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JustTruth's avatar

Russia does not need to destroy Dnieper river bridges as things stand today. Most people are very slow to understand Russia is not yet fighting for territory, other than the 4 annexed regions. Russia is also holding back most of its mobilized troops and massive firepower. Russia has a 10 to 1 kill ratio advantage in troops and armaments. It is grinding and pulverizing the Ukraine military while minimizing its own losses. Russia has total conventional and nuclear escalation dominance in Europe, and it has nuclear escalation dominance over the West worldwide. Yes, worldwide. Russian leadership is mature, extremely competent, self-controlled and highly rational. Time is well on their side for at least the next year. NATO leadership is fragile, weak, incompetent and very immature. Russian leadership knew this war was coming in 2007 and perhaps prior. They have prepared. Sure, the West will pull a few more asymmetrical pin-prick attack tricks that will grad ST media headlines, but change nothing. Ukraine will launch its offensives and blow its wad. Russia will destroy the capacity, capabilities, will and spirit of NATO in this war. Success requires nothing short of that. Russia will also control the Black Sea. This is inevitable.

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The World Complex's avatar

I used to teach an environmental epidemiology course at University of Toronto, and may speak somewhat about the health effects of depleted uranium.

Often the health effects are based on an assumption of their cause. When these rounds were developed, the assumption was that the health effects would be caused by residual radioactivity. But the main isotope in the rounds is U-238 which does not undergo spontaneous fission (hence, undesirable for nuclear reactors) and which has a very long half-life. Consequently, there is minimal health effects caused by the radioactivity.

However, studies from Iraq and Serbia conclusively demonstrated there were serious health consequences from the heavy metal aspect of uranium. In terms of valence and atomic radius, it tends to act like calcium within the body--rather it reports to the same places in the body as calcium would, which is primarily bones (for long-term storage) and the nerves. Unfortunately, once absorbed into the nerves, the uranium displaces calcium, but does not have the functionality of the calcium, i. e., the nerves no longer function properly.

There was evidence as well that uranium accumulates in the genitals (both male and female), where it gets contributed to developing offspring. As such, DU is one of the rare contaminants which, while in the body, can be passed down to the developing next generation. As the fetus grows within the mother's womb, DU that may be stored within the mother's skeleton may be passed to growing fetus, accumulating in bones and nerves.

Worse still, there is some evidence that piezoelectric effects are important in the development of certain structures in the body. Nerves and bones, arteries and veins are all long, thin structures. The piezoelectric effect causes charges to form at the ends of these structures, so that they elongate. Replacing the calcium by uranium reduces this piezoelectric effect so that the structures grow as blocks (nerves, bones, and veins) resulting in the many horrible birth defects observed in areas where DU weapons have been used.

The above information mainly comes from correspondence with a professor of my (slight) acquaintance, who at that time taught at Harvard. He was the real expert on this topic. Unfortunately, I have since lost contact with him.

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