North Korea’s hydrogen bomb – which is powerful enough to destroy a city – sparked a powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquake amid an “escalating” nuclear crisis when it was detonated on Sunday [two days ago, November 5, 2017].

The terrifying tremor was detected in the northeast of the country where the Punggye-ri test site is located – but was so strong that it shook buildings in China and Russia.

But the raw power of the bomb – which has a 100 kiloton yield, around five times bigger than that dropped on Nagasaki – isn’t the only threat it presents to the US. For the first time, North Korea specifically mentioned the possibility of an EMP, or electro-magnetic pulse, attack on the US following Sunday’s test.

North Korea’s state news agency warned that the weapon “is a multifunctional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP attack”.

So the Daily Mail reports.

It goes on:

North Korea has specifically threatened an EMP attack on the US for the first time.

Nuclear blasts generate high-intensity radio waves that can disrupt electronics.

These EMP blasts travel along line-of-sight, which means the effects extend only to the visual horizon.

A powerful enough blast at an altitude of 249 miles could impact most of the continental US.

North Korea has already demonstrated its ability to reach this altitude with two satellite launches, in 2012 and 2016, which some experts believe were secret tests of an EMP launch trajectory. …

A nuclear bomb detonated high in the atmosphere could knock out the power grid across a swathe of the continental US – or even all of it.

That would leave hospitals without power, civilian and government agencies unable to coordinate, and the fabric of society unraveling fast.

Would China or Russia object to such an attack on the US? Possibly.

China … “resolutely opposes” and “strongly condemns” the test while urging the rogue state to “stop taking wrong actions”.

Russia urged calm and warned Pyongyang to “refrain from any actions that lead to a further escalation of tension” .

According to Business Insider, which describes in horrific detail what would happen in a US war with North Korea, there would need to be US troops on the ground:

US special operations forces, after North Korea’s air defenses have been destroyed, would parachute in with the goal of destroying or deactivating mobile launchers and other offensive equipment.

[They] would face a big challenge in trying to hunt down some 200 missile launchers throughout North Korea, some of which have treads to enter very difficult terrain where US recon planes would struggle to spot them.

US special forces would establish themselves at key logistical junctures, observe the North Koreans’ movements, and then relay that to US air assets.

But if this report in The Sun is true, US soldiers could face another sort of weapon which would be harder to protect against. Yet it is a sort of weapon which makes an immediate strike on North Korea to eliminate the Kim Jong-un regime not only justified but urgently necessary.

Kim Jong-un is feared to be secretly mass producing biological weapons to unleash nightmarish plagues …

Under the cover of a farm lab, it is claimed North Korean chemists could be weaponizing some the world’s deadliest diseases such as smallpox, Black Death and cholera which could lay waste to millions of people if an epidemic was sparked.

Radio Free Asia cited a report released by Belfer Centre of Harvard University’s Kennedy School, which says the rogue state already has biological weapons. …

The chilling report states that the highly infectious diseases could be spread via a missile, drones, planes and sprayers.

North Korea’s 200,000 special forces could also unleash the bio-weapons.

The report states: “While nuclear programs can be monitored by the number of nuclear tests and the success of missile tests … cultivated pathogens can stay invisible behind closed doors.”

Of course if Kim Jong-un releases smallpox, Black Death and cholera over his own country, a vast number of North Koreans would die. That wouldn’t trouble the little dictator in the least. He is happy  to let them die of starvation anyway.

He could release them over South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Guam, Hawaii, and even the US mainland.

If Kim Jong-un has such weapons he will use them in war without compunction.

And it seems fairly certain that he does have them.

Can the US move against him fast enough, soon enough, and decisively enough?