And no-one on hand with a Quorn alternative. Unbelievable.

I have my iodine tablets, and a chicken nugget in each ear. I'm ready.

'Anger and exhaustion as Ukrainians turned away by UK in Calais'

'They treated us worse than water in the toilet'.

Its outrageous, and worse, shameful.

One concern, for a few years now, has been the possibility of Russia enacting an "escalate to de-escalate" strategy. As in lowering the threshold for using say a very limited nuclear strike (perhaps just a single weapon), then essentially presenting the West with a dilemma

- Concede that Russia can use nuclear weapons in this manner and allow it to be used as a bargaining tool and favourable terms for Russia

- Respond in kind, risking further escalation and all out nuclear war.

Putin doesn't seem to have an issue with behaving however he pleases and leaving the conundrums and horrors of where it could lead down to us to ponder. Hopefuly, for all of our sakes, he'd fall short of this though... but who knows..

Apparently the US had already considered and discussed this eventuality, and have deployed low-yield W76-2 warheads on submarines for this purpose (and there nuclear bombs on NATO airbases with adjustable yields).

Edited by BlueJay (09 Mar 2022 7.39pm)

Any use of nuclear weapons of any yield by Russia may well result in a pre-emptive strike by the US. They would attempt to take out most of their sites and deal with the subs as they launch.

I'm sure they are trying to track the Russian subs.

Cruise missiles would go under radar where as ICBMs wold be detected immediately. It would then be a question of what those weapons would do to the atmosphere and how many Russian nukes hit home.

The defcon level was raised from 4 to 3 when this started.

The cold war restarted when putin came to power. We last intercepted russian bear bombers headed for us on 2 Feb 2022 and turned them away before they hit our airspace. There have been 136 such incidents since 2005.

All it takes is one of them to enter our airspace and it will be shot down. We can't take a chance that they launch.

It's troubling that the more Russia struggle in Ukraine the more likely they are to escalate to save face. That's why peace talks certainly have their place, but the impact of this invasion on both Ukraine and Russia has been significant, and so I'm struggling to think of what agreement could be reached.