You know that company, the one that everyone hates? The one that makes people depressed, the that makes them angry? The one that makes them feel like everyone else in the world is okay and they're the one that's broken and a failure? The one that has every political scandal from interference with elections to negligence over a genocide? The most powerful and invasive ad generation machine ever devised? Well they're about to own VR.
The title is both a joke and not one. Reading dev twitter is horrifying. From Anton to the head of BigScreen, devs are clear about two things. Facebook screws us, they screw Devs, and they have a fucking evil plan for VR; but there's no stopping them. As Anton said. "there is no second party in VR that cares as much as them," to the end. To be clear, Valve has done a lot for VR and I think it would be much smaller and a lot worse without them. Not just steam but making the Vive and inventing room scale. If you don't know, Oculus originally was partnered with Valve, but Valve didn't buy them, then Facebook secretly bought them and ripped them away from Valve who was literally sharing hardware and software with them freely. Not just that but Micheal Abrash worked at Valve and shut down their entire AR division, firing everyone, then jumped ship and became an exec at facebook. Valve has been in this for years.
The problem is that for all their work, the stakes are now higher, not lower. Facebook is making a platform and capturing the whole medium. The point of this move was to remove a key thorn in their plans, and make a clear statement. They need to be able to do what they want freely in VR and they just went for the nuclear option and are killing whatever identity Oculus had. Soon you will need a facebook account to turn your VR headset from a paperweight into a useable device. And when Facebook is how games have avatars, multiplayer, every little feature or function, then crossplay breaks down. I've already talked to Devs who are making facebook only games since they need access to things that are only in the Oculus API. What happens when games are just rooms in Horizon? Horizon is a social platform clearly channeling The Oasis, something more ironic than I can convey right now. Facebook clearly thinks that by doing this now, before their big conference, they can get all the anger out now and trade their current customers for brand new ones who don't realize what has changed or don't care. They think the Quest will sell 100 million units and everyone in their way will be crushed like a bug. They care more than everyone else because they're coming for every drop of blood.
A company for which users are the product, not the customer, should not be in VR. Just flat out, VR is the creation of entire worlds, entire realities, and it's a big deal as we've all been telling ourselves. And that means the flaws and ambitions of the companies involved are magnified a lot. This is a clever company too. Their "big privacy initiative" a few years back told people that they would be able to hide anything they want from their friends.... but not from facebook. Your friends aren't the point of facebook, they're just the carrot that make you hand over your data, which is then handed to advertisers.
I'm not going to get into all the details of facebook but you can watch the john oliver piece about it for some of the details (including a genocide that facebook actively made worse). He doesn't even get into all of it. A few things he doesn't mention: Facebook's primary product accounting for 90% or more of their revenue is ads. Ads aren't a big seller usually so they actually are a pioneering targeted ad company. Now that may sound normal at first but you need to think about how it actually works. Ad buyers on facebook at one point could sell ads to a category called "jew hater," that's how automated and insane their system is. Another thing Oliver doesn't mention is the Facebook Free Basic program. This was a program that would have set up facebook satellites and service in India. But the catch was that you could only use facebook's systems and everything was financially and technically steered towards their services top to bottom. To India this was an outrage, basically swooping in and colonizing their digital life. India's parliament voted it down and the facebook VP in the country said "India has gone with anti imperialism, clearly that has worked so well for them for the last 60 years." Facebook experimented on teenagers manipulating their moods through their feeds (to the point of depression) without consent, the study showing it absolutely had an effect, and it's entirely possible teens could have actively self harmed as a result. Facebook told people that if they wanted to make sure their nudes couldn't be posted on facebook, they should send their nudes to facebook to feed into the automated system. The list goes on and on.
A lot of people don't think about the full implications of this. Your oculus account won't just require a facebook account, it will be one. In the sense that when you're in VR, what you do will be no less subject to facebook's scrutiny than on their site. On Horizon? Everything you do or say is fair game, what rooms you hang out in, who you talk to. On a third party app? You're still using their (depth aware) api and runtimes so they have access and since Facebook for flatscreen follows you after you leave the site it's far from unreasonable to think some fraction of their invasive behavior there will carry over. It's really hard to protect your data from them, even if you just have a burner account. Facebook even has "shadow profiles," which are profiles for people who don't even have accounts with the site, with their photo info, friends and family, and personal info. They were secret but they leaked years back.
This whole situation made me want to throw up. There is no feeling of "I told you so" satisfaction when you see Devs openly afraid online. When people who worked for Mozilla on VR are saying "If Facebook is going to be the only platform for VR, I am actively opposed to it, I have an ethical imperative." (Mozilla was working on something called "WebXR," which was supposed to be a way to spread and use VR content like using the web, totally free and open. Well the pandemic has hit them so hard that they had to close their entire VR division and now all their work basically belongs to facebook). When some outspoken devs are saying "they knew that devs are on the brink of bankruptcy in this pandemic and can't afford to walk away from Oculus." This is real, this is the actual reality that facebook is betting you'd rather put on a headset and run away from into their garden rather than face.
The real question I have right now is whether tech and especially VR journalism will actually wake up. Interview devs who are getting screwed by facebook, report on these problems, mention in every article about the quest that you have to have a facebook account, and stop giving their free marketing just because it gets clicks. And when facebook has a scandal, you avoided reporting on it before because it was facebook, not oculus, but now oculus doesn't exist so you need to be reporting on the company that wants to build whole realities and control this industry.
So what should Valve do? Something. This is new ground for them I'm sure, and it's such a complicated company that they could be fighting over this inside and we don't know. But the fact is that Valve is the largest and most serious player in this space after Facebook but people have so little faith that they care enough to fight facebook that after reading hundreds of threads by devs on all this, not a single one even mentions Valve. Maybe they can hire a bunch of VR studios to add open source functionalities to SteamVR like a WebXR browser, they could make systems like avatars and other services for free to give devs with few resources a way to compete, maybe they can make deals with content suppliers like big screen so they can sell their movie tickets without anyone taking a cut, maybe they can host webXR content really cheaply so Facebook loses people to WebXR as a platform. I really hope they're working with multiple manufacturers to make an "android" system of standalones to compete with facebook's "iOS." They have a small staff but a large warchest and a lot of attention.
Maybe Valve can't or doesn't want to do anything, and we have to hope for some traditional company to fight with facebook, the problem is that it took a decade for Epic to take on Apple, and we need something to happen now.
https://twitter.com/bai0/status/1295806708019687424
https://twitter.com/DShankastatus/1295825809496629248

What if Tanishq ad Showed a Muslim girl getting married in Hindu family & why Tanishq rolled back the ad so swiftly

One Piece 500K subscribers Survey Result!

It's time for the result of our latest survey! And it had 7252 participant! So thank you everyone that took time to answer those questions.
You should be able to see the answer if you go there : https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KfHOyWHQTyFEEeAYvCZRxBc3_ZGZxJn6ZUztiwMdVjE/edit

Community section :

What country are you from?

Country	U.S.A.	Germany	India	Australia	Canada	U.K.	Bazil	France	Spain	Sweden
Percentage	33.1 %	7.4%	5.4%	5%	4.8%	4.4%	3.1%	3.1%	2.1%	1.7%

Is nice to see that we have users from all around the world, even if nearly 50% are from English speaking countries.
Image 1.

How old are you?

The average age of a /OnePiece user is 23.62 years old. We have roughtly 10% of users that are underaged, and 10% that are 30 years old or more.
Image 2.

Gender

Gender	Male	Female	Other
Percentage	88.6%	8.9%	2.5%

There is no surprise there.
For the others, we have some Gender Fluids, transgenders, Bigenders, quite a lot of Non-binary, a Loli, a Furry, and nearly a 100 Oden (You wish), as well as some rude people, but I won't put up what they said.

Manga or Anime?

Both	Manga Only	Anime Only
49.8%	46.2%	4%

No real surprise here either. Considering the subreddit has a lot of spoilers and is focussed around the chapter release, it's obvious there are only a few Anime Only people here. So thank you for Sticking Around, even if it the best place to avoid spoilers.

For approximately how long have you been following One Piece?

1 Year or less	2 years	3 years	4 years	5 years	6 years	7 years	8 years	9 years	10 years or more
8.7%	6.2%	6.8%	6.1%	8.1%	7.1%	6.7%	7.1%	4.6%	38.5%

Nearly 40% of our users have followed the series for 10 years or more. (To give an idea, this mean they followed the series since Before the timeskip, as chapter 597 was released at the end of August 2010).
For the rest, we have roughly the same number of new readers that stays with the series. So it's quite good to bring new blood and not have a decrease of new readers.

Where does One Piece rank on your list of favorite manga?

N°1	Top 3	Top 5	Top 10	Bellow Top 10
70.1%	21.6%	5%	2.6%	0.6%

Well, you are in /OnePiece after all. So it's kinda obvious the manga is either your favorite or in your top 3.
If it isn't your number 1, what series are better than One Piece for you?

Do you own One Piece Merchandise?

No	Manga Volumes	Figurines	Clothes	Poster	DVD/Blu-ray
44.2%	33.1%	24.5%	18.4%	17.2%	6.3%

Those are some good numbers I would say, 55.8% of users have some merchandise and are probably supporting the series (depending on where you bought those)
For the OTHERS answers given, some good ones are : autograph from dub VA of brook, Alvida pre devilfruit bodypillow, Chopper teddy bear, Sountracks, Custom made and 3D printed Keychain, Databook.

Subreddit Section :

Do you visit OnePiece mostly on mobile or on desktop?

Mobile or Apps	Both	Desktop
50.6%	29.5%	19.9%

If you are using desktop, are you using the old version of reddit? Or the redesign?

Redesign	Old version
63.3%	36.7%

It seems like most users are using Mobile and Apps, as well as the redesign on desktop, so it's probably time to pay more attention to that than to the old version, this way we can get banners/flair for users that are on the new version of reddit.

How often do you make : a submission on OnePiece?/Comment?/read the rules?

Submission :

Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Very often (Daily)
67.1%	24.7%	5.6%	1.6%	1%

Comments :

Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Very often (Daily)
41.2%	32.7%	17.6%	6.7%	1.8%

Check the rules :

Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Very often (Daily)
49.1%	17.1%	13.7%	8%	12%

This really shows that there are a lot of lurkers on the subreddit. Most of you won't ever post or comment on the subreddit. With 8% of users creating submission and 25% commenting.
As for the rules, there isn't any surprise since nearly every post respect the rules. (Only 1/5 of the post needs to be removed), so thank you to all of those that read them.

Content you enjoy the MOST/the LEAST.

Content you enjoy the most :

Theories/Discussion	Fanart	Polls	Cosplay	Merchandise	Youtube Video	Media (Photo and Video)
89.6%	47.9%	19.7%	16.7%	14.4%	14.1%	11.7%

So without surprise, people in this subreddit enjoy the Theories/discussions the most out of every type of post, it's then followed by the Fanarts.
Which is good since like 75% of posts made are Discussion (50% total)/Fanarts (25% total).
Content you enjoy the least:

Youtuber Video	Merchandise	Cosplay	Media	Fanart	Polls	Theories/Discussion
36.7%	35.1%	31%	15.7%	15.3%	6.9%	4.2%

Here there aren't any content that most users enjoy the least, but it still seems like users don't want to see that much Merchandise or Cosplay post. (Youtuber video are very rare)
Also, a quick reminder, Discussion/Theories are mostly found by sorting by New. This is where you will see all of them, as it's hard for them to show up on the front page of the subreddit (but if it shows up on Hot, then it's a very good one).

Do you only use the subreddit for the Spoiler and Chapter Discussion thread?

No	Yes
63.4%	36.6%

It's nice to see that roughly 2/3 of the users are here for more than just the Spoilers and Chapter discussion. But there is still a huge part that only use the subreddit for that.

Do you want the spoilers gone from this subreddit?

No	Yes
86.7%	13.3%

Rate your overall experience on OnePiece.

Here it's seems that out of 10, the Overall Experience on /OnePiece is 8.35
Image n°3

One Piece related questions :

Who is your favorite Straw Hat?

Luffy	Zoro	Nami	Usopp	Sanji	Chopper	Robin	Franky	Brook	Jinbe
34.8%	29.1%	1.3%	6%	10.1%	1.8%	6.5%	2.4%	5.4%	2.6%

Who is your least favorite Straw Hat?

Luffy	Zoro	Nami	Usopp	Sanji	Chopper	Robin	Franky	Brook	Jinbe
0.8%	3.3%	10.6%	15%	6.5%	21.3%	4%	19.2%	8.3%	11.1%

As it was expected, Luffy is the Favorite Straw Hat for a lot of peopel, he's also the Straw Hat with the fewest "Least Favorite". After him Zoro is second favorite, followed by Sanji, Robin, Usopp, Brook, with the other Straw Hat having very few votes (and Nami having the Least "Favorite" Straw Hat.)
After that, it seems like Chopper, Usopp, and Franky are the one people like the least out of the Straw Hat.
I know it was a hard question for some of you, but the result are still interesting to know.

Which Strawhat has the saddest backstory?

Robin	Brook	Sanji	Chopper	Nami	Other
50.9%	25%	9.3%	7.1%	5.8%	1.9%

The Straw Hats with the saddest backstory is Robin! Followed by Brook, then Sanji, Chopper and Nami.

What is your favorite Yonko crew?

Red Hair	Whitebeard	Big Mom	Beast	Blackbeard
34.7%	31.1%	14%	10.6%	9.5%

So the favorite Emperor's crew are the Red Hair Pirate! Which is very impressive since we haven't seen much of them. I guess Oda better delivers when it come to see them in action after Wano.

Who is your favorite Admiral?

Garp	Aokiji	Fujitora	Kirazu	Akainu	Sengoku	Green Bull
28.4%	28.2%	20.8%	15.8%	4.7%	1.7%	0.5%

While Garp was only a Vice Admiral, he was put in the poll, and he won it! Whitout him, it's Aokiji that is the favorite, followed by Fujitora.
Image 4

Who is your favorite Supernova (outside the Straw Hat)

Law	Kid	Bonney	Urouge	Bege	X Drake	Hawkins	Apoo	Killer
63.5%	12.4%	5.5%	4.5%	4.3%	4%	2.8%	1.7%	1.3%

Who else than the character that nearly managed to defeat Luffy in the 5 popularity poll? Law is the Favorite Supernova outside of the Straw Hat!

Which is your favourite canon arc in One Piece?

The Favorite Canon Story arc are (You could vote for more than 1) :

Position	Story arc	Result
N°1	Enies Lobby	43.3%
N°2	Marineford	39.8%
N°3	Wano	30.2%
N°4	Water 7	23.3%
N°5	Impel Down	19.6%

Which is your least favourite canon arc in One Piece?

The Least Favorite Canon Story arc are (You could vote for more than 1) :

Position	Story arc	Result
N°1	Long Ring Long Land Arc	37.2%
N°2	Fishmen Island	16.9%
N°3	Syrup Village	15.8%
N°4	Thriller Bark	10.1%
N°5	Punk Hazard	9.7%

Favorite Cover Story?

Position	Cover Story	Result
N°1	Enel's Great Space Operations	24%
N°2	From the Decks of the World : "The 500.000.000 Man Arc"	11%
N°3	The Stories of the Self-Proclaimed Straw Hat Grand Fleet	10.7%
N°4	Ace's Great Blackbeard Search	9.8%
N°5	Straw Hat's Separation Seria	9.6%

Character Design in One Piece :

Do you like the female character designs in One Piece?

Yes	No	I have no opinion.
63%	19%	18%

Do you like the male character designs in One Piece?

Yes	No	I have no opinion.
89.6%	0.9%	9.5%

It's true that Oda isn't the best when it comes to Female character design. However it seems like the majority of users don't have a problem with that.

Are fight a determining factor for your enjoyment of the series/arc?

Yes	No
52.6%	47.4%

Now this is rather surprising I must say. What do ou thing about this?

What is/are your (absolute) favourite aspect(s) of One Piece?

From the result we have, it seems like the World-Building is the favorite part of One Piece (With 88.6% of voters choosing this).
It's followed by The Adventure (69%), The characterization (54.4%), the Inter-character relationship (49.4%), the Action (36%) and the Art Style (26.2%).
And those result are obvious. Some of the most upvoted chapters of this subreddit are when we have huge world building moment, like 907 (Shanks talks to the Elders), or 957 (ULTIMATE).

Post-Timeskip is?

On Par with Pre-TS	Better than Pre-TS	Worse than Pre-TS
59.8%	28.2%	12%

This question is one of the most asked. With a lot of vocal voices saying that post TS is worse than Pre-TS.
It's different for sure, but now we know how the community feels about that.

If you could eat a Devil Fruit, what type would you want?

Paramecia	Zoan	Logia
28.9%	8.6%	62.5%

Most people could choose to eat a Logia, and it seems like becoming a Furry is the lesser choice in this subreddit.

The Final Antagonist of One Piece will be :

With 48.5% it's Blackbeard!
Really? That is surprising for me since it's obvious that Oda will make the SH fight against the World Government after they find the One Piece. And I honestly don't see Blackbeard being the final Antagonist because of that.
So people who voted for this, what was your reasoning for it?

What is One Piece Biggest Flaw?

Some of the biggest flaws mentionned are :

The Pacing
The Lack of characters' death outside of Flashback
The Anime.

Which are all fair flaws to the series.

Random Questions about the Series :

As of Wano, is Jimbei stronger than Zoro?

Yes	No	Yes but Zoro will be stronger soon
9.8%	60.3	29.9%

I guess people really want Zoro to always be the second strongest no matter what... I expected this result, but I was still disappointed...

Was Zoro as strong as Luffy just after the timeskip?

Yes	No
31.5%	68.5%

I... Really? 31.5% said yes?

Will Sanji get laid by the end of the story?

Yes	No
49.6%	50.4%

Nearly the perfect split, and it's easy to see why it's very divisive. (Also shows that every vote counts).

Will Usopp be part of the 1 Billion Club by the end of the story?

Yes	No
76.4%	23.6%

The Straw Hats will go to Laugh Tales :

Before fighting the WG	After Fighting the WG
71.1%	28.9%

It's been hinted at a lot that the SH will go to Laugh Tales before taking on the WG. So for me it feels rather strange to have more than 1/4 voting for them reaching the final island after.

Who will be the one to defeat Kaido? (So give the last hit)

With 66.3% of the votes the one who will give the last hit to Kaido is : Luffy!
Followed by 11.5% with someone else (that isn't Law/Kid/Zoro/Big Mom/Scabbard/Admiral) and 11% by one of the Scabbard.
Zoro received 6.4% of the votes.

Who will be the first SH to realize their dream?

Luffy	Zoro	Nami	Usopp	Sanji	Chopper	Robin	Franky	Brook	Jinbe
16.2%	12.5%	3.2%	32.7%	7.8%	1.8%	15%	6.8%	2.8%	1.2%

Most users believe that Usopp will be the first one to realize his dream!
I also think the same as it's the easiest Dream to realize really. I could bet you it will happen in Elbaf.
After that, we have Luffy and Robin, and it make sense since their dreams are linked. Both can be done once they reach Laugh Tales.

How many members will the crew have at the end? (With Luffy)

And most people want 11 members total in the crew! (With 28.6%), 27.5% wants 12 members, wile 19.8% want the crew to be complete right now with Jinbe.

Who do you think wins in a 1v1 : An Emperor or an Admiral?

Yonko	Admiral
92.3%	7.7%

If you are active on the subreddit, you know it's one of the question that creates the most discussion/arguments about.
So it's nice to know the overall opinion of the subreddit on this question (Doesn't mean it's always correct mind you).

Is Mihawk emperor's level?

Yes	No
57.7%	42.3%

Also a very divisive question on this subreddit.

Is Aokiji emperor's level?

Yes	No
38.3%	61.7%

Is Akainu emperor's level?

Yes	No
66.2%	33.8%

So they fight for 10 days in a very close battle. With Akainu winning in the end, but after a long and hard fight. And one is Emperor's level while the other isn't?
Really? I find that hard to understand.

If Oden was alive would he be stronger than Mihawk

Yes	No
63.7%	36.3%

How strong was Oden at the time of his death?

The strongest	Top 3	Top 5	Top 10	Top 20	< Top 20
1.4%	15.4%	32.5%	37.5%	11.9%	1.4%

I like Oden, but sometimes I feel like people are overestimating him.

Who is stronger between Shanks and Mihawk?

Shanks	Mihawk
85.6%%	14.4%

This is also one of the question creating the most arguments on this subreddit, after all Mihawk is the World Strongest Swordman. But Shanks is an Emperor and became one after losing his arm.

Is Kaido stronger now that 20 years ago?

Yes, he's stronger	Same level	Weaker
64.5%	26.3	9.2%

Had Ace survived, would Wano be liberated by now?

Yes	No
17.9%	82.1%

Could the Marines take on ALL the Yonko at the same time ?

Yes	Yes in Marineford only	No	2 at the same time	3 at the same time
2.4%	3.3%	68.6%	23%	2.7%

This question is also linked to how you see the Emperor vs Admiral. So depending on which side you are on, you are more likely to pick Yes or No.

Which character do you want focus on next?

Rank	Character	%
N°1	Vegapunk	24.7%
N°2	Dragon	18.8%
N°3	Shanks	14.6%

All very good choices, and all of them are character we have known for a long time without really knowing.

Will Blackbeard find the One Piece before Luffy?

Yes	No
18.7%	81.3%

How strong is Monkey D. Dragon?

The strongest	Top 3	Top 5	Top 10	< Top 10
3%	18.8%	31.8%	37.5%	8.9%

Here, most people seems to think that Luffy's father, Garp's son is part of the strongest characters of the series. Oda better respond to our expectations then.
As for his Bounty : Well, 31.6% think it will be more than 6 Billions and 28.1% think it will be between 5-6 billions.
That remind me, I once made a poll asking people what Sabo's bounty would be (since we knew it was getting revealed in a magazine soon). So maybe I will do the same for Dragon? That could be nice.

Who is currently the strongest Emperor?

Kaido	Shanks	Blackbeard	Big Mom
43.1%	26.4%	26.3%	4.2%

I wonder if the recent chapters made people change their perception on this...

What are the fights you would want to see?

Fight	%
Blackbeard vs Shanks	55.5%
Garp vs Rocks	54.9%
Garp vs Roger	54.8%
Mihawk vs Shanks	52.6%
Akainu vs Aokiji	44.6%

How long do you think One Piece has left? (At a rate of 40 chapters a year)

Image 5.
As you can see, most people think One Piece has at least 5 years left to go on. We will know Oda is terrible with respecting his own objectives. And this is good. The more One Piece the better.

On a scale from Spandam to Whitebeard/Roger, How strong is Im?

For this question, it seems like most people put Im at the same level as Whitebeard/Roger with 28.6% voting Im being there.
I honestly don't know how strong I want Im to be.

What arcs, after Wano, do you want?

The arcs people want the most are :

Arc	%
Elbaf	79.8%
Laugh Tales	68.6%
Vegapunk	67.5%
The Final War	66.3%
Red Hair Pirates	38.2%

So arcs teased for years (Elbaf/Laugh Tales/Final War) and about character that people want to see (Vegapunk/Red Hair pirates).

How is Blackbeard able to use multiples Devil Fruits?

Reason	%
More than 1 soul	29.5%
Weird Body	29.7%
Yami Yami	35.2%
Other	5.6%

It's one of those question were people have very different opinion about. And right now there isn't really a major concensus in the fandom, even if the theory about it being related to the Yami Yami is more popular.
In the Other catergory, there was the Cerberus Devil Fruit option, Blackbeard being a Triplet, him being actually 2+ kids in a trenchcoat, him being a failed Vegapunk experiment, having several stomachs him being pregnant (Stop reading fanfiction), him putting the power inside his rings, being a great guy and him being a cunt.

Haki is :

Image 6
Overall, People like Haki in the series, with a 4.38 out of 5!

How many arcs are left after Wano?

Image 7
Here, it seems like the answer for the community would be 4-5 arcs left. Which would then make (base don the How long One Piece has left), like a year per arc on average.

The final war of One Piece will be :

Reason	%
SH+RA vs WG+Marines vs BB	50.8%
SH+RA vs WG+Marines	37.6%
SH vs RA vs WG	6.8%
Other	4.8%

I just don't see Blackbeard being in the final war, as my opinion is that he will be dealt with before it. For the other answers, there was Straw Hats vs Blackbeard Pirates, Family of D vs vs im sama, Total civil war in marines, Straw Hat vs Shanks, Straw hat vs Pound, Zoro vs World Goverment, Dugongs vs buggy.

Will Luffy die at the end of One Piece?

Will Luffy die?	%
Yes	28%
No	72%

An ending were Luffy died wouldn't be a good ending for me. He needs to survive and go on more adventures.

Are Shakky and Rayleigh Mihawk's parent?

Answer	%
Yes	10.2%
No	89.9%

Will the crew still be together at the end of the series?

Answer	%

Yes, they will keep going on adventure together.| 57.6% o, they will move on, like the Roger Pirates| 42.4%
Like with Luffy living, I want the Crew to stay together, and sail together for many more adventures. I could see them taking breaks from time to time, but them staying together would be the best ending for me.

Can the Red Line be destroyed with Ancient Weapons?

Answer	%
Yes	91.9%
No	8.1%

What is the biggest mystery left to be revealed?

The most common answers were : The Void Century, the Will of D, Im, The One Piece, Joy Boy, Luffy's mother and Who is Pandaman?

What is the One Piece?

Here, there was plenty of : "No idea", The friends we made along the way, a Devil Fruit, Knowledge, Uranus, History, a book, my mom.

What sort of Devil Fruit do you want to see in the story?

The most common answer was : Water Logia! Followed by Wind Logia and people wanting more mythical Zoans.

What is the craziest theory you believe?

Here are a few of them :

Shanks is a Celestial Dragon
That Vegapunk is going to flip a switch in the Pacifista programming to fight the marines at the end.
Luffy's mom was a celestial dragon
Devil fruits are all artificial from the void century
That Finland doesn't exist
Zoro is going to get Rodger's disease
D's were the original Celestial Dragons
Weevil was made by Vegapunk using Whitebeard's cells and then was discarded until Bakkin picked him up
One of the Roger Pirates (probably Scopper Gaban) is on Laugh Tale waiting for whoever finds it, sort of like how Crocus and Rayleigh seem to be positioned to monitor rookie pirates
Onigashima is an Oarz like skeleton and Big Mom is gonna bring it to life.
The different races came from other planets/moons
Tama is a Kurozomi
Ussop is a descendant of Mont Blanc Nolan
Luffy hatched from an egg.
The fish that bit Shanks's arm off was Joyboy's pet
Bon chan is Kin'emon's son
Oda no longer draws the manga
bonney and ace having a child
That Perospero is going to help kill Big Mom.
Dragon being former Admiral

What are your favorites?
And here it is, the 500K survey! Took me far too long to make, as I underestimated the time needed to sort the answer and create this post. Like damn.
I hope you enjoyed it. The anwers for the Survey Saga will be up next in some time.

The ACTUAL real world influences of the Bosmer

For years, when the topic of real world influences on the cultures of Nirn have come up, one particular race has always gotten the short end of the stick when it came to having a fair description. That race, is the Bosmer, also known as the Wood Elves. It's always irked me that while other races had their fair share of real world comparisons, the Wood Elves were always painted with broad strokes and generic explanations. There's much more to the Bosmer than people have bothered to describe them as, and I feel if no one else is going to bother writing about these real world parallels, then screw it, it's my off day, I just had a steak at 10 in the morning, so I guess I will.
Before I start in on who the Bosmer are based off of, or, at the very least, who the Bosmer could strongly, STRONGLY be argued to be based off of, I'd like to say who they're not based off, and more specifically, why the descriptions they've been given to real world peoples is, well, lacking.
First, I'll start off with the most popular one, being Native Americans. Saying Wood Elves are based on Native Americans is incorrect, not because there isn't necessarily influence from them, but because the term Native American is an encompassing term for a variety of different people. People who's cultures are as different as the Italian Renaissance and Feudal Japan. Sure, I understand why some would say Native American and leave at that. There are times when it can't be helped. You're building a world, you're basing culture and peoples off the real world, but sometimes it's easier just to say "These people I'm writing about are based on Asia" because those fictional people you are writing about have culturally significant symbols like dragons and other things one could find shared among many cultures in the East. The problem is, despite the fact that though certain motifs can be witnessed among multiple cultures, it's a very base level description. Some could even consider it offensive depending on how certain peoples interpret certain shared cultural relevancies. Jesus I'm saying culture a lot. Anyway, what I'm getting at is, on a shallow, first glance, sure, you can say "Wood Elves" are Native Americans.
But not all Native Americans share the things people have pinned on to Bosmer. Not every Native American tribe was some Archer Hippie. Also, most tribes didn't partake in cannibalism, ritualistic or otherwise. This is actually something, that, if someone were to get offended by, I could understand. It indirectly buys into that old Hollywood interpretation of Amerindians being savages. That just wasn't the case. Yes, there were a very few tribes that occasionally took part in ritualistic cannibalism. But for every one tribe that did, there was a thousand that didn't. Well, probably not a thousand. Don't quote me on that, but just know that it was a rarity, and that saying Bosmer are based on Native Americans, especially when including ritualistic cannibalism, doesn't work. Mostly because, ritualistic cannibalism can be found in a number of cultures across the planet, so.... yeah, don't... don't say that. It's also important to note the other Native American describers used for Wood Elves (IE archery, close with nature) are so broad that it not only doesn't work from a Native American standpoint, it doesn't work from ANY standpoint. Do you know what other cultures have been good at archery or close with nature or both? Frikkin. All of them. Or at least damn near so. Look at a timeline for any culture in the world prior to the Renaissance. The probability that you'll find one if not both of these things is high. Having said all this, there is a Native American tribe, one, that the wood elves absolutely do have a shared parallel with, and I'll get to that in a minute. For now, I'll continue on to what the Bosmer are not.
Secondly, the Bosmer are not a barebones Celtic placeholder. This is has been tossed around a bit here and there due to the naming trends of the Wood Elves. Make no mistake, these names are absolutely based on Irish and Welsh names, but there's way more to it than that. You're probably wondering "Well wait, Fruitlessideas, are they based on Celts or not". Well, yes... but also no. Here's what I mean. You can take ANY race or culture from The Elder Scrolls, and at any given time, find that they're based on anywhere from 5 different cultures, to even 20, if you so look hard enough. The reason I say Bosmer aren't just Celts, is because they're not. Now, there is a significant influence from the real world Celtic people, but 1.) it goes beyond just their names, and 2.) in spite of that, it does NOT take up the majority of the influence for the Wood Elves.
Which brings me to my third, and final "thing the Bosmer are not", and that is, a generically, high-fantasy trope, or a "realm of the fairies and pixies" inspired race. It's not a secret that the modern elf we know of is based almost entirely on JRR Tolkien's elves in LotR. If not based in the cultures or values of his elves, at least in the physiology, as described as a gracefully built people, with "leaf shaped" or pointed ears. Peter Jackson also has a significant role in this, based on the fact that his movies brought to life this fantasy world, and because of that, when people think of elves, they thing of Lego's Ass. Let go Lass. Orlando Bloom. Elf Boy.
Here's the thing though, people often forget just how fleshed out Tolkien's writings were, not just about the stories he wrote, but also about the people's he wrote about. The elves, if I'm remembering right, had something like three of four different cultures in his books. Even if I'm wrong, and it's only, about two, he still wrote so much about them, that to say that either were the same people would be folly, and by extension, saying Bosmer are based on generic high fantasy elves, or Tolkien elves, is disingenuous. Because honestly, which ones? Which ones do you mean? All of them? Cause they're not all the same. HOWEVER, even in a world where they were all the same, saying Bosmer are based on these "made up cultures" doesn't work either. It only takes a five minute search to know that some of Tolkien's elves, if not all to some extent, were based HEAVILY on ancient Welsh and Irish people, as well as Norse mythology, seeing as that's kind of where elves come from. And, if we look at the Peter Jackson films, we can see a clear Art Nouveau influence in much of the architecture of the elves. So, giving this overly broad description of the Bosmer to being something akin to your basic DND, or Tolkien, or Fantasy elf race, doesn't work. Now, if one were to say that the Wood Elves of Valenwood had deep Welsh and Irish influences, they'd be right on the money. You could say they have a Nordic influence, based on the fact that, in Norse mythology, there are elves, but personally, I wouldn't. And seeing as I have no idea what Valenwood looks like, I can't say if there is an Art Nouveau inspiration in their architecture, but if anyone out there who has played ESO, been to Valenwood, and knows what the hell Art Nouveau is, please feel free to let me know if the Bosmer have it or not. I think it's cool.
SO, those are what the Bosmer are not. Now, let me tell you what they SUPER are influenced by, or at least, as I said before, COULD BE STRONGLY ARGUED THAT THEY ARE INFLUENCED BY. I'm not going to give ultra long paragraphs at this point because it has dawned on me, I'm in my 20's writing about a fictional fantasy race instead of applying myself to be better in life or getting laid.
Before I begin, I want it to be known that, this is not an "end all, be all" list. I'm sure there's other influences on the Bosmer other than what I'm going to say. These are just what I believe to be major influences. I'd also like to add, that I don't think Bethesda ever planned to have as much cultural influence on these races as they currently do. I think it's only because of us a fans making comparisons on our own, and overanalyzing these things as we do, that the significance of our real world peoples have been incorporated into the races of Nirn. So, without any further ado, and little to no milking of this post left... here are the real world cultures that the Bosmer most resemble, and that I've never found anyone comparing them too.
4.) Starting from the bottom and working my way up (or technically down), the Iroquois. Many know that the Wood Elves have a "Mourning War", but what many may not know is this based off the real world practice of the Iroquois Mourning War. Essentially, and I'm paraphrasing here, when a tribe member dies, they are "replaced" by a new member. This new member is a hostage, usually stolen from a neighboring tribe, if not by the tribe that killed the original tribe member. They are then made into a new member of the mourning tribe. If I remember right, the Wood Elves will torture the poor bastard to test their merit or something like that. Good way to make friends, I guess.
3.) And coming second to last, were bringing back the Celts, but not really, but kind of. "But wait! You said they weren't, but you said they were, but you said they weren't?!". I know what I said, don't tell me what I said. I was the one who said it. As stated earlier, the Bosmer aren't "just Celts", but they DO have a Celtic influence, mostly, at least to my observation anyway, what seems to be ancient all the way to early middle ages Irish and Welsh. I would like to say there's also a strong Druidic inspiration that comes from this, but the fact of the matter is, I don't know enough about ancient Celtic Druidism to make that claim, and I don't want to confuse fantasy Druidism with actual Druidism, assuming that they are absolutely nothing alike. Which maybe they are. And if they are, then that's what I'm gonna say. That there's a strong Welsh and Irish Druidic influence. But I don't know for sure on that part so.... I won’t. Moving on.
2.) Next on the list, is a trifecta, because these three next groups have all done this seemingly amazing thing, that I would believe would be part of Valenwood society (IE villages, towns, and cities), and also because I'm lazy and don't feel like making three points for essentially the same damn reasoning. These people are the Indonesian Baduy people, and the Indian Khasi and Jaintia (Pnar) people. The reasoning for these three groups is due to the fact that all have have built Living Root Bridges. What that means is, they've effectively taken the roots of trees and made them into bridges. These bridges are still alive. They are never not alive. They continue to grow into each other over the years, strengthening the bridges. Earlier, I spoke how people paint broad strokes of Native Americans as being in touch with nature, but if this isn’t as "in touch with nature" as it gets, then I don't what the hell I'm doing anymore. Again, I haven't seen Valenwood in game, and I can only assume what it looks like in ESO, but if I had to bet a nickel and a dime, I'd say, Living Root Architecture is probably, most definitely, something Bosmer would have, and by that logic, I say these three tribes of Indonesia and India are the second most influential, real world culture when it comes to the Bosmer.
1.) And finally, there is one. I won't say a lot about this next group, only because, well, I think you, the reader, should read about them on your own when you get the chance, because they're a very interesting people. They are known as the Korowai. They're a people found in Indonesia, specifically Papua. Said to be reclusive and to have had little contact with the outside world, up until about 2018, they were known as a "tree dwelling" tribe. For the longest time, they had been reported to live in tree houses in Indonesia, and though this has been found to be false, the fact that it was so widely believed by those who knew of the Korowai for such a long time, I think that in and of itself has enough significance and merit to say that it would be an influence on the Bosmer. Moving past that though, the Korowai, like the Bosmer, practiced ritual cannibalism. To what extent, I don't know, but I do know they did it for awhile, but have stopped over the past few years due to growing contact with the outside world.
Now, lives in trees, practices ritualistic cannibalism, isolated from the rest of the world... sounds a bit familiar doesn't it?
I also want to point out the ever present South Asian influence that's shown up in other cultures of Tamriel, in case anyone were to think this assessment of mine is far fetched. You can see it in the Khajiit, the Dunmer, and, even to a small degree, the ancient Falmer. Specifically, you can observe the cultures of India and Indonesia. There seems to be a recurring theme with those two countries. If those influences can show up in other TES cultures, it's not out of the question to say they might influence the Bosmer.
Bonus half-baked, maybe, maybe not influence: The Maori. I was iffy about placing this on here, but I thought, eh, screw it. Do it. Someone gets mad, then they get mad. The reason I say the Maori, is due not necessarily because they too, in the past, practiced ritualistic cannibalism, but because they practiced it on their fallen enemies, something they share in common with the Wood Elves of Valenwood. I wanted to make other comparisons like tattoos, but seeing as I can find no writing that places significance on tattooing, and more specifically, tattooing ceremonies of the face (like that of the Maori), I'll leave that be until someone at Zenimax or Bethesda decide to add Ta Moko face tattoos to the Bosmeri culture.
Anyway, a-dee, a-dee, a-dee, a that's all folks!
Edit: Thank you for the silver anonymous human! Edit 2: Thank you other human for the other award! Actually, you know what? I’m just gonna save time and say thank you for the current awards, and in case I get anymore, thank you for those too!

Save us Gabe, you're our only hope {Seriously though, this is bad]

Tartaria: The Supposed Mega-Empire of Inner Eurasia

Introduction

For those not in the know, the Tartaria conspiracy theory is one of the most bizarre pieces of pseudo history out there. Its core notion is that the region known as ‘Tartaria’ or ‘Grand Tartary’ in Early Modern European maps was not simply a vague geographical designate, but in fact a vast, centralised empire. Said empire emerged… at some point, and it disappeared… at some point, but for… some reason, its existence has been covered up to suit… some narrative or another. As you can tell, there’s a lot of diverse ideas here, and the fact that there hasn’t been the equivalent of a Christological schism every time a controversial thread goes up is really quite impressive. While this post will primarily address one particular piece of writing that is at the core of Tartaria conspiracy theorising, I’ll include a few tidbits to show you just how much madness its adherents have come up with. But first, some background.

State of Play, and why I’m doing this

The Tartaria theory has a small but active following on subreddits such as Tartaria, tartarianarchitecture, and CulturalLayer, which as of writing have around 5,300, 2,400 and 23,000 subscribers, respectively, but it’s clear from the 8 questions on the topic asked at AskHistorians since January 2019 and this debunk request from June that it’s a theory that has somewhat broad appeal and can reach beyond its core niche. This is unsurprising given how little education most people in the West receive about basically anything east of Greece: simply put, the reality of Eurasian history is just not something most of us are taught. And if we don’t know the reality of Eurasian history to begin with, or if we do then it's all in bits and pieces where we might not even know a basic set of dates and names, then what seems to be a pretty developed narrative about a lost empire actually turns out rather plausible.
Unfortunately, many debunks of the Tartaria narrative come from people pushing competing conspiracy theories, like this guy claiming that there’s a global ~~Jewish~~ Phoenecian conspiracy and that Tartaria is simply rehashing the notion that Khazars were Jews in order to distract from the real Phoenecian threat at the heart of global society or some nonsense like that. (I don’t really care, I died of laughter after page 3.) Now, there are those coming from serious perspectives, but they focus largely on the problems with Tartaria as a concept rather than addressing the more specific claims being made. This is of course valuable in its own right (shoutout to Kochevnik81 for their responses to the AskHistorians threads), but we can go deeper by really striking at the roots of this ‘theory’ – what is the ‘evidence’ they’re presenting? But to do that, we need to find out what the origins of the ‘theory' are, and thus what its linchpins are. Incidentally, it is because of some recent events regarding those origins that I’ve been finally prompted to write this post.

Where does it come from?

My attempts to find the exact origins of the Tartaria conspiracy have been not entirely fruitful, as the connections I’ve found have been relatively circumstantial at best. But as far as I can tell, it at least partially originates with that Russian pseudohistorian we all know and love, Anatoly Fomenko. Fomenko is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world for his 7-volume ‘epic’ from 2002, History: Fiction or Science?, but in fact he’s been pushing a complete ‘New Chronology’ since the publication of Novaia khronologia in Russian in 1995. While the New Chronology is best known for its attempt to explain away most of the Middle Ages as a hoax created by the Papacy on the basis of bad astronomy, it also asserts a number of things about Russian history from the Kievan Rus’ to the Romanovs. Key to the Tartaria theory is its claim that there was a vast Slavo-Turkic ‘Russian Horde’ based out of ‘Tartaria’ which dominated Eurasia until the last ‘Horde’ ruler, Boris Godunov, was overthrown by the European Mikhail Romanov. This, of course, is a clear attempt at countering the notion of a ‘Tatar Yoke’ over Russia, as you can’t have a ‘Tatar Yoke’ if the Tatars were Russians all along. Much as I’d like to explain that in more detail here, I don’t have to: in 2004, Konstantin Sheiko at the University of Wollongong wrote an entire PhD thesis looking at the claims of Fomenko’s New Chronology and contextualising them within currents of Russian nationalism, which can be accessed online.
But I personally suspect that if there are Fomenko connections as far as Tartaria specifically is concerned, they are limited. For one, at one stage users on the Tartaria subreddit seemed unfamiliar with Fomenko, and there are those arguing that Fomenko had ‘rewritten’ Tartarian history to be pro-Russian. This is why I said that the evidence was circumstantial. The only other link to Fomenko is indirect: the CulturalLayer sidebar lists the ‘New Chronology Resource Collection’ and the audiobook of History: Fiction or Science? under ‘Essential Resources’, and Tartaria in its ‘Related Subs’.
As far as I can tell, the ultimate origin of its developed form on the Anglophone web traces back to this post on the StolenHistory forums, posted on 17 April 2018. This makes some chronological sense: only one post on CulturalLayer that mentions Tartaria predates this. Moreover, KorbenDallas, the OP of the thread, was also the forum’s chief admin, and given that StolenHistory is still (as of writing) the top resource on CulturalLayer’s sidebar, that suggests significant influence. However, using the search function on camas.reddit.io, it was mentioned at least 9 times before then, with the first mention, on 10 January 2018, mentioning that the ‘theory’ had been doing the rounds on the Russian web for at least 5 years. Nevertheless, as the detail in these early comments is sparse and generally refers only to speculation about maps, it is probably fair to say that the first in-depth English-language formulation of the Tartaria ‘theory’ was thus the April 2018 forum post. Funnily enough, it is not cited often on Tartaria, but that subreddit was created on 27 December, long after discussion had been taking place on places like CulturalLayer, and combined with the ‘mudflood’ ‘theory’ and the notion of giant humans, which are not significant features of the StolenHistory thread. This more convoluted and multifaceted version of the Tartaria theory doesn’t really have a single-document articulation, hence me not covering it here.
It is this StolenHistory thread which I will be looking at here today. Not just because it seems to be at the heart of it all, but also because it got shut down around 36 hours ago as of writing this post, based on the timestamps of panicked ‘what happened to StolenHistory’ posts on CulturalLayer and Tartaria. So what better occasion to go back to the Wayback Machine’s version, seeing as it’s now quite literally impossible to brigade the source? Now as I’ve said, this is not the most batshit insane it gets for the Tartaria crowd, in fact it’s incredibly tame. But by the end of it, I bet you’ll be thinking ‘if this is mild, how much more worse is the modern stuff!?’ And the best part is, I can debunk most of it without recourse to any other sources at all, because so much of it involves them posting sources out of context or expecting them to be read tendentiously.
But that’s enough background. Let us begin.

Part 1: The Existence

Exhibit 1: The Encylcopædia Britannica, 1771

”Tartary, a vast country in the northern parts of Asia, bounded by Siberia on the north and west: this is called Great Tartary. The Tartars who lie south of Muscovy and Siberia, are those of Astracan, Circassia, and Dagistan, situated north-west of the Caspian-sea; the Calmuc Tartars, who lie between Siberia and the Caspian-sea; the Usbec Tartars and Moguls, who lie north of Persia and India; and lastly, those of Tibet, who lie north-west of China.” - Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. III, Edinburgh, 1771, p. 887.

Starting a post about the ‘hidden’ history of Central Asia with an encyclopædia entry from Scotland is really getting off to a good start, isn’t it? Anyone with a sense of basic geography can tell you that Tibet lies due west of China, not northwest. But more importantly, this shows you how single-minded the Tartaria advocates are and how tendentiously they read things. ‘Country’ need not actually refer to a state entity, it can just be a geographical space, especially in more archaic contexts such as this. Moreover, the ethnographic division of the ‘Tartars’ into Astrakhanis, Circassians, Dagestanis, Kalmuks, Uzbeks, and, for whatever reason, Tibetans, pretty clearly goes against the notion of a unified Tartary.

Now compare to the description given by Wikipedia, ”Tartary (Latin: Tartaria) or Great Tartary (Latin: Tartaria Magna) was a name used from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century to designate the great tract of northern and central Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, settled mostly by Turko-Mongol peoples after the Mongol invasion and the subsequent Turkic migrations.”

Obviously, Wikipedia is not a good source for… anything, really, but the fact that they’re giving a 349-year-old encyclopaedia primacy over the summary sentence of a wiki article is demonstrative of how much dishonesty is behind this. And it only gets worse from here.

Exhibit 2: Hermann Moll’s A System of Geography, 1701

THE Country of Tartary, call'd Great Tartary, to distinguish it from the Lesser, in Europe, has for its Boundaries, on the West, the Caspian Sea, and Moscovitick Tartary; on the North, the Scythian, or Tartarian Sea; on the East, the Sea of the Kalmachites, and the Straight of Jesso; and on the South, China, India, or the Dominions of the great Mogul and Persia : So that it is apparently the largest Region of the whole Continent of Asia, extending it self [sic] farthest, both towards the North and East: In the modern Maps, it is plac'd within the 70th and 170th Degree of Longitude, excluding Muscovitick Tartary; as also between the 40 and 72 Degree of Northern Latitude.

Immediately underneath the scan of this text is the statement, clearly highlighted, that

Tartary was not a tract. It was a country.

Hmm, very emphatic there. Except wait no, the same semantic problem recurs. ‘Country’ need not mean ‘state’. Moreover, in the very same paragraph, Moll (or rather his translator) refers to Tartary as a ‘Region’, which very much disambiguates the idea. Aside from that, it is telling that Moll refers to three distinct ‘Tartaries’: ’Great Tartary’ in Asia, ‘Lesser Tartary’ in Europe, and ‘Muscovite Tartary’ – that is, the eastern territories of the Russian Tsardom. If, as they are saying, ‘Great Tartary’ was a coherent entity, whatever happened to ‘Lesser Tartary’?

Exhibit 3: A 1957 report by the CIA on ‘National Cultural Development Under Communism’

Is a conspiracy theorist… actually believing a CIA document? Yep. I’ll add some context later that further complicates the issue.

Or let us take the matter of history, which, along with religion, language and literature, constitute the core of a people’s cultural heritage. Here again the Communists have interfered in a shameless manner. For example, on 9 August 1944, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, sitting in Moscow, issued a directive ordering the party’s Tartar Provincial Committee “to proceed to a scientific revolution of the history of Tartaria, to liquidate serious shortcomings and mistakes of a nationalistic character committed by individual writers and historians in dealing with Tartar history.” In other words, Tartar history was to be rewritten—let its be frank, was to be falsified—in order to eliminate references to Great Russian aggressions and to hide the facts of the real course of Tartar-Russian relations.
[similar judgement on Soviet rewriting of histories of Muslim areas to suit a pro-Russian agenda]

What’s fascinating about the inclusion of this document is that it is apparently often invoked as a piece of anti-Fomenko evidence, by tying New Chronology in with older Russian-nationalist Soviet revisionism. So not only is it ironic that they’re citing a CIA document, of all things, but a CIA document often used to undermine the spiritual founder of the whole Tartaria ‘theory’ in the first place! But to return to the point, the fundamental issue is that it’s tendentious. This document from 1957 obviously is not going to be that informed on the dynamics of Central Asian ethnicity and history in the way that a modern scholar would be.
In a broader sense, what this document is supposed to prove is that Soviet coverups are why we don’t know about Tartaria. But if most of the evidence came from Western Europe to begin with, why would a Soviet coverup matter? Why wasn’t Tartarian history deployed as a counter-narrative during the Cold War?

Exhibit 4: ‘An 1855 Source’

This is from a footnote in Sir George Cornwalle Lewis’ An Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History, citing a travelogue by Evariste Huc that had been published in French in 1850 and was soon translated into English. From the digitised version of of Huc’s book on Project Gutenberg (emphasis copied over from the thread):

Such remains of ancient cities are of no unfrequent occurrence in the deserts of Mongolia; but everything connected with their origin and history is buried in darkness. Oh, with what sadness does such a spectacle fill the soul! The ruins of Greece, the superb remains of Egypt,—all these, it is true, tell of death; all belong to the past; yet when you gaze upon them, you know what they are; you can retrace, in memory, the revolutions which have occasioned the ruins and the decay of the country around them. Descend into the tomb, wherein was buried alive the city of Herculaneum,—you find there, it is true, a gigantic skeleton, but you have within you historical associations wherewith to galvanize it. But of these old abandoned cities of Tartary, not a tradition remains; they are tombs without an epitaph, amid solitude and silence, uninterrupted except when the wandering Tartars halt, for a while, within the ruined enclosures, because there the pastures are richer and more abundant.

There’s a paraphrase from Lewis as well, but you can just read it on the thread. The key thing here is that yes, there were abandoned settlements in the steppe. Why must this be indicative of a lost sedentary civilisation, and not instead the remnants of political capitals of steppe federations which were abandoned following those federations’ collapse? Places like Karakorum, Kubak Zar, Almaliq and Sarai were principally built around political functions, being centres for concentration of religious and ritual authority (especially monasteries) and stores of non-movable (or difficult to move) wealth. But individual examples of abandoned settlements are not evidence of broad patterns of settlement that came to be abandoned en masse. Indeed, the very fact that the cited shepherd calls the abandoned location ‘The Old Town’ in the singular implies just how uncommon such sites were – for any given region, there might really only be one of note.

Exhibit 5: Ethnic characteristics in artistic depictions of Chinggis and Timur

I… don’t quite know what to make of these.

Today, we have certain appearance related stereotypes. I think we are very much off there. It looks like Tartary was multi-religious, and multi-cultural. One of the reasons I think so is the tremendous disparity between what leaders like Genghis Khan, Batu Khan, Timur aka Tamerlane looked like to the contemporary artists vs. the appearance attributed to them today.

Ummm, what?
These are apparently what they look like today. These are ‘contemporary’ depictions of Chinggis:

Except, as the guy posting the thread says, these are 15th-18th century depictions… so NOT CONTEMPORARY.
As for Timur, we have:

In what bizzaro world are these contemporary?
We’ll get to Batur Khan in a moment because that’s its own kettle of worms. But can this user not recognise that artists tend to depict things in ways that are familiar? Of course white European depictions of Chinggis and Timur will tend to make them look like white Europeans, while East Asian depictions of Chinggis will tend to make him look Asian, and Middle Eastern depictions of Chinggis and Timur will make them look Middle Eastern. This doesn’t prove that ‘Tartaria’ was multicultural, in fact it you’d have an easier time using this ‘evidence’ to argue that Chinggis and Timur were shapeshifters who could change ethnicities at will!

Exhibit 6: Turkish sculptures

Why this person thinks modern Turkish sculptures are of any use to anyone baffles me. The seven sculptures shown are of Batu Khan (founder of the ‘Golden Horde’/Jochid khanates), Timur, Bumin (founder of the First Turkic Khaganate), Ertugrul (father of Osman, the founder of the Ottoman empire), Babur (founder of the Mughal Empire), Attila the Hun, and Kutlug Bilge Khagan (founder of the Uyghur Khaganate). They are accompanied (except in the case of Ertugrul) by the dates of the empires/confederations that they founded – hence, for instance, Babur’s dates being 1526 to 1858, the lifespan of the Mughal Empire, or Timur’s being 1368 (which seems arbitrary) to 1507 (the fall of Herat to the Shaybanids). To quote the thread:

A few of them I do not know, but the ones I do look nothing like what I was taught at school. Also dates are super bizarre on those plaques.

Again, Turkish sculptors make Turkic people look like Turks. Big surprise. And the dates are comprehensible if you just take a moment to think.

Do Turks know something we don't?

Turkish, evidently.

Exhibit 7: A map from 1652 that the user can’t even read

The other reason why I think Tartary had to be multi-religious, and multi-cultural is its vastness during various moments in time. For example in 1652 Tartary appears to have control over the North America.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/1652-nova-totius-terrarum-orbis-geographica-ac-hydrographica-tabula_1-1-jpg.37277/
This speaks for itself.
The thread was later edited to include a link to a post on ‘Tartarians’ in North America made on 7 August 2018, but that’s beside the point here, read at your own leisure (if you can call it ‘leisure’). Except for the part where at one point he admits he can’t read Latin, and so his entire theory in that post is based on the appearance of the word ‘Tartarorum’ in an unspecified context on a map of North America.

Part 2: The Coverup

The official history is hiding a major world power which existed as late as the 19th century. Tartary was a country with its own flag, its own government and its own place on the map. Its territory was huge, but somehow quietly incorporated into Russia, and some other countries. This country you can find on the maps predating the second half of the 19th century.

…Okay then.

Exhibit 8: Google Ngrams

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/tartary_ngram-jpg.37276/
This screenshot shows that the use of ‘Tartary’ and ‘Tartaria’ declined significantly over time. This is apparently supposed to surprise us. Or maybe it shows that we actually understand the region better…

Part 1a: Back to the existence

You know, a common theme with historical conspiracy theories is how badly they’re laid out, in the literal sense of the layout of their documents and video content. Don’t make a header called ‘The Coverup’ and then only have one thing before jumping back to the evidence for the existence again.

Exhibit 9: A Table

Yet, some time in the 18th century Tartary Muskovite was the biggest country in the world: 3,050,000 square miles.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/tartary_huge-13-jpg.37329/
I do not have enough palms to slap into my face. Do they not understand that this is saying how much of Tartary was owned… by foreign powers?

Exhibit 10: Book covers

You can look at the images on the thread itself but here’s a few highlights:

1654: Bellum Tartaricum, or the Conquest of China By the Invasion of the Tartars, who in the last seven years, have wholly subdued that empire
1670: Historia de la Conquista de la China por el Tartaro

Histories of the Qing conquest of China, because as far as Europeans were concerned the Manchus were Tartars. Proof of Tartaria because…?

1662: The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors of the Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia… Containing a compleat History of Muscovy, Tartary, Persia, and Other Adjacent Countries…

An ambassador who never set foot in ‘Tartary’ itself, cool cool, very good evidence there.
There’s also three screenshots from books that aren’t even specifically named, so impossible to follow up. Clearly this is all we need.

Exhibit 11: Maps

The maps are the key think the Tartaria pushers use. All these maps showing ‘Grand Tartary’ or ‘Tartaria’ or what have you. There’s 20 of these here and you can look for yourselves, but the key thing is: why do these people assume that this referred to a single state entity? Because any of these maps that include the world more generally will also present large parts of Africa in generic terms, irrespective of actual political organisation in these regions. And many of the later maps clearly show the tripartite division of the region into ‘Chinese Tartary’, ‘Russian Tartary’, and ‘Independent Tartary’, which you think would be clear evidence that most of this region was controlled by, well, the Chinese (really, the Manchus) and the Russians. And many of these maps aren’t even maps of political organisation, but geographical space. See how many lump all of mainland Southeast Asia into ‘India’. Moreover, the poor quality of the mapping should give things away. This one for instance is very clear on the Black Sea coast, but the Caspian is a blob, and moreover, a blob that’s elongated along the wrong axis! They’re using Western European maps as an indicator of Central Asian realities in the most inept way possible, and it would be sad if it weren’t so hilarious. The fact that the depictions of the size of Tartaria are incredibly inconsistent also seems not to matter.

Exhibit 12: The Tartarian Language

There’s an 1849 American newspaper article referring to the ‘Tartarian’ language, which is very useful thank you, and definitely not more reflective of American ignorance than actual linguistic reality.
The next one is more interesting, because it’s from a translation of some writing by a French Jesuit, referring to the writing of Manchu, and who asserted (with very little clear evidence) that it could be read in any direction. In April last year, Tartaria users [claimed to have stumbled on a dictionary of Tartarian and French](np.reddit.com/Tartaria/comments/bi3aph/tartarian_language_dictionary/) called the Dictionnaire Tartare-Mantchou-François. What they failed to realise is that the French generally called the Manchus ‘Tartare-Mantchou’, and this was in fact a Manchu-French dictionary. In other words, a [Tartare-Mantchou]-[François] dictionary, not a [Tartare]-[Mantchou]-[François] dictionary. It is quite plausible, in fact probable, that the ‘Tartarian’ referred to in the newspaper article was Manchu.

Exhibit 13: Genealogies of Tartarian Kings

Descended From Genghiscan

Reads the comment above this French chart. How the actual hell did OP not recognise that ‘Genghiscan’ is, erm, Genghis Khan? Is it that hard to understand that maybe, just maybe, ‘Tartars’ was what they called Mongols back in the day, and ‘Tartaria’ the Mongol empire and its remnants?

Exhibit 14: Ethnographic drawings

These prove that there were people called Tartars, not that there was a state of Tartaria. NEXT

Exhibit 15: Tartaria’s alleged flag

Images they provide include
https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/tartary_flags-11-jpg.37367/
https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/tartary_flag_6-jpg.37307/
Except there’s one problem. As any EU4 player will tell you, that’s the flag of the Khanate of Kazan. And while they can trot out a few 18th and 19th century charts showing the apparent existence of a Tartarian naval flag, the inconvenient fact that Tartaria would have been landlocked seems not to get in the way. To be sure, their consistent inclusion is odd, given the non-existence of Tartary as a country, and moreover its landlocked status. It seems plausible that the consistent similarity of the designs is just a result of constant copying and poor checking, but on its own it means relatively little.

Exhibit 16: 19th-century racism

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/flags_of_all_nations_1865-mongolian-1-jpg.37369/
That I think speaks for itself.

Exhibit 17: Flags of Moscow on one particular chart

It is also worth mentioning that in the British Flag Table of 1783, there are three different flags listed as a flag of the Tsar of Moscow. There is also an Imperial Flag of Russia as well as multiple naval flags. And all of them are proceeded by a flag of the Viceroy of Russia.

By that logic, the Royal Navy ran Britain because the Royal Navy ensigns precede the Union Jack. It’s simply a conscious decision to show the flags of individuals before the flags of states. The ‘Viceroy’ (unsure what the original Russian title would be) and ‘Czar’ of Muscovy would presumably be, well, the Emperor of Russia anyway, so as with the British section where the Royal Standard and the flags of naval officers came first, the same seems true of Russia. Also, as a side note, the placement of the USA at the end, after the Persians, the Mughals and ‘Tartarians’, is a fun touch.

Significance of the Viceroy is in the definition of the term. A viceroy is a regal official who runs a country, colony, city, province, or sub-national state, in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. Our official history will probably say that it was the Tsar of Russia who would appoint a viceroy of Moscow. I have reasons to doubt that.
Why is the flag of the Viceroy of Moscow positioned prior to any other Russian flag? Could it be that the Viceroy of Moscow was superior to its Czar, and was "supervising" how this Tartarian possession was being run?

No.

Part 3: 1812

This, this is where it gets really bonkers. A key part of this post is arguing that Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was a cover story for a joint invasion against Tartaria gone horrendously wrong. All the stops are being pulled out here.

There is a growing opinion in Russia that French invasion of Russia played out according to a different scenario. The one where Tsar Alexander I, and Napoleon were on the same side. Together they fought against Tartary. Essentially France and Saint Petersburg against Moscow (Tartary). And there is a strong circumstantial evidence to support such a theory.

Oh yes, we’re going there.

Questions to Answer:
1. Saint Petersburg was the capitol of Russia. Yet Napoleon chose to attack Moscow. Why?

He didn’t, he was trying to attack the Russian army. (credit to dandan_noodles).

2. It appears that in 1912 there was a totally different recollection of the events of 1812. How else could you explain commemorative 1912 medals honoring Napoleon?

Because it’s a bit of an in-your-face to Napoleon for losing so badly?

And specifically the one with Alexander I, and Napoleon on the same medal. The below medal says something similar to, "Strength is in the unity: will of God, firmness of royalty, love for homeland and people"

Yeah, it’s showing Alexander I beating Napoleon, and a triumphant double-headed Russian eagle above captured French standards. Also, notice how Alexander is in full regalia, while Napoleon’s is covered up by his greatcoat?

3. Similarity between Russian and French uniforms. There are more different uniforms involved, but the idea remains, they were ridiculously similar.

Ah yes, because fashions in different countries always develop separately, and never get influenced by each other.

How did they fight each other in the dark?

With difficulty, presumably.
Basically, he’s saying that this: https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/1_rus-jpg.37322/
Is too similar to this: https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/1_rus-jpg.37322/
To be coincidental.
OK, whatever. Here’s where it gets interesting:

There was one additional combat asset officially available to Russians in the war of 1812. And that was the Militia. It does appear that this so-called Militia, was in reality the army of Tartary fighting against Napoleon and Alexander I.

Russian VolunteeMilitia Units... Tartarians?
Clearly this man has never encountered the concept of a cossack, an opelchenie, or, erm, a GREATCOAT.

4. Russian nobility in Saint Petersburg spoke French well into the second half of the 19th century. The general explanation was, that it was the trend of time and fashion. Google contains multiple opinions on the matter. * Following the same logic, USA, Britain and Russia should've picked up German after the victory in WW2.

Clearly never heard of the term lingua franca then.

5. This one I just ran into: 19th-century fans were totally into a Napoleon/Alexander romance

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/treaties_of_tilsit_miniature_-france-_1810s-_side_a-jpg.37314/
https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/napoleonxalexander2-jpg.37310/
https://web.archive.org/web/20200701065421im_/https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/napoleon-alexander-jpg.37312/
It is true that after the Treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon wrote to his wife, Josephine, that

I am pleased with [Emperor] Alexander; he ought to be with me. If he were a woman, I think I should make him my mistress.

But Napoleon’s ‘honeymoon period’ with Russia following the Treaty of Tilsit should not be seen as indicative of a permanent Napoleonic affection for Russia. Notably, Napoleon’s war with Russia didn’t just end in 1812. How are the Tartaria conspiracists going to explain the War of the Sixth Coalition, when Russian, Prussian and Austrian troops drove the French out of Germany? Did the bromance suddenly stop because of 1812? Or, is it more reasonable to see 1812 as the end result of the bromance falling apart?

Conclusions

So there you have it, Tartaria in all its glorious nonsensicalness. Words cannot capture how massively bonkers this entire thing is. And best of all, I hardly needed my own sources because so much of it is just a demonstration of terrible reading comprehension. Still, if you want to actually learn about some of the history of Inner Eurasia, see below:

Bibliography

The Cambridge History of Inner Asia – 2 volumes so far, covering up to 1886. Not really a single contiguous narrative, as each chapter has its own individual author, but a good general coverage.
Scott C. Levi, The Bukharan Crisis: A Connected History of 18th Century Central Asia (2020) – A book about actual Central Asian history, focussing on the global and local factors that led to the weakening and collapse of the Chinggisid state in Bukhara and the rise of the Uzbek-led Emirate. Also a very good historiographical examination of lay understandings of the period.
Mark C. Elliott, ‘The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 59, No. 3 (2000) – A discussion of conceptions of Manchuria by Manchu, Chinese, Japanese and European cartographers and geographers, with the section on European geographers being important for getting at the ‘Tartary’ aspect.
David Christian, ‘Inner Eurasia as a Unit of World History’, Journal of World History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1994) – A somewhat older view, presenting Inner Eurasia as a distinct unit in world history, but largely in terms of effects on the rest of Eurasia.
Nicola di Cosmo, ‘State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History’, Journal of World History, Vol.10, No.1 (1999) – A partial response to Christian, offering an alternate periodisation based more on the internal dynamics of nomadic state formations and stressing viewing Inner Asian history in terms of those internal dynamics, rather than relegating it to a subordinate place in the histories of ‘Outer Eurasian’, sedentary states.
Konstantin Sheiko, ‘Lomonosov’s Bastards: Anatolii Fomenko, Pseudo-History and Russia’s Search for a Post-Communist Identity’ [PhD Thesis] (2004) – Specifically deconstructs Fomenko’s version of Tartaria.

The Emerging Global Uranium Bull Market – Supply Deficit, Demand Growth, Production Cuts, COVID Impact and the Big Tendie Winners. Real DD and Legit Discussion

Firstly, apologies to ASX_Bets as this post contains actual DD collated from financial and Uranium Experts – something usually overlooked when chasing tendies here. But I promise to link some uranium penny stocks to keep it balanced.
TL:DR section at the bottom
Now you either like, love or hate uranium but that won’t affect the inevitable bull market that is knocking at the global door. "When this Uranium market starts to really move, the rising tide WILL raise all ships. BUT eventually, the cream will rise to the top." - Uranium Insider
It’s a long post, as anyone remotely interested should know all the facts, but regardless I have broken it down into the following sections: Uranium Background, Demand, Supply, COVID Impact, Inventory and Market Outlook.

Uranium Background

Uranium is primarily used in nuclear reactors for energy & electricity generation but there is also a large use in research reactors for production of medical and industrial isotopes and training. Also, over 160 ships (mostly submarines) are propelled by nuclear reactors.

Uranium is the LOWEST non-carbon operating cost per MWh fuel source
Nuclear is increasingly being recognised as a contributor to a low carbon future
Nuclear energy provides reliable base load power and accounts for 10% of global electricity
Growing interest in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) in Canada, Scandinavian countries and Middle east.
Inventory built up since Fukushima is near exhausted
Long process from mining converting Enriching fuel rod fabrication (~2yrs)

Demand - it’s increasing

Industry is driven by energy and electricity consumption which continues to rise yr-on-yr
· Steady Uranium demand growth
· As of 2020 177Mlb (million pounds) required to fuel the
· 440 operating reactors wordwide – providing 10% of worlds electricity
· Further 56 under construction globally
· China building 12 new reactors this year with further 44 planned over next 15yrs
· Further 108 reactors planned for construction globally after 2020

By Country:

· France – depends on 78% of electrical production from nuclear with 54 operating reactors
· USA – 20% of elect production with 95 operable reactors
· Canada has 19 reactors for 15% with life extension under way for 30-35yrs to phase out coal
· Russia – 38 reactors for 20% elect with 4 new under construction and 11 new plants by 2030
· China – 47 reactors with plan to build further 56 as per their 2020 Energy Development Strategy – with the impetus for developing new nuclear power for need to improve urban air quality
· India – 22 reactors for 3% elect supply with further 7 under construction
· 220 Research reactors in 50 countries with more under construction. Production of medical and industrial isotopes and training.
· Over 160 ships (submarines and air-craft carriers) propelled by some 200 reactors

So that’s demand. It’s set and its increasing as the world’s energy and electricity demands increase and as Green Governance Policy is introduced to reduce carbon emissions.

Supply - it’s been decreasing and accelerated due to COVID

Since 2016, global supply of Uranium has been decreasing. This is due to sustained low uranium prices that have led to supply cuts (mines shutin) and small companies closed.

· Mines were scheduled to supply 135Mlb in 2020 with the rest coming from secondary supply and inventory drawdown.
· Due to covid this was reduced to 115Mlb
· The two biggest uranium producers (Kazataprom and Comeco began closing mines in 2016
- Cameco closed Rabbit Lake in 2016
- Suspended McArthur River in 2018 (~18Mlb/annum)
- Cigar lake suspended (due to Covid – see next section)
· Kazahkstan is the world’s largest supplier of uranium – they have actively been reducing production and in 2017 announced a 20% reduction for three years – purely because of the low price.
· Kazataprom has openly stated they will not replace the lbs of lost production as it is not in their best interest to produce their finite resource at the lower Uranium prices.
· Paladin’s Langer Heinrich was suspended in May 2018

As a result of the planned mine closures and production cuts, the spot market price surged from US$24/lb to $33/lb at the start of this year.

COVID Impact

Further to the planned production shut-in and closures, COVID has accelerated the looming supply shortage with even greater production cuts and mine closures.

· Cameco closed its Cigar Lake mine in Canada due to risk to a Native population. 18Mlb/yr mine closed indefinitely
· Kazakhstan in march 2020 announced suspension of pre-drilling ops. As they mine they have to drill ahead. 10Mlb/yr reduction in 2020 supply. They drill 3-months ahead of where they are mining from which is halting production now (Aug/Sep 2020)
· Namibia suspended Rossing and Husab mines on 28th-March
· Approx. 20Mlb hit to mine supply (135Mlb to 115Mlb coming out of mine in 2020 and dropping by about 5Mlb/month as each month of covid restrictions continues)
· Accelerating the commercial inventory supply drawdown.

Inventory

Inventory (storage by utility companies, traders, and governments) has been drawn down year-on-year since 2014. COVID has exacerbated the drawdown in 2020 from 35Mlb to 50Mlb

· Utility companies (the reactor operators supplying electricity) tend to hold 2-2.5 years of inventory supply – they HAVE to have the guarantee of fuel for reactors.
· Additional cold war / weaponry strategic inventory of ~240Mlb in US and 360Mlb in Russia
· US has utility inventory of 110Mlb (2019) which is just over 2yrs supply to fuel their reactors (~50Mlb/yr consumption)
· Kazataprom holds usually 6months of supply, though are down to just 3months – i.e. they will build up own inventory first.
· China has no home-land uranium production, but some of the highest uranium demand. They have ~400Mlb-425Mlb held by China and that will not be for sale to the market.
· Russia has a national industry policy to market their expertise – to build nuclear power plants for other countries. As part of that deal, they agreed to supply all the fuel for the plants for the life of the plant. Their inventory, though not widely shared is expected to be around 260-300Mlb though they need that inventory for future demand obligations

In summary, a lot of lbs in inventory are just not available to be sold and will not be made available to the market.
The Market is in supply deficit and is using inventory to fill the gap between supply and demand.

Market Outlook

Growing mine supply gap
Producers cutting production since 2016
Steady increasing demand – especially china, India, middle east and EU
Storage inventory reducing and most of what is left won’t be sold into the market
Uranium spot price has performed strongly year-to-date
Uranium contract coverage in US declines markedly from 2022-2023, down to less than 50% by 2024
US utilities are expected to re-enter the mid to long-term market contracts (3-7yrs) in Q4 2020
Russian Suspension Agreement negotiations creating some near-term uncertainty
Continue to see more risk to Uranium supply side on back of COVID
Steady Uranium demand growth from nuclear reactor build programme

Who is going to supply commercial inventory?
There is no chance that primary (mined) + secondary (recycled) supply can meet consumption. That is even accounting for shut-in capacity coming back online right now – which won’t happen.
So new projects HAVE to get started.

Open pit mining is where big volumes come from – all take atleast 2.5 to 3 years to build and couple years to permit and prove to utility companies they have a high-grade product.
Due to sustained low prices since 2013 the industry has not been invested in for last 7-8years.
No real capital has come in to replace depleting assets for close to decade now. i.e. there is no backlog of projects that can come on-stream in a few years.
Nuclear reactor plants have been constructed but no investment into the mines and producers

Decisions by many producers, including the lowest-cost producers, have been made to preserve long-term value by leaving Uranium in the ground increasing the number of supply disruptions.
On the back of COVID, unplanned supply disruptions has further increased the gap between the supply deficit and growing demand.
Most EU and US long-term utility contracts expire between 2022 and 2023 with less than 50% extending past 2024. i.e. the Utility companies will shortly be going back to market to lock in future supply.
Despite the stigma associated with uranium, nor whether you love it or hate, regardless there is a clear supply demand gap and the market will make its move accordingly. It’s just up to you whether you want to be part of it or not. Disclosure: I am part of it

TL:DR Uranium is at supply deficit with next 12-18months proving inevitable supply gap coupled with increasing demand as world governments look to reducing carbon emissions and electricity and energy demand increases.

ASX stocks to watch – if this post gets enough attention ill provide due diligence on few individual companies that are standing out from the pack where huge gains will be made.
ASX:LOT Lotus Resources - purchased shut-in Kayelekera mine in Malawi from Paladin in 2019. Are currently talking to utility and commercial companies to re-open at a set U. price.
ASX:DYL Deep Yellow Resources - Chaired and driven by Josh Borshoff – ex Paladin CEO who took Paladin from $2mill market cap to $4BILLION market cap in 2005 Uranium bull market.
ASX:VMY Vimy Resources – uranium miner with assets being developed in North QLD and NT
ASX:PEN Peninsula Energy
ASX: GTR GTI Resources
ASX:BOE Boss Resources
ASX:PDN Paladin Resources

#Uranium #Uraniumbullmarket

The biggest stock market crash could be coming

Biden's New START and modern nuclear war

Well, boys, I reckon this is it - nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin' on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin'. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human bein's if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelin's about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a-countin' on you and by golly, we ain't about to let 'em down.
Major Kong, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb [quote here] [full film available here at archive.org, highly recommend, definitive American dark comedy on the subject]
Hello! We're sort of taking a break from East Asia-specific this week to talk about a great conversation-starter: Thermonuclear war. As developments in this area have not entirely halted in the past few decades, and yet I suspect most [not all--there's probably like one 80-year-old or something] of the readers of this post were either not alive during the Cold War or were too young to really appreciate most of what was happening during that period, I feel that it's important to cover the topic, especially with "great-power competition" being a new buzzword and the possibility that the NPT and the other arms control and limitation agreements that have been prominent for the past few decades falling apart being very real.
I'm sorry in advance if I occasionally get a bit repetitive but I think I've made a fairly comprehensive post on the subject, and I don't think I've particularly biased it one way or the other [though of course, that's what I would think].
Glossary:
Bunker-buster = nuclear warhead designed to destroy hardened sites, like bunkers or missile silos
Nuclear weapon = nuclear bomb = nuclear warhead = weapon that uses an operating principle based on nuclear physics
Thermonuclear weapon = more advanced type of nuclear weapon that uses fusion as its primary energy source rather than fission
Warhead = the part of the weapon that goes boom
Fuze = what sets off the bomb, distinct from fuse, which is an electrical part
Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty = one of the biggest arms control treaties in recent years, barred the US and USSRussia from having land-based missiles that were nuclear capable with a range from 500km to 5500km]
Ballistic missile = missile that travels in ballistic trajectories, fast, difficult to intercept, accuracy problems and always powered by rockets
Cruise missile = missile that travels in the atmosphere, smaller, difficult to intercept but easier than ballistic missiles--but harder to detect, powered by jet engines and air-breathing and thus slower
SRBM = Short-range ballistic missile [1000km range or less, most less than 300km to comply with MTCR or less than 500km to comply with the former INF Treaty]
MRBM = Medium-range ballistic missile [1000km to 3000km range, common in arsenals outside the US and Russia]
IRBM = Intermediate-range ballistic missile [3000km to 5500km range, common in arsenals outside the US and Russia, previously barred by the INF Treaty
ICBM = Intercontinental ballistic missile [5500km+ range, standard in US and Russian arsenals, China, France, and possibly North Korea operate a handful]
SSBN = "boomer" = ballistic missile submarine, nuclear powered and nuclear armed [no conventionally armed ballistic missile subs exist at present to the best of my knowledge, the only proposal being known a Trident conventional version]
Early warning = the systems used to detect missile launches and track them, could be ground-based radars or satellites
MIRV = Multiple independent reentry vehicles, a way to attach multiple warheads to one missile
SLBM = submarine-launched ballistic missile
Tactical nuke = determined by usage, not yield, tactical nukes are meant to be used in conflicts that do not escalate to an all-out nuclear war
Countervalue = a capability to strike against an opponent's cities and hard targets
Counterforce = a capability to strike against an opponent's hardened missile silos
Gravity bomb = nuke dropped from a plane
Nuclear triad = the full set of nuclear delivery methods: Air-launched cruise missiles/bombs, submarine-launched missiles, and ground-based missiles
SDI = "Star Wars" = strategic defense initiative, the origin of all of America's modern missile defense efforts
ABM = anti-ballistic missile
Nuclear sharing = a system via which nuclear warheads, owned by the US, are located in NATO countries [and in the past non-NATO countries] and can be turned over to their management in wartime
Some particular pieces of hardware to know about:
Trident = the submarine-launched ballistic missile currently used by the US and UK, can carry up to 14 warheads in MIRV configuration [typically 4 under treaty limits], solid-fueled and an ICBM as well as a SLBM
Minuteman-III = the current ground-based nuclear deterrent of the United States, ICBM, also MIRVed to handle 3 warheads, built in the 1960s originally and solid-fueled
Peacekeeper = MX = LGM-118 = the most sophisticated ground-based ICBM fielded by the United States and, possibly, by any power, solid-fueled and carried 12 [limited by treaty to 10] MIRVed warheads. Retired in 2005 due to high cost and arms limitation treaties. Meant to replace Minuteman.

1. The Bomb

The very first nuclear bombs relied on fission, the power of splitting atoms of fissile material to generate vast amounts of energy very quickly in a chain reaction. The general principle here is critical mass. Once a critical mass of the fissile material is achieved--usually either Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239--it activates a chain reaction which results in a nuclear explosion. These bombs are very simple in operating principle--pretty much anyone could build one if given the requisite materials. The main problem, and the reason we have not yet seen a nuclear warhead DIY, is that the fissile materials are very difficult to get. One must either synthesize plutonium in an atomic pile or use one of the various methods developed to enrich uranium--gaseous diffusion and centrifuges being the major ones. Either one takes a significant amount of time and specialized equipment, at least to produce nuclear weapons in any quantity. However, when you get down to it, any sufficiently motivated group could build one of these--at least if not stopped by another, more motivated group. Even North Korea could do this.
The next step in evolution was the boosted fission nuke. It represented a nuclear weapon that was more capable, but not radically so. By adding fusion fuel to the nuclear weapon, specifically the fission assembly, you could get a better yield--splitting more of the atoms in the core assembly before it suffered a critical existence failure and got spread out over several square miles. Fission-boosting is also fairly easily done, with the main obstacle being obtaining enough deuterium, lithium, and/or tritium to do the job correctly. These are, to my knowledge, pretty seldom seen; but I would suspect that both Pakistan and North Korea have them.
Thermonuclear weapons are, however, a major leap in capability. Much larger yield warheads can be built, in the multi-megaton range, and miniaturization is also possible, which is very useful for missiles in particular. Thermonuclear weapons rely on adding a fusion "secondary" stage, which is set off by a "primary" fission stage and generates vast quantities of energy. However, thermonuclear weapons are much more difficult to develop than fission-based weapons; largely because they rely on exotic materials and classified physics to operate. The United States itself has had difficulty building new thermonuclear weapons, or refreshing ones in current inventory, because it has lost knowledge of how to build some key materials. Most nuclear powers, however, are believed to or known to possess thermonuclear weapons, the exceptions being Pakistan and North Korea.

2. The Cold War

Nuclear weapons were probably the defining feature of the Cold War, at least once it finally began in earnest in the 1950s. To this day, the Cold War defines the cultural conception of nuclear weapons.
What this is about, though, is more a mechanical than philosophical or sociological discussion, explaining why nukes were, and are, used. Or rather, are planned to be used, because despite hundreds of nuclear tests, nobody has ever used a nuclear weapon in wartime in just over 75 years, since the US dropped a crude plutonium device on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
The very beginning of nuclear war involved hundreds of strategic bombers--first B-29s, which actually cost more than the Manhattan Project to develop--and then more advanced jet bombers, the most iconic of which and perhaps the most enduring is the B-52 Stratofortress, which the US Air Force expects to remain in service through possibly the end of the century. These were the only viable delivery vehicles, and thus both the US [well, mostly the US] and the Soviet Union rushed to build as many of them as possible, with [unfounded] concerns of a "Bomber Gap" resulting in the construction of thousands of strategic bombers. In the event of war, these bombers would take off from their bases and drop nuclear bombs on enemy positions. For a substantial length in time, the US actually maintained a constant patrol of B-52 bombers with nuclear warheads onboard, which, in the event of a surprise attack, would retaliate against the USSR. It is one of these bombers which Dr Strangelove focuses on--though I should note that only a handful of people actually possessed the ability to launch a nuclear strike, and even then only in contingencies when the president was unavailable, and this persists to this day, excepting submarines--which will be mentioned in a moment.
However, technology marched on, and soon the ballistic missile became the delivery vehicle of choice. Early ballistic missiles were relatively crude, based off of the original V-2 design and whose quality was largely determined by how many Nazis you had stolen at the end of the Second World War. However, technology continued to evolve, and soon ICBMs had enough accuracy to launch countervalue attacks. These attacks targeted cities and aimed to deter an enemy from launching a first strike by ensuring that doing so would destroy the nation of the attacker. This doesn't mean that ballistic missiles were the only delivery method, though. Smaller nuclear weapons were built, designed to be delivered by air. They offered greater accuracy and tactical utility, and lowered the risk of a strategic nuclear exchange breaking out. It was around this time that tactical and strategic nuclear exchanges began to be devised in nuclear theory, with tactical nukes becoming essential to NATO war plans due to the numerical, and sometimes qualitative, inferiority of their conventional forces when faced with Warsaw Pact opponents. Nuclear weapons found their way into practically every kind of format. Nuclear-tipped air-to-air rockets were an early invention, aimed at shooting down massed bomber formations. Nuclear-tipped surface-to-air-missiles soon followed. Nuclear anti-ship missiles, nuclear artillery, and even "backpack nukes" like the Atomic Demolition Munition all were developed for a variety of purposes. Nuclear depth charges, nuclear torpedoes--if you put explosives in something, chances are someone drew up a plan to put a nuke in it. [as an aside, Cold War schemes to use nuclear weapons to perform massive construction projects, such as liquidating the Athabasca Tar Sands or creating a giant salt lake in Egypt, are one of my favorite Cold War relics]. Nukes were the bread and butter of Cold War strategy in a way that seems hardly conceivable today. This is largely why both the US and USSR had stockpiles of tens of thousands of weapons.
Mutual assured destruction, or MAD as it is commonly known, was also derived during this time, suggesting that the way to prevent nuclear war was by ensuring that any initiation of nuclear combat would lead to certain destruction. The development of SSBNs and SLBMs, which provided a way to ensure survivability of the nuclear arsenal and a sure second strike capability--usually countervalue because of the lower accuracy of SLBMs--seemed to make this set in stone. These would avoid destruction in a first strike by hiding within the ocean, and would then launch based off of orders issued from base--or, in the case of Britain, off of orders written by the Prime Minister and secured in the submarines to be opened in event of war.
Unfortunately, life tends to make things more complicated, and this was and is the case with MAD. The first problem that developed was that of the MIRV, or Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle. This allowed missiles to carry large numbers of warheads, as many as twelve in the case of the LGM-118 Peacekeeper [probably the most sophisticated ICBM ever developed, the Soviet R-36 threw 10 and Trident D5 14 smaller warheads]. As a result of this fact, combined with increasing accuracy of reentry vehicles [especially, it is thought, on the part of the United States], a counterforce strike that could eliminate an enemy's ground-based nuclear deterrent became possible. MIRVs also place a high value on first-strike because each MIRVed missile can destroy numerous enemy silos but is correspondingly more vulnerable to first-strike as it replaces a dozen independent missiles with a single one. As a result limitations of MIRVed warheads have been a major focus of arms reduction treaties and several attempts have been made to ban usage of the technology altogether. Other problems complicated the situation further, such as anti-ballistic missiles, which potentially could shelter a nation from a weak second-strike. However, this broadly describes most of the key elements of nuclear war, skipping over the vast cultural and political impacts of nuclear weapons for the most part, because that's not really what I'm focused on here.

3. Arms control and non-proliferation

From the moment the US first got its hands on the bomb, it sought to keep it away from everyone else, including a very miffed Britain which had been promised access to the secrets learned from the Manhattan Project as a result of the contributions of its "Tube Alloys" program to the American development of the bomb. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, or McMahon Act, has largely set American nuclear policy since its creation. Britain ultimately developed its own nuclear bomb, and the Soviets, in a large part thanks to the involvement of traitorous American nuclear scientists, developed their own bomb as well. By the 1950s, the world was in a frantic race to build the bomb--those who had it, to build more of them, and those who didn't, to get them. Even Sweden ran a nuclear weapons program. France got the bomb, and China did as well--much to the chagrin of the Soviets, who had undergone a dramatic split with the Chinese a few years earlier and whose original research work was invaluable in contributing to the Chinese nuclear program. It must be understood that back in those days building nuclear weapons was much more difficult than it is now, without computers or without even easy resources as to how they functioned. Nowadays, I can learn how to build a nuke off of Wikipedia, and, barring the ten tons of heavy water, hundreds of kilograms of natural uranium, and large quantity of nitric acid required, doing so is a relatively trivial task.
The real shift, however, began around 1970. The first major act in this was the development of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which all the nuclear powers promised to work towards the reduction and abolition of nuclear weapons, and in return the majority of non-nuclear powers agreed not to build nukes, and it is upon this foundation that the modern order is built. However, it has hardly proved perfectly successful--only six years later the detonation of the first Indian nuclear weapon occurred, which had been built using Canadian technology that had not been adequately controlled, or, indeed, controlled at all--the reactors Canada sells are, by the way, essentially DIY kits for nuclear weapons. As a result, an increasingly involved control regime began to be built. The IAEA was founded and membership was generally required for the ownership of nuclear reactors. The nuclear powers banded together to ensure that critical components of nuclear programs were not exported, pressured nations in their own blocs into cancelling nuclear programs [as the US did to both South Korea and Taiwan], and, barring some relatively low-profile cheating on the part of China, which has sold peripheral equipment to North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran, this vast patchwork mostly held together. As a result, instead of a predicted 30-40 nuclear weapons states, there are only 9 today.
Also around this time, both the US and USSR recognized that spending large quantities on building ever-increasing quantities of nuclear weapons without either side gaining any decisive advantage was helping absolutely nobody, and the two states began to agree to various reductions in arms and limitations in weapons development, including the ABM treaty and SALT.

4. Anti-ballistic missiles and Star Wars

Eventually, starting in around the 1970s, people got the idea that maybe you could stop ICBMs. This sounds absolutely ludicrous--but it wasn't, per se, impossible, and it led to a lot of really advanced, science-fiction sounding technology.
The very first method was to launch interceptor rockets that carried H-bombs of their own, aiming to detonate them close enough to the missiles that they would either destroy the reentry vehicles, their electronics, or cause a non-critical "fissile" of the warhead. This was halted, however, by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, one of the first big arms limitations agreements, and also by a simple fact: Ground-based missile interceptors are generally much more expensive than building additional missiles--for instance, the US Ground-Based Midcourse Defense costs more to produce, missile for missile, than a LGM-118 with 12 warheads. This treaty actually held for its full term, despite what you may have expected, as it did not limit research, only the actual building of anti-ballistic missile systems, and actually, IIRC, excluded space-based defenses via omission. However, until Ronald Reagan came along, the idea of ABMs was largely cast to the wayside.
Reagan, however, revived the idea quite famously in his Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars" by many. It explored a number of ideas, many of which were quite outlandish--one of the more successful proposals, at least in terms of how much funding or attention was devoted to it, involved setting off nuclear warheads in space to power x-ray lasers to shoot down enemy missiles, which if nothing else sounded really cool. By far the most practical program to emerge out of this, however [a rather relative merit], was called "Brilliant Pebbles". It relied on a constellation of tens of thousands of kinetic interceptors, small, only a few kilograms each, which would target and destroy any ballistic missiles in low orbit. This plan was supposed to solve the issue where interceptors were more expensive than missiles, and allow the US unquestioned missile superiority.
It was also around this time when surface-to-air missile systems, originally designed with the mission to shoot down aircraft, began gaining limited anti-ballistic missile capabilities, which were... somewhat underwhelming in the Gulf War, though the technology was brand new at the time.

5. Peace dividend

When the Cold War finally ended, one of the parts of the peace dividend that probably made more sense than most was the vast savings made on nuclear weapons. The trend had already begun in the late Cold War, but once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, stockpiles fell from tens of thousands of warheads to just a few thousand on the part of the US and Russia. All sides had a vested interest in arms reduction, and so those thousands of warheads were disassembled and largely turned into fuel for nuclear reactors.
Ballistic missile defenses also got cut. The original Brilliant Pebbles scheme was cancelled and replaced with a less-expensive but substantially less effective program called the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, which relies on a relative handful of interceptor missiles in Alaska to shoot down ballistic missiles in the midcourse stage; primarily designed with China or North Korea in mind [oddly enough the first ballistic missile defense program of the US was also designed with the intent of stopping a Chinese nuclear attack]. Ironically Ground-Based Midcourse Defense ended up costing a large portion [more than half] of what the final Brilliant Pebbles implementations were proposed at, for a system with very limited capabilities [this cancellation may have also been part of what killed the DC-X spacecraft].
Vast fleets of SSBNs were disassembled. Expensive delivery platforms and programs, like the MX Peacekeeper, were scrapped. All in all, the threat of nuclear war practically vanished, excepting on the subcontinent, where India and Pakistan engaged in nuclear showboating multiple times. It's really hard to understate the sheer magnitude of what happened, with the number of warheads in existence shrinking from around 70,000 to 10,000 or so, with around half of those today being inactive. The US Navy went from stocking multiple warheads on each ship to removing them entirely from the fleet, aside from, of course, the SSBNs.
The successor states of the USSR, aside from Russia itself, were successfully convinced to hand over their nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees--Ukraine most infamously--and their fissile materials were turned into [relatively] harmless nuclear fuel. South Africa became the first nation with an independently developed nuclear arsenal to voluntarily denuclearize, admittedly largely out of fear of what the black population might do with the bomb.
Other areas saw major reductions and non--proliferation efforts. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program decommissioned large quantities of nuclear delivery vehicles and Soviet biological and chemical weapons sites. The Missile Technology Control Regime expanded and enveloped most nations with the capability to develop ballistic missiles and long-range cruise missiles, making nuclear weapons delivery difficult for the aspiring third world dictator--for instance, an Iraqi program to develop a ballistic missile in partnership with Argentina was scrapped by American pressure and Argentine admittance into the MTCR. While India and Pakistan still harassed each other, their open non-nuclear conventional war assuaged some concerns while raising others [perhaps nuclear powers could engage in conventional war after all]. Nuclear programs in several countries were stopped by diplomatic pressure, as in Libya, rather than by Israeli bombing campaigns.
For a time, all was peaceful. In the last decade or so, however, things have changed--and for the most part, they have done so below the radar of even Washington policymakers.

6. A Return To The Old Days?

Things in the past decade or so, however, have changed the nuclear situation substantially.
First on the list is that North Korea now has nuclear weapons and, it seems, a deterrent. This has seriously tested the efficacy of non-proliferation already, with the merit of non-proliferation when North Korea and Pakistan have weapons being rather suspect. Iran is also building nukes. North Korea's case was, and is, dangerous in particular because it suggests that, barring strong support from a great power, nukes are the only way to maintain autonomy [Ukraine and Libya both offering examples of why surrendering nukes, or even a nuclear program, is a bad idea to the world], and that they aren't too difficult to get. North Korea also may well already be engaging in proliferation activities as a revenue source--it's already known that they sell ballistic missile delivery vehicles and have exported materials related to chemical weapons production in the past, so exporting nuclear technology is hardly a stretch, especially given that North Korea is not seriously threatened by these activities and they provide a useful revenue source for the regime. As a result, the non-proliferation circle built over decades by the various great powers now has a rather large North Korea-shaped hole in it. This, however, isn't leading to big changes in Russia, China, and the United States. Rather, technological advancements, largely by the US and China, are slowly nibbling away at the tenuous nuclear peace.
Second is the problem, for Russia, created by the new Trident super-fuze. Under cover of a "refurbishment" of the Trident warhead family, a new fuze was introduced. However, this fuze is no mere one-for-one replacement: Instead, it allows the warhead to detonate within a range of zones that could destroy the target, allowing warheads that would previously overfly the target and miss to instead detonate in an airbust directly above said target. In effect, it increased the power of Trident by as many as five times, and has made it into a counterforce or first strike weapon. Quoted figures are a .86 probability of kill for a 10kpsi target, about as hard as defensive structures get, and .99 probability of kill for a standard, 2kpsi hardened target. As most of Russia's missile silos are only secure to the point of the latter, and Russia uses liquid-fueled ICBMs for the most part that are much more sensitive to attack than Western or Chinese solid-fueled ones, what this means is that Trident is now capable of wiping out Russia's entire ground-based strategic deterrent at extremely short notice. This has, it seems, quite possibly frightened Russian leadership, and is the likely reason why they have been desperately trying to devise new outlandish delivery vehicles, like an unmanned nuclear torpedo or a nuclear-powered cruise missile. This is further complicated by the fact that Russia has more or less completely lost its space-based ballistic missile warning network and does not seem to have the capability to replace it, which means that Russia must rely on land-based early warning radars to inform it of a nuclear strike. As a result, Russia will have as little as ten minutes of warning for an incoming nuclear attack, and will have essentially no idea what it will look like or what scale it is on. When Russian sources say they'll treat any ballistic missile strike as a nuclear attack, they probably aren't lying, because their sensor network is so bad they can't tell whether a sounding rocket is a nuclear first strike, and their survivability is so bad they can't afford to not launch.
There's also the interesting problem presented by the development of a new low-yield Trident warhead. While it might possibly have some use, many believe that low-yield nuclear weapons are dangerous because they blur the line between conventional and tactical nuclear war, and the use of Trident as a delivery vehicle runs a substantial risk on account of the fact that it may be difficult for an adversary [such as Russia] to discern that the vehicle is a tactical nuclear strike rather than the beginning of a strategic exchange. These same very concerns scuppered a conventional variant of Trident proposed for the Prompt Global Strike program, which would have used Trident to launch large conventional payloads, a bad idea for multiple reasons.
Arms agreements that defined the 1990s and 2000s have also begun to fall apart. The cancellation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was just the latest in what has been a slowly escalating trend since the 2002 expiration of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. The Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, for instance, which required the US and Russia to convert their stockpiles of plutonium into MOX reactor fuel, is also dead, ostensibly for financial reasons on the part of the US, but quite possibly to allow the US to retain its 80+ tons of plutonium in a diluted form so it can be easily converted back into warheads [keep in mind only a few kilograms of plutonium is needed for a warhead so we're talking about thousands of devices in the several hundred kiloton range].
Why this is happening is an interesting question, and it seems that both the US and Russia [but, to be honest, mostly the US] are involved in the end of these arms restriction treaties. The first problem, and most obvious, is China. China has a general policy of not engaging in arms-limitation treaties, viewing them as a way for dominant powers to retain their position, and has a nuclear arms reduction policy that amounts to "get rid of all of your nukes and then we'll talk". With China becoming an increasingly significant threat to the United States, the arms controls placed on it by agreement with Russia have become problematic for American strategic planners. In particular, the limitation on intermediate-range forces was seen as a major difficulty given the increasingly capable conventionally armed intermediate range ballistic and cruise missiles that are one of the edges the PLAN holds; and, I suspect [but cannot prove] that planners within the US government view tactical nuclear war with China as a very real thing they should plan for, with the US using nukes first to gain a decisive tactical advantage and not escalating to a strategic exchange--this is enabled by the fact that China has essentially no tactical nuclear weapons, seems to believe it can avoid nuclear war with the United States [or possibly not--I've heard both], and a very small strategic stockpile of which only around 50 missiles can hit the continental US. Russia, on the other hand, has a rather different problem. Its conventional forces in Europe are inferior in quality and quantity to what NATO can field, so it has to plan to make up the difference with nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the increasing sophistication of American capabilities in ways which Russia simply cannot match means that the survivability of the Russian nuclear force is beginning to be called into question, and thus a larger arsenal is required to ensure that a strategic deterrent can be maintained as it has traditionally. As a result, both parties are abandoning arms treaties with, well, reckless abandon.
Finally, the development of increasingly capable ballistic missile defenses, especially by the United States--which now holds pretty much all the cards in the event of nuclear war--means that nations will be required to develop either new and more sophisticated delivery vehicles, or, alternatively, produce more warheads, to ensure that they can maintain deterrence. These include the SM-3 anti-ballistic missile, which can intercept ballistic missiles in the midcourse stage, though only shorter ranged ones and not full ICBMs at the moment, and which is being deployed by the US not only aboard its numerous destroyer fleet but also in "AEGIS Ashore" sites in Eastern Europe [which also caused concern by Russia because these units could easily fire ground-launched cruise missiles that were banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty], and were to be deployed in Japan before local opposition halted construction. The US also designed THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, which provides an interceptor to destroy even ICBMs in the terminal stage, and has made significant improvements to the Patriot missile system which enhance its ABM capabilities. The US has also discussed reviving technologies from previously abandoned schemes such as the YAL-1, a 747 that aimed to shoot down ballistic missiles with lasers at a range of hundreds of kilometers [though it was suggested the new implementation be on a stealth drone] and even considered further research into space-based interceptors--which seem far more feasible in a day and age when private companies are already putting up constellations of advanced communications satellites in similar numbers to those proposed for the "Brilliant Pebbles" scheme.

7. Conclusion

As a result of these shifts, the current lull in nuclear war preparations and small nuclear arsenals of today may not last much longer. Indeed, to an extent, the lull has already ended.
Without a doubt Biden will try to negotiate a renewal of New START--he himself has stated his intent to do so multiple times, but the short time window he has in which to renew it [it expires on 5 February 2021, little more than a week after his inauguration] means that whether he will be successful is uncertain. Even if New START is renewed or brought back in a new form I would expect it to be much less restrictive and a de facto abandonment of the arms reduction that has characterized the last thirty years of nuclear policy. I also don't think that New START, even extended, will last past 2026--that's the point when major nuclear modernizations are set to begin to the US arsenal, including the introduction of the Columbia-class SSBN into service and replacement of the 1960s-era Minuteman III ICBM that constitutes the ground-based deterrent.
Both the US and Russia are poised to make major modernizations to their nuclear arsenals and I expect both of their stockpiles to grow barring a renewal of New START as presently constituted. I also expect that the US may well begin preparing to build new facilities for nuclear weapons production, as its old ones have pretty much all closed at this point. Nuclear weapons may also begin to see a return to the naval field, with nuclear-tipped anti-ship missiles and torpedoes possibly seeing revivals--watch for a return to the US's historic nuclear ambiguity policy on whether or not its ships carry nuclear weapons.
New forecasts say that China is poised to double its nuclear arsenal in the next decade, and I suspect these ones will actually turn out, because China knows that their arsenal at present is too small to pose an effective deterrent to tactical nuclear war and may, within a relatively short time, become an ineffective strategic deterrent.
The list of states with nuclear weapons is likely to grow--South Korea is a near sure bet for reasons I have described previously, but I would not be surprised to see more states get the bomb. Iran seems likely to build one unless stopped via force, and they've gotten quite close already. However, more than the number of states which will possess nuclear weapons outright will grow, I predict a major expansion in nations which attempt to reach a nuclear-latent state. The recent burst of smallsat launchers provides a perfect cover for ballistic missile systems to be developed; drone technology and electronics have made cruise missiles easier than ever to design, and nuclear power will be sought after by a large number of states with potentially ulterior motives--once a sufficient stockpile of used fuel is made reprocessing it to extract the plutonium within is relatively trivial, and I expect more states to push for reprocessing technology and "full control over the nuclear fuel-cycle". As a result, strategic planners may ultimately have to reckon with a world in which most nations [or far more than the 9 current nuclear-armed states] could well develop modest nuclear arsenals within a few months to a few years.
As for what the US should do--well, my opinion is that the US should just embrace the inevitable. During the Cold War, the US saw that France wasn't going to be stopped from building the bomb--so instead they helped the French build their weapons and thus gained the trust and friendship of the entire French strategic community, at least to an extent where their nuclear and even conventional forces were de facto reintegrated into NATO.
That has lessons for today, I think. If something is going to happen one way or another, the US should just embrace it and try to help the process along and gain the trust and friendship of the nation involved, provided such a move is not directly contrary to American interests. For instance, take South Korea. If it becomes clear that South Korea intends to build nuclear weapons, the US would be better off discretely enabling that by amending its Section 123 agreement and clandestinely supporting the program than trying to fight it.
The US should also seriously reconsider whether it should maintain a non-proliferation stance, although I can see strong cases on both sides. Non-proliferation has failed to stop Pakistan or North Korea, and at that point it's really rather questionable whether it works, but for the moment it's the only thing that's holding the Middle East and world as a whole back from a nuclear arms race. If Iran does get the bomb, I doubt that the US will continue to hold onto that position. At that point [or this point] most of the nations the US doesn't want to have the bomb either already have it, cannot be stopped from getting it without war, or just flat out can't build it due to lack of money, will, and resources. It's unlikely that the US will openly support proliferation, especially Congress, but I find it quite probable that the US may well take a "wink-and-a-nudge" approach to the whole issue. A Section 123 Agreement might be amended to allow reprocessing and a solid-fuelled smallsat launcher sold or authorized, but how was the US government to know that the nation was pursuing nuclear weapons?
Furthermore, the US should start preparing as if an all-out nuclear arms race may resume, because it may well do so. Developing a new comprehensive ballistic missile defense strategy is part of this, possibly including Brilliant Pebbles--I'm a strong advocate of at least researching the solution especially given that so many hurdles already have been met by private companies like SpaceX--but also terminal defenses and directed-energy weapons. The US should also begin thoroughly examining the use of nuclear weapons in a modern context and prepare facilities needed for the production of additional warheads, including possibly a lithium-separation site to manufacture additional tritium, as well as reprocessing sites to produce additional plutonium.
[citations in comments due to max character limit]

LeoVegas is a recent sports betting company that is taking over the field of online betting gradually. LeoVegas started in 2011, and since then, it has managed to acquire thousands 12-09-2020 15-09-2020 0 India Betting Online. Another country that has played a large role in contributing to the global gambling and online betting industry is India. Known primarily for Matka, India’s policy towards betting is similar to that of other countries’, wherein gambling is allowed to a certain extent, although it is strictly monitored and regulated by the government. If you want fact-paced, real-time cricket betting action, then you need to find a betting site that offers cricket live betting. ... Betway is another one of the leading online cricket betting sites in India. The betting site was founded in 2006 and in 12 years of time it has earned its place as a reputed bookmaker. Now the betting Android app is not inferior to the forecasts made via the full version. You can easily verified it yourself. Given the variety of betting India application, finding one that meets your requirements is real. Advantages of the betting mobile Android application A type of betting most legal betting sites will offer is Live betting. As the name says, betting sites in India with live betting will offer a chance for players to bet as a game or event is ongoing. You won’t have to make up your mind in advance but can make some fun bets as you are watching the game live.

Street in India real street fight in India real street ...

Women form human shield around man in New Delhi and shout 'go back, go back' as officers attempt to beat him with sticks. Protests have erupted across India ... PUBG IN REAL LIFE INDIA #ShubiCreations #PUBG Funny moments Thanks for watching please do like Share and give your feedback in the comment box. Thanks to... Hi Guys: Aaj Me Aap Sab Ke Liye Bahut Achha Online Casino Game Laya Ho Joki Ye Real Money Game Hain Our Maine Video Me Bataya Hain Aap Isme Account Kaise Banaye Our Kaise khele. JeetWin Site Link ... real fighting videos in india Connect us: Thank for watching the video. Friends Don't forget to subscribe, likes and add your comment. Time to time i will pu... Today we went to the Roseate hotel it was beautiful ... I decided to show you the real beautiful side of india ... this place is amazing and i wanted to shar...

Best 磊 betting sites in India Online Betting in India (2020)

SBOTOP - Betting Site in India — Beat The Lock down by Playing Teen Patti For Real...

SBOTOP - Betting Site in India — How To Play Andar Bahar for Real Money

SBOTOP - Betting Site in India — Best Site To Play Online Roulette For Real Money

SBOTOP - Betting Site in India — Earn Real Money By Playing Andar Bahar Game Online

SBOTOP - Betting Site in India — Online Betting Site, Win Real Money Online...

SBOTOP - Betting Site in India — Bet On E-Sports Online | Win Real Money

SBOTOP - Betting Site in India — Play For Fun | Win Real Cash

I bet you don't know the real history of the gin and tonic. It's crazy. | Malaria medicine for British soldiers in colonial India. And, like, colonialism is evil and stuff lol. God, the writing style is so annoying.

Jio bets big on Artificial Intelligence, to solve real time problems in India

Do you know India and china are at war with each other - I mean a REAL MILITARY WAR. I bet you dont. Even most Indians dont, as there is nothing in media and Indians are ignorant in general.