International Neuropsychological Society Poster Presentation (work sample)

Russian missile (writing sample)

On July 23, 2018, Russia’s Ministry of Defense released a video describing its new ‘Poseidon’ torpedo. The high-speed, nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed torpedo is designed to be especially fearsome and punishing to Russian adversaries like the United States by threatening the capability to evade and overcome all U.S. defenses and to have weaponized the long-term, radioactive fallout of a nuclear explosion so that a massive swath of coastal area, potentially up to thousands of miles, could be rendered uninhabitable for approximately fifty years. By detonating off-shore, the torpedo would generate radioactive tsunamis in addition to distributing widely the radioactive metal isotopes rumored to coat the bomb’s interior. The video first shows the torpedo sitting in a large lab setting, followed by an animation of it navigating in the water towards potential targets, including a fleet of destroyers and an aircraft carrier.

The weapon is one of many advances in Russia’s nuclear capabilities first announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his State of the Union address on March 1st, less than three weeks before his eventual re-election on March 18th, 2018. During the speech, Putin used animations and hyperbole to describe the Poseidon and other nuclear weapon systems, including a claim that a “low-flying, difficult to notice winged missile carrying a nuclear warhead, with virtually unlimited range and an unpredictable trajectory and capability to bypass interception lines is invincible to all existing and prospective missile defense systems,” and that, “no systems, not even prospective missile defense systems, are an obstacle.”

Given Russia’s long history of threats against the United States, Americans are often left skeptical of escalations in aggressive rhetoric coming from the Kremlin and wonder which, if any, should be taken seriously. Americans using Zip, an anonymous opinion-aggregation app, were polled about whether they thought Russia was bluffing about how far along they are in developing the ‘Poseidon’ nuclear torpedo. Of respondents, 28% believed this new threat to be legitimate, with the remaining 72% answering that the Russians are bluffing.