> Putin is talking of spending $100 billion over 7 years to 
> develop
> new weaponry. Put a perspective on that please


Your wish is my command.

$100 per year per Russian citizen.
About 7 Roubles per day for every man woman and child.
That's about the cost of  15% of a Big Mac or one banana or 
one apple each, depending on how big the apples and bananas 
are. (AFAIK Russian Big Macs are the same size as the ones 
here). Interestingly Apples cost almost twice as much per kg 
as bananas (in St Petersburg at least). Maybe they fly their 
bananas directly from Iceland but the apples have to come 
from eg Spain or Italy?

OR:    At its height the Apollo Lunar program cost 
$US0.50/day for every US citizen. That was also arguably a 
political posturing exercise (even though certain 
space/rocketry geeks may have felt otherwise) and all they 
got was a few rocks and a lot of pork-bellying and 
employment, so put in perspective Putin seems likely to be 
getting value for money.
__________________

More perspective:

> That is just a sick comparison.

Politics tends to be like that :-(

> I find the whole obsession and
> fascination with ways and reasons to kill and subjugate 
> people
> and subvert their/any society, obscene and disturbing
>
> There. I've had my say

And an unusually unusual say it was, for you.

I was, fwiw, mainly interested that

i)    The US plane managed to get so close to a Russian 
test, which was held well inside the Soviet area of 
influence, 'just happened' to be the largest H bomb 
explosion of all time and that it had its paint scorched. I 
do rather suspect the accuracy of the report. But it's a 
good story.

ii)    The US had time and warning and knowledge of day and 
time good enough to outfit it especially and send it in an 
adequate time slot to be there. It may be simpler than it 
seems. They may even have been invited explicitly if not 
actually publicly to send an observing craft as the whole 
point of the explosion was for the Soviets to strut their 
stuff and it was well pre-announced.

_____________________

I note, very much in passing, that while I share, as you 
know, your general distaste of mankind's inhumanity to man, 
and hold a 'moderately' dim view of Khrushchev generally, 
his "enemy at the gate" triumphs notwithstanding, this 
device had nothing to do with using its technology to kill 
people. Unlike Putin's proposals, which are as likely to be 
real enough but still more political positioning than weapon 
making, the Tsar Bomba was ALL about political position 
making. It was just too too too big physically and too 
impractical to be anything than an attention grabbing noise 
maker. It was even carefully engineered to be only half as 
large in yield as it could have been in order to reduce its 
fallout by a factor of over 20:1.

__________

> Putin is talking of spending $100 billion over 7 years to 
> develop
> new weaponry. Put a perspective on that please

$100 per year per Russian citizen.
About 7 Roubles per day for every man woman and child.
That's about the cost of one banana or one apple each, 
depending on how big the apples and bananas are each.
Interestingly Apples cost almost twice as much per kg as 
bananas (in St Petersburg at least). Maybe they fly their 
bananas directly from Iceland but the apples have to come 
from eg Spain or Italy?



your obedient servant,



                Russell



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