7 ms·

The Secret Nuclear Threat

72 points by miraj 11y ago

marvel_boy 11y ago
Just frightening.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  Whats most frightening about this story is how folks react to it - reading the comments is definitely not one way to maintain faith in humanity. The unadulterated hatred which some feel is their right to express is just .. astounding ..
  - madaxe_again 11y ago
    That would be damage control doing their thing. First response to leaking is defamation and denigration - make the source look like a complete and utter tool, like an idiot, like someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. I for one can vouch that much of what he's said harks true, from the horror stories a friend who serves on these boats has told over the years - apparently being a submariner mostly comprises wading around in (occasionally electrified) sewage with a headache, waiting for something to catch fire or break.
andyjohnson0 11y ago
Some context: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/18/navy-whistleblower-on-run-alleged-trident-safety-failings http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/18/navy-whistleb...
- cmdkeen 11y ago
  Not really given it mostly quotes directly from the "article" and makes basic errors - I'm sure Chief Petty Officers would like to think they are "senior officers" but that doesn't make it so. He leaked this to all the national papers and they are pretty much all running it on the human interest angle, not the nuclear safety angle, which should tell you a lot about this "story".
  - andyjohnson0 11y ago
    I agree that is doesn't add much if you read UK media. For the majority of the world, which doesn't, I thought it gave some useful context: the sailor is "on the run", the MOD are downplaying his claims, the SNP reaction, etc.
    - cmdkeen 11y ago
      Ah, fair play, you're right.
junto 11y ago
Are there any other examples of British whistleblowers who broke the Official Secrets Act and were pardoned? I can't imagine that David Cameron is going to pardon this and 'make a mockery' of both the British Navy and the OSA. This is not my opinion I hasten to add, but the British government tends to be pretty militant when it cones to this kind of thing. The OSA is treated as 'sacrosanct'. The ex-MI5 officer David Shayler had a similar situation, when he released the information about the state sponsored assassination attempt on Libya's Gadaffi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler At the trial Shayler represented himself, claiming that the Official Secrets Act was incompatible with the Human Rights Act and that it was not a crime to report a crime although these arguments were dismissed by the court with the latter being ruled irrelevant. Shayler's defence attempted to argue that there were no other avenues to pursue his concerns with the service and its performance. The judge ruled that while this was true it was irrelevant. The judge instructed the jury to return a guilty verdict and that the House of Lords had ruled in another case that a defendant could not argue that he had revealed information in the public interest. After more than three hours of deliberation the jury found him guilty. In November 2002 he was sentenced to 6 months in prison, of which he served three weeks in Belmarsh prison and just under five weeks in Ford Open Prison, with the four months served on remand in France being taken into consideration.
- andyjohnson0 11y ago
  Katherine Gun [1]. She was prosecuted, but the case quickly collapsed. Not a pardon though - they are very rarely used in the UK. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun
PhantomGremlin 11y ago
Wikileaks published a similar (earlier?) version just yesterday. The HN Illuminati didn't have much to say about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9561854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9561854
cmdkeen 11y ago
Sailors spin dits (that's "tell stories" to mere mortals), especially to baby sailors. There are plenty of "we thought we were going to die" stories about submarines, yet for some reason the RN doesn't actually lose them. Perhaps it is because highly experienced personnel, whose lives are equally on the line, know more than someone doing a 3 month training patrol. AB McNeilly went onboard with the intent of "whistleblowing" - the effect of this can be seen in the biased way he reports on the concept of trainees being onboard. People have to be trained on submarines, the V boats are excellent platforms to do it, and the people he was "distracting" are a) used to it and b) would have no compunction about telling a trainee to go away if things got busy. Finally - you don't need to smuggle a bomb on board to sink a submarine, any member of the crew can do it, in just the same way that you could sink a surface ship without explosives.
- cloakandswagger 11y ago
  I agree, the author's tone makes it obvious that he's a rabble-rouser who went in with the explicit goal of finding a scandal.
- GunterGiggidy 11y ago
  Your criticisms: 1. William McNeilly is an inexperienced trainee, 2. William McNeilly is not preceded by other whistleblowers from the same field, 3. William McNeilly is a whistleblower who intended to blow the whistle, 4. William McNeilly does not have good writing skills, 5. William McNeilly cannot prove that the world will end. You need to carefully investigate your own motivations behind these criticisms. According to this logic, the only legitimate whistleblowers are those who have been in their industry for 15+ years, have the writing skills of a well-versed journalist, and have blown the whistle after a series of other whistleblowers (with the above qualifications, of course) from the same industry. This is piss poor (or convenient, your choice) criteria to dismiss whistleblower revelations. It is however an excellent way of reframing the issue by focusing on the whistleblower rather than the issue itself, effectively avoiding the debate on the revelations and their implications. My advice is that you watch Citizenfour, in which a lengthy scene describes whistleblowers' and journalists' valid anxieties and experience with shills, commentators, and the public, all of whom are more interested, for a multiplicity of reasons, in delegitimizing a whistleblower's persona rather than the content of the leaks s/he provided.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Aoyagi 11y ago
"The further the submarine descented the more the weight of the submarine increased due to pressure." How does that work? I thought pressure under water is the same from all directions.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  The mass of the submarine increases due to pumping water into the ballast tanks. The weight of the submarine remains proportional to the mass, and varies a tiny amount according to depth (deeper = heavier). The net downward force upon it increases, due to reduced upward force from buoyancy, which is dependent upon density, which is proportional to gas pressure. The author was correct, but for the wrong reasons. The weight of the submarine increased due to the additional mass of water in the ballast tanks. The weight of the submarine increased due to the increase in Earth's gravitation at points nearer the center of mass. The apparent weight increased due to a reduction in buoyancy. But in no way can you increase the weight of something by squeezing it. (Aside from invented hypotheticals like two gas giant planets wrapped in unbreachable envelopes, lightly touching, without rotation.)
- big_paps 11y ago
  Pressure under water is not the same from all directions. Otherwise a balloon rise under water.
rememberlenny 11y ago
Is anyone here interested in the nuclear abolition movement? Im in an international buddhist organization that is represented at the United Nations. As a software engineer, I'd love to meet other people who are interested in solving these problems.
- gnvkay 11y ago
  Whichever org you're a part of, you're overstating its qualifications. The only NGOs "represented" at the United Nations[1] are the Red Cross/Crescent, IPU, IOC and Knights of Malta. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_observers#Other_entities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly...
  - huxley 11y ago
    Being represented at the UN doesn't necessarily mean being an observer at the General Assembly, lots of NGOs have consultative status on ECOSOC, the UN Economics and Social Council.
outworlder 11y ago
I've just skimmed the document due to lack of time. But I haven't found anything truly earth-shattering. People lose their ids, the pin system is not working, anyone can get in and release the nukes! Unless the submarine is crewed by monkeys, I don't expect anyone not in the navy avoiding detection for long. Humans are great pattern-matchers. The rest of the issues... I get it. Things break. Submarines are hard. This is why they have multiple, redundant systems. The more useful question would be: how well does it fare against the potential enemies? It could turn out that the potential opponents are much worse off. But I wouldn't expect a single, young sailor to know the answer for that.
- cmdkeen 11y ago
  It's worth comparing this with the HMS ASTUTE shooting [1] when a sailor with a loaded weapon did decide to cause problems on board a submarine. That led to a major culture shift in the Royal Navy and a lot of soul searching. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Astute_%28S119%29#2011_fatal_shooting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Astute_%28S119%29#2011_fata...
shenanigoat 11y ago
Article deleted from Scribd. Seems the Illuminati got to it before I did.

72 points by miraj 11y ago

marvel_boy 11y ago

Just frightening.

fit2rule 11y ago
Whats most frightening about this story is how folks react to it - reading the comments is definitely not one way to maintain faith in humanity. The unadulterated hatred which some feel is their right to express is just .. astounding ..
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  That would be damage control doing their thing. First response to leaking is defamation and denigration - make the source look like a complete and utter tool, like an idiot, like someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. I for one can vouch that much of what he's said harks true, from the horror stories a friend who serves on these boats has told over the years - apparently being a submariner mostly comprises wading around in (occasionally electrified) sewage with a headache, waiting for something to catch fire or break.

andyjohnson0 11y ago

Some context: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/18/navy-whistleblower-on-run-alleged-trident-safety-failings http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/18/navy-whistleb...

cmdkeen 11y ago
Not really given it mostly quotes directly from the "article" and makes basic errors - I'm sure Chief Petty Officers would like to think they are "senior officers" but that doesn't make it so. He leaked this to all the national papers and they are pretty much all running it on the human interest angle, not the nuclear safety angle, which should tell you a lot about this "story".
- andyjohnson0 11y ago
  I agree that is doesn't add much if you read UK media. For the majority of the world, which doesn't, I thought it gave some useful context: the sailor is "on the run", the MOD are downplaying his claims, the SNP reaction, etc.
  - cmdkeen 11y ago
    Ah, fair play, you're right.

junto 11y ago

Are there any other examples of British whistleblowers who broke the Official Secrets Act and were pardoned? I can't imagine that David Cameron is going to pardon this and 'make a mockery' of both the British Navy and the OSA. This is not my opinion I hasten to add, but the British government tends to be pretty militant when it cones to this kind of thing. The OSA is treated as 'sacrosanct'. The ex-MI5 officer David Shayler had a similar situation, when he released the information about the state sponsored assassination attempt on Libya's Gadaffi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler At the trial Shayler represented himself, claiming that the Official Secrets Act was incompatible with the Human Rights Act and that it was not a crime to report a crime although these arguments were dismissed by the court with the latter being ruled irrelevant. Shayler's defence attempted to argue that there were no other avenues to pursue his concerns with the service and its performance. The judge ruled that while this was true it was irrelevant. The judge instructed the jury to return a guilty verdict and that the House of Lords had ruled in another case that a defendant could not argue that he had revealed information in the public interest. After more than three hours of deliberation the jury found him guilty. In November 2002 he was sentenced to 6 months in prison, of which he served three weeks in Belmarsh prison and just under five weeks in Ford Open Prison, with the four months served on remand in France being taken into consideration.

andyjohnson0 11y ago
Katherine Gun [1]. She was prosecuted, but the case quickly collapsed. Not a pardon though - they are very rarely used in the UK. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun

PhantomGremlin 11y ago

Wikileaks published a similar (earlier?) version just yesterday. The HN Illuminati didn't have much to say about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9561854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9561854

cmdkeen 11y ago

Sailors spin dits (that's "tell stories" to mere mortals), especially to baby sailors. There are plenty of "we thought we were going to die" stories about submarines, yet for some reason the RN doesn't actually lose them. Perhaps it is because highly experienced personnel, whose lives are equally on the line, know more than someone doing a 3 month training patrol. AB McNeilly went onboard with the intent of "whistleblowing" - the effect of this can be seen in the biased way he reports on the concept of trainees being onboard. People have to be trained on submarines, the V boats are excellent platforms to do it, and the people he was "distracting" are a) used to it and b) would have no compunction about telling a trainee to go away if things got busy. Finally - you don't need to smuggle a bomb on board to sink a submarine, any member of the crew can do it, in just the same way that you could sink a surface ship without explosives.

cloakandswagger 11y ago
I agree, the author's tone makes it obvious that he's a rabble-rouser who went in with the explicit goal of finding a scandal.
GunterGiggidy 11y ago
Your criticisms: 1. William McNeilly is an inexperienced trainee, 2. William McNeilly is not preceded by other whistleblowers from the same field, 3. William McNeilly is a whistleblower who intended to blow the whistle, 4. William McNeilly does not have good writing skills, 5. William McNeilly cannot prove that the world will end. You need to carefully investigate your own motivations behind these criticisms. According to this logic, the only legitimate whistleblowers are those who have been in their industry for 15+ years, have the writing skills of a well-versed journalist, and have blown the whistle after a series of other whistleblowers (with the above qualifications, of course) from the same industry. This is piss poor (or convenient, your choice) criteria to dismiss whistleblower revelations. It is however an excellent way of reframing the issue by focusing on the whistleblower rather than the issue itself, effectively avoiding the debate on the revelations and their implications. My advice is that you watch Citizenfour, in which a lengthy scene describes whistleblowers' and journalists' valid anxieties and experience with shills, commentators, and the public, all of whom are more interested, for a multiplicity of reasons, in delegitimizing a whistleblower's persona rather than the content of the leaks s/he provided.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Aoyagi 11y ago

"The further the submarine descented the more the weight of the submarine increased due to pressure." How does that work? I thought pressure under water is the same from all directions.

logfromblammo 11y ago
The mass of the submarine increases due to pumping water into the ballast tanks. The weight of the submarine remains proportional to the mass, and varies a tiny amount according to depth (deeper = heavier). The net downward force upon it increases, due to reduced upward force from buoyancy, which is dependent upon density, which is proportional to gas pressure. The author was correct, but for the wrong reasons. The weight of the submarine increased due to the additional mass of water in the ballast tanks. The weight of the submarine increased due to the increase in Earth's gravitation at points nearer the center of mass. The apparent weight increased due to a reduction in buoyancy. But in no way can you increase the weight of something by squeezing it. (Aside from invented hypotheticals like two gas giant planets wrapped in unbreachable envelopes, lightly touching, without rotation.)
big_paps 11y ago
Pressure under water is not the same from all directions. Otherwise a balloon rise under water.

rememberlenny 11y ago

Is anyone here interested in the nuclear abolition movement? Im in an international buddhist organization that is represented at the United Nations. As a software engineer, I'd love to meet other people who are interested in solving these problems.

gnvkay 11y ago
Whichever org you're a part of, you're overstating its qualifications. The only NGOs "represented" at the United Nations[1] are the Red Cross/Crescent, IPU, IOC and Knights of Malta. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_observers#Other_entities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly...
- huxley 11y ago
  Being represented at the UN doesn't necessarily mean being an observer at the General Assembly, lots of NGOs have consultative status on ECOSOC, the UN Economics and Social Council.

outworlder 11y ago

I've just skimmed the document due to lack of time. But I haven't found anything truly earth-shattering. People lose their ids, the pin system is not working, anyone can get in and release the nukes! Unless the submarine is crewed by monkeys, I don't expect anyone not in the navy avoiding detection for long. Humans are great pattern-matchers. The rest of the issues... I get it. Things break. Submarines are hard. This is why they have multiple, redundant systems. The more useful question would be: how well does it fare against the potential enemies? It could turn out that the potential opponents are much worse off. But I wouldn't expect a single, young sailor to know the answer for that.

cmdkeen 11y ago
It's worth comparing this with the HMS ASTUTE shooting [1] when a sailor with a loaded weapon did decide to cause problems on board a submarine. That led to a major culture shift in the Royal Navy and a lot of soul searching. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Astute_%28S119%29#2011_fatal_shooting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Astute_%28S119%29#2011_fata...

shenanigoat 11y ago

Article deleted from Scribd. Seems the Illuminati got to it before I did.