US almost nuked itself in 1961

MissChief · 22 Sep 2013 at 00:24

Westyfield2 said:
I thought that bombs had to be armed before they'll do anything? I.E. you could smack a truck into one, but if it's not armed it'll do nowt.

Nuclear weapons are caused to explode by conventional explosive, usually arranged in a sphere around the nuclear material, focusing the conventional explosive into the nuclear material. You'd still get a decent enough conventional explosion but mixed among that would be lots of Radioactive material, a so called 'dirty' bomb. The initial explosion would be relatively small but the radioactive material released into the air could make a great deal of people very sick and kill hundreds if not thousands through radiation poisoning.

Combat squirrel · 22 Sep 2013 at 01:44

I can't figure out what's making me chuckle more:

(1) The either **** pilot or **8* engineers which caused the bomb to drop.

(2) The fact that the drop activated nuclear weapons failed to arm correctly, proving they can't build those properly either!

I assume the guy that built the plane was accompanied by the nuclear bomb maker when they sent them into the room to dismantle the half armed nuclear bomb that failed to go boom boom.

Comedy gold.

Stretch · 22 Sep 2013 at 02:22

The US has nuked itself hundreds of times.

do_ron_ron · 22 Sep 2013 at 08:23

I remember the Govt. downplaying Lakenheath. The H-bombs over Goldsboro would have been a game changer. A couple of H-bombs exploding in America would have made the world a safer place. No later Cuba crisis.

Efour · 22 Sep 2013 at 08:27

Fire_fly said:
Or it could have gone the other way with the Americans not bothering to fully investigate and just ordering retaliation strikes starting WW3.

Thats what i was thinking

.. Lovely

n111ck · 22 Sep 2013 at 08:49

randal said:
Sad as any loss of life would have been from such an accident, it probably would have made the world a better place.

Or triggered WW3...

No1newts · 22 Sep 2013 at 08:53

do_ron_ron said:
I remember the Govt. downplaying Lakenheath. The H-bombs over Goldsboro would have been a game changer. A couple of H-bombs exploding in America would have made the world a safer place. No later Cuba crisis.

No it wouldn't.

The likelihood is in times like those the US would have blamed Russia whether they knew the truth to save face or whether they were unsure of facts so to respond. Next thing you know it would have been nuclear Armageddon.

Dolph · 22 Sep 2013 at 08:56

Combat squirrel said:
I can't figure out what's making me chuckle more:

(1) The either **** pilot or **8* engineers which caused the bomb to drop.

(2) The fact that the drop activated nuclear weapons failed to arm correctly, proving they can't build those properly either!

I assume the guy that built the plane was accompanied by the nuclear bomb maker when they sent them into the room to dismantle the half armed nuclear bomb that failed to go boom boom.

Comedy gold.

Not as funny as your complete and total misunderstanding displayed in point 2. Now that really is comedy gold.

Incidents like this are the main reason everything moved to sub based missiles tho7gh.

Dolph · 22 Sep 2013 at 09:05

Double post.

mmj_uk · 22 Sep 2013 at 10:33

Friendly aliens stopped it from detonating, obviously.

Duke · 22 Sep 2013 at 10:37

Guest2 said:
Someone will start inventing something more destructive / accurate. Like a laser that can pinpoint individuals or a whole country and kill with a button press - like this but for offense instead of defense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

Read that earlier, thanks for posting.

flynlr · 23 Sep 2013 at 01:21

Stretch said:
The US has nuked itself hundreds of times.

yup .every circle in this pic is a nuke explosion
and this is a little part of the Nevada test range
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_National_Security_Site
.

ubersonic · 23 Sep 2013 at 08:16

Isn't it standard procedure for a nuclear bomber to drop its payload if it gets into trouble? unarmed the bombs/missiles wouldn't be a threat whereas if they wen't down with the plane that could cause an issue.

Wasn't the also an incident where the USAF nearly nuked Sussex at some point? May have been Surrey or Suffolk.

Jester* · 23 Sep 2013 at 08:25

Dolph said:
Not as funny as your complete and total misunderstanding displayed in point 2. Now that really is comedy gold.

Incidents like this are the main reason everything moved to sub based missiles tho7gh.

I have to disagree on that.

Think about it tactically, the submarine as a launch platform is the fundamental idea behind the deterrent. How can another country guarantee taking out another countries nuclear capabilities 100% in the first strike when they cannot account for the location of all ICBM's. Silo's/Bunkers and other facilities cannot move or be extremely hard to detect, so submarines ensure the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) idea.

So no one nukes each other :cool:

platinum87 · 23 Sep 2013 at 08:43

Guest2 said:
So they were dropped but didn't go off?

260 times more powerful than the hiroshima atom bomb would probably wipe out not just America, but the whole planet! (guess from things like Tsunami and other aftermath)

260 times more powerful than hiroshima will not wake sleeping children from 50 miles away

Geekazoid · 23 Sep 2013 at 13:09

Tasar (however you spell it) was 50MT nuclear device (most powerful nuclear device ever tested) how does that compare to the energy output say of a volcanic explosion? like how many MT explosion was Mt Saint Helens?

or the Tundra Incident??

Glaucus · 23 Sep 2013 at 13:11

Geekazoid said:
Tasar (however you spell it) was 50MT nuclear device (most powerful nuclear device ever tested) how does that compare to the energy output say of a volcanic explosion? like how many MT explosion was Mt Saint Helens?

Seymour Narrows, British Columbia 1958. 1,375 tons of chemical explosives. 1.375 kilotons

Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. 13 kilotons.

Fat man, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945. 20 kilotons.

The Tanguska Event, suspected comet impact in Tanguska, Russia on June 30, 1908. 10 megatons

The Bravo test, one of the Bikini Atoll bomb tests. February 1954, was, at 15 megatons, the most powerful bomb ever detonated by the United States--far bigger than expected. 15 megatons

One pound of antimatter 19.5 megatons

Mount St. Helen May 18, 1980. 24 megatons

Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated 11:32 AM 30 October 1961 (Moscow Time) Such a device could be souped up to deliver a 100 megaton blast. 50 megatons

The third 1883 eruption of Krakatoa 150 megatons

Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast. At full power, a hurricane like Katrina releases 10 megatons every 20 minutes. 300 megatons

World War III, computed as the simultaneous explosion of all known nuclear devices (about 15,000 today). 10,000 megatons

"Dinosaur Killer" Impact of 10-15 km asteroid traveling at 20 kilometers per second. 100,000,000 megatons or 10^8 megatons

A supernova, an explosion powerful enough to destroy a solar system. 10 billion billion billion megatons or 10^27 megatons

platinum87 · 23 Sep 2013 at 13:14

Geekazoid said:
Tasar (however you spell it) was 50MT nuclear device (most powerful nuclear device ever tested) how does that compare to the energy output say of a volcanic explosion? like how many MT explosion was Mt Saint Helens?

or the Tundra Incident??

probably 20-30MT Though krakatoa was about 200MT if i remember correctly.

Skunkworks · 23 Sep 2013 at 13:19

It makes me wonder if the US would have a different attitude to bombing anyone it feels like now. Probably not.

I also heard a story about a plane crashing while landing during the 70s or 80s at either Bentwaters or Lakenheath. Apparently burning aviation fuel was thrown over some live nukes being stored in a hangar. No idea how true that is.

Geekazoid · 23 Sep 2013 at 13:32

Seymour Narrows, British Columbia 1958. 1,375 tons of chemical explosives. 1.375 kilotons
Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. 13 kilotons.
Fat man, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945. 20 kilotons.
The Tanguska Event, suspected comet impact in Tanguska, Russia on June 30, 1908. 10 megatons
The Bravo test, one of the Bikini Atoll bomb tests. February 1954, was, at 15 megatons, the most powerful bomb ever detonated by the United States--far bigger than expected. 15 megatons
One pound of antimatter 19.5 megatons
Mount St. Helen May 18, 1980. 24 megatons
Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated 11:32 AM 30 October 1961 (Moscow Time) Such a device could be souped up to deliver a 100 megaton blast. 50 megatons
The third 1883 eruption of Krakatoa 150 megatons
Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast. At full power, a hurricane like Katrina releases 10 megatons every 20 minutes. 300 megatons
World War III, computed as the simultaneous explosion of all known nuclear devices (about 15,000 today). 10,000 megatons
"Dinosaur Killer" Impact of 10-15 km asteroid traveling at 20 kilometers per second. 100,000,000 megatons or 10^8 megatons
A supernova, an explosion powerful enough to destroy a solar system. 10 billion billion billion megatons or 10^27 megatons

WOW thats shocking i thought natural disasters would be more powerful.