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There are not a lot of controls that work really well. And a lot of the controls that do exist were fought for tooth and nail. That is the entire point of the

by knappe 9y ago

There are not a lot of controls that work really well. And a lot of the controls that do exist were fought for tooth and nail. That is the entire point of the book. :) For example, the locks in place at each Titan II facility all had exactly the same code (1111). And they were left unlocked. Regarding the accidents, here are a few examples: Thule Airbase crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash Damascus incident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex... How about the two hydrogen bombs that were accidentally dropped from a B-52: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north-carolina-1961 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bo... Or what is probably the worst incident to date, the B-52 that caught fire and almost blew up with 75,000 people within the blast radius: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-08-13/news/9103280297_1_nuclear-weapons-grand-forks-plutonium http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-08-13/news/910328029... The list goes on and on. That is the reason why the book specifically called out that it was a miracle we haven't had any (known) detonations. Here is a list of the _known_ broken arrow events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear... Keep in mind that the article we're discussing is about a 53 year old event that was _just_ revealed. There are more of them -- we just don't know about it, yet.

goialoq 9y ago
The other way to interpret these facts is that it takes a lot of work to actually detonate a nuclear weapon, so they are pretty safe by default and can handle abuse.
- bbddg 9y ago
  Yes, that is another way to interpret those facts. It's just terrifyingly arrogant and irresponsible.
- MertsA 9y ago
  To actually detonate a nuke it pretty much has to be armed and intentionally dropped. That said, there's a much lower barrier for scattering nuclear material all over the countryside. As an example, an implosion type bomb needs to be detonated at several places around the bomb simultaneously. It's designed such that if you don't have detonation of the explosives all at the exact same time then the pit won't make a nuclear blast. They're very safe in terms of accidental nuclear detonation, but still, if the explosives are detonated it's going to make quite a mess to say the least.

by knappe 9y ago

goialoq 9y ago

The other way to interpret these facts is that it takes a lot of work to actually detonate a nuclear weapon, so they are pretty safe by default and can handle abuse.

bbddg 9y ago
Yes, that is another way to interpret those facts. It's just terrifyingly arrogant and irresponsible.
MertsA 9y ago
To actually detonate a nuke it pretty much has to be armed and intentionally dropped. That said, there's a much lower barrier for scattering nuclear material all over the countryside. As an example, an implosion type bomb needs to be detonated at several places around the bomb simultaneously. It's designed such that if you don't have detonation of the explosives all at the exact same time then the pit won't make a nuclear blast. They're very safe in terms of accidental nuclear detonation, but still, if the explosives are detonated it's going to make quite a mess to say the least.