North Korea Claims 6th Nuclear Test Is Its Most Powerful Ever

Much larger than the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kim Jong Un with a new friend
STR/AFP/Getty Images

Following a good-sized earthquake in the vicinity of North Korea’s known nuclear test site, the rogue communist nation has claimed a successful test of a “two-stage thermonuclear weapon.” 

More troubling to nations concerned about the DPRK’s steady increase in aggression is the fact that North Korea also claims its alleged hydrogen bomb can fit on the head of a long-range missile. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjnm3V0xYjI

The largest hydrogen bomb test in history (see the video above) was conducted with the Russian “Tsar Bomba” in 1961. That was 57 megatons. 

The 6.3 magnitude quake that supposedly coincided with North Korea’s test would indicate that Kim Jong-Un isn’t bullshitting now. Multiple foreign policy experts noted in social media posts that a quake of that size could equal at least a 1-megaton nuclear detonation—substantially larger than the atomic bomb which destroyed Nagasaki. 

According to press photos and Pyongyang pronouncements, Kim Jong Un was directly involved with the entire process.

Both the United States and Japan measured the quake and Japan concluded it was mostly likely caused by an explosion. 

North Korea claims that this bomb is a “nuke with great destructive power that can be detonated even at high altitudes for superpowerful EMP [electromagnetic pulse attack]” if the Hermit Kingdom chooses to use it.

United States president Donald Trump said the test was “hostile and dangerous” to America. Japan’s Prime Minister Abe used similar language, calling North Korea’s entire nuclear program a “grave and urgent” threat to his nation.

Getty Images

International perspectives on Kim Jong Un have long pegged him as a lunatic in a way that tends to undercut the seriousness of any North Korean threat. 

Now that a man unstable enough to have people executed with artillery fire may have the H-bomb, it’s likely he’ll be taken much more seriously. 

And that may not end well for him.

h/t LA Times, NY Post

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