Mods, please replace the URL with any of the other sources in the comments. This URL goes to an empty page that says to go to another page which then asks you to subscribe.
If this is confirmed, I am really interested to see China's stance. South Korea and Japan are definitely going to raise security concerns. The crazy neighbor now has a gun.
Initial seismic reports are pretty underwhelming for a fusion weapon, so maintaining some skepticism on whether this is a significant new capability is probably merited until we get some radiation data.
Here's another source: https://www.rt.com/news/328038-north-korea-earthquake-nuclea...
My first thought after seeing this was, "what if they published the complete design online? I wonder how the major world powers would react."
Here is another http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/05/asia/north-korea-seismic-event...
Their Atomic Bombs had notably low yields [1], suggesting that the designs were poor. I'd be really surprised if they managed to successfully construct a Hydrogen Bomb.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_North_Korean_nuclear_test
Apparently their last test was also detected at magnitude 5.1, so I suppose that this was probably not an H-bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mas...
>On February 11, 2013, the U.S. Geological Survey detected a magnitude 5.1 seismic disturbance,[13] reported to be a third underground nuclear test.[14] North Korea has officially reported it as a successful nuclear test with a lighter warhead that delivers more force than before, but has not revealed the exact yield. Multiple South Korean sources estimate the yield at 6–9 kilotons, while the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources estimates the yield at 40 kilotons.[15][16][17]
The 5.1 earthquake for this bomb would suggest a smaller explosion than the bombs at the tail end of WW2, however that depends on a lot of things. Looking at this list it would suggest about a ~600 ton explosion http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/richter_magnitude_scale
If I had to guess the seconds stage of their bomb significantly underperformed / didn't fire if it was a true h-bomb
Text isn't loading, says its on Bloomberg Terminal.
I'm not well schooled in nuclear bombs. What's the payload, how does this compare to their previous tests, and what's next?
The only country that could do something about NK is China. The won't. Takes eyes off of the South China Sea. I wish they would just annex the country.
It looks like the URL changed: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-06/north-kore...
Deleting the post because of the URL and title change.
What a timing. South Korea's Left and Right haven't been polarized in years since South Korea and Japan settled on Comfort Women tragedy. In less than a month, Koreans are now faced with this news that will surely erupt new discussions on how to deal with North Korea.
Damn their infernal terminal. Weirdest social network ever.
Congratulations to NK for their first successful test!
Well, on the bright side, they've probably killed more of their own people through allocating resources to such a thing instead of food and whatnot than they'll ever manage to take out with the weapon.