Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 10/17/2010 12:38:18 PM PDT by lbryce
We spent the Cold War in perpetual fear that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would start an intentional nuclear conflict. The truth is, we came far closer to blowing ourselves up with nuclear weapons than we ever came to WWIII.
Nuclear incidents have a bunch of ominous military code names, like Broken Arrow, Faded Giant or NUCFLASH. There are actually dozens of instances like these, but here are five major ones that happened in the U.S. If we were to consider Soviet activity, the list could go on for hours. The Russians either lost a nuclear sub, lost a sub with nuclear weapons on board, had a nuclear sub's reactor melt down, or all three roughly every other week. Kompetentnyh? Nyet.
During the Korean War, U.S. military and political officials gave serious consideration to the use of atomic weapons. In August of 1950, ten B-29 Superfortress bombers took off from what was then called Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base in California, headed for Guam. Each was carrying a Mark IV atom bomb, which was about twice as powerful as the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. 5 times we almost nuked ourselves by accident
Shortly after takeoff, one of the B-29s had engine trouble. On board was General Robert Travis. He commanded the plane to turn back to the base when the landing gear refused to retract. Sensing the plane was going down, the pilot tried to avoid some base housing before crashing at the northwest corner of the base. The initial impact killed 12 of the 20 people aboard, including General Travis. The resulting fire eventually detonated the 5,000 pounds of conventional explosives that were part of the Mark IV.
(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...
The nucs require detonation devices before they are implemented in these cases.
aaaahhhh, Nostalgia
Marvin the Martian
Exactly, none of these were cases where we almost nuked ourselves. My reading is that:
1. Twice unarmed military nukes that we have been told can not explode didn’t when in a plane crash or drop in the ocean after a crash.
2. Twice there were reactor accidents the author believes were more serious than Three Mile Island.
3. Once there was a false alarm. BTW, that one is one where we might have acciently nuked someone else not ourselves.
Well, it would have taught us a lesson.
Are they still looking for the one that is in Georgia.....
Strange. No mention of the bomber and bomb loss in Greenland, or even the bombs loss off Spain.
But then, that wasn’t over the US!
1. Twice unarmed military nukes that we have been told can not explode didn’t when in a plane crash or drop in the ocean after a crash.
2. Twice there were reactor accidents the author believes were more serious than Three Mile Island.
3. Once there was a false alarm. BTW, that one is one where we might have accidently nuked someone else not ourselves."
Too long a title,
not enough hype
won't sell enough [whatever]
“The resulting fire eventually detonated the 5,000 pounds of conventional explosives that were part of the Mark IV.?”
Um, that kind of detonation cannot have the precision necessary to cause a nuke explosion. A lot of this article includes similar sensationalism.
bttt
Not well written,, some of the numbers are wrong.
There’s just so much wrong with this article - for example, what a Broken Arrow is - that I can’t take it seriously. I suspect the author has never heard of ‘single point’.
As it was, the crew that was killed pretty much got the worst possible outcome, by definition. A steam explosion that vaporized the reactor's coolant supply in a few milliseconds, tearing the reactor's pressure head apart and bouncing the entire reactor into the air.
So we’re supposed to conclude that we’re always on the verge of nuclear holocaust. Nuclear accidents keep “almost” happening, but somehow don’t. Sorry, probability doesn’t work like that.
Sounds like propaganda to me.
Don’t forget that Obammy set the Nuke clock back a couple of minutes with Hopey Changey!
I might have known better than to post an article about accidental nuclear detonation from a site dedicated primarily to science fiction. :-(.
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