Tag: North Korea

A Doomsday Report (and a song) for 2025

Skye Doomsday Report 2025
Isle of Skye, present day, photo by James Fagan.

You may have been expecting fireworks, first-footing, haggis and other Celtic fare in my first Digression for a while, but no, it’s a Doomsday analysis.

I don’t mean Doomsday as in the Marvel comic character; look instead at the Doomsday Clock, a harbinger of global catastrophe. The world’s atomic scientists have adjusted the time of the clock (founded by Albert Einstein in 1945), 17 times since 1947. The members of the Science and Security Board, deeply worried about the deteriorating state of the world, set the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight in 2019 and at 100 seconds to midnight in 2022. The best we could do was 17 minutes to midnight (in 1991).

The SASB will reveal the 2025 Doomsday Clock time in Washington, DC on January 28, 2025. In so doing, the team will consider multiple global threats, including; the proliferation of nuclear weapons, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, the Russia-Ukraine war, Israel-Hamas war, Israel-Hezbollah conflict, bio-threats and the continued climate crisis.

Bob & Winne’s curtailed honeymoon

The world is in as parlous a state as it was when my parents – Bob and Winnie, journeyed to Scotland’s fabled west coast Isle of Skye for a honeymoon in early September,1939. The honeymoon was cut short by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of war against Germany.

Dad’s skills as a baker and cook were at the top of a list of ‘must haves’ for the British government of the day. He was elevated from Reserve status to regular army duties in double time. Private Wilson to you.

Perhaps I exaggerate by making comparisons about Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and today’s conflict-ridden world. Or not.

I spent a couple of heatwave days locked in the home studio (it faces west), finishing a Doomsday song for Generation Beta. If you didn’t know, babies born between 2025 and 2039 are Gen Beta. Whatever they want to call them, this next generation (and Alpha that came before them), will probably grow up with a grudge against their parents’ generation and the ones that came before. From their perspective, we pillaged the planet, mostly for material gain. As a result of damage done over 200+ years, climate change has run amok.

If you want some insights from Gen Alpha, this (lengthy) opinion piece in The Guardian does not hold back.

The majority (97%) of actively publishing climate scientists still agree that humans are causing climate change. I got that stat from my research assistant Al (well, AI looks like Al, doesn’t it?).

Digressing just a little, did you know that the saxophone parts on Paul Simon’s hit You Can Call Me Al were programmed on guitar synthesisers by Rob Mounsey.

My pal AI also tells me that 99% of peer-reviewed literature on climate change says it is human-induced.

Yet in 2020, Australia was ranked third in the world on a table of climate denier countries (topped by the US at 12%)

A University of Canberra survey conducted in 2020, not long after the Black Summer bushfires, found that Australian news consumers were far more likely to believe climate change was “not at all” serious.

The Conversation’s report on the survey of 2131 people found that 15% don’t pay attention to climate change news.

Of the 40 countries in the survey, Australia’s 8% of “deniers” was more than double the global average.

A recent Pew Research Center survey on global threats found that whether you believe climate change is a major threat depends on your political views.

Scepticism rules in the US, where 85% of voters who lean to the left thought climate change to be very serious; on the right of politics, only 22% agreed.

As I wrote this, Doomsday arrived early for some residential suburbs in Los Angeles, burnt to the ground by unseasonal and out of control wild fires.

In Australia, 91% of those who place themselves on the left side of the political spectrum say climate change is a major threat, compared with only 47% among those on the right. In the share market world this would be called ‘talking to your book’. That is, politicians acknowledge climate change as a threat, yet appease business interests by backing new coal mining and oil and gas projects.

Despite those trends, at least 10 countries in the Pew Report have changed their tune dramatically in recent years as floods, cyclones and other climate change events have crippled towns and cities.

President 47 And The Doomsday Clock

As President 47 prepares to take over the Oval Office, we all wonder just what will replace former President Biden’s policy of backing Israel’s armed offensive against Arab nations.

The most worrying sign of the Middle East conflict escalating is the mass importation of cannon fodder. This derogatory term describes troops regarded as expendable. It was most used to describe Australian and New Zealand innocents abroad during WWI. They were sent to the front line to fight in trenches, where survival was rare and dysentery more common.

The Russian-Ukraine war, which dates from 2014 but got more serious in 2022, took on a different hue in late 2024.

Russia imported 10,000 troops from North Korea, a secretive state from which no verification of facts is ever offered. Sources including NPR, the BBC and the Washington Post say the troops sent to the front have limited training and experience in front-line warfare. Al Jazeera reported in late December that 1,000 North Korean troops had been killed and 2,000+ soldiers injured on the Kursk front line.

But what does all this have to do with us folks Down Under? Quite a lot, as we are allied to the US and by extension, Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas/Gaza. Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have walked back their too-early pro-Israel statements, but the damage is done.

Fair to say we would become a fancied takeover target in any world war or Doomsday scenario. Just as the late John Marsden imagined it in Tomorrow When the War Began, Indonesia (or China or India), would have no trouble invading Australia using barges and four-wheel drive landing craft.

Despite the US establishing a large Marine presence in northern Australia, our capacity to retaliate against mass invasion is questionable, nuclear submarines notwithstanding.

Not that it will come to that – nuclear warheads and the dodgy people at the top will bring any escalation to a rapid end. In the meantime, more ordinary people will be flushed out of their homes and businesses to continue life as refugees and asylum seekers.

Sad to say, Australia’s new laws relating to those who come by boat leaves no room at all for a future here.

As Kasey Chambers once sang: “If you’re not pissed off at the world then you’re just not paying attention.” (from the song Ignorance and the album Barricades and Brick Walls).

Kasey wrote the tune in 2001 and 24 years later keeps on rolling out new music and blunt opinions. My editor recommended Kasey’s 2024 biography “Just Don’t Be a Dickhead”. The publisher has asterisked the title, even though 9 out of 10 streaming dramas freely use far more offensive words.

If this Digressions essay and the accompanying song carry any hope at all, it might be that Kasey’s book title become a universal cry for fair and reasonable discourse, at all levels.

Take five then have a listen to a song on the same topic.

(link from Bandcamp)

Submarine Stakes – North Korea 71 Australia 6

Nuclear-powered-submarine
Nuclear powered attack submarine PCU Virginia returning after its maiden voyage in 2004 US Navy photo by General Dynamics Electric Boat Public Affairs CC Wikipedia

Call me late to the party, but this submarine commentary has been on the back burner for a couple of weeks. As long-term readers would know, I often eschew the 24/7 news cycle, in favour of (ahem) in-depth reports.

The headline might look like an outrageous flogging in a rugby match, but it is actually the fact of the matter. North Korea, with a population close to ours (25 million), has 71 submarines. Australia has just six. North Korea’s subs are diesel-electric only, although it does have nuclear weapons and in fact tested a missile just last week! But no nuclear subs as far as we know.

Most of North Korea’s ageing submarine fleet is comprised of relatively small coastal patrol subs or mini subs. An infographic prepared by Al Jazeera shows that the top 10 countries own a total of 343 subs, with North Korea, the US, China and Russia accounting for 247.

Six countries (the US, UK, Russia, China, France and India), have nuclear-powered submarines. The US dominates the nuclear submarine stakes with 68, ahead of Russia (29) and China (12).

That’s the global picture behind Australia’s newly-inked alliance with the US and UK (AUKUS), which led to Australia scrapping a contract with France to build 12 conventionally-fuelled attack submarines. What sharpened the topic was a timely opinion piece in the Brisbane Times by former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

He claims the hyperbole about the new defence alliance has been ‘dialled up to 11’.

I don’t usually pay much attention when a former PM critiques the government of the day. But in Turnbull’s favour, he put the French submarine deal together during his tenure, so he probably knows more about it than most. Despite a tendency to refer to ‘my government’, a trait he holds in common with Kevin Rudd, Turnbull puts the issue into perspective. For a start, he makes it clear that every country that has nuclear submarines has a nuclear industry. He also points out that while Australia is scrapping one contract, it has not replaced it with another; just “discussions’’ over the next 18 months.

“There is no design, no costing, no contract,” Mr Turnbull wrote. “The only certainty is that we won’t have new submarines for 20 years and their cost will be a lot more than the Attack class submarine, the first of which was to be in the water by 2032”.

Veteran investigative journalist Brian Toohey has big problems with the timeline for delivery of the nuclear subs.

“What role will Australia’s nuclear-powered attack submarines play if a war with China breaks out in the next 20 years? The answer is none. The first of these subs will only become operational after 2040 and the last around 2060, if all goes well.

“Worse, they will reportedly cost well over $100 billion, the latest estimate for the cost of the 12 French-Australian conventionally powered submarines that the Morrison government has scuppered.”

Prior to World War 1, there was considerable dissent in Canberra as to whether we should have a submarine fleet at all. In the end we comissioned two subs in 1914 as a response to the enemy’s use of submersibles during WW1. The Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service did not operate subs during WWII but provided bases for allied navies in Fremantle and Brisbane. We also had Oberon class subs from the 1950s to 1970s, mainly used for surveillance. https://www.asc.com.au/submarines/australias-submarine-history/

Our current fleet of six Collins class submarines was built between the 1990s and 2003, subject to massive cost blowouts and delays.

The tactical advantage of the nuclear-powered sub is that it can stay underwater for months at a time without surfacing.

If you have seen movies like the Crimson Tide, The Hunt for Red October, Das Boot or Abyss, you might imagine how submariners feel, cooped up in a metal tube 24/7. There are insights aplenty in the latest BBC melodrama, Vigil. The six-part mini series is made by the team that created Line of Duty. Much is made of the psychological impact of prolonged underwater isolation, the lack of privacy and temptations to stray from a strict regime of regulations.

Australia’s AUKUS announcement is likely to rekindle the flame that burns in the hearts of those who oppose nuclear power and nuclear weapons. This will probably happen regardless of Scott Morrison’s assurances that “Australia has no plans to acquire nuclear weapons”. 

The ageing vanguard of the anti-nuclear movement (my vintage), grew up through the Cuban missile crisis, the ensuing Cold War and nuclear power station meltdowns. We had plenty of reasons to oppose Australia’s nuclear ambitions. It was (and still is) widely assumed Australia would at some point embrace nuclear energy, given that we have a plentiful supply of the raw material (uranium).

There was opposition to nuclear power, but the broader movement was aimed at stopping governments from developing (and testing) nuclear weapons. While France is getting all huffy about its scuppered submarine deal, let’s not forget the nuclear tests it carried out in French Polynesia (Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls) between 1966 and 1996. Don’t go there.

You may recall 300,000 anti-nuclear protesters cramming into London’s Hyde Park in 1983. A year later, New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange caused an international ruckus when introducing a ban on nuclear-powered vessels within NZ’s territorial waters.

When journalists asked NZ PM Jacinda Ardern about AUKUS, she said she had not been informed – “Nor would I expect to be.”

Anti-nuclear protesters are also fearful of the dangers of radioactivity leaking from damaged power stations (as happened on Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukishima (2011). Check out these 28 accidents (that we know about).

Scarier still is this list of 38 sinkings, collisions, fires and other submarine accidents since the year 2000. Nine nuclear submarine sinkings or scuttlings have a list of their own.

Submarines have come a long way since the world’s first military submersible, The Turtle, which operated during the American Revolution in 1775. Captained by Sergeant Ezra Lee, the pear-shaped submersible failed in an attempt to attach a small mine to the hull of the gun ship, HMS Eagle, in New York harbour. The craft was powered by hand cranked propellers.

Submarines have proven to be the most lethal machines in warfare. The German U-boat fleet lost 178 boats in WWI but sunk 5,000 naval and merchant ships. Likewise in WWII, the U-boat fleet sunk some 3,300 ships, most by firing torpedoes at them.

However, submarines have many uses apart from their peace-time role as a military deterrent. My favourite is the transparent sphere used by David Attenborough’s team to bring us brilliant underwater imagery. Other uses include deep water exploration, research, filming, tourism and private recreational activities. The closest I’ve come is a glass-bottom boat on a Barrier Reef excursion. Ed)

If you have a spare $25 million or so you could ask Seattle-based shipbuilder US Submarines to show you its mid-size luxury submarine yacht model. The Seattle 1000, with a range of 3,000 nautical miles, has five staterooms, five bathrooms, two kitchens, a gym and a wine cellar spread across three levels.

Boys and their toys, eh! My post-war childhood contains a happy memory of bath time, playing with a toy submarine which came free in a cereal packet. The toy sub was powered by household baking powder and one could while away hours in tepid water watching it submerge and surface.

Perhaps you had one too.

 

 

 

The near misses that spawned 207 nuclear war songs

nuclear-war-bomb
Hydrogen bomb explosion – image by www.pixabay.com

Ok, it’s a rough tally and not all of the songs about nuclear war on the Wikipedia list below were written in the 1980s. But many of them surfaced after the nuclear missile conflict near-miss of 1983. Millennials and even Gen Yrs may have been agog at the two nuclear missile false alarms broadcast in Hawaii and Japan recently, but there are precedents.

In October 1962, Russian naval officer Vasil Arkhipov intervened in the imminent launch of a nuclear torpedo, thus preventing the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 from escalating. At the time, US and Russian naval fleets were posturing in waters off Cuba, where Russia was building missile silos.

Arkhipov, a naval officer aboard a B-50 Soviet submarine, somehow knew something his captain did not; that the depth charges being dropped by the US destroyer Beale were practice rounds, designed to deter. As other US destroyers joined in the “mock” attack Captain Valentin Savitsky, assuming World War III had broken out, ordered that the sub’s 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo be prepared for firing. This required the permission of three on-board senior officers, but Arkhipov refused. Had the torpedo been fired (at the aircraft carrier USS Randolph), this would inevitably have triggered US retaliation.

Last year the BBC interviewed retired Soviet Colonel Stanislav Petrov, another brave Russian who averted nuclear war in 1983.

“In the early hours of September 26, 1983, the Soviet Union’s early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the US. Computer readouts suggested several missiles had been launched,” the BBC report began. “The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own.

“But duty officer Stanislav Petrov – whose job it was to register apparent enemy missile launches – decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm.”

In doing so, Petrov defied his instructions (to pass the information up the chain of command). But he was right.

Lieutenant Colonel Petrov, now living the quiet life in a small Russian village, used his common sense and decided (risking a posting to Siberia), to bypass his superiors. Bravo, Stan.

“I had all the data [to suggest there was an ongoing missile attack]. If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it,” he told the BBC’s Russian Service, 30 years after that overnight shift.

At least half of the (anti) nuclear war songs in this Wikipedia list were released in 1983 or over the following six years, with another big flurry in 1989. Call it the Chernobyl Factor if you must.

This is by no means a comprehensive list (my 1981 song ‘The Almost Armageddon Waltz’, for example, is not included). The earliest nuclear war protest songs surfaced in the 1950s – Tom Lehrer’s ‘We’ll all go together when we go” and the Kingston Trio’s ‘Merry Minuet.’

Of the earlier material, no-one IMHO will ever top Randy Newman’s ‘Political Science’ (1972) with its wry reference to Down Under (“…we’ll save Australia, don’t want to hurt no kangaroo, we’ll build an all-American amusement park there, they’ve got surfing too…”

(Randy at the piano)

Given the average time nominated between the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and the strike (about 40 minutes), you could look up a dozen of these songs on YouTube and spend your last hour on earth with your favourite tipple/best girl or boy listening to these ‘told you so’ warnings from the likes of Peter Tosh, Barry McGuire, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Bruce Cockburn, Pink Floyd/Roger Waters, Tears for Fears and Sepultura, to name but a few.

You’d think Australian bands would not rate much of a mention on this list – we are after all 5,500 kms away from the nearest nuclear missile threat. Nevertheless, Redgum, Midnight Oil (3), INXS, Men at Work, Icehouse and the Urban Guerillas get a mention. There is also this obscure dance tune, ‘Dream home in New Zealand’, by the British ska band, The English Beat.

You won’t understand a word but you can just put it on repeat and groove the minutes away (ee-yo-yo, ee-yo-yo).

Then there’s Weird Al Yankovic’s merry Yuletide ditty, ‘Christmas at ground Zero’, with its weirdly prophetic line “The radio just let us know that this is not a test.”

I have no idea how this little ripper was overlooked for our Christmas playlist, but there’s always next year, isn’t there?

It’s good to have satirists like Randy Newman and Weird Al to keep us focused on the importance of being dryly fatalistic about the portent of a nuclear winter.

The questions should be: if humble songwriters can be so wise, why are world leaders so dumb? Why are the systems they put in place to avoid accidental nuclear war so downright flawed?

Lately a few stories have come to light that suggest North Korea has the missile capacity to strike Darwin, some 5,500kms away from Pyongyang. I don’t recall North Korea’s leader making direct threats about Australia or our relationship with the US military. But given the presence of a US Marine Corps in Darwin, I’d say we are on the list.

There is understandable global angst about the world’s lack of control over nuclear weapons and the rogue states which have them. The phrase “accidental nuclear war” is now very much in the lexicon.

The Future of Life Institute maintains a timeline of close calls on its website. This is scary stuff.

As commentators have pointed out, since last week’s Hawaiian misstep and this week’s gaffe by Japanese early warning systems, either incident could have sent the respective antagonists in this psycho-drama scurrying to press their big buttons.

People who research nuclear near-misses are careful to point out that they only know about the (de-classified) incidents involving the US. Data on near-misses and accidents in nuclear states like India, Pakistan and North Korea are not so readily available.

These two incidents of operator-error will no doubt result in a slew of reviews and overhauls of early warning systems. They may also give rise to another crop of anti-nuclear war songs.

If you care to delve into the list of (anti) nuclear war songs, be warned, the quality is uneven and heavy metal bands (Anthrax, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Black Sabbath) are over- represented. But there are also some thoughtful ballads (Kate Bush, Fred Small and this one, by The Postal Service (‘We will become silhouettes’).

People of the Left claim that wars of any type are started (and sustained) to keep the military-industrial complex ticking over.

I was so intrigued by the title of this 1982 Dead Kennedys song I checked it out – could have been written yesterday!

‘Kinky Sex Makes the World Go ‘Round’ has little to do with sex, or music for that matter. Instead we have a 508-word monologue accompanied by punk rhythms presented as a telephone conversation between the US Secretary of War (‘the companies want a war’), and a breathless (female) UK Prime Minister (‘oh, that sounds marvellous.’)

“We knew you’d agree – the companies will be pleased.”

Dead Kennedys

Next week, maybe.

Flashback (September 2017), June 2015

 

 

 

 

Journalists facing deadly risks

journalists-risks
Photojournalist wearing a gas mask covers civil unrest in Cairo.  Image Alisdare Hickson

Not for the first time, I’m ruminating about the deadly risks facing journalists working in conflict zones or countries like North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt or even India.

It’s 1am and I’m reading the Guardian Weekly, starting with its world roundup, where my eye is drawn to a headline: “Indian journalist beaten to death.” In just 100 words we are told that Shantanu Bhowmick’s death at the hands of a stick-wielding mob brings the tally of reporters killed in India since the 1990s to 29.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) outlines the risks facing individuals in India who have made Right to Information (RTI) requests. Since the law came into force in 2005, at least 69 people have been murdered after they filed RTI requests. Another 130 journalists have been victims of assault and 170 reported being harassed.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says that 1,746 journalists and 104 media workers have been killed world-wide since 1992.

What makes these statistics more compelling is that the majority of deaths were not random: a motive was confirmed in 1,253 cases.

The Committee to Protect Journalists maintains a list of the riskiest countries in which to work as a journalist. The list is based on the use of tactics ranging from imprisonment and repressive laws to harassment of journalists and restrictions on Internet access.

Eritrea is No 1 on the list of regimes which censor the press and the Internet, followed by North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan. Vietnam, Iran, China, Myanmar and Cuba.

There are 23 journalists behind bars in Eritrea. None has been tried in court or even charged with a crime. The Internet is available, but only 1% of the population goes online, using slow, dial-up connections. Only 5.6% of Eritreans own a cell phone. In North Korea, 9.7% of the population have (official) cell phones but an unknown number have phones smuggled in from China. A few individuals have Internet access, but schools and institutions are limited to a tightly controlled Intranet.

The CPJ says tactics used by Eritrea and North Korea are mirrored to varying degrees in other heavily censored countries.

“To keep their grip on power, repressive regimes use a combination of media monopoly, harassment, spying, threats of journalist imprisonment, and restriction of journalists’ entry into or movements within their countries.”

This was not helping my insomnia. I turned to page nine, to reporter Joshua Robertson’s full-page coverage of Australia’s same-sex marriage debate. The story includes interviews with residents of Warwick (Queensland), apparently the last bastion of the ‘No’ vote.

Robertson went to an un-named club in Warwick, a town of 15,000 on the Southern Downs, to interview un-named people about the town’s apparent reputation as a ‘No’ Vote stronghold.

“The bible says it’s wrong, and that’s all there is to it,” one woman in the club said, chiding her husband, who was yet to make up his mind.

The reporter also travelled to Roma, an oil and gas town in western Queensland. He interviewed a public servant who said he felt more comfortable being “out” in Roma that in Sydney or Melbourne.

Meanwhile in Queensland

As news assignments go, Joshua Robertson’s Queensland Diary would not fall into the category of risk that faced Shantanu Bhowmick or the other 44 foreign journalists and media workers killed so far in 2017.

These global statistics make the life of a working journalist in Australia look comparatively benign. But not so if you accept an assignment to file news reports, video or images from conflict zones. In 2015, Australian journalist Peter Greste laid a wreath at a new memorial in Canberra recognising the contribution of war correspondents. It was fitting that Greste was chosen for this honour as he’d not long returned to Australia after being imprisoned in Egypt, along with Al Jazeera comrades.

The memorial in a sculpture garden at the Australian War Memorial honours 26 war correspondents killed in combat zones. They range from William Lambie (Boer War 1899-1902) to cameraman Paul Moran, killed during a suicide bombing in Iraq, 2003. Also named is sound recordist Paul Little, who died in a German hospital in 2003 after being caught up in an ambush in Iraq. Also laying a wreath in September 2015 was Shirley Shackleton, widow of Balibo Five reporter Greg Shackleton, one of five Australian journalists killed in East Timor in 1975.

And Australians might want to think about these crucial issues of press freedom and the right to information. On Monday, the ABC’s Four Corners, still the best in the business, sent a reporter and producer to India to dig into the background of conglomerate Adani. It was a good example of journalists taking risks in risky territory. The Four Corners team were grilled for five hours by ‘crime branch’ police after filming at a controversial Adani-owned site. Four Corners investigated Adani’s environmental record and business probity because the Indian company wants the Australian Government to provide a $1 billion loan to underwrite the world’s biggest coal mine in western Queensland and associated rail and port infrastructure.

Joshua Robertson’s Queensland Diary, meanwhile, reminds us that not so very long ago, the State lived under a repressive regime. In 1989 the last criminal charges were brought (in Roma) under Queensland’s homosexuality laws. These were the last days of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen regime (1967-1987), an era when news gathering or protesting was riskier than they are today.

As one of the thousands of bearded, long-haired men who joined their saffron-robed women, wafting about King George Square in a cloud of patchouli essence and acrid cigarette smoke, championing anything that was anti-Joh, I suspect my photo is in a dusty Special Branch file somewhere.

Journalists working in Queensland through the Joh-era needed a Press Pass, which had to be shown whenever entering government buildings. I still have my pass, signed by the former Commissioner of Police, Terry Lewis.

Wonder how much that would be worth on eBay?

 

 

 

 

North Korea – 21st Century Missile Crisis

North-Korea-Missile
Workers in North Korea tending crops on Migok Farm, Sariwŏn. Photo by ‘Stephan’

If you’re old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis, you’re probably less inclined to see the North Korea/US standoff as a prelude to the End Time.

In October 1962 (I was 13), President John F Kennedy and his Russian counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, arm-wrestled over Soviet missile sites built on Cuban soil. Russia had taken steps to build missile silos on Cuba as a response to similar US installations in Turkey and other central Europe locations. As Cuba is just 90 nautical miles from Miami, Florida, this news prompted urgent meetings of defence and intelligence chiefs and then-POTUS John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

In October 1962, an American spy plane spotted what looked like a missile site being built on the island of Cuba. Thus began a tense, 13-day stand-off, during which time many people genuinely believed the world was about to end. Wealthy Americans commissioned fallout shelters (some are still being used today to take refuge from hurricanes).

You can say this about the US defence apparatus, they keep detailed historical records. Whether it is the unexpurgated truth is another matter. As Jack Nicholson’s character Colonel Nathan R Jessup in A Few Good Men famously says to prosecutor Lt Daniel Kaffee, who presses him for “the truth” – “You can’t handle the truth.”

In this instance, US intelligence agencies identified 15 SAM (surface-to-air missile) sites in Cuba.

The Soviets established a missile base on Cuba because they feared the US would invade Cuba, after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 by a CIA-sponsored paramilitary group.

At the time, there was still a lot of angst about Cuba; members of the CIA-sponsored Brigade 2506 were still being held captive after the Bay of Pigs invasion.

President Kennedy needed to resolve this situation, quickly and peacefully. The crisis ended with the Kennedy-Khrushchev “agreement” of October 28, 1962. Less well-known was a dispute over Soviet IL-28 bombers based in Cuba. The US claimed they were “offensive weapons” under the October 28 agreement. Kennedy also made a (then) secret agreement to remove US missile sites from Turkey. These events ended the crisis but continued the “Cold War” (which ended in 1991) between Russia and the US.

So to 2017 and North Korea’s threat to target Washington or New York (or more likely Tokyo), with nuclear-tipped missiles.

You may have watched Monday’s Four Corners/BBC expose on the assassination of Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam. This documentary was, I thought, a little bit too informed by ex-CIA sources, US think-tanks and North Korea-watchers. It would be good to sit down in a bar with a regular DPRK citizen to see if they really are oppressed.

“Howzit goin’ Choi? Gettin’ enough to eat? Been threatened or beaten up lately?” Mate, do you get Outback Truckers on DPRK TV?”

If reports about poverty, famines, repression, reprisals, executions and endemic surveillance are true, you could hardly blame a DPRK citizen for having a drink or four. Communist regimes commonly keep alcohol prices down and relax access to it as a means of helping citizens cope with a bleak lifestyle.

North Koreans predominantly drink hard liquor; Soju, a colourless spirit akin to vodka, taken neat. Its alcoholic content ranges from 17% to 60%.

“North Koreans’ main hobby is probably drinking,” said Simon Cockerell, a tour guide who has led more than 100 trips to the DPRK for foreigners.

But the World Health Organisation ranks North Korea below 128 countries whose alcohol consumption per capita is vastly more than the DPRK’s modest 3.7 litres (94.9% of which is spirits). Australians and New Zealanders drink four times as much.

If you want some raw insights into life in North Korea, cartoonist Guy Delisle’s 2001 graphic novel of his time in North Korea is a good start. The first part of Pyongyang – a journey in North Korea begins with a customs official in the dimly-lit airport terminal suspicious of Delisle’s tatty copy of 1984. “What kind of book is this?” The official relaxes when Delisle tells him he has a work visa arranged with a North Korean animation studio.

Once in country, Delisle kept a diary, illustrated with his drawings of Pyongyang and things that happened as he was chaperoned around by minders. I borrowed it from the local library a few years back and found it blackly fascinating and a little subversive.

A Hollywood movie was planned based on Delisle’s book starring Steve Carell. But the movie was cancelled, reportedly because of the kerfuffle over Sony’s film, The Interview.

Love, love, love is all you need

Last weekend, we spent four glorious days and nights away from the constant stream of doomsday news. About 1,000 people from a broad spectrum of society congregated at a bush campground on the fringes of the D’Aguilar National Park. When people ask me what a folk festival is like, I tell them it’s not so much about the music (often heartfelt songs of equality, justice and humanitarianism), but the harmonious atmosphere.

Many performers took time out between songs at the Neurum Creek Music Festival to observe how sweet it was to have some respite from the constant barrage of end-of-the-world scenarios.

Comedians and folksingers Martin Pearson and John Thompson, reunited as Never the Twain, took a moment from manic wisecracks and parodies to touch the collective soul. The Fred Small song Scott and Jamie is a five-minute story about a gay couple who adopt two boys and are living the dream until social services intervene. The refrain – ‘Love is love, no matter who, no matter where’ rippled out across the festival venue. A hush fell; dogs dialled it down to rapid panting. Even the bar staff fell under the spell.

Four people sitting in front of me rose to their feet at the song’s end, to applaud the splendidly rendered version and the sentiment. It may be a forlorn hope to think that we can cure the world by singing songs of love and peace like ‘Imagine’, ‘Redemption Song,’ or ‘All you Need is Love’. But what else can a pacifist do?

She Whose Family Immigrated from Canada in 1964 thinks her Dad picked this place on the map to escape proximity to a looming nuclear war between two super powers. It didn’t happen then, but there have been scary moments since – September 11, 2001 in particular.

What now? Will we see a new surge of refugees from Japan and the US testing Australia’s world-famous, inclusive asylum seeker policies? Perhaps, as the latest issue of Popular Mechanics suggests, people will invest in bomb shelters instead. Those with wealth enough can spend tens of millions on ‘Doomsday Condos’, shelters big enough to cater for the extended family, friends, pets, the family lawyer…

Or you could travel to a village in Ontario, contribute ‘sweat equity’ and join other idealists maintaining the world’s biggest nuclear shelter, Ark 2.

Sigh. Détente would be easier, and cheaper. You know – détente as in ‘a relaxing of tensions between nations through negotiations and agreements’. Or rapprochement, even. But this would require Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un to clasp hands across a table and sign an Accord.

We wish.

See more on this topic: ‘Surviving Armageddon’