[CyberAnt]

Thank you RA .. I knew somebody with more smarts than me would be able to tell me what was really going on.

I have to trust ya on this one, because it would make me very nervous to live in GA and know a nuke is right out my window in the ocean.

Because it isn't armed .. what kind of danger is there it would explode ..??

[Robert A Cook PE]

Couple hundred pounds of conventional explosives.

(Remember, I never worked on the "conventional" side of the nuclear bombs, so I'm guessing at compositions here.)

Let's pretend that the thermonuclear bomb is made up of a special Plutonium "trigger" wrapped around some Tritium and Lithium and other stuff that goes " BIG BOOM" when the nuclear bomb on the outside goes "Not-quite-so-big-Boom." (Pretend you need to use a Hiroshima-size bomb to set off 20-50 Hiroshima bombs.)

The Plutonium trigger isn't installed, but the bomb still falls away and crashes. So the "Big Boom" can't happen.

The nuclear bomb on the outside is still there. The "nuclear part of that bomb is set off by triggers and a conventional explosive around the nuclear material. It's peacetime, and plane isn't flying towards Russia, so the triggers and arming devices aren't installed. Like the shells from the WWI battles the rest just sits there.

But the chemical explosives are chemical mixes, and settle and separate and react slowly.

TNT for example, is made up of nitroglycerin mixed in a kind of a fine clay. Over long periods of time, the nitro settles into a little poolof liquid on the bottom of the old bombs, and likenitro anywhere can explode if it is just jiggled.

So, this long after the bomb is sitting there, the chemical explosives are much, much more likely to go off just by bumping the bomb, or by hooking a crane wire to the casing.

Its safer to just let it sit.