While the world worries over a nuclear World War III, experts warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin possesses a “doomsday machine” capable of triggering a 330-foot tsunami that could submerge Ukraine in minutes.
Could Putin launch a tsunami-creating doomsday weapon to flood Ukraine?
As technology rapidly advances, so do the type of terrors it is capable of unleashing. The world is holding its collective breath under fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin could use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons at some point in the conflict with Ukraine or against other parts of the world who may try to assist the embattled country.
A “doomsday machine” the world has never seen before
Now, reports are emerging of a new so-called “doomsday machine” in the possession of the Kremlin, that could unleash a new type of devastating military attack the world has never seen before.
According to intelligence sources, Russia is believed to possess a nuclear superweapon that has the ability to destroy cities within minutes, The Express reported.
Scientists say if Russia detonated a nuclear warhead underwater, near the seacoast, it could create a 330-foot high tsunami that has the potential to drown Ukraine in a matter of minutes.
Making the weapon more lethal
Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear policy at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, dubbed the hypothetical weapon “Putin’s doomsday machine.” In a 2015 article, Lewis speculated that the weapon might be “salted,” or surrounded with metals like cobalt, which would dramatically extend fatal radiation levels from fallout for at least several months, or possibly even decades. The blast would transform those metals into long-lived, highly radioactive chemicals and disperse them all over.
“What sort of sick bastards dream up this kind of weapon?” Lewis wrote, noting that such salted weapons were featured in the 1964 science-fiction Cold War parody film “Dr. Strangelove.”
The Poseidon: A not-so secret super weapon
Intelligence sources have actually known about the “doomsday machine” since images were leaked on Russian TV in 2015. Then in 2018, Putin himself revealed its existence. The weapon is known as “the Poseidon,” and is an underwater, unmanned stealth drone capable of launching nuclear payloads.
Putin bragged that his stealth submarine has “hardly any vulnerabilities” and delivers a “massive nuclear ordinance.”
Defense analyst H. I. Sutton wrote in a blog post that he estimates the Poseidon could be about 66 feet long and 6.5 feet wide.
The Poseidon carries torpedoes armed with a pair of nuclear warheads, estimated to be in the 20-50 megaton range. When launched, they hurtle through the water, evading detection, as they speed at 80 mph. They were originally designed to destroy enemy naval bases. However, they soon realized they were capable of doing even greater destruction.
Tsunami-maker
Scientists and physicists studying the capability of the weapon soon realized The Poseidon possessed a much greater threat than simply taking out naval bases. Nuclear torpedoes could trigger massive tsunamis.
“A well-placed nuclear weapon of yield in the range 20 megatons to 50 megatons near a sea coast could certainly couple enough energy to equal the 2011 tsunami, and perhaps much more,” physicist Rex Richardson, who researches nuclear weapons, told Business Insider. “Taking advantage of the rising-sea-floor amplification effect, tsunami waves reaching 100 metersd [330 feet] in height are possible.”
It gets worse: Nuclear fallout rain
Richardson, along with other experts, pointed out that a near-shore blast from triggering a nuclear weapon near the shoreline, could suck up tons of ocean sediment, irradiate it, and rain it upon nearby areas. The result would be catastrophic radioactive fallout.
“Los Angeles or San Diego would be particularly vulnerable to fallout due to the prevailing onshore winds,” said Richardson, who lives in San Diego.
