4 ms·
If the book Command and Control is to be believed, that list looks pretty incomplete_by a pretty significant degree. One of the staggering stats from the book:
by goostavos 4y ago
If the book Command and Control is to be believed, that list looks pretty incomplete_by a pretty significant degree. One of the staggering stats from the book: In 1957, one hydrogen or atomic bomb was jettisoned in every 1 out of 320 flights. And there were a lot of flights going on at that time, as the core strategies was keeping bombing power in the air.
It really does seem like just plain dumb luck that we made it through those turbulent wild west days when the bomb was new without killing ourselves.
Just as a side note, reading all the unexpected failure modes that popped up during the weapons program was remarkably humbling. Interactions with reality will poke all the holes in can in your world view. One of my favorite examples from the book: One of the early designs of the bomb required a human to specifically remove a key card from the bomb in order to arm it. This was deemed pretty safe. Until, an aircraft entered problems during a training mission and entered a spin. The centrifugal force of that spin was enough to suck the key out, arming the bomb on the way down as the plane crashed into the earth.
There is, counter intuitively, a lot of comfort to be had in modern missiles from a "will we accidentally blow ourselves up?" perspective.