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US has lost at least three nuclear bombs that have never been located
- Victerius 4y agoBefore the introduction of permissive action links (PAL), nuclear weapons could be operated and detonated by almost anyone. > The exact details are hazy, but the broad contours are clear: the inspection team found the control of the forward-based nuclear weapons inadequate and possibly illegal. In Germany and Turkey they viewed scenes that were particularly distressing. On the runway stood a German (or Turkish) quick-reaction alert airplane (QRA) loaded with nuclear weapons and with a foreign pilot in the cockpit. The QRA airplane was ready to take off at the earliest warning, and the nuclear weapons were fully operational. The only evidence of U.S. control was a lonely 18-year-old sentry armed with a carbine and standing on the tarmac. When the sentry at the German airfield was asked how he intended to maintain control of the nuclear weapons should the pilot suddenly decide to scramble (either through personal caprice or through an order from the German command circumventing U.S. command), the sentry replied that he would shoot the pilot; Agnew directed him to shoot the bomb. https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/nsam-160/pal.html https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/nsam-160/pal.html The 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were a wild time. Tens of thousands of deadly devices in the hands of two superpowers armed to the teeth, and not a single rogue general. Not one single device sold to terrorists on the black market. It's a miracle we made it out alive.
- baybal2 4y ago
- akmarinov 4y ago> Not one single device sold to terrorists on the black market. I mean, there’s this journalist investigation - https://www.businessinsider.com/you-can-buy-a-nuclear-warhead-on-the-black-market-2015-8?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/you-can-buy-a-nuclear-warhea...
- credit_guy 4y agoIf any terrorist organization had ever put their hands on a nuke, they would have either used it or threatened to use it.
- hedora 4y agoWe'll find out soon. Apparently Trump scuttled the anti nuke deal with Iran on his way out of office, and they're enriching uranium again. Tehran says they're planning to level New York City ASAP (within the year). Among other things, they're lobbying to be taken off a list of terrorist organizations.
- imglorp 4y agoNation states, sure, they've probably bought a few, but I think the evidence points to no terrorists. If a nation state has a nuke, it's in their interest to hold it as deterrent. As soon as it's used, anyone seeking accountability knows whom to visit. Eg Pakistan, Israel, NK have all been holding for years with motive to use them, but haven't. If a terrorist group has a nuke, it's in their interest to use it asap. If they delay, it might be taken away from them. If they use it, they achieve the attention and blood they seek, while the world doesn't know where they all live (assuming good opsec) and where they might have more. This might indicate they don't have any.
- Someone 4y ago> Nation states, sure, they've probably bought a few […] If a nation state has a nuke, it's in their interest to hold it as deterrent. It also is in their interest to let ‘them’ know they have an atomic bomb. Of course, they could have done that secretly, but I think the world at large would know of it, anyways. Since that hasn’t happened (Pakistan and North Korea built their own devices, and so, likely, did Israel, all after buying it stealing the technology), I think it’s unlikely this happened. > If they [terrorists] use it, they achieve the attention and blood they seek, while the world doesn't know where they all live Terrorists don’t want to instill fear, they want to instill fear in the pursuit of political aims. Because of that, they would have to tell the world they were responsible. I think the world would figure out where they live from that. I agree with you that it’s unlikely terrorist groups are in possession of nuclear devices. It’s not a weapon that’s easily hidden (its radiation probably gives it away), and it’s expensive to obtain, and they wouldn’t have many, so losing one without using it would be a big loss.
- bad416f1f5a2 4y agoI see your article mentions this, but I love to highlight this one story: Strategic air command opposed the installation of these locks. Their stated concern was they would interfere with a launch order, but some think they just resented civilian control. So they allegedly worked around them. For years, the passcode keeping nuclear war at bay was 00000000 https://web.archive.org/web/20120511191600/http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.cfm https://web.archive.org/web/20120511191600/http://www.cdi.or...
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago> not a single rogue general There was a rogue soviet lieutenant colonel though, and thank god for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident#Incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
- dron57 4y agoHardly rogue. In his own words - his job was to supervise the radar system and make judgement calls. He judged the detection of a single "missile" to be a false positive sincea a NATO would have consisted of a massed first strike rather than a single bogey. Petrov simply did his job.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- happyopossum 4y agoHow was he a rogue? He was doing his job and he did it well, and saved a lot of lives. That doesn’t make a rogue.
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago"the Soviet Union's strategy was an immediate and compulsory nuclear counter-attack against the United States (launch on warning), specified in the doctrine of mutual assured destruction." Immediate. Compulsory.
- nautilius 4y agoYeah, but there wasn't an attack.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y agoWhat’s not included is the confirmation that they are under attack.
- logicchains 4y ago>It's a miracle we made it out alive. It's a selection bias. In all the universes in which a nuclear war was triggered, we wouldn't be alive here today discussing it; we could only exist in a universe in which a nuclear holocaust didn't occur.
- baybal2 4y agoAnd Russia has lost 20+ 152mm tactical nuclear weapons over years. Then one day, suddenly all of them were declared "found" somewhere around 1998-1999. My bet USA just annoyed Yeltsin enough to put up a pretence solution.
- rustqt6 4y agoWhat is more likely? US lost or US laundered? Can't answer? Thought experiment time. Replace US with the president from your opposite party. What happens now? Lost or laundered?
- missedthecue 4y agoI'm sorry but I can't even imagine my least favorite president of all time laundering an atom bomb
- pydry 4y agoCan you imagine a hostile nation paying some relatively low level military personnel to deliberately fuck up at a crucial point in time?
- spywaregorilla 4y agoSeems unlikely that you could pay off a low level military dude who has the capacity to personally steal an atomic weapon.
- pydry 4y agoLosing != stealing
- spywaregorilla 4y agoYou're going to pay someone a large sum of money to lose an atomic weapon? Why? It's probably harder to lose something than steal it because stealing implies there's another party to remove it from the location it was lost at.
- happyopossum 4y agoEspecially when “losing” that bomb (or in the case we’re discussing, 2 nuclear cores) also entails “losing” yourself and the entire crew of your B-47.
- christkv 4y agoI found the book “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety” much more terrifying.
- nappy-doo 4y agoI came to recommend this book as well. The book is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.
- Victerius 4y agoRead "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a nuclear war planner" for a round two.
- saboot 4y agoFred Kaplan's book "The Bomb" is a good read too, haven't read doomsday machine but they sound similar.
- noefingway 4y agoDitto for "Command and Control". Good read, very terrifying how much lack of control there was/is. I can recommend "Raven Rock" as another good read. How very rational people and be totally irrational. Living near Raven Rock and Camp David for over 50 years, we always assumed that if the missiles started flying, we be toast in a nuclear wasteland.
- TigeriusKirk 4y agoBeyond the terror factor, the book is a fantastic history of technological development, and how a system of systems evolved to cope with additional failure states. I think it's worth reading and thinking about for anyone working in a technical field.
- lazyant 4y agoI got the book from a HN comment recommendation a few years ago, now I keep recommending myself for anything accidents :-)
- papito 4y agoBut the US did find something the Soviets lost - a whole sub. Project Azorian, which involved none other than Howard Hughes. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/09/18/549535352/how-the-cia-found-a-soviet-sub-without-the-soviets-knowing https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/09/18/549535352/...
- MichaelCollins 4y ago1956, a B-47 carrying two nuclear weapon cores (not assembled bombs) disappears somewhere near the Mediterranean, never seen again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_B-47_disappearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_B-47_disappearance 1959, A USN P5M carrying an unarmed Mark 90 nuclear depth charge (no core) is lost in the Puget Sound, never recovered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whidbey_Island#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whidbey_Island#History
- ourmandave 4y agoI didn't know nuke depth charge were a thing. That sounds like a nuke hand grenade. How do you get out of the way? Dropped from aircraft I suppose.
- kayodelycaon 4y agoNuclear torpedoes where also a thing. :)
- jskrablin 4y agoNuclear torpedoes are still a thing - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpos...
- meepmorp 4y agoi'm just gonna press X to doubt on this one
- mbrodersen 4y agoRussian submarines armed with nuclear torpedoes is still very much a thing. The idea is to target US cities along the coastline. It neutralises any anti-ballistic missile defences the US has deployed.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoDropped from aircraft, or thrown by missiles. Missiles that deliver homing torpedoes are also a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-submarine_missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-submarine_missile
- washbrain 4y agoPlus the two armed nuclear weapons that were dropped on North Carolina when a bomber exploded mid flight, and amazingly did not detonate.
- gear54rus 4y agoShould they have exploded? I was under the impression that to actually get the powerful chain reaction you have to spend a lot of energy bringing pieces of fuel together (to the point that explosives are used for that) otherwise they'd just melt and not explode. Can anyone more knowledgeable chime in here?
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoIt's quite hard to get a nuclear bomb to go boom. A lot of things have to happen in a carefully controlled and timed sequence. A big part of that is indeed forcing bits of fuel to stay together for long enough to allow the chain reaction to work its way through a significant proportion of the fuel. Without the force you get various intensities of fizzle explosions and radiation bursts. Hitting the ground with a "doink" after falling out of a plane is more likely to break something than trigger a full-scale explosion.
- yccs27 4y agoI believe the highest risk is that some unplanned external influence sets off the trigger mechanism. As you said, the nuclear core itself will not spontaneously explode from an impact, but there are surrounding explosives designed to mke the core achieve criticality - can we be sure they don't accomplish their goal unintentionally?
- samus 4y agoThe activation of the explosives has to be precisely aligned, else it will just explode and distribute the nuclear material over the surrounding area. Events that happen on the scale of microseconds determine the success and final yield of the nuclear chain reaction. Therefore, an uncontrolled detonation of the explosions is likely to thwart the reaction from happening.
- hindsightbias 4y agoMissed another one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Philippine_Sea_A-4_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Philippine_Sea_A-4_incide...
- ec109685 4y agoIt’s in there: “ Some incidents are so baffling, they almost sound made up. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary occurred when a training exercise on the USS Ticonderoga went badly wrong in 1965. An A4E Skyhawk was being rolled to a plane elevator, while loaded with a B-43 nuclear bomb. It was a disaster in slow-motion – the crew on deck quickly realised that the plane was about to fall off, and waved for the pilot to apply the brakes. Tragically, he didn't see them, and the young lieutenant, plane and weapon vanished into the Philippine Sea. They're still there to this day, under 16,000 ft (4,900 m) of water near a Japanese island.”
- corybrown 4y agoThis could be a great initial premise for a novel
- power 4y agoYou're right. Tom Clancy used it in The Sum of All Fears
- jasomill 4y agoOn a related note, in college ca. 1999, when I took a history and philosophy of science course on nuclear weapons, the instructor, a retired Los Alamos physicist, assigned an excerpt from The Sum of All Fears as required reading. He claimed it was — critical, probably deliberate technical inaccuracies notwithstanding — the best description of the process of detonating a nuclear weapon he was able to find in the open literature. Amazing class, which also included a field trip to Oak Ridge, TN, where we got a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of the K-25 gaseous diffusion facility[1] while it was in the process of being decommissioned, and a far less interesting "tour" of the basically nonexistent public areas of the Y-12 weapons plant[2], where the only interesting things on display were the extensive security precautions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-25 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-12_National_Security_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-12_National_Security_Complex
- HomeDeLaPot 4y agoFun editing mistake: >The weapons remain there to this day, trapped in their rusting tomb. Some people think the weapons remain there to this day, trapped in their rusting tomb – though others believe they were eventually recovered.