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US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina in 1961
- MWil 13y agoTIL Hacker News is Reddit
- BrandonMarc 13y agoTerrifying question: had this thing detonated, would the powers that be - with only a few minutes to decide whether to defend the homeland while they still could - have realized it was an aircraft accident and not a hostile surprise attack? I think you know the answer.
- mpyne 13y agoThe answer is that they had both aircraft-tracking radar and "early warning" radar designed to pick up incoming ICBM re-entry vehicles by that time, so it would have been fairly easy to verify that a single nuclear detonation around a militarily and strategically innocouous site was an accident. But don't let that stop you from panicing.
- smtddr 13y agoOh they'd know. The real question is would they have told the public it was an internal accident? Or do some wonderful media-spin and blame whatever country they feel like going to war with...
- Dove 13y agoNo one "felt like" going to war during the Cold War. Avoiding war was the top priority in everyone's mind. And I mean everyone -- leadership, public, on both sides. That's why it was a cold war. If anyone on either side had wanted a hot one, they could have started it easily a dozen times over.
- coldtea 13y ago>No one "felt like" going to war during the Cold War. Avoiding war was the top priority in everyone's mind. And I mean everyone -- leadership, public, on both sides. "Noone" felt like going to war with the big other superpower. As for places of strategic interest, they absolutely LOVED going to war over them, Korea, Vietnam, tons of Latin America, etc etc.
- Osiris 13y agoI would be highly skeptical that the President would have told the American people "Oops, our bad. That was just an accident". It's very likely that the government would have blamed the attack on someone other than the U.S. even with the evidence in their hands that it was an accident. Seriously, can you imagine a U.S. President admitting to the public that the military just 'accidently' killed millions of people?
- dragonwriter 13y agoAn even bigger threat than "the President goes to war to cover up an accident" is what happens with the chain of escalation when the Soviets notice the detonation and go to high alert in case the US thinks that it was a Soviet attack (since the Soviets are less likely than the Americans to know it was a US bomber accident, and therefore not necessarily confident that the US will not think that it was a successful sneak attack of some kind.)
- jevinskie 13y agoSo they blame the USSR and say they started a nuclear war? I don't think that would work out better.
- Dove 13y agoIn 1961, JFK would have been president. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, when an American U-2 was shot down and the pilot killed, he chose not to retaliate. Not to. Just let the Russians shoot down one of ours, and did nothing. He did the right thing, too. It was an already tense situation, and letting it escalate into all out war . . . no one can say where it would stop. Whatever you think of current politicians, JFK was a great man. There's no way, no way at all, he would have started a global hot war out of sheer pride. But beyond that, it was a very different time. The US really was in mortal combat, which is not something this generation has witnessed. "We will find those terrorists" was a popular message on 9/11. "The Russians hit us for real and we have to hit back," during the Cold War, would not have been. It would have sounded like the end of the world. The political temptation would not have been to make an accident look like a real strike, but -- if anything -- to make a real strike look like an accident.
- bsullivan01 13y agoNot necessarily. What if the 'evil empire' had smuggled a small one in US soil?
- coldtea 13y ago>But don't let that stop you from panicing. Yes, because radars at the time were so advanced that nothing could go wrong. They were made by the same guys that lost 2 bombs near a major metropolitan area. Yay for engineering!
- Dove 13y agoWe already know the answer. There were several close calls during the Cold War, and while the powers involved always chose to respond (they had to, it was doctrine at the time), they always chose to respond cautiously. Both sides wanted to avoid a "hot" war at almost any cost. For an example of how bad things could get with both sides still responding cautiously, read about Able Archer[1]. A first strike in the cold war was expected to be all out -- many, many missiles at once in an attempt to disable the enemy before he could respond. One explosion, in the middle of nowhere, is not a sensible first strike. I'd think "accident" would be the top hypothesis, even if "What are we dealing with?" was definitely a burning question. There were plenty of times when a much more credible first strike came up. Computer glitches that made it look like dozens of missiles were already in the air. Large exercises that looked legitimately like immediate attacks. Those were scary crises, but they were navigated with caution and skill. A lone explosion in the middle of nowhere wouldn't even rate as a close call, I don't think. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
- mtdewcmu 13y agoGood point. The military should know where their own planes are, too.
- lostlogin 13y agoMaybe. Their record for knowing where stuff is isn't that good. The Iraq adventure lost $1billion of stuff. This shouldn't be confused with the overall cost (some would also say loss here) of a few trillion dollars for the whole episode. http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500257_162-3584247.html http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500257_162-3584247.html
- twoodfin 13y agoIraq war estimates in the trillions involve some pretty iffy calculations of long-term effects, like guessing the impact on the price of oil. The actually budgetary cost was much lower.
- cynwoody 13y agoI doubt it would have triggered a war. This was before the ICBM era was in full swing. The DEW line† would not have detected the expected armada of Soviet bombers coming over the pole. There would have been one missing B-52, known to be carrying, and probably one missing airbase (Seymour Johnson AFB, to which they were on approach for an emergency landing). I expect it would have been pretty obvious it was an accident. †http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Early_Warning_Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Early_Warning_Line
- tlb 13y agoThe author seems to think people aren't very familiar with electrical switches. But normal people are frequently only one switch away from likely death. Like if you turn off your electric lawnmower and reach inside. It's recommended to have a fail-safe, but switches don't spontaneously turn on at even 1 in a billion and most people don't write breathless articles about the one time they were only one switch away from death 50 years ago.
- wnevets 13y ago> Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly 3/4 of the safety mechanisms on a 4 megaton bomb failed over US soil. I would hardly call this a breathless article.
- stevetursi 13y ago> and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity What does "highly vulnerable" even mean? Could it have been triggered by the wind? If I'm the guy at the control panel, am I accidentally hitting that switch a couple of times per week? Maybe the only way that switch gets triggered is if I black out from the stress and my nose hits it on my way to the floor. I get the significance of three/four barriers failing, but if the fourth one has a one-in-a-billion chance, is it really fair to say North Carolina was "dramatically close" to being nuked?
- wnevets 13y ago> the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt I would say its fair, would you feel safe if all bombs only had this switch from the 50s?
- stevetursi 13y agoSo he means something like what a surge protector blocks? I suppose they could have neglected to put a fuse in the circuit which should have protected it against a surge that would damage some very expensive equipment (not to mention cause nuclear detonation.) But I don't know. I wasn't there to see and I didn't read the report. And we all know fuses fail as well - would that be the fourth out of five failsafes? To answer your question, no - I honestly would not feel safe. But "dramatically close" is different altogether. When I think "dramatically close" I think about the time my kid ran into the street and I grabbed him from in front of a car... I needed to act urgently to avoid disaster. I could be wrong though (and often am.)
- Ihmahr 13y agoSurprise surprise...
- bsullivan01 13y agoThe headline is kinda accurate but definitely misleading. 'Accidentally' should have been added to it, the way it is now it seems like they planned on doing it and then changed their mind last minute or something like that. Accidents do happen.
- tptacek 13y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6389633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6389633
- narfquat 13y agoLooks like the other bomb disintegrated on impact. From Wikipedia: The second bomb plunged into a muddy field at around 700 miles per hour (310 m/s) and disintegrated. The tail was discovered about 20 feet (6.1 m) below ground. Parts of the bomb were recovered, including its tritium bottle and the plutonium. However, excavation was abandoned as a result of uncontrollable ground-water flooding. Most of the thermonuclear stage, containing uranium, was left in situ. The Army Corps of Engineers purchased a 400 feet (120 m) circular easement over the buried component. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill determined the buried depth of the secondary component to be 180 feet (55 m), plus or minus 10 feet (3.0 m).
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- madaxe 13y agoWhat the article neglects to mention is that after months of searching, they never found the bomb. It's still somewhere under the silt near Tybee island, biding its time.
- Zikes 13y agoIf they never found the bomb, how did they determine what safety mechanisms did and did not fail?
- lolcraft 13y agoWith the other bomb. And the fact that it didn't explode.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- fhars 13y agoAccording to wikipedia, they found most of the second bomb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsboro,_North_Carolina#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsboro,_North_Carolina#Histo...
- saltyPeter 13y agoUS was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961 The plane was carrying 2 of those bad boys. But it sounds like the whereabouts of both may have actually been determined. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.
- Jgrubb 13y agoThat's specifically not what the article fails to mention, because it states where both of the bombs were found. You're just thinking of a different narrowly avoided nuclear catastrophe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- CapitalistCartr 13y agoWe dropped bombs all over the place during the Cold War, until about '70 when we stopped carrying them in the bomb bay. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, California, Greenland, Spain (4), In the Atlantic, Pacific, etc. Broken Arrows, Bent Spears, Dull Swords. As they say in the movie, scary it happens so often we have a name for it. Personally, I was only involved in one Bent Spear, and two Dull Swords.
- cynwoody 13y agoHave we ever had an Empty Quiver? Or come close? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_...
- CapitalistCartr 13y agoNot yet. The guarding of our nuclear stockpile was, during the Cold War, excellent. I don't know how it is now. I hear not-so-good things. Damn kids, get off my lawn.
- BinaryBrainz 13y agoAround 2008 the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff were fired due to a massive screw-up regarding the transport and handling of our nukes [1]. The summary that I got from the situation was that a plane heading through the heartland of America accidentally transported a nuke, when instead they thought it was just some other type of bomb which basically means a nuke was accidentally transported across the US without anyone controlling the shipment or noticing until much later. The current chatter and inclinations are that things have improved due to more rigorous checks and inspections. For me this is very believable due to the amount of news that is made when one of the nuke squadrons fail a regular inspection due to minor mistakes [2]. [1] http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20080605/NEWS/806050301/Moseley-Wynne-forced-out http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20080605/NEWS/806050301... [2] http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20130819/NEWS/308190013/Unit-failed-nuclear-missile-inspection-raring-second-chance http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20130819/NEWS/308190013...
- coldtea 13y ago"Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone." That's nice for when one uses official statistics to defend the safety of such things...
- rwallace 13y agoThe lesson I draw from this incident is that when you want the highest degree of safety, you want many layers. The plane failed, three safety mechanisms in the bomb failed - but the very last safety mechanism worked.
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoReminded me of other nuclear hijinks, like Project A119.
- runarb 13y agoAnother interesting article on nuclear security in the real world: "British nukes were protected by bike locks" - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm
- bitops 13y agoGrowing up in Scandinavia, I remember reading about these as a kid and being fascinated. It's amazing how far the Cold War reached globally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash
- acqq 13y agoWeirder than fiction. A decade ago it was published that the "president's code" that should be the last permission before firing the nuclear rockets was for many years "0000" and that all army officers in charge knew it. http://web.archive.org/web/20120511191600/http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.cfm http://web.archive.org/web/20120511191600/http://www.cdi.org... I remember thinking "that would be the nice gag in James Bond movie, but it was real"! This time, all this "we dropped bombs all the time" doesn't sound crazier that "Dr. Strangelove."
- Mindless2112 13y agoThe idea behind the design of fail-safe controls is that there are enough to prevent accidental detonation when an atomic weapon is in a hostile environment (in this case falling out of a disintegrating aircraft). Given that the number of tests that must be done to ensure that a bomb doesn't detonate when any k of n bad events happen grows exponentially, you can only guarantee that the bomb is fail-safe to a certain degree; so it's not unreasonable that 3 of 4 switches failed to prevent detonation; the last one was designed in just as much as the first 3. Given that there haven't (as far as I know) been any accidental nuclear detonations despite the ridiculous number of accidental drops, I'd say the fail-safe control engineers are doing a pretty good job.
- JackFr 13y agoAlternate title for article: Nuclear Weapons 65-Year Flawless Safety Record
- ovoxo 13y agoWell, that explains why Michael Jordan was such a freak of nature.
- sehugg 13y agoThe declassified document is new, but this has been well known for some time and corroborated by multiple trusted sources: http://www.ibiblio.org/bomb/story.html http://www.ibiblio.org/bomb/story.html Mr. Schlosser is doing a good job promoting his book though.
- dm2 13y agoPicture of one of the bombs taken with a GameBoy camera. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goldsboro_nuclear_bomb.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goldsboro_nuclear_bomb.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash > "large enough to have a 100% kill zone of seventeen miles" Wow, this quote makes you realize the scale. Nuclear bombs are discussed so frequently that it's easy to forget their potential. > "Five of the six arming mechanisms on one of the bombs activated, causing it to execute many of the steps needed to arm itself, such as charging the firing capacitors and, critically, deployment of a 100-foot-diameter (30 m) retard parachute. The parachute allowed that bomb to hit the ground with little damage." What would cause any of the "arming mechanisms" to activate? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuze#Fuze_safety.2Farming_mechanisms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuze#Fuze_safety.2Farming_mecha... http://cryptome.org/nuke-fuze.htm http://cryptome.org/nuke-fuze.htm
- InclinedPlane 13y agoThis is sort of a side note, but that 17 mile kill zone for a 3.8 megaton bomb would depend on it exploding in the air, which would allow more of the energy of the bomb to hit the ground rather than be forced out along the ground or be directed into excavating a useless crater or up in to the air. A ground-level blast would have a much shorter radius of lethality but it would also create vastly more radioactive fallout.
- dm2 13y agoIf the final safeguard wasn't in place, rather than just "5 of the 6", then wouldn't the bomb detonate at the proper altitude automatically? One of the two floated down with a parachute like it was suppose to. Would there be any evidence of what even happened if the nuclear bomb had exploded? The plane and bomb would be completely vaporized. It would be nothing but conspiracy and rumors as to why a nuclear bomb went off that day in Goldsboro.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
- ImprovedSilence 13y agoI wonder if any espionage/sabotage was the cause of this. I've been around the block enough to see through articles like this that overlook things LIKE HOW A B52 JUST "BROKE UP" WHILE CARRYING NUCLEAR WEAPONS. That shit really doesn't just happen at random, and the article is suspiciously void of information on how/why one of the most proven aircraft of the time just fell out of the sky... I find THAT the more interesting/terrifying object of the story here.
- MichaelMoser123 13y agoI think Superman intervened personally in this case and fixed the fourth switch while the bomb was descending; However this detail is still classified ;-)
- frank_boyd 13y agoI'm curious, assume the detonation had happened: Would you see any of the past/recent administrations blame themselves for it? Wouldn't the blame instantly be put on terrorists/russians/iranians/etc? And wouldn't this have lead to some kind of WWIII?