Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Following North Korea’s recent missile test, which ominously flew over Japan, the specter of war with the hotheaded nation was raised once again.

As time goes on, it seems less and less likely that the Kim regime will back down from its nuclear program. All forms of diplomacy and appeasement have failed, and not even threats of war from the US seem to have an effect on the regime.

There’s a very good reason for that. North Korea knows something that the United States, the most powerful nation on the planet, would absolutely hate to admit. Our country is is no position to engage in a preemptive strike on north Korea, because any attack would result in unimaginable devastation. The days when Americans would tolerate massive war casualties over a short period of time are long gone, and North Korea knows it. There simply isn’t anything we can offer or threaten that will stop their nuclear program.

And that’s understandable once you know how much destruction North Korea could really bring about if the Kim regime ever decided to let its military loose on South Korea.

If the current situation in East Asia is not resolved, a number of countries “will be living under a threat of a nuclear volcano erupting,” Russian diplomat and an expert in Asian studies, professor Georgy Toloraya told RT.com. Everyone understands perfectly well that for North Korea, if it initiates an aggressive strike, a military conflict will mean a complete and immediate destruction, because no one can deny the US military might,” Toloraya said. “However, for the US, attempts to solve this problem militarily also bring on a retaliatory strike by North Korea that would turn South Korea into a desert,” he warned, saying the North doesn’t even need nuclear weapons for that. While Pyongyang’s artillery is able to reach Seoul, the entire territory of South Korea will also “be no good for life,” as Pyongyang’s missiles – even without nuclear warheads – might hit nuclear facilities in the South, he explained. He said there are some 30 such sites close to North Korea’s border.

Obviously, the destruction of nuclear facilities could have more of an impact than any other attack, by causing widespread radiation leaks. If anything, it could be more devastating than dropping a nuclear weapon, since the radioactive materials in these facilities often have a significantly longer half-life than what we see in atomic bombs.

It’s threats like that which make it clear that no military option is capable of reigning in North Korea. That’s a sentiment that former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon expressed earlier this month.

Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

And let’s not forget that North Korea has one of the largest chemical weapon stockpiles in the world, and is suspected of maintaining a bio-weapons program since the 1960’s. Given those possibilities, Bannon’s belief that North Korea could kill ten million people may be a gross understatement, and that doesn’t even consider the chances that war with North Korea could trigger another world war.

It’s time to accept the truth. We can bargain with the Kim regime, appease it, threaten it, and lay down sanctions on it, but nothing will actually stop that government from continuing its nuclear program without causing mass casualties. The only thing we can do is try to keep a lid on that country until their citizens rebel, or until the Chinese decide that they’ve had enough with their ally.