ton-yield nuclear blast spreading hundreds of pounds of plutonium and enriched uranium from the secondary for miles around...it is better than a megaton explosion, but not by much.

[lagomorph777]

37. I think you're talking about what we used to call "H-bombs" vs "A-bombs"

"H" ("hydrogen" really its tritium isotope) bombs are ignited by "A" ( "atom" ) bombs. They are powered by a fusion reaction, many times more powerful than the "A" bomb fission reaction.

The isotopes used in "A" bombs have much longer half-lives.

I say all of this to point out that Putin's smaller (tactical?) weapons are more likely to work than his big ones.

[localroger]

43. It's the other way around

Tactical nukes are A-bombs. In order to make them smaller than Fat Man they have to be boosted with Tritium to speed up the fission reaction, which reduces the necessary size of the critical mass and the compression required. Not enough Tritium, it's just a very small dirty bomb. And H-bombs use these boosted small A-bombs as triggers, so no trigger, no fusion nuke.

[lagomorph777]

44. I learned something --thanks.

Also, the main fuel in an "H" bomb is lithium-6 deuteride, which actually transforms to tritium in the explosion.

[localroger]

47. Yes, in fact a modern H-bomb is exactly the opposite of the first one, Ivy Mike

Mike had an unboosted Fat Man style fission trigger but had Tritium injected into the fusion secondary to boost it. Castle Bravo, the first "dry" bomb, did away with the Tritium in the fusion secondary. Modern bombs also use Lithium 6 deuteride to make their own tritium for the fusion secondary, but the primary is "miniaturized" and requires Tritium so that it can be small and lightweight enough to fly.

[BeyondGeography]

10. He can't even lock down Mariupol

And he’s going to run the table in Eastern Europe?

Ok.

[Igel]

11. Adventitious thinking.

Consider his big Luzhitsky stadium cult-of-personality festival.

That was planned.

It was shortly after his assured victory over the drug-addicted Ukrainian Nazis was assured.

Maybe he's rescheduled Christ's return. Most messianic dweebs do that at least once. But Putain's evil plans pointed to one date in March that didn't quite work out.

It's close enough now, though, that anything that can be dubbed a victory will be leveraged on 5/9.

What I'd like is that on 5/9 the news is that the Russians aren't just pushed back out of Ukraine, but that Ukrainians troops have entered Tagarog in the morning and taken it by evening. With Tula, Voronezh, Belgorod, Saratav and Rostov-na-Donu badly (and I mean seriously badly) damaged. Don't hurt civilians. But every industry or large non-food/non-medical business I want smashed.

On edit: I notice that the Guardian's "live blog" this evening has caught up to the morning news that it's claimed the Russian army is using their mobile crematoria to dispose of Ukrainian corpses.

Have to wonder--did they just figure it didn't matter before? No family would be tricked if the Russian Army said, "Yeah, your son? He's in good shape. Why haven't you been able to talk to him for 9 months? Um...." Now, cremating *Ukrainians* ...

[PortTack]

13. He's really out of his mind if he believes that.

As far as nukes, it’s been pointed out the prevailing winds from the area of Eastern Europe would blow right over his Black Sea billion dollar mansion, that sits on hundreds of acres of pristine forrest and would be seriously contaminated

[AntiFascist]

16. Watch out for the WW3 nuclear war fear mongers...

who might suggest that we stay out of all these conflicts, otherwise...

[relayerbob]

21. Not possible

Completely inadequate resources to fight another war at this time

[WarGamer]

27. +1000 so true...

[WarGamer]

26. How could he attack the Baltics?

His military has been decimated.

He'd get crushed like a bug vs NATO.

He's not attacking the Baltics.

Unless he's stupid or suicidal.

[Midnight Writer]

28. Just think if Putin used all these resources to strengthen trade and alliances

and push Russia into a modern world economy based on peaceful interaction with the world.

He's no "genius".

[48656c6c6f20]

30. Probably he'll be in England

by next year. It's a strategy that seems to work. Threaten to use nukes and take what you want. NATO won't do anything as long as ww3 fears are there.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

32. Oh fer christ's sakes,

just stop with this defeatist bullshit, it's not needed, nor wanted, here.

[48656c6c6f20]

34. Are you my stalker now?

[MarineCombatEngineer]

36. Stalker?

Don't fucking flatter yourself.

I'll call out your bullshit defeatism every time I see it, that's not stalking.

[SmallFry]

39. Clark is working hard for his paycheck. NT

[elleng]

40. General Clark is a military retiree,

and is engaged in several endeavors; no firm 'paycheck' other than as a retiree, I think. Probably some compensation from CNN, as 'expert.'

He does work hard, for whomever he works.

[SmallFry]

41. I like him, in general.

Went to a lecture of his at UF. Voted for him in a Presidential primary. I do now think that was a foolish vote but not due to any lack of respect.

I watch Clark do his bits on CNN. Clark understands a paycheck and a days work. He works it. Sometimes over the top, which is characteristically unlike him.

[elleng]

42. I too voted for him in a primary.

I don't think I've ever seen/heard him 'over the top.'

[Ilsa]

45. I worked on his primary.

By the time I got to vote in May (Texas), Kerry had pretty much wrapped it up.

[Ilsa]

46. Maybe we can convince the Russians that

Bolshevik Jesus is returning that very day, so a suicide pact is in order. I wouldn't cry over their mass suicide.