"In all, estimates of North Korea’s separated plutonium range between 30 kg and 50 kg, with an approximate 5 kg to 6 kg of this figure having been used for the October 2006 test and an additional amount probably used in the May 2009 test.15 This amounts to enough plutonium for approximately five to eight nuclear weapons, assuming 6 kg per weapon. Taking the nuclear tests into account, North Korean could possess plutonium for four to seven nuclear weapons. A 2007 unclassified intelligence report to Congress says that “prior to the test North Korea could have produced up to 50 kg of plutonium, enough for at least a half dozen nuclear weapons” and points out that additional plutonium is in the fuel of the Yongbyon reactor.16 North Korea claimed to have reprocessed that fuel in the summer of 2009...The Director of National Intelligence said in early 2012 that “we also assess, albeit with low confidence, Pyongyang probably would not attempt to use nuclear weapons against US forces or territory, unless it perceived its regime to be on the verge of military defeat and risked an irretrievable loss of control.”
from "North Korea's Nuclear Weapons: Technical Issues" ; Mary Beth Nitikin: Congressional Research Service, April 3, 2013.Don't let the soothing, dismissive press fool you. If we find our community engulfed in thermonuclear war on April 11 ("4/11/2013") , it won't be because we weren't warned. The North Korean and Iranian 'conflicts' are firmly tied in the minds of our war-mongering, imperialist industrialist complex: neither Iran nor North Korea can be allowed to exist. Therefore, we intend to sanction, provoke, and antagonize them into armed conflict; a foreign policy firmly designed to provoke both Russia and China.[1]
I admit I have some respect for North Korea's spunk. Iran seems to believe that it can play chess with the West, a game the Iranians have some claim to inventing. North Korea's culture seems devoid of bourgeois sentimentality. Their game has finally reached an ultimate expression of this theme; the threat of preemptive nuclear war on the United States.
Red lines in the sand have been drawn. We will not be allowed to invade Iran or North Korea without risking global thermonuclear war. It will surprise me little if the United States proceeds undeterred nonetheless. Perhaps, this is the best our species can do; savage, apathetic and immoral animals that we have become.
