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And what's even more scary is what's true beyond the movie. Like dropping nuclear bombs on Goldsboro, NC.
by cjslep 7y ago
And what's even more scary is what's true beyond the movie. Like dropping nuclear bombs on Goldsboro, NC.
- lightedman 7y agoBombs were not purposefully DROPPED on Goldsboro. The B-52 transporting those broke up in mid-air and as a result lost the cargo of the couple of megaton-range bombs. Thank you for purposefully misaligning the actual event with your words of intent attack on the city.
- rhizome 7y agoThank you for adding sarcasm to your comment, it really helps.
- ceejayoz 7y agoNo one said purposefully, and they were dropped. It's the sort of incident Dr. Strangelove predicted might accidentally cause a nuclear war.
- ourmandave 7y agoPretty sure you have to purposely arm them before there's any chance it would go off for just such a scenario. Otherwise every time you transport one it could end in disaster.
- jacobush 7y agoThat's the intention, yes. But in at least one case, the fail safe came very closing to failing, and not in a good way.
- ceejayoz 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash > Information newly declassified in 2013 showed that one of the bombs came very close to detonating. > In 2013, Revelle recalled the moment the second bomb's switch was found: "Until my death I will never forget hearing my sergeant say, 'Lieutenant, we found the arm/safe switch.' And I said, 'Great.' He said, 'Not great. It's on arm.'" If I'm reading the article right, the other bomb also had the other three arming steps happen and was stopped only by the arm/safe switch, so between the two bombs, each of the four safety steps failed.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Symmetry 7y agoFor modern nuclear weapons yes. For the ones we were still carrying around in 1960 much less so.
- cjslep 7y agoIf it is semantic games you'd like to play, I'd like to submit for your consideration that the euphemism "losing cargo" is a pretty disrespectful take on the human life put at risk in an accident that involves atomic bombs dropping -- yes, literally falling -- from the sky. And then consider that some of that human life -- those people -- are my friends and their families. Finally, as a commenter has already pointed out elsewhere in the chain of replies, between the two bombs, every kind of safety mechanism meant to prevent detonation failed at least once. Fortunately, at least one succeeded in preventing the detonation in each bomb. It is not an accident to take lightly.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't cross into personal attack or post snarky comments to HN. Your comment would be just fine with just the first two sentences. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Also—it's a smaller point, but while I have you: can you please not use uppercase for emphasis on HN? That's also in the guidelines, and it looks like your comments have done that a lot. As the guidelines explain, if you want to emphasize text, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized. Using allcaps is basically yelling, and it has the effect of evoking worse from others.