Have you ever heard the old adage “Red skies in the morning, sailors take warning. Red skies at night, sailors delight?” Perhaps you read it in the Bible (Matthew 16:2,3)? An adage, itself, is a short statement with an element of truth. For more than two millennia this bit of folksy wisdom has been passed down among mariners and their kin. And, there is actually science behind this. In the mid-latitudes, a red sunrise at sea can mean that a high-pressure system which is characterized by fair weather has already passed, indicating that a storm system is moving from the west to the east. The angry red sky in the morning indicates a high amount of water present in the atmosphere, heralding rain, winds and storms.
BLACK SWAN EVENT IN THE MAKING?
After repeating the comment above, Jesus goes on to say “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” Signs of the time? In other words, some events appear clear to us while perhaps we are oblivious, perhaps short-sighted, perhaps willfully blind to others. While most eyes in the U.S. have been focused on the election earlier this month and now the peaceful transition of power in America, another spectacle (a very violent one) is rising in the East. The eastern sky is becoming more and more ruddy in appearance as I write this and as you read this.
In the last few days, President Joe Biden has given Ukraine the green light to launch sophisticated ballistic missiles aimed at targets in Russia. These missiles are made in America, and the potential targets are provided by American satellites, while other U.S. satellites likely guide the missiles to their targets. All the Ukrainians need to do is play a shell game with the launchers to keep the Russians from locating them and destroying them. That, and press the launch button.
American, British and French missiles are being launched from captured Russian territory into the Russian heartland. Russian President Vladimir Putin says that this is an “act of war” provoked by America and NATO against his country and he vows a powerful, possibly even nuclear response. In other words, he sits in his office and entertains the possibility of launching his nuclear weapons. Might it be a detonation over the Arctic (or Kjiv) to threaten us that he means business? Perhaps “battle field nukes” against Poland. or Lithuania? Russia cannot fight a conventional against the West when they cannot even win decisively in Ukraine given three years time. So what are Putin’s choices? He can rip up expensive cable off the ocean floor to disrupt communications (that was done most recently last weekend to C Lion 1 and BCS East-West as seen on the diagram below.) Or, he can authorize the placement of explosive devices on jet planes destined to land in European or North American cities. That has been done as well. He can hire and transport 10,000 North Koreans from another continent (with the option of employing another 90,000) to help him fight his war. The first contingent is already joined in battle on some small scale, and at least a few North Koreans have been wounded or killed we are told. To what extent if any has he been a party to this sabotage (and much more in Europe these past few years?) But lest we feel sorry for Russia, Russia without provocation has for the second time in less than a decade invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine with the intention of carving even more territory away from that country on some pretense or another.
In the last few days, Ukraine has launched for the first time Anglo-Franco Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles on targets in Russia. Western embassies including the U.S., Italy, Spain and Greece closed and battened down their embassies in Kyiv on Wednesday. While the air raid sirens have been blaring in that city for a good part of the night, “credible intelligence sources” warns that there is an imminent threat of a massive attack on that city later today. The U.S. State Department picked it up and posted as much. But what does that mean? And where is this intelligence coming from?
We learned today, November 21st from the BBC that
“The Pentagon’s deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said the US had been notified ‘briefly’ before the missile was launched through Nuclear Risk Reduction channels – which are used to exchange information on issues including missile launch notifications.”
Apparently, this call, almost certainly from Russia, may have precipitated the closing of the U.S. embassy and the other nations followed. However, it was the city of Dnipro and not Kyiv that was hit. Said President Putin:
“In response to the use of American and British long-range weaponry, on 21 November this year, the Russian armed forces carried out a combined strike on one of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex sites . . .”
HYPERSONIC MISSILES
Today was the first wartime use of the RS-26 (“Oreshnik”) missile. Putin described the “Hazelnut tree” missile as an Intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), but in fact, its range places it in the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) category. This is a nuclear warhead delivery vehicle, but Putin had the nuclear warheads replaced with six highly powerful conventional warheads.
There is video of the six warheads on the missile slamming into the Dnipro at a speed between 3,500 and 7,700 miles per hour on Thursday morning. Personally, I never saw objects crash into a structure anywhere near that speed. It is a stunning video clip to watch.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia addressed his nation on Thursday evening. He said in part:
“In response to the deployment of American and British long-range weapons, on November 21, the Russian Armed Forces delivered a combined strike on a facility within Ukraine’s defence industrial complex. In field conditions, we also carried out tests of one of Russia’s latest medium-range missile systems – in this case, carrying a non-nuclear hypersonic ballistic missile that our engineers named Oreshnik. The tests were successful, achieving the intended objective of the launch. In the city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, one of the largest and most famous industrial complexes from the Soviet Union era, which continues to produce missiles and other armaments, was hit.”
. . .
“We will determine the targets during further tests of our advanced missile systems based on the threats to the security of the Russian Federation. We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against military facilities of those countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities, and in case of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond decisively and in mirror-like manner. I recommend that the ruling elites of the countries that are hatching plans to use their military contingents against Russia seriously consider this.
“It goes without saying that when choosing, if necessary and as a retaliatory measure, targets to be hit by systems such as Oreshnik on Ukrainian territory, we will in advance suggest that civilians and citizens of friendly countries residing in those areas leave danger zones. We will do so for humanitarian reasons, openly and publicly, without fear of counter-moves coming from the enemy, who will also be receiving this information.
“Why without fear? Because there are no means of countering such weapons today. Missiles attack targets at a speed of Mach 10, which is 2.5 to 3 kilometres per second. Air defence systems currently available in the world and missile defence systems being created by the Americans in Europe cannot intercept such missiles. It is impossible.”
Think about that, You have thirty minutes to vacate a city before parts of it are pulverized beyond recognition. And nothing can stop those missiles. And true, it is to Russia’s advantage to stroke fear into the hearts of civilian and military forces alike. Yet, these are the facts as the good people of Dnipro can attest.
According to open sources on the web, Russia is not moving their nuclear forces towards the West, though they have already prepositioned many of them in Belarus last year. However, at this very moment, Russia is loading transport trucks to distribute portable KUB-M class shelters while starting mass production on many more. These shelters look more-or-less like the shipping containers one finds on cargo vessels and they can house forty-eight people for up to two days, offering protection of sorts from the shockwaves of a nuclear blast as well as accompanying radiation. At least as well as any product manufactured in Russia can.
THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE
I thought of the basement of our house in rural New York. Like many basements, it is below ground with half a dozen windows near the basement ceiling that are ground-level with our yard. Should I buy some sandbags to fill and pack against these windows in the event there is a war? We don’t have nearly enough staples, water and other kit to see us through a nuclear bomb landing on New York City. We’re a comfortable 150 or so miles away from the Metropolis, but what does “comfort” mean if one is staring at the apocalypse? We have bandages and some medical supplies and have a month more or less stockpile of our medications, but should we invest in a radiation detector for our basement? Do we really want to know what it might register? Does it really matter when our family and friends are somewhere “out there” and we can’t reach them? This is a Jerry Bruckheimer sort of apocalypse. We’re being forced to think about the unthinkable. And as if there was not enough other stressful variables that we need to juggle and process.
AM I BEING AN ALARMIST?
Before the 9/11 attacks, before the Korean War, or the two World Wars, and the American Civil War, there were undoubtedly alarmists. They thought hostilities were about to commence at any moment. On the other hand, there were people who did not believe there would be a war at all. Deena and I recently watched “The Darkest Hour” about Winston Churchill. Neville Chamberlain’s party did not believe there would be a war if England approached Hitler respectfully and in good faith. We know now in hindsight that Hitler was not a man of good faith. The question is, what sort of man in Vladimir Putin? Or, what sort of man is President-elect Donald J. Trump? Can President Putin be pacified and at what price? At the cost of ripping a sovereign nation apart to satisfy his view of history?
ANOTHER ADAGE
There is a saying that even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day. This adage by the British fantasy writer Stephen Hunt (born 1966) suggests that “even when something is completely malfunctioning, it will occasionally happen to be correct by pure chance” as Chat GPT 4.0 explains it. Working on that notion, nations should act prudently, especially when historically reliable systems are becoming increasingly chaotic (entropic) and unpredictable. In the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev blinked after thirteen days and after U.S. President John F. Kennedy believed that a thermonuclear war was imminent. That blink prevented war. The question is who will blink this time?
SIGNS OF THE TIME
Who better to know the need to be observant and to read between the lines than an expectant mom? I remember teaching obstetrics while I was in the Air Force. My students were outpatient and inpatient health care workers (i.e. medics) who often worked for years in the labor and delivery theatre themselves, or in new born or intensive care nurseries (NICU’s.) I mention labor here because Jesus did too, in Mark 13:1-13 and elsewhere in the syntopic gospels in the context of stress, economic uncertainty and other red sky threats such as war. A year ago, I blogged about this and since then, the contractions have become more regular and more intense.
Now, mothers know that there is something called a Braxton Hicks contraction or prodromal labor where the expectant mom is almost certain the baby is on the way. Her water hasn’t broken, but she knows her time is short. She often arrives at the hospital for a check-up only to be sent back home disappointed, perhaps embarrassed. But false labor does not change the fact that something momentous is on the way. So, this is probably not the best time to take a cruise somethere. Likewise, the fact that we are presently on the brink of war does not mean, should civilization step back from it, that the world will never inevitably cross it someday.
SAILORS TAKE WARNING
Sailor take warning. After all, aren’t we all sailors of a sort, sailing some charted or yet to be determined course? Or, perhaps we are just aimlessly moving about? We go through smooth seas, punctuated by fierce squalls. We float adrift, becalmed through the horse latitudes of life, thirsty, desperate, waiting for a fresh, stiff breeze to nudge us out of our predicament. Some of us are bold and we sail far and wide seeking adventure. Others are more risk adverse and find comfort close to the shore or in some secluded cove. Some people travel in luxury aboard expensive yachts. Others in some small pram or dinghy that inevitably leak or break down.
If the skies in the east become increasingly crimson and ominous in appearance, many people will reflect on their lives and be flooded by thoughts of “what if…” The Bible says that the fear of God is the beginning of understanding (Proverbs 9:10.) No doubt, millions of people will ask God to once again deliver us from our folly. I’m not making up the facts in this post. It is not my intention to fan the flames of fear. There is an army of bots online to do just that. I do hope that now as in good times, the reader evaluates their relationship with their Creator. Jesus was a sailor as well, and during one gale he rebuked the winds and the sea was calmed. Centuries before that, He appeared in the furnace that the prophet Daniel was thrown in. Regardless of what may or may not happen, God is greater than our fears and our circumstances and He will care for us come what may. You just need to trust and believe that with your hearts.
p.s. The activity log on my website logged in someone from Moscow last night as I edited this. At that point, the draft was already published. If this person returns, reads this, and has something worthwhile to add, then I’m all ears, lol.
