First, the good news. As a point of pure trivia, I've put together a page with all the cover images that didn't make it onto BME. The way covers get chosen is that while I'm doing an update, any time I come across something interesting, I copy it into my “potential covers” folder. Then at the end, I pick one — it's always hard because there are lots more cover pictures than there are updates.
I have written earlier this year (3/29 and 4/12 for example) about the continued escalation in nuclear arms between the US and Russia. To make a long story short, both countries continue to spend enormous amounts of money developing and deploying weaponry with one goal alone: the total thermonuclear destruction of life in the other nation. It's not as if these are multi-purpose weapons. These are quite literally weapons that can only be used for one apocalyptic strike. They're no good in the “war on terror” or even on smaller nations. They serve one purpose: destruction of superpower nations.
Anyway, on Sunday Russia deployed six more Topol-M's, their top-of-the-line “American killer” (more). It has a range of 6,000 miles and is designed to evade current and future anti-missile systems through its speed and maneuverability. It has nuke-proof launch silos, and next year will be available in an off-road version that can be launched from anywhere. The new versions of the missiles are designed to deploy up to six separately targeted nuclear warheads into the heart of US cities, leaving nothing but corpses in their wake.
In addition, Russia is dusting off it's old R-36 series (known in the US usually as the SS-19 or “Satan” designation; more) with a rance of up to 25,000 miles in its orbital version which can deliver a five megaton nuke to anywhere in the world. Other versions of the R-36 can deliver multiple nukes as well. To be clear on what these are, they are space rockets — they fly up into space, orbit around the planet until they're hundreds of miles over their target, and then they strike… red dust. Variations on both of these missiles can also be submarine launched.
Russia, just like America, also has a new set of scorched earth toys in the works. Their new system, scheduled for release in 2009, can carry ten separate nuclear warheads — up to four and a half tons of weaponry (per missile) can be dropped anywhere in the US at the touch of a button and there wouldn't be a damn thing anyone could do to stop it. I suppose we should be “happy” that the Soviets stopped development on projects like R-56 which could deliver 46 TONS of payload to American soil (ie. enough to pepper dozens of multi-megaton nukes across the US).
Anyway, Phil started this project when him and Johnny visited, but I've got to go out now and continue digging our back yard bomb shelter. Or something like that.
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