Russia is testing a nuclear torpedo in the Arctic.
The "doomsday" device has the power to trigger radioactive tsunamis off America's East Coast.
The Pentagon said it was watching developments "very closely."
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Russia is planning to deploy a nuclear-powered missile to the Arctic next summer that's designed to detonate off the coastlines of enemy countries, CNN reported.
Satellite images provided this week to CNN by Maxar, a satellite company, indicated that Russia is testing weapons in the region and building significant military infrastructure in the Arctic — which is increasingly free of ice because of climate change.
CNN reported that Russia would deploy the Poseidon 2M39 missile to its Arctic region next summer. The missile has been referred to in reports as a "doomsday" device because of its devastating power.
The device — images of which first surfaced on Russian state television in 2015 — is an underwater nuclear torpedo designed to hit the ocean floor, kicking up a radioactive tsunami that could spread deadly radiation over thousands of miles of land, rendering it uninhabitable.
Russian President Vladimir Putin requested an update on a "key stage" of the tests in February from his defense minister, and more tests are expected later this year, the Times of London reported.
Russia and NATO countries with a presence in the Arctic region have been increasing their activity there in recent years as rising sea temperatures make it more accessible, Insider's Christopher Woody reported.
Russia has the world's longest Arctic coastline and derives about a quarter of its GDP from the region, and the Northern Sea Route is a valuable shipping corridor for Moscow.
The Pentagon on Monday said it was watching reports of Russian military activities and infrastructure build-ups in the Arctic "very closely."
"Without getting into specific intelligence assessments, obviously we're monitoring it very closely," said Pentagon press secretary John F. Kirby at a briefing Monday.
"Obviously we're watching this, and, as I said before, we have national-security interests there that we know ... we need to protect and defend," Kirby said.
"And as I said, nobody's interested in seeing the Arctic become militarized."
NinjaCaviar on April 7th, 2021 at 15:51 UTC »
Lmao this headline is such bullshit
Edit: there’s even a relevant Kurzgesagt
breadbasketbomb on April 7th, 2021 at 13:52 UTC »
The tsunamis created by tectonic plate movements are orders of magnitudes larger than the most powerful nuclear weapons ever decided. Said torpedo has a diameter of approximately 2 meters, which isn’t large enough to contain anything close to make an even small tsunami. It’s likely this weapon is designed to destroy ports and dockyards, not create tsunamis.
SirJelly on April 7th, 2021 at 13:46 UTC »
This is not super credible news.
Ocean and underwater nuclear tests have been conducted before. They make big waves, sure, but a tsunami takes a colossal amount of energy to generate.
The 2011 tsunami that resulted in the fukushima disaster was the result of an 9.0 magnitude quake.
It would take a 30 gigaton detonation to generate such energy. That's at least 600 times larger than the largest nuke ever tested.
Furthermore, the radiation concerns are overblown. Water is one of the best radiation shielding materials there is, a weapon detonated on the sea floor is basically an ideal case for radiation mitigation.
However, the fact that this application of a warhead would be relatively mild might be a good reason to worry it would actually be used. It wouldn't level a city, but could flood a coastal airstrip and irradiate the soil to some degree (I doubt to "uninhabitable" levels). Such an act wouldn't likely be justification for a "traditional" nuclear escalation.
EDIT: I don't mean to trivialize environmental harm caused by radiation in water, I mean that the fallout from a weapon like this would be much more like a coal ash spill and not a nuclear apocalypse.
Governments of many flavors have already tolerated similar or worse environmental catastrophes for profit, that's why I think the use of this kind of weapon would NOT provoke a nation to just decide to nuke Earth to death.
Also I was wrong on magnitude of original earthquake, 9.0 not 8.4. fixed.