Biden allows American missiles to be launched into Russia proper and thus meets the conditions for war with Russia.
Trump is completely silent.
Biden pardons his money laundering son.
Trump immediately protests.
I don’t know about you, but I would take this as a sign that one of those was pre-arranged between the two.
When the Russians initially hit Yuzhmash with the “Hazel” MIRV impactors, I think the NATO guys went there to inspect the debris, a standard measure when some new weapon is suspected to have been used. I think their first reaction was professional and “business as usual”. By now, I think they are all holding their heads in shock.
You see, what happened there is something that would not be intuitive to non-physicists. People normally imagine physical matter behaving in certain ways, which is why I periodically hear the question “why are all the craters on the Moon round and not elliptical, when one would expect most impacts to happen at oblique angles?” Well, you see, what happens at such high-velocity impacts, is well outside of normal human experience. We expect there to be a great deal of a difference between rock and water, and we don’t intuitively think in terms of energies that far exceed the energy of the molecular bonds, but when an asteroid strikes an object, what actually happens is that the kinetic energy of the object converts into thermal energy, which is a fancy way of saying that both the object and the immediate impact zone are either liquefied or evaporated, depending on the energy level they receive and whether it’s water ice, rock or iron. But, basically, both the impactor and the impact zone turn to a liquid that spherically explodes outwards and sprays liquid rock, glass, water vapour, various gases and molten metal outwards:
So, the round crater isn’t from the meteorite. The meteorite was liquefied/evaporated on impact, together with the impact zone. The crater was from the liquid explosively propelled outwards from the area, the way steam would disintegrate a failed pressure cooker.
The impact velocity of the meteors striking Earth is around 12 km/s. This is around 3-4 times faster than the impact velocity of the “Hazel” penetrators. I heard that the temperature of the impactors before they hit was around 3000°C. This means that they are made from either Tungsten, or some kind of a Tungsten alloy. This means they are very dense, and have greater kinetic energy and structural integrity than an asteroid impacting at this velocity, and they are also shaped like needles, which would create greater pressure on the ground, causing deeper penetration. I don’t know how deep they went, but I would expect 10-50m. On the surface level, I would expect lots of percussive damage to the concrete structures, but not much energy was transferred yet. As the impactor goes deeper, it grows hotter, as some kinetic energy is converted into heat. At a certain critical point, the force required to penetrate deeper becomes greater than the cohesive forces within the impactor, and its entire remaining kinetic energy is converted to heat, adding to the initial 3000°C. Let’s say that the melting point of concrete is the highest melting point of its compounds, which is limestone at 2570°C and quartz at 1650°C. This means that, at the end of the road for each Tungsten impactor there would be a spherical cavity caused by the explosion of overheated materials, consisting of various vapours, molten rock, molten glass and molten Tungsten, which probably remained hot for days after the impact. That stuff wasn’t just pierced and shredded. No, the deepest levels of the structure were turned into something similar to the Trinitite formed after the Trinity nuclear explosion in New Mexico, or tektites that shower the Earth thousands of kilometers across with globules of molten glass after an asteroid strike.
So, those inspectors are holding their heads there in shock, because they did the math and concluded that this would turn their deepest command bunkers into a lake of fire and brimstone. In some ways, this is worse than a nuclear bomb, because it’s so deep, so precise, and destruction is total.
I’m finding it very hard to model Americans, in a game theory context.
You see, game theory assumes that every actor is rational and is trying to win; or, at least, not to lose. It assumes rational actors that will do what’s in their own best interest. This models Russians, Chinese and others perfectly, but it doesn’t seem to apply to Americans, and I was wondering why.
One of the reasons seems to be that they are delusional; basically, they think that ignoring the facts and the available reality matters, and is in fact a move that favors them. Partially, I think this is because they, as a people, are essentially salesmen. To them, faking things in order to sell their stuff is as natural as breathing. A fake smile, fake appearance, fake body language, and belief that it matters, is something they learn so early they not only fail to understand that it’s unique to them, and not universal, but they also don’t even seem to notice it’s there.
Also, they have their own ideology that contains a set of assumptions about why they as a nation have been successful, and those assumptions are all false. They, as a rule, attribute their success to freedom, to their constitution, and so on. They don’t understand it’s due to a very complex set of circumstances – for instance, patent law that motivated invention by promising profit, two world wars that destroyed Europe while they remained isolated from harm and were the last one left standing, with intact industry that attracted the brightest minds from the devastated Europe if they wanted to continue working in their field, Bretton Woods system which gave them all of the world’s gold and the ability to print money, later replaced by the petrodollar system, and all of it imposed on the world by brute force. Also, their propaganda is unique in that it seems to be so good that most people don’t even recognize it as such. As a result, they live in a fake reality, where they think something is caused by A while in fact it is caused by B. Not knowing the actual facts makes them unable to understand the mechanisms that contribute to either success or failure, and they think they act in their self-interest, but because they are under a misapprehension, their moves are contrary to their self-interest and appear irrational to an outside observer.
For instance, to an outside observer it appears irrational to provoke Russia into a situation where it will be forced to defend its most basic self-interest with nuclear weapons, because this will cause America to be destroyed and their most vital self interest will thus be negated. The Americans, however, don’t see it this way. They live in a reality where Russia already collapsed and stopped being any kind of a threat in the 1990s. After that, America rose triumphant, and its supremacy was shown in the Iraq Wars and elsewhere, and nobody could stand before its military might. The nuclear weapons stopped being a threat since the Reagan-Gorbachev disarmament in the late 1980s, and then the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia remained as a barely-surviving sick nation, everything they inherited from the Soviet Union rusted out and decayed, and they are no threat to anyone anymore, and so every threatening posture from them must be a bluff.
Since this “reality” is constantly fed to them through the media, they think it’s intuitively true, and everything contradicting it is transparent propaganda from their weak and defeated enemies, who are of course all shivering at the thought of facing America in war, which is why they all resort to propaganda, bluff and trickery.
This is how you get the cognitive dissonance where they buy rides on Soyuz and buy Russian rocket engines and titanium blades for their jet engines from Russia, but Russia is a primitive, technologically backward country where nothing works and everything is divided into corrupt oligarchs and utter squalor. So, when Russians say they have something advanced, their claims are not believed. When Russians demonstrate an advanced weapon, the Americans wave it off as a one-off prototype that doesn’t mean anything, and when the Russians demonstrate that they can serially produce it in endless quantities, the American reaction is a shock and utter inability to process that as fact, and so they will blame China, Iran or North Korea for violating sanctions, because there’s no other way the primitive and backward Russians could demonstrate technology that’s 20 years ahead of anything America could do.
When America sends its outdated weapons to Ukraine, in order to empty the warehouses of the old stuff, that’s seen as perfectly reasonable, but when the Russians do the same, and use up the old tanks and guns, it’s seen as a sign that they are running out of everything and the American strategy is working. When the Russians make weapons that are “good enough”, basically preferring to make something that works reliably for a long time but has 5% less power, they are laughed at and this is seen as evidence that they are primitive and backward. When those “primitive” weapons out-gun the “advanced” Western ones, this is not interpreted as evidence that the Russian weapons design made better compromises; instead, it’s seen as evidence that the crazy Russians are throwing “human waves” at the enemy in complete disregard for the lives of their men, and if we just wait long enough they will run out and the war will be won, and the people will revolt against Putin, his bluff will fold and Yeltsin will again come to power and reality will reset itself to what Americans will find acceptable, true and normal, after the illusion of Russian power crumbles upon the walls of Western military and economic superiority.
So, the reason why the Americans are difficult to model in my game theory simulations is that they don’t live in the same reality as the rest of the world; they don’t accept the same facts. They live on the planet Hollywood. They think their military is no1 in the world by orders of magnitudes; in comparison to the rest of the world, they are aliens armed with photon torpedoes and energy shields. Their economy can power endless military production that can out-produce everybody, and when each of their weapons appears in battle, it just shatters everything fielded by the opposition. As for the nukes, they have a shelf life, and since everything Russians actually have (not pretend to have) was produced in the Soviet Union and merely repainted, it’s all rusted out and gone by now, and exists as a mere bluff that will be called by Trump, who is the embodiment of American poker, and everybody will shit themselves.
As a matter of fact, the Russians have, in reality, the stuff that Americans have only in Power Point presentations and 3d renders. The Russians have an economy that’s based on material assets, while the Americans have an economy based on virtual nonsense and debt. The Russians have engineers that actually know physics and mathematics, while the Americans have leftist woketards. As a result, the Americans are the ones whose only functional weapons were designed and fielded in the 1980s, and most of their nuclear forces are rusted out. However, American movie and propaganda industry is vastly superior to anything the Russians have at their disposal.
This makes the Americans incredibly dangerous.
During the cold war, they had their illusions, but for the most part they were very much grounded in reality. They were aware of the losses they would take against the Soviets, and they were aware that they would lose almost immediately in a conventional war, and would have to resort to nuclear weapons. They were also aware that the Soviet nuclear weapons are excellent, and that America would be destroyed completely and utterly in a nuclear war. This is why they were very careful in dealing with the Soviet Union, and, if anything, their propaganda would inflate Soviet capabilities in order to justify the defense budget. This awareness of the danger is the reason why we had such a long time of world peace since WW2. However, this current America that lives on planet Hollywood, is extremely dangerous, because it doesn’t accept the facts as such. They think they are powerful when they are not, they think the enemy is bluffing because it appears powerful while they “know” that can’t be true, and they think they know the actual reality, which is that the enemy is all fake and will crumble any time now, if they just hold the line and call the bluff.
The expected result of that, of course, is that they will force Russia and China to escalate, until things reach the nuclear threshold, and then they will “call the bluff”. When the opponent uses a nuclear weapon as last warning, they will conclude that it’s a bluff – they used the last working bomb from the Soviet Union, and they’re done now. When a thousand nuclear devices explode all across NATO, and the Internet and all the information sources go dark, the survivors in America will think it was a deception, the Russians cut the cables with some trickery, and detonated an EMP to cause blackouts; the power and the Internet will go back soon, and reality will re-assert itself.
That’s the problem with America: they declared war on reality, and they won. As a result, reality no longer has any power over them, at least in their minds. Even as they die of radiation poisoning eating stale spam in their basements, they will believe that America is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Except that sliced bread was invented in America, and it’s absolute shit.
The situation is as follows:
The political statements from the West indicate complete unwillingness/inability to de-escalate. The political statements from Russia indicate that they are no longer waiting for the West to come to their senses. Also, the Russians are making significant advances on the battlefield, indicating that the Ukrainian front line is collapsing. Also, statements from the future Trump administration indicate that they intend to continue with pressure on Russia.
It is my opinion that nuclear war is imminent. It’s only a matter of time until someone uses the first nuclear warhead, and then the pace will increase. It used to be decades/years between significant moves, then months, and now we are under a week already, and it seems to be exponentially decreasing. It will be days, then hours, and then it’s all automatic.
I think I’m starting to get a good impression of Trump’s future course of action on Russia. Here’s a clip form the person he picked to inform his action on Russia:
This makes it increasingly likely that the Biden regime’s recent escalatory moves have been given green light by Trump; he’s basically making things five times worse, so that when he makes them 10% better he’ll be hailed as a peacemaker. Only, it’s not going to work.
You see, Trump works from flawed premises. He thinks he can threaten Russia with effective measures in order to ensure submission. However, America has already used everything it dared to use and lost the war. America already depleted their stockpiles of weapons, and not just their own, but across NATO. It also has a crisis in Israel, and is trying to bully China. America just doesn’t have the military potential Trump thinks he has. Sure, they can start using their air force, but it will be shot down and their airfields and aircraft carriers will be destroyed within a day. Everything they have is within range of Russian retaliatory weapons, which is why it wasn’t used; it was certainly not out of great love for the Russians. Also, in case of open war the Russians will destroy all their satellites, making America completely blind. Essentially, America is not where Trump thinks it is. It’s between admitting failure in its attempt to strategically defeat Russia, or resorting to nuclear weapons. Also, economically speaking America is not doing well, and is in a process of collapse; Russia is doing much better. American allies have all been strategically weakened by American efforts to cut them off from Russia and China, and will be of absolutely no help. Russian allies, on the other hand, desire to keep the world as it is for the most part, just remove the part where America bullies them; they are nothing but a bunch of scared sheep, and are also of little use to anyone as they are.
So, basically, Trump will try to “negotiate” from the position of strength, which he thinks he has but he is mistaken. The Russians will take a look at this and say “ok, so nothing new, we continue with our operation”. The great America that Trump remembers was there when he was young, but it’s not there anymore, and it’s not coming back. Also, Trump thinks that his enemies see his potentially friendly attitude towards Russia as his weakness that was exploited against him in his first mandate, and he will apparently try to be super hostile towards Russia in order to compensate, and he thinks Putin is some Russian thug he can intimidate like he did with mafia in New York. He is mistaken. In fact, Trump is the oligarch thug, and Putin dealt with his kind very successfully in the beginnings of his rule. He understands stupid power addicts. There’s an enormous gulf in competence, intelligence and sophistication between the two.
I can predict that Trump will threaten, and his bluff will be called. He then thinks he will intimidate Putin into submission by making some kind of a nuclear demonstration, or a limited nuclear attack. The result will be Russian retaliatory strike on America.
Trump defines “getting along” with Russia and China as a “relationship” where America dictates and the others obey. What he failed to understand is that this is no longer working. America has been abusing other powers too much and for too long, and they are done with it. Putin is barely containing his people and his military, because there is huge desire for crushing the West altogether. Putin is not some dictatorial thug that can be bullied or manipulated, Putin is a moderate who is desperately trying to prevent nuclear war, and already had to make concessions, and what Trump is about to do is going to weaken Putin’s argument to the point where he will have to concede, and admit that the radicals were right. He had to do that several times already, and his moderate position is already in retreat.