(Illustration of Belgorod submarine, and found here.)

Hot and maybe feels a bit humid, too, this late-afternoon Friday here in California’s Central Valley — but make no mistake about the weather, it’s getting more summer by the day.

In the flush of the news shit today — and there have been plenty — I came across an item I hadn’t even considered — a giant Russian submarine that can launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo at coastal America. And how this sub got its sailing orders last week.
Maybe Vlad Putin is using Ukraine as a shiny distraction — shit fucking frightful

The Russkie torpedo has a history, and its media name is ‘doomsday’ — from today’s BarentsObserver: ‘An official press statement posted by the Sevmash submarine yard on Friday says the “Belgorod” (K-239) is a “research submarine”. In fact, the vessel is built to carry one of the craziest weapons of mass destruction mankind ever has seen: The Poseidon, an autonomous, nuclear-powered underwater drone that can deliver its nuclear payloads from deep under, at distances like crossing the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans.‘

Added emphasis on destruction — via USNI News this morning: ‘Poseidon, first revealed in 2015, is a nuclear strategic weapon that would have a range of thousands of miles and would “destroy important economic installations of the enemy in coastal areas and cause guaranteed devastating damage to the country’s territory by creating wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time,” according to a translation of a Russian presentation caught on camera by the BBC.‘

In-depth and scarier is a piece at Forbes from January 2021 on the nuclear torpedo/drone, a year away from Ukraine, and the first couple of graphs aren’t pretty:

Six years after Russia’s Poseidon doomsday torpedo first appeared in a television camera’s fleeting shot of a briefing book for Russian President Vladimir Putin, it’s still not totally clear why the Kremlin thinks the bizarre radiological weapon is a good investment.

But it is clear Moscow is serious about deploying Poseidon, a 79-foot-long, nuclear-powered underwater drone armed with a huge dirty-bomb warhead that could irradiate U.S. coastal cities and naval bases in the late stages of a civilization-ending nuclear war.

Go read the whole thing — conclusion that maybe the subs will be used for spying, and intelligence gathering more than Vlad’s nuclear-war ‘doomsday’ project.
Who can tell?

Cold War still going on — doomsday style:

Strangelove or not, once again here we are…

(Illustration out front found here.)