When you read about all the things that could have gone wrong in first decades of the nuclear arms race but didn't, it really feels like there were multiple nar

When you read about all the things that could have gone wrong in first decades of the nuclear arms race but didn't, it really feels like there were multiple narrow escapes that could have escalated rapidly. The Titan missile silo story, for example - basically kids just past their teen years were responsible for maintaining those systems (the dropped wrench down the missile silo, oops...). See Eric Schlosser's history: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452798-command-and-control https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452798-command-and-cont... By the way, this caught my eye with respect to Jack Revelle's leukemia: > "Jack earned the Bronze Star during the Vietnam War, where he was exposed to Agent Orange." While Agent Orange's active agent was supposed to be a mixture of two herbicides, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, the manufacturer ran a sloppy synthesis which produced a lot of dioxin as a side product. The herbicide mix was effective, but dioxin has a lot of nasty side effects related to interference with various cellular processes, and promotion of cancers such as leukemia and myeloma appears to be an issue. (The US govt and Agent Orange manufacturers tried to block VA care for veterans exposed to Agent Orange by promoting bogus studies done with highly purified 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T showing no such effects). See for example: (2009) Cancer incidence in the population exposed to dioxin after the "Seveso accident": twenty years of follow-up. Exposure to ionizing radiation could of course also be involved, either via ingestion of small amounts of those radionuclide species that are incorporated into human tissues and bone (cesium-137, etc.) or by short-term exposure to high levels of gamma photons, neutron fluxes, positrons, alpha particles, etc.