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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (15573)	1/5/2002 6:14:09 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Well, call me paranoid if you like, but as a kid I had an underground bunker [which unfortunately wasn't going to be much use because the larva flow is not far under the surface where we lived and I didn't understand the pressures involved, so the roof would have fallen in]. The Japanese had come marauding down to not far north of NZ. Nuclear tests and Strontium 90 were problematic, with high milk levels until they went underground. You can call it melodramatic if you like. My father and other relatives had spent 4 years fighting Germany and others were fighting the Japanese. I grew up with army convoys, and all the accoutrements of mass killing in military operations. My grandfather was in WWI. It's been a litany of conflict going back into the depths of time. Wacko people were thinking of conscripting me to kill Vietnamese. I'd have had to have a civil war in NZ! For decades, the talk was of MAD, a dead earth with plenty of nukes for everyone. Nuclear winters and the like. Anyone who wasn't fearful obviously didn't have their brain properly connected. The domino theory was all the rage and the USA killed millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians to stop the dominoes toppling. NZ troops fought in Malaysia, Vietnam and Korea against the communist military threat. We have Indonesian barbarians just north of us and there are quite a lot of them. Russia, to show they were serious in a confrontation with the USA, might have found it expedient to nuke an American ship in Auckland, an American ally, to show the USA they were deadly serious without provoking a doomsday reaction which might happen if mainland USA were nuked. Missile silos are hardened and are perhaps the safest place to be! We lived next to a nuclear laboratory, Chernobyl, and had radioactive debris raining down on us in London. The radioactive levels weren't too bad in that area, but I quickly bought a lot of milk powder to feed our 4 young children for a few months until the coast was clear. <You guys won't even let our Navy ships come into port if they are carrying Nuclear weapons > Or nuclear-propelled. I'm not one of the anti-nuclear fan club members, but I'm not convinced that having nuclear reactors in port is all that good an idea. The Kursk shows what can happen to submarines for example. Yes, we can say that's just the Russians, who can't do things right, but I recall an American submarine had a little bump by mistake off Hawaii not too long ago. Mistakes and accidents and deliberate attacks happen. As the WTC showed. Nuclear reactors carry special risks. Nuclear weapons attract military attacks. Just as the Taleban hiding among civilians can lead to problems for civilians, military boats among civilians might be a problem too. We have our little Navy moored in Auckland Harbour, so let's hope they aren't nuked like Hiroshima. If USA ships are in port, which they have been many times, that makes NZ a target. When people armed with nukes and other stuff are roaming the neighbourhood, it's sensible to consider that they actually intend to use them. They are not built to never be used. They are built to be used if necessary. Predicting just when they might be needed is not simple. Just as predicting the WTC attack wasn't simple. Enemies don't ring a bell before they bomb Pearl Harbour. They don't announce that they have a nuke before they demonstrate it on Hiroshima, giving the population time to leave town. Anyone who isn't frightened is insane! Mqurice