Our obsession for nostalgia seems to know no bounds; not only are classic franchises like Star Wars and Transformers back in cinemas we’ve also brought back the ultimate eighties cultural footnote, fear of all out nuclear war.
Strangely though, rather than Hollywood plugging our nostalgia in an attempt to make a cheap buck it’s everyone’s favourite hermit kingdom North Korea who’ve been rattling their sabre so hard in recent months I’m beginning to think they’re compensating for something.
Now in a recent interview with the BBC a senior North Korean official has said that they plan on continuing their intercontinental ballistic missile program in the hope of developing a weapon that can actually hit something other than their own countryside.
Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol said: ‘We’ll be conducting more missile tests’ before confirming they were planning for ‘all out war’ should the U.S. involve themselves.
Not wanting to inflame the situation Vice-President Mike Pence said ‘bring it on you commie bastards’. Well no, he didn’t but reading between the lines he may as well have.
In fact the VP said that ‘all options are on the table’ when it comes to dealing with the ‘ominous threat’ the country poses.
In recent months North Korea has refused to buckle to international pressure and continued to develop both its nuclear and test missiles.
So where can North Korea currently hit with their missiles? Well according to the George C Marshall Institute here’s the maximum hypothetical range of the four intercontinental missiles used by the North.
The first three are relatively short ranged…
Where as their Taepodong 2 missile is a little more worrying…
Don’t worry though, as former reality TV star turned world’s-most-powerful-toddler, Donald Trump, has said he won’t allow that to happen and sent a navy strike group towards the Korean Peninsula to put pressure on North Korea.
Like a mardy child though, the isolated country has apparently got plans to carry out a sixth nuclear test after a missile they tried to test on Sunday embarrassingly blew up only a few seconds after launching.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be too worried.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.