3 ms·

Here we have a sample of 8 safety measures across two bombs with 3 failures. That's not 1 in a million, that's 1 in 3.

• corin_ 13y ago
  That's not how probability works, though. I could go and buy a lottery ticket tomorrow for the first time in my life and win the jackpot, it wouldn't mean that the odds of winning are 100%.
  • nostromo 13y ago
    No, this isn't a problem of probability, it's a problem of "not enough data." Based on this tiny sample, here's the lottery analogy: The lottery will flip 4 coins that have a 37.5% chance of being heads. If you roll 4 heads lots of people die. So, just using this very inadequate sample from a single declassified document, you could estimate that a misfired bomb has a 2% chance of detonation (37.5%^4). Obviously none of us know the real dataset, but my point is simply that it's not comforting that so many safety measures failed. (Which, as it happens, is also the opinion of the author of the original report in the article.)
    • corin_ 13y ago
      > No, this isn't a problem of probability, it's a problem of "not enough data." That was exactly my point, that with such little data you cannot judge the probability.
• smsm42 13y ago
  Actually, according to the article, only one bomb suffered failure of 3 security measures out of 4. The second one just dropped to the ground and disintegrated on impact[1], as any well-behaved non-activated bomb should. Of course, this still leaves uranium and other stuff laying around, but that's another matter - no security system can prevent that, if you have it in the bomb and it falls down, it'll be where it fell. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash