Written by: Beck

Blackmail.

North Korea told the United States on Thursday that it would test a nuclear weapon unless Washington accepted Pyongyang's proposal for a freeze on its atomic program, a senior administration official said.

You know, of second world nations, North Korea has long been the most backwards and primitive. While they've spent much of their abundant natural resources towards building up heavy industry and military technology, at the same time, a majority of their population lives only a few international aid packages ahead of the stone age and starvation.

Despite much of what you read in popular fiction, a true nuclear fission bomb is not an easy thing to produce. The fissile material has to be highly purified, properly shaped, and the implosion which triggers the fission reaction must be absolutely perfectly engineered and timed. Otherwise, all you have is an extremely expensive (and not especially effective) dirty bomb. There's a large part of me that would actually like to see the North Koreans test a nuclear device (so long as it's on their own soil--I'd rather they not test it on, say, Seoul). Why? Because I think there's a very good chance it wouldn't even work.

There was no indication of when North Korea might carry out its reported threat to test. The United States is uncertain as to how many weapons North Korea possesses, but thinks it has at least one or two with the potential for several more.

Go ahead, use up one of your bombs. We've got a few thousand we can loan ya if you ever find yourself caught short. To quote regular INCITE reader Goe, "Ok. You can have nuclear weapons. Here they come. Catch."