WI: Second Korean War in 1994

The technical difficulties of creating a nuclear shell are actually pritty darn huge. What we eventually saw of the NK nuclear device they detonated was it was a very big thing, certinally not a weapon but a large and bulky affair. You'd need to be able to make the weapon itself before being able to do it.

As ye said Paul the South/US would win air supremacy within a few hours, but they would not be able to knock out all the artillery positions due to the sheer volume of them and the need to support troops on the ground. I agree on your timeline too, 3 weeks to two months max.

I've always kind of assumed that their greatest underground tunnel project was to get one of their nukes either as close as possible to Seoul, or to the projected route of advance for South Korean/US armored advance.

Maybe both.
 

sharlin

Banned
I've always kind of assumed that their greatest underground tunnel project was to get one of their nukes either as close as possible to Seoul, or to the projected route of advance for South Korean/US armored advance.

Maybe both.

Interesting theory but those tunnels at best are 3 - 4 miles into/under the DMZ, to dig that far without it being noticed by modern day kit (even 90's era) is next to impossible. Seoul is quite a distance from the DMZ (about 45km ish) which is far longer than the channel tunnel which was a HUGE undertaking with specialised digging kit. The NK tunnels that have been found were all probably dug by hand and small scale excavators.

And then there's the scale of the detonation. a buried nuclear blast would vent little energy, expending most of it digging a crater and the tunnel would have to be DEEP to not be detected so its going to do even less. Going off the history of the trio of NK tests lets assume that the device goes off like the first, which may have been a fizzle, so somewhere between 0.7kt to 10kt which by nuclear standards is pathetic, powerful weak stuff. The other one was somewhere between 10 and 20kt of explosive force which = Little Boy territory.

Ground bursting so small a weapon would make a pretty big hole and if the blast broke the surface throw a lot of radiation but damage wise, very little.

You're not gonna get this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPwSN9gUG5c (5.2 megatonnes of boom)
 
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