Those are my favorite charts in the bunch (and probably the most useful ones), but you can follow the links to check out the rest. My only request is that you give me a cozy cabin somewhere peaceful when you use this knowledge to succeed where I've failed. [Flickr via Bibliodyssey via io9]

Iran already has the Shahab-​​3, which is capable of reaching Israel and parts of Europe, like the Sajjil-2. But the Shahab-3 uses liquid fuel, which means two things: First, they have to be fueled before launch, something that can be detected by spy satellites, so potential targets can take appropriate countermeasures. Second, the liquid fuel is highly corrosive, greatly affecting the accuracy of the missile by destabilizing it.

The Sajjil-2—which is designed to be a weapon payload carrier, not a peaceful space rocket—uses the same kind of solid fuel technology that the United States uses in the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. That means that they can be perfectly accurate, like the Minuteman III is. But more importantly, these missiles can be safely stored and launched with no preparation or warning. Click the big red button, and the birds are on their way one second later.

The new Iranian missile is only a two-stage rocket. That means that they can launch one right now to Israel or Europe, with no warning whatsoever. It also means that, if they add a third stage, they would be able to use these missiles to reach any part of the world, from San Francisco, California, to London, United Kingdom, to New York, New York, that little town blue.

Hello Cold War 2, we didn't really miss you. [Weekly Standard via Defense Tech]

A few years after the United States unleashed the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union tested their first nuclear warhead ever. They appropriately called it "First Lightning," the opening of a series 456 atomic tests that brought Hell to Earth sixty years ago. For all of us, that summons terrifying, but beautiful images into our brains:

Sadly, to more than one million innocent people living near the Semipalatinsk Polygon—the Soviet nuclear testing site in the northeast of Kazakhstan—it means this:

For three generations, and more to come, those tests mean deformed babies. They mean premature aging, and countless diseases caused by radiation poisoning. The bombs' ghosts still live in the dead steppe, their invisible fangs ready to suck seven years off the life of every person living around that place. That's the difference in life expectancy with the rest of Kazakhstan.

Of course, it's not the only horror inflicted by weapons in the Soviet Union—or in the rest of the world. I recently read all about them in a fascinating book by Ryszard Kapuściński, one of the best journalist and writers of our time. The book, called Imperium, talks about the Soviet Union through a series of adventures and trips that reach all the corners of the Red Empire. The mosaic is a frightening view of the deadliest, most insensitive killing machine that has ever existed, all through the eyes of the people who suffered it. Not even Hitler matched the horrors of Stalin and his cohorts.

Imperium's raw stories moved me to tears many times, and these images by Ed Ou are a perfect summary of the atrocities inflicted upon hundreds of millions that Kapuściński describes in his book.

However, as I watch through glassy eyes how Mayra Zhumageldina massages her daughter Zhannoor, or how 29-yo Berik Syzdykov sings and plays piano despite being deformed and blind since birth—he was exposed to a nuclear blast while he was inside his mom's womb—I try to smile. I try to smile and be a bit optimistic because, no matter how monstrous some men and women can be, the human spirit always seems to find a way to survive. [Adventures With Light and Getty Images via Big Picture]

That includes every single nuclear weapon, every one of the Russian Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles in ground silos, nuclear submarines, and heavy bombers around the world. Scary stuff indeed.

But fear not, fellow humans, because the Dead Hand system is not completely automatic. The actual red button is apparently activated by a soldier hidden in some underground bunker.

Yes, I feel so much safer now. [gradremstroy—in Russian via DRB]

The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn't matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.

The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand. It was built 25 years ago and remained a closely guarded secret.

The scary thing is that Perimeter still works today. At least according to Valery Yarynich, a former Soviet colonel now 72 years old. Yarynich should know, though: He worked 30 years at the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff helping to build it.

US Officials won't even like to mention it, but with the Cold War over and Russia being more or less a friend, why risk having such a system in place? I really don't like the idea of something going wrong in a rusty 25-year-old piece of Soviet-era technology.

Not when it can automatically launch a nuclear attack capable of taking out Humanity out of the map. [Wired]

It's quite interesting, with well-thought-out logic that points to NK obtaining parts and knowledge from Russia. In short, they probably don't have quite as good a capability for delivering the payload as previously thought. [The Bulletin]

According to Wikipedia, it depends. If they're using the short to medium range missiles, it's probably going to be the Musudan, which has an operational range of 2500-4000 kilometers. The darker red circle shows the maximum range of this. Nowhere close to US territories, but China, Russia and Japan should probably keep an eye open.

However, if they're going to use their Taepodong-2 long range three-stage missiles, there's a MAXIMUM possibility of 10,000 kilometers (the larger circle). However, a more likely scenario is somewhere around 4500 kilometers, which still isn't quite far enough to hit Alaska or Hawaii.

In the case that somehow it can reach the maximum 10,000 kilometers, it's still not quite there to the west coast of the US, so I can take my diapers off and stop worrying. [Guardian]

Update: Ah crap. There's a reason why I don't do this for a living. The Earth is round. Here's a better map. We're all screwed. Thanks commenters. Forget everything I wrote.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

You read that correctly, fellow Net denizens. Coming soon, Mr. Polar Bear and his brethren will be sharing real estate with a ring of floating, self-sustained nuclear power stations. It's all part of Russia's—and the world's—ongoing thirst for energy.

Environmentalists are understandably outraged over the impact said stations could have on an already endangered area of the globe, and if polar bears could talk, I imagine they'd be outraged too.

Said a rep from Bellona, a Scandinavian environmental watchdog group, "[The plan] is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle."

Oh, and there's this fear that Russia will simply dump the radioactive waste into the Arctic Sea anwyay, which they've done before on several occasions. To date at least 12 nuclear reactors from decommissioned Russian submarines have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid waste.

Pretty soon the ocean will be like a 24/7 aurora borealis up there. A wonderful, cancer-causing aurora borealis. [Guardian]

After years of ignoring the Israeli nuclear program—which was denounced in 1986 by former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu—the United States' Department of Defense has acknowledged Israel nuclear power status for the first time.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of its own nuclear arsenal, but page 37 of the US Joint Forces Command report recognizes the fact, putting it in the same group as Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Russia, along with an "emerging Iran," Taiwan, and Japan having "the capability to develop nuclear weapons quickly."

According to "The Samson Option" report—an investigative article written by reporter Seymour Hersh—Israel may have 200 to 400 atomic warheads, ready to use as the last resort in case of a massive attack that may put in danger the existence of the country.

This is a big deal for two reasons: First, because the subject has been dodged forever by the US government, including President Barack Obama, who recently ignored the question when asked by White House correspondent Helen Thomas. And second, because to the Symington Amendment—which bans support to countries developing nuclear weapons—this may mean the end of US help to Israel.

Or maybe this just means that someone at the DOD will get fired and the report corrected with a big black marker.

It can go either way, and it will still be very bad news. [US Army PDF via DOD Buzz]

There are four or five airfields in Cuba with 4,000-meter-long runways, which absolutely suit us.

That's what tovarishch Major General Anatoly Zhikharev—chief of staff of the Russian Air Force's long-range aviation—told Russian news agency Interfax, adding that "if the two chiefs of state display such a political will, we are ready to fly there."

So basically, the Russians are now at the dick-waving testing-the-new-guy stage. Add this to the Chinese plans to build carrier battlegroups and their recent harassment against a US Navy oceanographic ship in international waters, and you will have a pretty grim picture of what may be brewing. [Defense Tech]

[VideoRadar via Dark Roasted Blend]

A Royal Navy source told the Times:

It is remarkably difficult to detect a modern submarine with sonar and we work very hard with our own submarines, as do our allies, in making them as quiet as possible so they are not detectable.

And he's serious about that—even after realizing they'd hit something, the French crew couldn't tell what it was. They wrote the object off as a shipping container, only to find out that they had actually collided with another submarine upon docking three days later, after the government had deduced the collision from routine information exchanges with the British.

The problem was that both submarines use passive sonar to map out their surroundings, which doesn't give away their location with the 'pings' of active sonar, and is somewhat less sensitive. Without these 'pings', it was nearly impossible for either sub's passive sonar to detect the other's, leading to the collision and subsequent confusion.

In reality, the whole thing was a bit more subdued than initial reports (or our imaginations) led us to believe. The subs, which were traveling very slowly, just sort of bonked into on another, and the only critical damage to either vessel was to the French sub's sonar system. [Times Online]

The news was confirmed by First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jonathon Band:

Recently, the two submarines came into contact at very low speed. Both submarines remained safe and no injuries occurred. We can confirm that the capability remained unaffected and there has been no compromise to nuclear safety. HMS Vanguard returned safely to Faslane under her own power on 14 February.

The incident may have happened around February 3 or 4. The submarines, each of them about 150 metres long and 13 metres in diameter, had 250 sailors inside and 16 35-ton intercontinental ballistic missiles missiles, with a 5,000-mile range.

The Royal Navy says there was no real danger and the nuclear safety of the UK arsenal—no word from the Frenchies—was never compromised. However, according to a senior Royal Navy source, "it's very unlikely there would have been a nuclear explosion. But a radioactive leak was a possibility. Worse, we could have lost the crew and warheads. That would have been a national disaster."

Indeed. These things are just too damn stealthy. [Sky News]

A great story from George Stephanopolous: Before coming onstage, before going to church this morning, he went to his national security briefing, as he has for the last couple of months. What made this different from every other briefing though, is that at the end, a man with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist told Obama how to launch a nuclear strike using the codes inside.

Obama won't get the card to launch the nukes until he is officially sworn in, but as George Stephanopolous remarks, "the true transfer of power has begun." [ABC News, Image: MSNBC/AP]

Since there was no easy way to travel by ship across the Northern coast of the Soviet Union, the smartypants of the Communist regime decided that they needed a chain of autonomous lighthouses that could run 24/7/365. The answer: light-weight nuclear reactors and a generation of lighthouse guards with four hands and six eyes.

Right now, these structures can be visited, if you don't care about you or your future kids growing up extra members—the lighthouses are, obviously, contaminated with radiation. [English Russia]

It happened in a frozen bay a few miles near the base. The rescue job was extremely difficult, as the documentation and video obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act show. It took months for the government to collect thousands of pieces from the B-52—scattered all around the bay—plus 500 million gallons of ice, some of it radioactive.

For a while it was just a giant recovery operation, but then the real problems started. After trying to make sense of all the pieces they were able to gather, they discovered that something was missing. The new documents reveal that they were only able to find three out of the four nuclear bombs on board the plane. The possible reason: "Something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary".

Nevertheless, the government said all four weapons were destroyed and everything was ok. Meanwhile, in April the US government sent a Star III submarine to find the bomb, making the Danish government believe it was a "survey of bottom under the impact point":

Fact that this operation includes search for object or missing weapon part is to be treated as confidential NOFORN [not to be disclosed to any foreign country]. For discussion with Danes, this operation should be referred to as a survey repeat survey of bottom under impact point.

The search was finally abandoned. According to William H Chambers, a former nuclear weapons designer at Los Alamos: "There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components. It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them." There you go, people. If you are ever attacked by a 45-foot high shrimp, remember to call Mr. Chambers and tell him that, apparently, our new crustacean overlords didn't find it so difficult. [BBC News]

The most pressing one is that changing to nuclear will help reduce the amount of emissions from planes and keep them flying in the air longer. A plane sipping on nuclear energy could take off in London, land in Australia, and then go to South Africa without needing to refuel, and it'll have zero impact on the atmosphere as well.

Plus, the safety risks we tend to knee-jerk envision with nuclear are tied more to its image in popular culture than any real scientific facts. Nuclear submarines have been around since the beginning of the Cold War—when was the last time you heard of an actual meltdown related to one of those? Now compare that to the tons of other fuels that have been leaked into waters over the years. Safe nuclear planes have been feasible since the 1950s, but lost favor when the military decided to start building intercontinental ballistic missiles instead.

While there are a few genuinely valid concerns we need to address before we actually let nuclear-powered planes take off—how to automatically jettison the reactor in case of a plane crash and what to do with spent fuel, for instance— there's no reason why we shouldn't at least hit the power button on research. [Times UK via Crunchgear]

The crux of IAN's breakthrough is a new shielding technology that encloses a small room (or trailer, as seen in the pic), and blocks the harmful, tech-frying effects of an EMP. The shielding is comprised of electrically isolated layers of steel and aluminum, and weighs 70% less than what the military uses today for blocking EMP bursts.

The "microgrid" concept arrives when you stick a generator or two inside these portable safe houses. Connect a few together and you have a microgrid, which Charles Manto, president of IAN, says can "easily power the city of Annapolis, a hospital, or the University of Maryland campus. The idea is to create islands of power to reduce the cascading effects of a wide-scale failure."

Better yet, IAN designed the microgrids to be powered by renewable energy sources, like wind and solar. The End Times will be tough, it seems, but at least they'll be green. [MarketWatch]