3 ms·

Two nuclear bombs nearly detonated in North Carolina in 1961

16 points by rodrigocoelho 12y ago

lfuller 12y ago
The nagasaki bomb was actually only 2% of a megaton (21kt).
api 12y ago
Had this occurred, I wonder if it would have immediately been interpreted as a Soviet strike and started WWIII? Stuff like this makes me wonder about quantum immortality. Maybe we just inhabit one of the slices of the multiverse where we didn't die.
1qaz2wsx3edc 12y ago
I'm guessing this popped up here after appearing on reddit yesterday. John Oliver did a good report on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g&list=UU3XTzVzaHQEd30rQbuvCtTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g&list=UU3XTzVzaHQ... http://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/2bxfzq/john_oliver_on_nuclear_weapons/ http://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/2bxfzq/john_oliv... It's pretty frakked up. Edit: Oh, and the cold war is heating up: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2c1emy/russia_may_leave_nuclear_treaty/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2c1emy/russia_may... None of this is settling.
- bluedino 12y ago
  It was posted here 10 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6419056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6419056 And it was posted here a few weeks ago as well.
  - dang 12y ago
    Thanks. Burying as dupe.
__m 12y ago
Blitznews... Eric Schlosser already wrote about it in his book "Command and Control"
droopybuns 12y ago
Great example of a news anchor mangling technical details in this link.
CapitalistCartr 12y ago
Again??? How many times are we gonna rehash this? Yeah, we dropped them all over the place until 1970. Here's a couple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6419056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6419056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7927910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7927910
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  The difference here is this part, I think: > The impact of the crash put it in the "armed" setting. Fortunately -- once again -- it damaged another part of the bomb needed to initiate an explosion. That's a lot close than "whoops, we dropped one".
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mixmax 12y ago
It's easy to be snarky about nuclear weapons almost going off time and time again from the 50's to the 70's and maybe later, but when you look more closely it's actually an incredibly difficult design challenge. A nuclear bomb has two design criteria that are at odds with each other; On the one hand it must under no circumstances detonate when it isn't suppposed to. On the other hand it must be easy to detonate when it's supposed to. How do you design a fail-safe system that lives up to those two criteria? It's a lot harder than it sounds.
- Already__Taken 12y ago
  Well a lot of that starts with not flying them across your own country fully armed. Nukes are incredible hard to set off, you could blow one up with a missile. It would be a mess but that is not enough to set off the full on detonation of the core material. The scary thing isn't a nuke going off accidentally, I mean if you keep enough of them it's just a certainty on a timeline. The scary thing is a miscommunication about whose it was, and the vengeful actions that follow.

16 points by rodrigocoelho 12y ago

The nagasaki bomb was actually only 2% of a megaton (21kt).

api 12y ago

Had this occurred, I wonder if it would have immediately been interpreted as a Soviet strike and started WWIII? Stuff like this makes me wonder about quantum immortality. Maybe we just inhabit one of the slices of the multiverse where we didn't die.

1qaz2wsx3edc 12y ago

I'm guessing this popped up here after appearing on reddit yesterday. John Oliver did a good report on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g&list=UU3XTzVzaHQEd30rQbuvCtTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g&list=UU3XTzVzaHQ... http://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/2bxfzq/john_oliver_on_nuclear_weapons/ http://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/2bxfzq/john_oliv... It's pretty frakked up. Edit: Oh, and the cold war is heating up: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2c1emy/russia_may_leave_nuclear_treaty/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2c1emy/russia_may... None of this is settling.

bluedino 12y ago
It was posted here 10 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6419056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6419056 And it was posted here a few weeks ago as well.
- dang 12y ago
  Thanks. Burying as dupe.

__m 12y ago

Blitznews... Eric Schlosser already wrote about it in his book "Command and Control"

droopybuns 12y ago

Great example of a news anchor mangling technical details in this link.

CapitalistCartr 12y ago

Again??? How many times are we gonna rehash this? Yeah, we dropped them all over the place until 1970. Here's a couple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6419056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6419056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7927910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7927910

ceejayoz 12y ago
The difference here is this part, I think: > The impact of the crash put it in the "armed" setting. Fortunately -- once again -- it damaged another part of the bomb needed to initiate an explosion. That's a lot close than "whoops, we dropped one".

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mixmax 12y ago

It's easy to be snarky about nuclear weapons almost going off time and time again from the 50's to the 70's and maybe later, but when you look more closely it's actually an incredibly difficult design challenge. A nuclear bomb has two design criteria that are at odds with each other; On the one hand it must under no circumstances detonate when it isn't suppposed to. On the other hand it must be easy to detonate when it's supposed to. How do you design a fail-safe system that lives up to those two criteria? It's a lot harder than it sounds.

Already__Taken 12y ago
Well a lot of that starts with not flying them across your own country fully armed. Nukes are incredible hard to set off, you could blow one up with a missile. It would be a mess but that is not enough to set off the full on detonation of the core material. The scary thing isn't a nuke going off accidentally, I mean if you keep enough of them it's just a certainty on a timeline. The scary thing is a miscommunication about whose it was, and the vengeful actions that follow.