On the tracks of the Covid-19 virus; Lesson fortysix

The United States was in about the same situation as northern Europe in mid-March 2020. We northern Europeans are probably possibly better than the United States on infection tracing and we have a better social capital (political science term for citizens’ level of trust in authorities and other institutions). If we suspect that we have acquired the infection ourselves we seek contact with the right authority instead of taking protection in a bunker with an automatic weapon in our lap should someone intrude on our bunker. There is nothing wrong with weapons, it is American users of weapons that are failing in their heads. That is not how we Swedes would act if we had access to small firearms. In addition, at the time it cost more than a 1,000 US dollars to test for Covid-19 in some states. It probably reduced the number of confirmed cases.

The figures for Covid-19’s spread probably had little to do with how many were ill at the beginning of the pandemic, and more to do with how many infected people were intercepted.

Trump declared the British coronavirus more sympathetic to the United States because Britons were allowed to travel to and from the United States without restrictions for the next 30 days despite having as many infected per capita as did for example Sweden have. The number of known infections in the US was at the time over 1,200 and the numbers increased rapidly, but relatively few Americans had been tested so the number of cases was probably larger. We can only hope that the British travelers were all exemplary infection-free. It is also fortunate that no homeless person has yet been affected because they lack the money to consult a doctor, so fortunately it is a class issue and only the middle class and the rich are affected in the United States.

”In an extra televised speech to the nation, President Donald Trump announced that all travel from Europe would be stopped. The exception was travel from the United Kingdom and American citizens who had undergone careful examination. The United States imposed similar travel restrictions on China when the virus began to spread there, something the EU did not do, and Trump now blames the corona outbreak in the United States on European travelers.” Quote SR; Ekot on 12/3 2020

The United Kingdom otherwise had almost exactly as many infected as Sweden per capita. No, this is not about the risk of infection, it is politically and economically motivated.

It looks like Covid-19 is a seasonal and weather-sensitive virus. It should come as no surprise. If you look at the climate zones, you can see how the virus in mid-March 2020, in the big perspective, stayed within a certain zone. Interestingly enough, Spain did at first not have a Covid-19 outbreak to the extent that they had in Italy. The tourists in Spain are mainly northern European. Italy receives many tourists from China and Northern Europe and America. Australia has many Chinese citizens but they only had about 200 cases of Covid-19 infected in mid-March.

I would also like to say that the government in Sweden was right not to force the schools to close. We have passed the time when we could have stopped the virus from spreading in our society. Forcing the schools to close would only have created a panicked situation and the hoarding of toilet paper and other life necessities. The only good thing that could have come from forcing the schools to close is that we could have gained a few weeks of activity, so that we or others could have had time to produce and manufacture a vaccine on a large scale. But making a vaccine takes time. Distributing it and organizing the vaccination also takes time.

We could see early whose population panicked and hoarded the most toilet paper. From the Swedish supermarkets, during the first half of the year, only toilet paper was hoarded, and some shelves with canned jars were empty. I have seen live videos from the USA where all the shelves in the entire supermarket were completely empty.

We could have closed our borders but we have no border controls. But if we were to close our borders, we should do so by being selective with who we let into our country based on where the travelers recently came from, so that we damaged our economy as little as possible.

China caused its own panicked situation by enforcing drastic and draconian measures such as nailing down doors and windows in building complexes with, it is said, the people still inside them without the tennants having any exit route from the building.

If new measures are to be introduced, care should be taken to base these measures on virological facts, mathematics and algorithms now that we have a better grasp of the situation.

Israel had extremely low death tolls, around a total of 100 total until mid-April 2020. This is because the Israeli government from early on used Mossad as a torpedo to vacuum the global market for respirators and other medical equipment for its own population.

What I would like to say to the world regarding Covid-19, is that what your politicians should do is take responsibility and saying:

”We can not lock down large companies in our country in the coming months, it will hurt the economy too much. There is even a risk that civilization as we know it will stagnate permanently. We can not expect our doctors and nurses to have to decide who is allowed to live and who is to die, but we should not take any responsibility, about which group of people must risk death and who will be allowed to live? If we do not soil our hands with blood, then we can not be said to be statesmen.”

And:

”Isolate the elderly and the people at risk, not the average worker.”

Which general would you prefer to put your life in the hands of as a soldier, the general who saves everyone and no one, or the general who orders military doctors to save those who have a chance to survive?

According to Trump, we Swedes, he claims, internationally or in the world are known as ”the herd”. It stems from something that was discussed in the United States recently – herd immunity. Herd immunity is when a sufficient group of people in a society have had the virus and recovered from it so that society gets an immunity as a group.

It is the rest of the world that is ”the herd”, we go our own way. But if he means that we are a nation, then he is right.

I’m not a social Darwinist, I’m a realist. If there was any other method that could really protect the people at risk without damaging the economy too much, I would advocate it. But no matter how we handle the situation, Covid-19 will spread in Sweden, just as it will spread in the rest of the world all the way into nursing homes and into the healthcare system, and has already done so. Few or no countries have succeeded in artificially stopping the spread of infection for any pandemic. The only thing one can hope for with restrictions on freedom of movement is to slow down the spread of infection, but at a high cost to the economy.

Reasonably, the only benefit of trying to postpone the spread of the epidemic in a country is that we then have time to prepare and have time to take action. We have three research teams that works around the clock to produce a vaccine. But we have failed to prepare healthcare for the effects of the epidemic.

The biggest risk to the economy are the oil-producing countries. They are sensitive to extreme economic downturns in the world. It could be that many of the oil-producing countries lack sufficient robustness in the economic system and that the oil taps are permanently shut off due to unprofitability so that oil traffic stops abruptly. Thus we should act proactively for Sweden and the Nordic countries.

State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell and his decision on how to handle the epidemic in Sweden has mostly been for the better. He has acted as a statesman and reasoned logically and rationally. I have got the impression that a majority of the Swedish people still have confidence in the way Tegnell has handled the matter. I have also got the impression that the Swedish people are well aware of what they should do to prevent the spread of infection and that they also have a high level of awareness about what measures have been taken by the Swedish Public Health Agency. And I believe that there is a great incentive for personal initiatives and personal responsibility among the Swedish people.

It doesn’t pay to argue that Sweden’s death toll was higher than the outside world’s because we document deaths more accurately than the outside world does. It may be true, but it will not stop those who are malicious towards Sweden from throwing back selected information and claim that Sweden certainly has a higher death rate per capita of the Covid-19 virus. The devil lies in the details!

How should one then respond to the outside world’s criticism? By proclaiming that Sweden intends to wait and see how the spread of infection has peaked in Sweden by comparing our data with the outside world. A contagion curve over time is comparable to the contagion curves of the outside world. It doesn’t matter how you have handled the spread of infection, the curves will be comparable when this is over, not before. What makes a difference is the extent to which countries’ healthcare workers have had access to face masks and other protective clothing and protective equipment as well as alcohol gel. One more thing comes into play. How different countries have handled their epidemic in different stages. And the social capital of a country plays a big role for what rate the infection spreads in. We can look at Somalis in Sweden. We can see it in our suburbs. These people largely lack social capital. ”Social capital” is a political science term that means; The degree to which citizens have confidence in the authorities and vice versa.

It is telling, however, that in the most recent Swedish peak to date, 4 November 2020, Sweden had turned the death curve to a low 4 deaths of 4,497 infected. By comparison, when Israel peaked again on September 30, they had 37 dead out of 9,078 infected. But then many of our oldest Swedes have sadly already died of Covid-19.

I understand why in the first half of the pandemic, people outside the group who had been traveling in risk countries and healthcare staff were not tested. It is perhaps mainly in China and Italy that test kits are manufactured, and these countries frequently tested their own population. But they had no overproduction on test kits and used that method excessively for their own part. We simply could not get enough test kits.

The number of deaths does not have a strong correlation with the number of infections. I wish that when this pandemic is over, people who suspect that they have had Covid-19 will continue to test themselves, even if it turns out that these people have not had the virus, but that they have had a completely different virus.

What do we gain from such a voluntary test then?

  1. First, we get a better picture of who is immune to a later epidemic, and the negative effects on society’s functions will then be less, as will as the risk of rapid spread of infection will be less.
  2. Secondly, we may find out how accurate the infection statistics are. Could it be that the infection came to Sweden earlier than we think? In February, we only tested Italian and Austrian travelers. But outside that group, the infection may have spread in the country already in December or January.

On April 17, 2020, Trump went on the air along with the entire professional infection control corps, and Mike Pence also participated. Trump said at the press conference that the United States would test millions of Americans for immunity to Covid-19. On April 18, an Israeli stock-conservative online media that I follow to keep up with the situation in the Middle East and Israel in particular, issued a statement saying that Mossad had helped Israel with the transport of a million protective masks and thousands of respirators to Israel. At the Swedish Public Health Agency, they said, the day after Trump’s statement, that Sweden ”currently has no plans to test people for immunity”. It’s a nicer way to say ”we made a mistake”.

Some time before these statements, Trump went out to the media and said that ”I have control over when we will open the economy.” I also understand why Trump was so careful to point out that ”frankly, I think one dead is too many” several times. He wanted to distance himself from Sweden’s alleged herd mentality and our alleged strategy with ”herd immunity”.

Sweden violates human rights when they sacrifice the elderly, international law researcher Katinka Svanberg wrote in a debate article in Göteborgsposten on 23 April 2020. Katinka believes that Sweden should introduce binding restrictions in the wake of the Covid-19 epidemic.

Firstly, it has not been established that binding restrictions in the long run will save more people. Secondly, no one in the government has said that Sweden strives to achieve ”herd immunity”. Sweden is not ”an experiment with herd immunity”.

The UN Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states that everyone has the right to health and that the state must prevent epidemics: ”prevent, treat and combat all epidemic diseases and create conditions that ensure all medical and hospital care in the event of illness.”

Sure, but pretty much the whole world was fighting for the same few resources right then. Sweden does not stand out here, not in terms of prevention and treatment. We do the rest.

”EU:s fundamental rights include a general ban on discrimination. The elderly must not be discriminated against and must be treated with dignity.” Says international law researcher Katinka.

Here I agree with Katinka. But Sweden has no ”intentious ending of elderly life”. In Sweden during the Covid-19 epidemic, priority is given to care, ie. respirators, to those who have a chance to survive. It could be a 20-year-old who is considered not to have a chance to recover and therefore is not allowed to occupy one of the few and precious oxygen breathing assistive devices. But most of the time, unfortunately, these are really old people. It is not intentional to prioritize away many elderly people, it is intentional to prioritize those who can be saved first and foremost.

Katinka writes ”In March, Australia and Sweden had the same number of covid 19 cases, about 5000. After the Australian government shut down society, the infection curve fell from 400 cases per day to about 20 per day, which means that restrictions can be lifted before so that a British vaccine may be available in the autumn of 2020.”

Katinka points here to a figure of 5,000 patients in Covid-19 in Australia in March. But that is not true because it was 500 when Australia peaked at the end of the same month. And it was not until the end of April that the numbers dropped to ~20 ill per day in Australia. Sweden had 280 patients at the end of March. In a different climate, albeit we peaked later. In addition, Sweden certainly has binding restrictions, it is just that we have not implemented a special monetary fine or other penalties for violating the prohibition rules in Sweden. Sweden still has a high ”social capital”, which political scientists call the trust between government and the population. At least as far as Anders Tegnell and the Swedish Public Health Agency and Sweden’s citizens are concerned.

”But the right to life is not worth much if a pandemic rages freely,” writes Katinka.

It’s not like that.

”The right to protection against pandemics is part of the concept of human security which is part of a state’s duty to protect its population in urgent humanitarian emergencies… If the state fails to protect its population, it should receive help and advice from international experts, like WHO, or otherwise face international sanctions.”

Sweden reserves the right to act on its own initiative to reduce the spread of Covid-19 and other epidemics within Sweden’s borders.

Finally, Katinka writes that she is worried about her 84-year-old father, who is ”from the time when ”folkhemmet” (state induced workers union) was built”.

I dare say that Katinka has her loyalty elsewhere than to Sweden, but if her father was involved in building the Swedish folk home, he deserves the best possible care. But it almost would not matter in which country he lives, he would at the time have problems getting respiratory breathing assistance.

In a political video channel on Youtube by Kim Iversen from the end of April 2020, it is stated with good cause that most people are infected at home or in other closed spaces, and that outdoor living does not give the same spread of infection. This shows that Sweden has not chosen the wrong path if it is true. It may not show that we have chosen a better path than the outside world in terms of the spread of infection because it would have happened in any case, but our path has been less harmful to society as a whole. My conviction is that, just as I concluded in this spread of infection, Anders Tegnell and the National Institute of Public Health had these factors in mind when we began to diverge from the outside world on how we should handle the spread of the Covid-19 virus in Sweden.

What is the difference between public transport in Germany and Sweden? Does Germany have public transport? Of course they have. But they do not have many buses, they have rail traffic, and it is probably the buses that are the worst villains. Each passenger touches the same places on the same poles in the bus to hold on to something when the bus starts to move even before people have had time to find a seat. And if you have to stand up during the bus trip, you have to grab the same poles as everybody else. Unlike Germany, Sweden has a lot of public transport by bus, and we were affected almost twice as much as the Germans in terms of the number of infections per capita. That is at least part of the explanation to Sweden’s high infection rate.

Sweden’s refusal to let Chinese owners into our ports has probably relieved Sweden’s strategically difficult situation. Russia may, or may not, want to see a Chinese sphere of influence in the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Bothnia or on the West Coast as welcome. The more we oppose Chinese interests in Sweden, the more it affects Russia. But they probably do not want us to know it, nor how it affects them. But that does not mean we can sit back and relax. China has reportedly recently set up a military base with the greatest possible obscurity somewhere in the Stan countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan. I do not think this is welcome in the Kremlin.

The Kremlin had hoped to see that Trump won the election in the autumn of 2020 and went all in with Russia to attack Sweden economically and (by Russia) later militarily. This would of course be an extreme situation and we are not there today. Trump has even wished Kim Young-Un well, and the man has threatened the United States with nuclear weapons. But Sweden’s anti-Trump sentiment Trump cannot swallow.

I understood from SR;Ekot that there was something called TINA in the financial world in the USA since the autumn of 2019. Tina stands for; There Is No Alternative.

Huawei sent threatening letters to the Danish Prime Minister:

”In Denmark, it is now reported that the Chinese tech giant Huawei in threatening terms in letters to two different prime ministers has tried to influence the country’s government.

It is the newspaper Berlingske that has read several letters from Huawei Denmark to both the former Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and the current Mette Frederiksen.

In the letters, the company writes, among other things, that it wishes to be involved in the expansion of the Danish telecommunications network of the future and that the media coverage of the company contains errors that it wants to clarify.

But in one of the letters, the company writes that if Huawei were to have problems in Denmark, it would seriously affect other Chinese companies’ willingness to invest in the country, something that can be interpreted as a threat.

The letter was written in March 2019 at the same time as the large Danish telecommunications company TDC was in negotiations about who would be awarded a contract for the 5G expansion in Denmark. In the same month, TDC switched from Huawei to Swedish Ericsson as a supplier of a new 5G network in Denmark. A decision prompted by a debate over Huawei’s relations with the Chinese government.

In an email to Berlingske, Huawei denies that the company had in any way tried to threaten the Danish government.

David Rasmusson, Denmark correspondent ”

SR; Ekot on Thursday 14 May

Of course, it depends on what you put in the concept of what a threat is. The real reason why China is bullying Sweden and refusing to sell face masks and other medical equipment such as respirators in these Covid-19 times, or selling defective equipment, is that they want to get rid of competitors to Huawei regarding 5G systems, and we do not allow it. The methods they use are communist authoritarian and should discourage all normal people from doing business with China in the future. They can do nothing against us from a military perspective, which would not automatically lead to immediate or imminent economic collapse for their regime, e.g. if they were to use nuclear weapons or explicitly threaten us with nuclear weapons.

We did not know until the autumn of 2020 if there would be a second wave of Corona. Nobody knew. We did not damage our economy that much, that is true, but then the big EU countries wanted to deprive us of our money just because we were smarter than them. That was solely the Germans’ idea. Our not-too-smart prime minister thought he was helping Sweden by answering the EU that all EU countries affected less severely than Italy and Spain should pay for the failures of these two countries. And I who thought that it was Sweden that was a failure? Note, traces of irony may appear in that comment. The Germans in particular should pay, I think that was the idea of ​​our Prime Minister. I’m not saying anything bad about Italy or Spain, but I will take the opportunity to speak up against Germany.

A statistical comparison:

Sweden, 10 million inhabitants

Infected June 24 first peak 1,698

Infected November 4, second peak 4,497

Deaths Sweden 15 April first peak 115 deaths

Deaths Sweden 26 October second peak 12 dead

Germany, 83 million inhabitants

Infected March 28 first peak 6,294

Infected November 7, second peak 23,399

Deaths Germany April 16 first peak 315 deaths

Deaths Germany November 6 second peak 166 deaths

Israel, 9 million inhabitants

Infected April 1 first peak 120

Infected September 30, second peak 9,078

Deaths Israel April 15 first peak 13 dead

Deaths Israel 8 October second peak 47 dead

Iceland, 365 thousand inhabitants

Infected April 1 first peak 99

Infected 8 otober other 2 peak 106

Deaths Iceland April 1 first peak 2 dead

Deaths Iceland November 7 second peak 2 dead

Australia, 30 million inhabitants

Infected March 28 first peak 458

Infected July 30, second peak 721

Deaths Australia 7 April first peak 6 dead

Deaths Australia 4 September second peak 59 dead

United States, 328 million inhabitants

Infected April 24 first peak 36,741

Infected July 16 second peak 75,687

Infected November 6, third peak 132,797

Deaths US April 15 first peak 2,752 deaths

Deaths US June 25 second peak 2,466 deaths

Deaths US November 4 third peak 1,616 deaths

We can clearly see on paper that Sweden had its first peak in the death toll more than two months before we had our first peak in the number of infected. So we tested far from enough at this time and consequently we counted the spread of infection according to what the death toll looked like, more or less a guess work. We are also more rigorous in what constitutes a death in Covid-19. During the autumn spread of infection in Sweden, justifiably few people die from the virus, despite four times as many infections as during the spring spread of infection. Germany, Israel and Iceland have all succeeded better in protecting their inhabitants than Sweden has done. But our situation with a lack of equipment and test kits was probably worse than all these countries, at least as far as Germany and Israel are concerned.

Even if Sweden had closed down to the same extent as e.g. Germany did, we would not have relieved the health care system. There were many more who became infected and fell ill in Sweden than we had medical equipment for, and probably that would have been the case even if we had shut down our entire country. I’m mainly thinking of respirators. What we could have done, however, is to compete better for the little healthcare equipment that were available on the global market during the pandemic. This applies not only to respirators but also surgical masks, alcohol gel and body protection. If we had managed to do that, we could have saved more people. But unfortunately, the anti-Swedish incentives in the world are very tangible. People with positions of power in large parts of the world are largely trying to not only ignore our attempts to buy medical equipment but also actively oppose us by stabbing us in the back when they can about how we handled Covid-19. Even Germany does so, which is strange because we Swedes have done a lot of good for Germany. Not even Norway, Denmark and Finland miss a chance to strike a blow under our belts. But we will emerge victorious from this.

I believe that the number of deaths for some countries and some states in the United States, such as my own country, Sweden, is high because they, our politicians, never planned for an epidemic even though we have already had several Corona virus outbreaks in the 2000s. We had Sars, the Bird Flu and the Swine Flu. One of them is not a Coronavirus, but it does not matter to my argument. We must not learn that our leaders neglected to prepare for a new pandemic and in some cases even scrapped the stocks of medical equipment.

But the Chinese do not like the United States, Britain and Sweden because our governments have high principles against the totalitarian regime in China. For Sweden, we can take the example of Sweden’s support for the Chinese-Swedish publisher Gui Minhai, who published controversial books in Beijing’s eyes, before the Chinese regime captured him in Thailand. So we were not allowed to buy the necessary medical equipment from China when we needed it the most, neither as a state nor when Löven delegated the purchasing assignment after he had noticed that the state of Sweden was not allowed to buy any functional medical equipment at all from the communist state of China. Our nurses often had to work with Covid-19 patients without a mask or protective clothing or with defective equipment that was not even made for virus protection. That is the real reason why Sweden had such a high death toll.

It is difficult to use the number of deaths in Covid-19 as a marker of how effective a state is, because China selectively decided which countries to help with the surplus equipment it had available or could produce. The fact that different countries had different conditions at the start of the pandemic also affected the outcome. Germany, for example, had a much more robust healthcare system and more existing equipment than many other countries, including Sweden. Sweden had no contingency stocks at all. Sweden can do better than that.

The number of patients in Italy was very high at an early stage. Italy is one of the leading manufacturers of test kits, alongside China. So they could test more and faster. Sweden could not test to the same extent. We had no test kits. We do not really know what the spread of infection looked like in Sweden. But we know how many dead we got, and there were many, especially in nursing homes. The Italians knew what the spread of infection looked like in their country, but they did not know who died of what because they did not have the same control over the cause of death as we Swedes had. It will thus be difficult to compare the spread of infection then.

Beijing was behind the fragmentation of the Western world in the wake of the Coronavirus, fear and confusion, by being selective with whom they helped. They exploited schisms between countries or at least did not oppose the development of schisms. It almost seems as if Beijing had prepared for the next pandemic that came from China, not by trying to prevent the spread of infection, but by planning to broadcast terror propaganda with e.g. film clips from inside China of people standing upright on the street one moment and collapsing dead the next. The horrors portrayed in various YouTube videos were partly genuine, but nowhere in Europe or the United States have there been reports of people standing up one moment and collapsing dead the next.

It was probably so that Stefan Löven and his government reacted to China’s hostile actions, when our government by legislation excluded Huawei from supplying telecom networks to Sweden’s 5G networks, and they are also being phased out of the 4G networks, as China is a security risk. To Say ”China’s hostile actions” is another way of saying that they are unreliable. The long-standing collaboration between Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) and China will also soon end. In September 2020, the state-owned space company announced that it will not enter into new business contracts with Chinese customers. Existing contracts will not be extended either.

Sources:

https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=7426844
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=covid+sverige+statistik&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/vetenskap/klart-idag-kinesisk-5g-forbjuds-i-sverige

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/Al2Wv3/svensk-kinesiskt-rymdsamarbete-avslutas

Strategy games on life and death at the Copper age

A 5,000 year old murder mystery

As a bonus, I solve a five-thousand-year-old murder mystery in a way that would have been accepted at the time when forensics was a virtually non-existent tool. At least in the Middle Ages, the authorities had to rely on, or chose to rely on, confessions through torture methods in the absence of evidence. If your name was Cecil and you had the job as head of the intelligence service for the Crown and Elizabeth the I in service of England at the 16th century and you had earned your post through meritorious cognitive talents and handsteady actions, you could be more cunning than that and trick the Catholic stooges out of information using the crown’s aides who pretended to be kinsmen of Catholicism.

There are four main theories as to why ”Ötzi”, the Austrian discovered ice man who was found in the Alps in the 1990s, was murdered 5000 years ago in the “copper age”. The copper age marks the transition between the stone age and the bronze age. Ötzi was naturally mummified centuries before the first blue-blooded Egyptian was mummified. I believe in the theory that Ötzi had a rival in his own relatively large village, but I think it is possible to penetrate into the murder plot and speculate further on the methods of the murder, and on how the plot turned out. Ötzi was a distinguished person in his clan, which is a known fact because he died with an exclusive copper ax in his possession. The fact that the ax was not stolen indicates that it was one of his own who murdered him.

With a little help from modern science, if I have not proved it so in any case, I have probated a certain causal course of events that preceded and led to a regal murder, and I have shed light on the power positioning that probably followed on the regal murder. All the indicators point in the same direction. It was probably an internal power struggle over the chief position, between two slightly older antagonists in what is today’s Italy.

The author

Ötzi

The mummified murdered ice man ”Ötzi” was discovered on the Austrian side of the Alps, lying with his head towards the mountain ridge another 5000 years after the murder. There is a church stone in Austria, which describes the murder in detail. A church stone which, incidentally, has not always been a church stone, since Christianity did not exist 5000 years ago. Viking Age run stones were used in similar ways in Swedish churches, as paving, so it was common to do so after the Viking Age in Sweden, and one can assume that it was just as common in Austria if we presume that there were engraved pagan stones available.

Clues

a) Ötzi was found on the Austrian side of the Alps lying on a mountain top with his head towards the mountain ridge.
b) Ötzi was shot with an arrow in the back wryly upwards from below and the arrow had cut an artery after which Ötzi bled to death.
c) The distance between the archer who killed Ötzi and Ötzi himself was relatively large, the arrow did not hit his body with full force but stopped a bit from the heart.
d) The arrow was pulled out of the body and there was no trace of it when they found the body, but the tip of the arrow remained inside Ötzi’s body.
e) Several of Ötzi’s arrows from his arrow quiver had been broken off at the site.
f) When they found Ötzi’s body in the 1990s, they discovered an exclusive copper ax lying five meters away from the body, which could only have belonged to an important man during the Copper Age.
g) Ötzi was murdered 5000 years ago during the short copper age in “Italy”.
h) The investigated stomach contents in Ötzi indicate that Ötzi came wandering from the “Italian” side walking to the Austrian side. It is also known because of the stomach contents that Ötzi climbed the mountain in the springtime.
i) Ötzi had wounds on his body from a fight a few days earlier.
j) Metal ore was mined at the Austrian side of Inndalen in the era.
k) There is an engraved pagan stone that later has been used as building material in an Austrian church, which describes the murder in detail.

Hypotheses A, B, C, D (and E)

A) One of the theories is that Ötzi was ritually murdered in the mountains.

What contradicts this theory is that Ötzi had wounds to the body, which had begun to heal, from a battle a few days earlier. And also the fact that Ötzi was on one of the mountain ridges when he was murdered, and consequently was in the only place in the mountains where you could comfortably lie and wait and look for him without risk of detection a number of people, indicates that it was deliberate murder, not ritual murder. Another thing that struck me was that a ritual murder would hardly have been committed on an alpine peak where no one was there to witness it. I think we can disregard the theory that it was a ritual murder, for a number of reasons, as most scientists also believe.

B) A second theory is that Ötzi was murdered by a rival clan in another community. [I contextually distinguish between rival clans in other communities and rival family constellations in their own village.]

I do not believe this either that a clan on Ötzi’s side of the Alps or the opposite side of the Alps were the perpetrators. If, for example, we assume that the rival clan lived on the opposite side of the Alps, then it would seem strange that such a clan, on the other side of the Alps, would first have learned that the man who was obviously their enemy – Ötzi – planned to come to their side and in addition know that he would travel alone, and then climb the Alps and ambush the (supposedly) alone Ötzi somewhere at the border of Ötzi’s territory. Now, Ötzi may have been beaten in the diametrically opposed clan area in “Austria” or “Italy”, of course, and in that case, theory B is not impossible. I will hereafter refer to Austria and Italy when I speak of “border states” or geographical division with the mountains as dividers. But as you will see if you read on, I think that Ötzi came from Italy because the probable approach (at least I would have ambushed him that way) at the actual murder a short time after Ötzi got wounded, logically imply that Ötzi crossed the mountain ridge from the Italian side.

He was found on the Austrian side and must therefore have been beaten in Italy sometime before the murder of him, and probably by a bellicose party of Ötzi’s own “clan members” from his own place of residence, if my theory of the approach for the murder itself is true. Continue reading.

If the murderers came from a rival clan in another community from the same side of the mountains as Ötzi, then they would have taken Ötzi’s copper ax after the murder. Likewise, they would have taken the copper ax if they came from a rival clan from across the mountains.

C) Inner clan rivalry, i.e. rival family constellations in their own village.

This (C) is the third and most probable theory, which can be deduced from my text.

D) Is that Ötzi would have been some kind of customs officer murdered by smugglers.

I am very skeptical to this, especially as he died alone! Why would a customs officer who runs the risk of encountering dangerous smugglers be alone when working? Everyone must have known that it was harsh times, especially a customs person. Furthermore, the distance between the archer who killed Ötzi and Ötzi himself was relatively large. The arrow had penetrated into the back wryly from below and stopped before the heart, but cut an artery so that Ötzi bled to death. If it had been smugglers who killed a customs official (if we suspect Ötzi of being that) then the copper ax would have been stolen. But that was not the case, the copper ax was not stolen, it remained five meters away from the body when the 5000-year-old mummy was discovered. Although a customs official would hardly have had a copper ax in his possession for more than a day, so we can probably strike that scenario.

Then there is a fifth hypothesis, an ad hoc theory, which is not very likely either;

E) It was customs officers who murdered Ötzi.

If it had been customs men who murdered Ötzi, the copper ax would have been confiscated.

The murder mystery

Now that we have established the most probable theory (C) inner clan rivalry, we can move on. Here’s how I think the murder happened: The fact that the lethal arrow didn’t hit Ötzi with full force, and that it hit him in the back, suggests that Ötzi was trying to escape and thus put some distance between himself and the archer. The fact that the arrow hit the chest wryly from below in his back indicates that the murderers (in pluralis!) ambushed Ötzi right behind the mountain ridge that Ötzi passed, on the Austrian side so that they could scout for him with a clear view without risk of being detected from a long distance or be discovered from the tracks left by the murderers in the snow when Ötzi came up the crest from the Italian side. If you come from the same side of the mountains as Ötzi, then by taking a detour and ambush him on the other side of the mountains you do not reveal yourself by leaving footprints in the snow, which you do when you ambush someone on the same side of the mountain. Of course, it is necessary to take a detour from the Italian side to the ambush place in Austria, but there is nothing contradictory in such a method, on the contrary, it is logical, practical and probable. But we know that Ötzi climbed the mountain in the springtime, so leaving traces in the snow was perhaps not the biggest problem for the killers. The plotter had placed some men on the other side of the top behind a stone or under camouflage on the Austrian side, so that Ötzi could not escape in several directions if the environment allowed that. At least I would have tried to arrange it that way, but it is entirely dependent on the environment on the mountain at the regular hiking trail at the time. Ötzi saw the men where his nose first pointed a little further down the mountain on the Austrian side and turned and ran upwards, whereupon he was shot in the back by the archman. It is known that Ötzi was shot in the back wryly from below. And this happened on the Austrian side where Ötzi was found with his head towards the mountain crest. If the body had slipped in the snow during these five millennias, chances are that the heavier upper body would have been heading downwards. Ötzi should thus have traveled from the Italian side. Once we have determined that Ötzi came from Italy, we can make conclusions that would otherwise have been considered a little bit wild. Go on reading!

But why did Ötzi have wounds to his body from a few days earlier? And why didn’t the killers take the valuable ax with them, and why did the killer pull out the arrow shaft? And why did Ötzi think he would go safe alone on his hike? He went alone, because if any of Ötzi’s men (supposedly) had managed to escape, the obvious benefits to the murderers of leaving the ax would be lost, otherwise Ötzi’s men would also have been killed and become mummified or skeletons and they would have found them at the same time they found Ötzi 5000 years later. And why is there a church stone in Austria that describes the murder in detail if the murder was so secret that the murderers left the ax? I have a good answer to all of this.

On the Austrian side of Inndalen, metal ore was mined from which metal was extracted, and the area was already quite densely populated. I think that Ötzi was an Italian gentleman who was about to hold a clan marriage with some prominent person from the Austrian side. An intermarriage was extremely important, because on the Austrian side they had a well-developed metal industry. The clan marriage was rejected by some rival on the Italian side, who had hitherto kept a low tone or at least tried to keep it within a relatively narrow circle. I think this because Ötzi took the risk of traveling alone across the border, probably in a manner that he thought was stealthy. I think Ötzi was already losing his role as clan leader for a relatively large village, otherwise he would not plan to leave his village alone at a fateful time, for a marriage arrangement, probably what he thought was a secret one until the wedding was supposed to take place. After all, he must have planned his journey if mine and other scientists assumptions that Ötzi’s death was preceded by an internal conflict is sound. Then the antagonist could send some men to ambush Ötzi, when he got the information about Ötzi’s departure. The antagonist could hardly have received the information from Ötzi about Ötzi’s planned departure, which points to simultaneous intrigues (alternatively a reverse causality – that the simultaneous intrigues made Ötzi not give the information to the antagonist – the result will be the same). Approaches like this and the supposed wedding arrangement suggest that neither Ötzi nor his antagonist were any youngsters, but they were family fathers with adult children, if it is a correct assumption. It was one of Ötzi’s own children that Ötzi wanted to wedlock with some Austrian nobelman or woman, otherwise he would not have traveled over the Alps himself. Ötzi may not have had many trusted people at the time of his departure because he chose to travel alone. It may therefore be that Ötzi knew that there was an informant in his own circle of friends. Or he needed every man in his own village. And given that Ötzi’s antagonist had trusted men to spare for two separate assault sites, it seems contradictory that Ötzi exposed himself so much by traveling alone. But if Ötzi was a risk taker, an A-personality, a player with leadership qualities which was probably the case, both hypotheses seem to be true – he needed every man in the village and therefore traveled alone as the risk taker he was, much like that of successful soldiers and officers in war, taking risks not to commit “selbstmord aus angst vor dem tod” (suicide from fear of death), as German soldiers said during World War II. So it is not I who have said that leaders with leadership qualities are risk-taking A-personalities. In addition, the village must have consisted of at least 100 people in order for someone to be able to mobilize at least a dozen men without noticing that these men had left the village at least one day in advance before Ötzi did so. In addition, they must have taken a detour so that they wouldn’t leave traces at the usual climbing route where Ötzi would travel. And as mentioned – the only place they could ambush Ötzi in the Alps was therefore on a mountain ridge, otherwise it would become obvious that the killers had gone before and how many they were. The fact that Ötzi traveled in the springtime indicates that Ötzi wanted to get the marriage completed before the next winter, so that he would gain influence in the metal clan or at least access to metals and a strengthened position in his village before it would no longer be possible to cross the Alps. But whatever matter anyone may have on the other side of the mountains, it is likely that they would have traveled in the spring, summer or fall, intrigues or not intrigues in the village.

Ötzi’s half-healed wounds indicate that his antagonist had taken the safe option before the unsafe option and prepared for an ambush on Ötzi at two different places, first in the forest on the Italian side and then on the ridge, but failed on the first occasion where Ötzi fled. According to studies of Ötzi’s intestinal system and stomach, it appears that Ötzi first climbed the mountain, only to turn and walk down again, and then walk up again on the same path as he went down. It can only indicate two things, together or separately:

a) Ötzi had his family in the village and he feared for their lives.
b) Ötzi feared what awaited him at the ridge.

It is likely that Ötzi chose to continue over the mountain ridge at night, but it is also likely that Ötzi traveled across the Alps at full moon, which you can assume that everyone did at the time. The fact that he first turned and went down, without being attacked downside, also indicates that no one bothered to follow Ötzi after the first attack. This reinforces my partial theory of two separate assaults by different perpetrators but with the same antagonist still in the village, and it also confirms some scientists’ theory that it was precisely an internal clan struggle that was the underlying cause behind Ötzi’s death, otherwise he would have had no reason to first walk up the mountain and then down and then up again, and he was injured in a fight a few days earlier. The Italians were the only ones who knew that Ötzi would pass where he passed at that particular time and place. A handful of men ambushed and murdered Ötzi as described. They had to leave the copper ax because Ötzi was a clan leader and the clan was in Italy where they would retire later, otherwise they would probably have been punished for regal killing. I bet Ötzi feared an attack on the peak of the Alps, after the first assault that probably took place in a forest because he escaped the archers at that time. But Ötzi was not just anyone, he was a clan leader and a brave man, and the road to the “top” was the quickest and fastest if the murderers pursued him. The murderers coldhammered calculated that Ötzi was most likely to do so, since they knew Ötzi. Ötzi couldn’t turn back because he knew who it was that had made an assault on him and he knew that this area would be the first area for them to scout. Besides, it wasn’t an option to come back emptyhanded. His only chance was to continue the fastest route to Austria and seek help from his new-found allies there.

The killers pulled out the arrow in Ötzi’s back to leave as few traces as possible, perhaps fearing that the Italian woodcraft on the arrow shaft or feathers would reveal them. In the heat of the moment, they did not realize that precisely this would cast shadows on them if Ötzi’s body was discovered. Why? Let’s turn the steak and see it from the eyes of a criminologist: Someone had tried to hide his identity (the murderer) by pulling out the arrow (the tip remained inside the victim’s body). These perpetrators left the precious copper ax untouched, so it was hardly from stinginess they pulled out the arrow. Nor was it from fear of being left without ammunition that they pulled out the arrow, as Ötzi’s killer broke off several of Ötzi’s arrows on the spot. Had there been one or more robbers, he/she would not have bothered to pull out the arrow, but they would have taken the copper ax. But now it was some of Ötzi’s tribal members from their own village, and then it seems logical, in the eyes of a criminologist, for the perpetrators to pull out the arrow but leave the copper ax. This is a good indication (which also reveals the motive for the murder) as I said, but it is no evidence. (As if evidence would be a requirement for police action at the Neolithic era, when one has such a strong indication. Evidence at that time was scarce.) And the approach can certainly be confirmed by any police officer, prosecutor, lawyer, judge and committee of any kind, being a criminal’s (in this case, a regal murderer’s) typical approach.

The church stone in Austria with the engravement of the murder then? Why didn’t the murderers take the ax if they were so happy to brag through engraved stones with ocher? I explain the church stone with the fact that the murderers were successful in climbing the social ladder after the murder. The church stone was thus created after the situation had stabilized for the new clan leaders, perhaps one or more generations afterwards, when the murderers had built up their empire and the murder had transformed into a heroic act. But in order for it to be true, an intermarriage arrangement must still have taken place sometime later between someone in the new clan and the Austrians, since the engraved stone was found in a church in Austria.

The alternative explanation for the handcrafted church stone (which was not initially a church stone since it was made 5,000 years ago) is a bit far-fetched, namely that the murder was revealed when the body was found by the Austrians 5,000 years ago, and it was found that an arrow had caused Ötzi’s death – all according to my criminologist’s reasoning – and that it coincided that the body could not be carried home because of a snowstorm which subsequently covered the body with snow and ice which never melted again and thus made it impossible to find the body again. Until a little more than a decade ago. The copper ax was located some distance from the body (five meters), and with a little luck it could have been hidden in snow when the body was first found in the era. Everything depends on how exactly a storm strikes, or how nature appeared at the time when the body was supposedly found 5,000 years ago, partly because the ax must be hidden in snow without any traces left, but partly the body must still be discoverable in the snow. The copper ax is the first thing a rescue team would have been looking for in the era. One can imagine even more wild speculations about Austrian murderers who switched sides, but then we would be talking conspiracy theories.

My indicated theory, incidentally, means that the civilization in Europe did not have its cradle in Italy or Greece.

Roger Mikael Klang

Australian bushfires 2019-2020, Lesson fortyfive

I suspect organized incendiaries, like we had in Västergötland and Småland in Sweden in 2018. Even though it was just as hot in the whole of Sweden that year, the many separated fires started only in those two regions. In Småland it was even concentrated around one community. By looking at the satellite image below one can easily conclude that the fires in Australia all originates from populated places. It’s suspicious that all these fires starts almost all at once, and as it seems, all in Australia and not the other parts of the pacific area.

I think we can be pretty sure what group of people started our fires here in Sweden. In Australia however it is not so easy to single out one group of incendiaries. There are two groups. There is a country called China which can stand behind such atrocities of organized arson over the whole of Australia simultaneously. But nowhere else in the pacific area? I’d be inclined to think that the radical muslims in Australian communities are not so organized to be able to pull off such a stunt in the short amount of time they had to start all the existing fires. Not by themselves anyway, and not without the Australian government knowing about it. The little dots of fire in the albeit manipulated and colored satellite image below indicates many arsonists.

The thing is that Australia, or at least certain individuals in Australia, in the late 2019 put in a higher gear in both politics and media, as they have become tougher against Beijing. That’s what it seems like anyway. In november 2019, Australian 60 minutes, made two tough reportages of which both had the prong aimed at Beijing China.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: CHINESE SPY SPILLS SECRET TO EXPOSE COMMUNIST ESPIONAGE, was about a former Chinese spy that wanted to defect to Australia. His only weapon was the truth. He said in the interview that he knew that the only possible way to receive an Australian citizenship was to cooperate truthfully with the Australian authorities. He also knew that he was going to die should he be compromized by the Chinese in Australia or if he was sent back to China with his family. The producer’s name was Grace Tobin.

Only days before that reportage the Australian 60 minutes did an important reportage, INVESTIGATION: WHY IS CHINA ON THE MOVE IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC. It was a reportage that was a real threat to Chinas interests and plans for the whole region of both the South China Sea and several strategic islands in the Pacific Ocean. The reportage was much about the allegations of corruption against the president of the Solomon Islands involving the Chinese, who was accused by Daniel Sudaini, the premier of Malaita. Malaita is one of Solomon Islands’ largest and most populous provinces.

They talk in Australia about what China calls ”The Blue Economic Passage” which is supposed to go through the island of Kiribati down to Antarctica passed the Eastern waters of Australia. The Australians believe the name is just a cover story for a comprehensive plan to dominate the region. In the Solomon Island there is a gold mine now signed over to China. And in Bouganville in Papua New Guinea there is a gigantic gold/copper mine that Beijing is really interested in. But in Papua Guinea they are still open for other offers.

Now, about the fires in 2019-2020. They are not yet (mid January 2020) the largest fires in Australian history, but they are the most devastating and closer to urban populations than ever before.  Bushfires in Australia can occur all year-round, though the severity and the “bushfire season” varies by region. That is why these fires are so suspicious since they occure all over populated Australia at almost one and the same instance, as seen in the image below. They are taking place in 6 territories simultaneously. Only in the fires of 2006-2007 did something similar happen, then in five territories. Of course it could happen that all over the continent there were thousands of thunder clouds at once since lightning normally is the number one incendiary for bushfires. Were there?

 

My conclusion

I suspect that Beijing now is feeling safe enough to ”cut Australia loose and sink it”. But they may have acted just a little bit premature out of anger towards the Australian journalists and politicians. What we do know is that bushfires at this scale is by far the cheapest and simplest way to brake the Australian economy. We also know that there is a power struggle going on between China and the US in and around the South China Sea and that the US as well as China have high stakes in the Persian Gulf right now and the US needs Australia as a dairy supplier to the US Navy, now more than ever since the US is losing more and more markets in the region with China’s growing influence. Yes I said dairy supplier. The US Navy and the US Marines march on their stomach, and they can be stopped if they cannot. The US needs access to the harbor in Darwin, as I have discussed in a previous lesson.

Roger M. Klang, defense political spokesman for the Christian Values Party (Kristna Värdepartiet) in Sweden

 

Iran and the S-300 surface-to-air missile system. Lesson fortyfour

Russia has sold or is selling S-300 air defense systems to Iran.

Iran has at least five bases on the Strait of Hormuz. The bases are located at Bandar Abbas, Bandar Lengeh, Sirik, Kish Island and Abu Musa, the latter two being islands.

The Americans have several air bases near or in the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. The bases are called Isa Airbase (Bahrain), Al Udeid (Qatar) and Al Minhad and Al Dhafra (UAE).

In addition, the Americans have a naval base in Bahrain, and one on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and a base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. They also have a large base with combat personnel on the British island of Ascension 2,500 km west of Africa halfway to Brazil in South America.

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the sale of the S-300 air defense system will stabilize the situation in the Middle East. But more likely it will do just the opposite, destabilizing the situation in the Middle East. Israel felt an urge to take action against Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future before Iran had deployed air defense systems. The Iranian news organization Tasnim reported on July 19, 2016 that Iran had obtained the first S-300 PMU-2 air defense systems which Russia sold to them.

If Israel does not strike while they can, if Iran becomes a nuclear weapons country with operational nuclear weapons with sufficient range and accuracy, then because of the Iranian mullahs’ unpredictability, it could turn into a disaster for Israel, or at least develop into a cold war between Israel and Iran. The Iranians have not been late in involving other stakeholders in the conflict, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, which risks tipping over the balance of power to Israel’s disadvantage and strengthen Iran’s position in the region. That would probably lead to a new Arab war against Israel. It could also mean that more states in the region would try to develop nuclear weapons.

Nor is there anything to guarantee that Russia will not sell the nuclear weapons carrier missiles to Iran, once Iran has received and deployed its air defense systems. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasizes that the weapons are defensive and pose no threat to neighboring countries, including Israel. Israeli intelligence minister Yuval Steinitz made a statement; “Instead of demanding that Iran cease its terrorist acts in the Middle East and the world, it now allows the country to acquire advanced weapons that will only lead to increased aggression.”

Iran also supplies crude oil to Russia in exchange for grain and building materials. In this way, we are already being affected in our part of the world as Russia exports its surplus of oil to strengthen its economy. The so-called P5 + 1 group, consisting of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany, reached an agreement in July 2015 on Iran’s nuclear program, which meant that Russia and Iran stood as winners. President Putin said in a statement on the Kremlin’s website that the world could take a relieved breath. In Israel, the sentiments were of another kind. The country’s Prime Minister Netanyahu did not mince words and called the agreement a big mistake of historical proportions. The sanctions against Iran were supposed to be lifted. The agreement meant that;

A) Iran would scale down its nuclear program while opening the doors for UN inspectors to all its nuclear facilities, including military ones.
B) The arms embargo against Iran was stated to remain for five years.
C) In addition, according to the IAEA, a roadmap had been signed to investigate Iran’s previous nuclear activities.
D) But even if a contract was in the clear, it would take months before it could take effect. The US Congress and Iran’s parliament would now approve the agreement.
E) The West’s sanctions against Iran, which isolated the country financially, could be lifted and several billion dollars of Iran’s frozen assets thawed thereafter.

Whether or not the sanctions under Obama really were lifted is an assessment question for anyone to figure out for himself.

Source; Euromaidan Press, April 2015; SR; Ekot, July 2015

Homework:

Do you think that Hezbollah with Iran’s help can tip the balance in the Middle East? And if they do, will there be another “Yom Kippur”? If you don’t know what Yom Kippur is I suggest that you read up about it. But I can tell you that it was the Arab war against the Israelis in October 1973 and it is also a Jewish Holiday, which they named the war after since the Arabs attacked Israel on the last day of the yearly Jewish fasting. The Jews were taken by surprise back then in the year of 1973.

Roger M. Klang, defense political spokesman for the Christian Values Party (Kristna Värdepartiet) in Sweden

Strategic submarines. Lesson fortythree

Each one of the 14 US SSBN Strategic Missile Submarine Ohio-class nuclear submarines has 24 SLBM Surface Launched Ballistic Missiles of the type called Lockheed Trident II with stellar and inertial guidance (inertial navigation).

Each missile has eight MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles) that can be assigned unique targets with either 475 kilotons alt. 100 kilotons combat charges. Trident II D-5 has a range of up to 11,300 km (7,000 miles) according to a British Wikipedia page, and the corresponding US Wikipedia page rounds up the number to 12,000 km (7,450 miles) but claims it has a longer reach than that.

The exact range, mentioned on the US Wikipedia page, is a secret. Elsewhere it is mentioned that Trident II D-5 can hit targets at 7,400 km (4,600 miles) distance. There is a big difference between 11,300 km and 7,400 km, and the divergence is probably due to the fact that the two types of nuclear warheads weigh differently depending on their charge.

As it is almost 7,400 km from New York to Moscow for a Jet aircraft, and let us say that a ballistic missile fly 7,500 km from New York to Moscow, the shorter weapon range or 7,400 km, means that an Ohio-class submarine based in New York which is out for a month of service at sea will spend approximately 2.5 hours of these thirty days to sneak under the surface at ~46 km/h to reach the outer water where their nuclear weapons with the greatest total charge can reach target Moscow. And perhaps a more moderate speed will be used in the other direction towards the US coast, but I don’t mix that into the numbers here.

This means that maybe 1.5 percent of the second strike ability of the United States could be omitted already there. Approximately 25 percent of the US strategic submarine fleet at any given moment will be in port for service work and repair that cannot be completed onboard the submarine at sea and/or outside the dock.

In addition, the crews must be allowed to spend time with their families in port and the submarines must be buffeted with food regardless of whether their submarine is in need of service and maintenance in port or not. Although there are at least two sets of crews, and a submarine can often be out to sea many times longer if the submarine is buffeted from surface ships.

To all this must be added that the submarines’ nuclear weapons must be maintained at regular intervals, perhaps every five years, and this is not done on board the submarine.

Overall it reduces the second strike capacity by 35 percent or more in the worst case. Alternatively, the detonation blast from a multiple early nuclear missile launch from a given submarine is reduced, close to the home coast, with up to ~80 percent if half of the missiles have 475-kilo warheads with shorter range for the nuclear missile, but remain un-fired because of their shorter range, and the remaining half are only 100 kilos charges that can be fired from the waters directly from the New York coast.

If this ratio applies to as little as 1.5 percent + 25 percent of the United States second strike capability, at least 71,000 kilotons of TNT can be removed from the equation, at least in the immediate phase for a time period of up to just over five hours. For Russia the calculations might be similar or even more discouraging.

These Ohio-class Trident II nuclear submarines make up the US strategic second strike capability and a total of 50 percent of the US strategic nuclear capacity.

There are also 4 Ohio-class SSGN Cruise Missile nuclear submarines capable of carrying 154 Tomahawk Block III or Block IV cruise missiles. The Tomahawk Block IV missile is an all-weather surface- and submarine-launched precision strike stand-off weapon.

Designed for long range precision strike missions against high quality and heavily defended targets, the Tomahawk has a maximum range of 1,600 km (1,000 miles). It travels at subsonic speed – 890 km/h (550 miles per hour).

The US surface combat fleet phased out TLAM-A, the nuclear warhead version of Tomahawk, a number of years ago. So the US surface combat fleet is not any longer armed with nuclear weapons, just like the British surface combat fleet isn’t. Today, all of the Tomahawks the surface combat fleet have are conventional missiles, either in the form of a single combat part (TLAM-C, TLAM-E) or with submunition parts (TLAM-D).

It is simply not true that one strategic submarine can annihilate a not so small country as sometimes mentioned in the debate. But a few of them could. In this link you can see for yourself the effect of a nuclear weapon, which you can give various size charges, in an attack on any city or city in any country:

http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

The numbers in this text is partly an approximation.

Roger M. Klang