POST SCRIPTS

I think it is strange that after all the noise and hype, they would do an underground test. Wouldn't it be more terrorizing to actually see the mushroom cloud? With an underground test all you get is a dent in the ground. I guess we will just have to wait and see but I think he is full of crap.

Yeah, it's probably a hoax, who can trust anything they say? I can just hear it now...CNN REPRORTING: "The explosion, equal to a kiloton of dynamite, was setoff earlier..." and why was it equal to a kiloton of dynamite? Answer: Because it was a kiloton of dynamite. Paid for by cutting back more on the food supplies for millions of his peasant workers.

If Nprth Korea tried using a mass quantity of dynamite to create the illusion of an underground nuclear test, they'd not get that past US electronic intelligence.

Any nuclear fission creates an electromagnetic as well as a particle emission signature. Even an undreground test, while shielded, will still produce this signature that satellites can detect.

If they do an underground explosion using TNT the intelligence conclusion will be either:

a) The nuclear test was a dud, no fission occured

b) It was a ruse using TNT

Either way, Kim Jong Il will look like an idiot if he tries to fool the world into thinking they have a nuclear fission weapon.

If he has one, world opinion will condem the action, though I doubt he'll care.

Good point, but I'm curious if you know, is it possible to construct a device that could register an electro-magnetic pulse similar to an atomic bomb? Possibly, he could set off a huge explosion and a pulse weapon at the same time and fake us out?

I've heard of such EMP bombs, but don't know how powerful they are or if their EMPs are different than from that caused by fission.