US Will Clean Area In Spain Where Hydrogen Bombs Fell (nytimes.com) 216
HughPickens.com writes: Rafael Minder writes in the NY Times that almost 50 years after coming close to possibly provoking a nuclear disaster, Secretary of State John Kerry, following years of wrangling between Spain and the U.S., signed an agreement to remove contaminated soil from an area in southern Spain where an American warplane accidentally dropped hydrogen bombs. In 1966 a bomber collided with a refueling tanker in midair and dropped four hydrogen bombs, two of which released plutonium into the atmosphere. No warheads detonated, narrowly averting what could have been an explosion more powerful than the atomic strikes against Japan at the end of World War II. Four days after the accident, the Spanish government stated that "the Palomares incident was evidence of the dangers created by NATO's use of the Gibraltar airstrip," announcing that NATO aircraft would no longer be permitted to fly over Spanish territory either to or from Gibraltar. The U.S. later announced that it would no longer fly over Spain with nuclear weapons, and the Spanish government formally banned U.S. flights over its territory that carried such weapons.
Neither Kerry nor Spanish Foreign Minister García-Margallo said exactly how much contaminated soil would be sent back, where it would be stored in the United States, or who would pay for the cleanup — some of the issues that have held up a deal until now. Spain has insisted that any contaminated soil be sent to the United States, because Spain does not have plants to store it. Concern over the site was reawakened in the 1990s when tests revealed high levels of americium, an isotope of plutonium, and further tests showed that 50,000 cubic meters of earth were still contaminated. The Spanish government appropriated the land in 2003 to prevent it being used.
Neither Kerry nor Spanish Foreign Minister García-Margallo said exactly how much contaminated soil would be sent back, where it would be stored in the United States, or who would pay for the cleanup — some of the issues that have held up a deal until now. Spain has insisted that any contaminated soil be sent to the United States, because Spain does not have plants to store it. Concern over the site was reawakened in the 1990s when tests revealed high levels of americium, an isotope of plutonium, and further tests showed that 50,000 cubic meters of earth were still contaminated. The Spanish government appropriated the land in 2003 to prevent it being used.
Americium is NOT an isotope of plutonium (Score:4, Informative)
Americium is NOT an isotope of plutonium, it is a decay product of Uranium/Plutonium, specifically
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium#Isotope_nucleosyntheses
Jack ass
Re:Americium is NOT an isotope of plutonium (Score:5, Funny)
Americium, Fuck Yeah!
Properties of Americium (Score:3)
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Americium is NOT an isotope of plutonium, it is a decay product of Uranium/Plutonium, specifically
Americium is the highest element on the periodic table that you can buy at Walmart. It is used ionize air in some smoke alarms.
Re:Americium is NOT an isotope of plutonium (Score:5, Informative)
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Just don't grow tobacco - getting pu239 traces in your lungs could give you cancer.
Most people smoking tobacco are already disregarding a well known cancer risk....
Re:Americium is NOT an isotope of plutonium (Score:4, Interesting)
Americium is NOT an isotope of plutonium, it is a decay product of Uranium/Plutonium, specifically
That was the first thing that struck me when I read OP.
And I think it's probably fair to say that the fact that they didn't blow up was far from an accident; they were designed that way.
Sell it all to FirstAlert (Score:4, Funny)
They'll turn all that Americium into smoke detectors and we'll all get to listen to that fucking beep in the middle of the night because nobody can seem to make a detector that has a light sensor on it.
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Or, just give it to the "Radioactive Boy Scout": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Now, for a hilarious film about the whole incident, check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They do have light sensors (Score:5, Funny)
They'll turn all that Americium into smoke detectors and we'll all get to listen to that fucking beep in the middle of the night because nobody can seem to make a detector that has a light sensor on it.
Of course they have light sensors in them. That's how they know to wait until the middle of the night before they start beeping.
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Okay, so now could somebody explain to me why Americium is used in smoke detectors? I'm too lazy today to use Google to look it up.
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Either way would it kill them to have the low battery chirp start in the day time? instead of at 3-5am every time?
I had a CO gas detector go to chirping (one of three) at 3am earlier this year the battery cover was screwed on so outside it went. It's still outside I think. Now I use the 10 year battery models exclusively.
Americium is a byproduct, not an isotope of Pu (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Americium is a byproduct, not an isotope of Pu (Score:5, Interesting)
After a couple neutrons are captured. Am-241 is the most common isotope (half life of 400-odd years). Pu-239 captures two neutrons (rarely), then undergoes beta decay to become Am-241.
Since this normally requires a specially designed reactor to produce, the amount produced casually by four bombs will have been minuscule.
Which is not to say it shouldn't be cleaned up. Just that the urgency of the cleanup is pretty much consistent with taking 50 years to get around to it.
Note the amount of material being discussed (50000 m^3 of dirt). Cleanup can be done with one of those big earth movers used when strip mining in a few months, tops....
Re:Americium is a byproduct, not an isotope of Pu (Score:4, Interesting)
Yea it won't take much to clean this up, that's for sure...
One thing, I'm guessing the Am-241 was in the original fission material of the bomb and not really from Pu-239 decay, but either way, there is going to be so very little of it. Given it's spread out over about 500 acres by the conventional explosives, I'm wondering why Spain is still pushing to get this clean up done. It's been over 50 years now and all a huge excavation project will really accomplish is to make a mess.
Well, if it pumps some dollars into the local Spanish economy it might be worth the trouble... But really, what's the big deal at this point? Couldn't we just pay them for the land, put up a fence with "keep out for 3,000 years" signs and be done with this? Or is having this material so dangerous to Spain that it's worth taking a few million cubic meters of dirt and dumping it in the ocean?
Re: Americium is a byproduct, not an isotope of Pu (Score:2)
Just look up what happened in Spain for the last, say, 150 years. Then think again.
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Modern tests will find all kinds of interesting products from the material lost over the years
"No Explosion" (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course there wasn't. This isn't nitroglycerin, and there are SO MANY layers of safety devices on these bombs this just not a possibility. The bomb has to be employed intentionally.
Re:"No Explosion" (Score:5, Informative)
While it's true that nuclear weapons usually have to be detonated in a very precise manner to create a full yield explosion, it's not true that accidental detonation is not a possibility. Depending on the weapon design, accidental detonation can actually be quite likely (a few percent of all hypothetical impact/fire scenarios). The details of this can get very technical, but the gist of it is that due to various size constraints many weapons were designed with two-point detonation systems ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) and these are very prone to accidental nuclear detonation. It was partly as a response to this that insensitive high explosive detonators were developed. Labs like DART have the responsibility of thoroughly testing nuclear weapons primaries to make sure that (1) they will explode when required and (2) will not explode when not required.
'Safety devices' are a completely different issue and they prevent an unauthorized person from activating the device's detonator.
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minor correction: It's DARHT, not DART.
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Re:"No Explosion" (Score:5, Informative)
This bomb design actually was a bit dangerous because the conventional explosives where a bit unstable during aircraft crash events. This crash and another one two years later caused a number of changes to nuclear bomb design after the Mk28.
Where I don't think "narrowly avoided a nuclear explosion" is anywhere near accurate, these bombs did explode conventionally and spread their radioactive content around and there is a *remote* possibility that these devices when flying in the "Chrome Dome" operation could have accidently caused a nuclear explosion during a crash because they would have been fully armed physically. I hear that the Mk28 had a number of fail physical and electrical fail safe systems that made it nearly impossible to explode in a nuclear way, but it's not impossible to have these systems disabled/defeated during an accident. If it could go nuclear on command, it's remotely possible to do it on accident.
Re:"No Explosion" (Score:5, Informative)
You should read "Command and Control." It's a very good book, but you come away with the feeling that it was more good luck than good management that there were no accidental nuclear detonations. And then you consider that the Soviet side was probably at least as bad, if not worse, and you're surprised there's still a planet here at all.
Re: "No Explosion" (Score:2, Insightful)
They actually might be, because they are the only things designed by man that NEEDS to work as intended.
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Wow that is a hard nut, you claim that something is impossible by design which would mean that these bombs were the only devices humans created that worked as intended.
Believe it or not, a nuclear explosion is pretty difficult to create. It is far easier to take measures to ensure your nuclear material does not go critical than it is to actually make it go critical. My understanding is that the explosions in these bombs need to be controlled very precisely to avoid a fizzle. So even if the surrounding explosive accidentally caused an implosion of the nuclear material you'd only ever see the nuclear material blown across the countryside. And for the bomb to create fusi
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"Isn't it wonderful that Spain appreciates that we kept a certain person from waltzing through France and down the Iberian peninsula"
Are you aware who were firsts entering Paris for its liberation? Please read about Amado Granell and "La Nueve".
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Umm... You might want to read your history and see who actually did the work for France's liberation. Who waltzed in to Paris first (the Nazis deciding to retreat at that point) hasn't any actual merit. If you put out the fire and I am the first one in front of a news camera that doesn't mean that I did it. You can thank the UK, Canada, and the US for France. They did the vast majority of the dying for it.
Sort of like Clark stomping into Rome while the rest of Italy was in a whole shitload of trouble and he
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Just ignore me.
Out of nowhere you say something sensible. Bravo.
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If you're going to criticize the French for being surprised by the German invasion through the Ardennes, then in fairness, I need to point out that they did the exact same thing to the US during the Battle of the Bulge. And we didn't even have the excuse of not having seen them pull that same maneuver just a few years earlier.
Re:"No Explosion" (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't it wonderful that Spain appreciates that we kept a certain person from waltzing through France and down the Iberian peninsula
Spain was an ally of the Nazis. The Nazis helped Franco win the Spanish Civil War. Spain sent more than 45,000 troops to fight with the Germans [wikipedia.org] on the Eastern Front. Hitler pressured Franco to attack the British and drive them out of Gibraltar, but the British made it clear that if Gibraltar was attacked, they would immediately seize the Canary Islands.
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Ah, you appear to understand WW II history. Question for you, why did the allies enter Europe in France and not Spain?
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Question for you, why did the allies enter Europe in France and not Spain?
Strategically and tactically, it would have been dumb to do so. The Allies weren't fighting Spain and the logistics of invading and holding Spain would have been a large burden on top of invading places that the Allies actually did want to invade.
Long time (Score:2, Troll)
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bo... [nih.gov]
Coles notes, if you were a woman exposed to said chemicals (and possibly still exposed to them), you have a good change of passing on defects to future generations. Of course the US doesn't give two sh*ts about the nations of the world, so no reparations for chemical exposure resulting in berth defects will ever be paid out... ohh well.
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berth defects
This was a plane crash, not a navel vessel. *nods*
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Yes, we'll all remember your name, A.C.
So much for accepting responsibility...
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Sure they will. Right after the mongols apologise for Attila, the Normans for William, the spaniards for Cortez & Pizarro, etc, etc etc.
That's not what "narrow" means (Score:4, Insightful)
No warheads detonated, narrowly averting what could have been an explosion more powerful than the atomic strikes against Japan at the end of World War II.
Re:That's not what "narrow" means (Score:5, Interesting)
Because nuclear weapons tend to require carefully timed simultaneous detonations of explosives in a controlled manner in order to compress the fission core to a supercritical mass, it is unlikely that simply dropping the bomb (unarmed) or even having some of the explosives used for core compression go off will create an actual nuclear scale detonation.
However, the explosives for the explosive lens can go off and distribute radioactive material over a relatively wide area. This was more of a threat in the past, when explosives used in the bombs were somewhat more sensitive. Additionally, some explosives become more sensitive over time, so bombs stored for long periods could have somewhat more sensitive explosives and react badly to an accidental drop or crash.
All of that being said... an actual accidental nuclear explosion is extremely unlikely, but not entirely impossible in the case of an accident, and it was much, much more likely back when these bombs were dropped in Spain.
Also, there was one time where a bomb was lost where all but one of the safeties had been deactivated. And that was a mechanical breaker which could well have been flipped. Luckily, that sort of thing was much more common when SAC was actually doing regular strategic deterrent missions and bomb design had not progressed as far as it has today.
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However, the explosives for the explosive lens can go off and distribute radioactive material over a relatively wide area.
That still would not be an explosion more powerful than etc., as the article claims it would have been. It's still nonsense and propaganda.
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Of course it was. It's so common it's unremarkable.
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What people are talking about is standard hollywood fud & bullshit. It's NOT real people!
As to the odds of an accident like that actually causing a nuclear detonation, it's somewhere close to the probability of a dissolved sugar c
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> In other words, slightly less than monkeys flying out your ass
I have rectal-aero-primacitus you insensitive clod !
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In this one it seems to have occured an explosion, which is why Pu was scatered, but it did caused fission or fusion of the materials.
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>The problem then becomes one of deciding if what it fell on is a target or not.
Sssh... if the pentagon reads that line they will declare: "Obviously this is the time to replace the detonators with an AI".
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It's Courics, not Keurigs, named after the journalist Katie Couric. It even said so in the South Park episode you got this pretend measurement from.
A keurig is a coffee maker... though, having read your post and in the off chance that somebody at the company made the same mistake you did... I'll avoid ever buying one.
More research (Score:3)
More research needs to be done on this... Spanish Soil welcome to Idaho
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Just add some tobacco crops [wikia.com]! Or, we could bring the concept forward into the 21st century, and make potannabis, and subsequently chips from those -- 'They're the mellow munchy!'
Not sure if funny or sad. (Score:4, Funny)
So we have agreed to clean it up where are we going to put it?
The US agreed to store nuclear waste from all of our reactors back in the 1960's they still haven't been able to decide where to put it over 50 years later.
If they do clean it up and ship it back to the US by boat it will stay on that boat at the dock until the boat rusts out and sinks.
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This stuff? A few million cubic feet of soil? Easy, dump it in the Ocean.
It's not like this stuff is horribly dangerous or really radio active. Just barge it out to sea where it's really deep and push it over the side. End of problem. Want to keep it tied up a few thousand years? Encase it in concrete and push it over the side one block at a time. Either way, cheap and easy.
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This stuff? A few million cubic feet of soil? Easy, dump it in the Ocean.
It's not like this stuff is horribly dangerous or really radio active. Just barge it out to sea where it's really deep and push it over the side. End of problem. Want to keep it tied up a few thousand years? Encase it in concrete and push it over the side one block at a time. Either way, cheap and easy.
Ohh we should dump it off the coast of Japan, near Tokyo. I've been waiting for Godzilla for a long time now.
Narrowly averted apocalypse my ass (Score:3, Insightful)
Nukes from day one have been designed to only detonate after a specific series of human and environmental interactions. A non-activated nuke is dirty, but it's never going to explode.
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http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]
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Sigh. I didn't want to copy-and-paste my own comment. I don't mean to be an ass, but I offered a link to my comment so that you could be educated and enlightened.
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To the ignorant or the stupid that think high order means a mushroom cloud, not it doesn't, that's nuclear.
The order, high or low, is defined by the speed at which the explosive burns or detonates. A nuclear explosion is WAY beyond those parameters and so has it's own classification. Off the top of my head, I've forgotten the feet per second on those
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In other words, at worst, a dirty bomb. My money is on not anything remotely like Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Radioactive or chemical hazard? (Score:4, Interesting)
Although people associate uranium with radioactivity, it is only very slightly radioactive (half life > 1 billion years), so if you don't assemble a critical mass the danger is actually chemical. (Heavy metals have a strong tendency to be toxic.)
Other posters have said that here we are dealing with plutonium-239, which has a half life of 24000 years. That is orders of magnitude greater activity (shorter life) than uranium. I've reached the end of my knowledge here - which is worse, is the radioactivity or the chemical toxicity of plutonium-239?
TFA suggests they are worried about radioactivity: "A main concern has been that the remaining plutonium was being allowed to degenerate into other radioactive components like americium, which emits gamma rays that travel farther and are hard to block" but concern is not always well founded, and reporters don't always get it right.
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which is worse, is the radioactivity or the chemical toxicity of plutonium-239?
Neither. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during 1940s; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."[124][126] Plutonium has a metallic taste.[127]
read "Command and Control" (Score:4, Interesting)
The posters here with the blase attitudes regarding nuclear weapons accidents ought to consider reading the book "Command and Control" and marvel at the fact we made it thru the cold war at all.
Regarding clean-up: when accidents happened on US territory we cleaned it up, even at Thule AFB, which is about as close to the end of the earth as you can get. We also contaminated the other end of the earth for good measure (leaky reactor at McMurdo Station Antarctica). In both cases the contaminated soil was 'disposed of' at the Savannah River Plant.
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What makes you think that book is valid? Authors have to eat and are well known for their hyperbolic spinning of facts to get dead tree material off shelves.
How about because many of the key players in the events described have publicly supported the descriptions of the events as written, even though those events don't always paint them in the most positive light?
Really, there comes a point where cynicism is just another way of fooling yourself into believing comfortable lies.
"Command and Control" is an excellent book. I highly recommend it. And it makes clear that the notions of safety and control we apply to nuclear weapons today were not applied until w
Not an isotope (Score:3)
Americium is not an isotope of Plutonium. It's a separate element. Americium is atomic number 95 and Plutonium is atomic number 94. Isotopes have the same atomic number.
Surprised there's not a +5 comment explaining this already.
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i mean it sucks and all, but why should we be on the hook for this???
Wells, we did drop four hydrogen bombs during a plane wreck....
Based on the evidence, it is more probable than not that (Cpt) America was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities.
Re:wait a second (Score:5, Funny)
Wells, we did drop four hydrogen bombs during a plane wreck....
Worst. Pilot. Resume. Ever.
Re:wait a second (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I shat on your carpet while running through your house uninvited, but why should I have to clean it up?
Re:wait a second (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, it's like saying your dad took a dump on my carpet, so your dad should clean it up; your dad hemmed and hawwed for 50 years before finally paying up, and you are pissed off that this might take the tiniest bite out of your inheritance.
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You didn't do it personally, but your country did.
They aren't asking you personally to fix the problem. They are asking your country to fix it.
It's not like there's nobody left alive from 1966.
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Do you really think that line of reasoning is valid? If so, the UK, Germany, Japan, and Korea owes the US more than their entire GDP.
Yes, yes they do.
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If you mean war debt from WWII, the UK finally paid that off in 1999.
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Under your theory should we be forgiven all debts that predate you too?
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Because when you go to a party, get drunk, and shit yourself on the sofa, you stay behind to help clean up or you never get invited back again.
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Because when you go to a party, get drunk, and shit yourself on the sofa, you stay behind to help clean up or you never get invited back again.
On the other hand if show up and spend 40 years keeping someone from getting killed they might seem a bit ungrateful if they complain about you getting diarrhea while doing so.
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The firefighter doesn't get to shit on my carpet either.
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Well, not if he did it intentionally but if it was by accident then, I guess, I'd probably just hire a carpet cleaning company.
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We're here to protect you so we can almost nuke you without out consequence. Good thinking.
Re:wait a second (Score:4, Interesting)
The US has mentioned it had a few nuclear related issues due to the huge numbers of nuclear armed flights around the world, crew issues, equipment issues.
United States military nuclear incident terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
List of military nuclear accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
has other details over the decades surrounding issues like accidental criticality, non-nuclear detonation of an atomic bomb, partial meltdown, weapons jettisoned and not recovered, fire, release of nuclear materials, nuclear bomb lost...
Most nations like to be seen to clean up after their own crashes to fully recover secrets, methods, materials and put a good media spin on been nice to nations where they have bases or want to have more bases.
Re:wait a second (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious ?
If it were Spanish H bombs on US soil would you let Spain off the hook for the expensive cleanup ?
Since you don't believe in responsibility, let's give BP a refund for clearing up their own mess too.
Fuckwit.
Re:wait a second (Score:5, Insightful)
i mean it sucks and all, but why should we be on the hook for this???
Well, let me see. The aircraft that crashed where ours. The bombs where ours. The pilots where ours and we where flying alone. The wreckage from the accident which was totally our fault fell on Spain... Hmmm...I don't know, Maybe we are responsible for the mess and should clean it up?
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Are they able to ask us to clean up the mess in fluent Russian?
The cold war is over. You still believe the propaganda?
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Seriously? Is this how they teach history in the public schools these days?
Here's a few questions to consider.... Does everybody speak English or French in Spain these days? AND Didn't Spain agree to enter the EU under their own free will? Truthful answers to these questions only serve to show that Spain is it's own country and not being forced to be part of anybody's empire...
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Putin, you're drunk. Go home!
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Maybe we are responsible for the mess and should clean it up?
No, no, you've that completely wrong. Here's the official response from the American Government:
"Fuck you, mum, I hate you!!" (slams the door)
Well, we've all been teenagers, even if we try to forget.
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They were our nukes. It's not cool to drop nukes on a country you're not at war with.
Re:wait a second (Score:4)
>They were our nukes. It's not cool to drop nukes on a country you're not at war with.
To be fair, it's also not cool to drop nukes on a country you ARE at war with... that sort of shit leads to extinction level events.
Re:An excuse (Score:5, Informative)
"I'm guessing a lot of American dollars will also head that way since Spain is pretty much insolvent"
Debt-to-GDP ratio:
USA: 101.33%
Spain: 97.70%
If Spain is "pretty much insolvent" what does that make for USA?
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shhhhhhhhhhh
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The US can print more money, unlike Spain.
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It makes the USA not at all insolvent. You're comparing apples to oranges. The USA has the ability to pay, Spain, not so much. The USA has positive growth. Spain is lurching in and out of economic contraction (and suffering some brain drain as the people leaving university go elsewhere in Europe rather than facing 50% unemployment, with the only jobs for graduates being mostly waiters). By contrast many people are trying to get *into* the US.
Spain also does not have its own currency. Its debt is more like y
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Public Debt-to-GDP ratio:
USA: 71.2%
Spain: 97.6%
FIFY (using apples to apples comparison of public debt per GDP [cia.gov] by the World Fact Book for 2014).
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Hm, if the Atlantic is California and Oregon, then the Mediterranean is New York, or well something closer ... Wyoming?
In other words: they are separated seas and only connected by a rather small passage, the straight of Gibraltar.
Regarding subduction zones, I have no idea :D
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http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]
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