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USAF Almost Nuked North Carolina In 1961 – Declassified Document
Freshly Exhumed sends in a story about how close the United States came to accidentally attacking itself with nuclear weapons just a few days after John F. Kennedy took office.
"A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the U.S. Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima. The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US 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 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."
What an improvement for NC that would have been.
South Carolina.
Have gnu, will travel.
Think about it... if you were the Russians back then, and you were going to drop a nuke on the US, would North Carolina be at the top of your list?
I'll give you Fort Bragg, but outside of that, what there would be worth risking a counter strike?
In all likelihood they would have just blamed Bush.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
I'd be good for someone with actual statistics knowledge to say what the probability of 3/4/5 safeties failing would be.
1/8 | 1/16 | 1/32. I'm a statistical god!
Article says:
"The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast."
If carrying A-Bombs across the eastern coast is a routine flight I would love to know what the USAF considers an exceptional flight.
If this was an attempt to rewrite history and kill Snowden before he was born, then they sent the time cops back over 22 years too early.
Life, ultimately, boils down to the Four Fs: Fighting, Fleeing, Feeding, and Mating.
I'm thinking that there's probably a higher chance of a devastating meteor impact... launched by giant space-bugs.
I think I saw a documentary on that once.
Surprising amount of tits featured for an astrophysics documentary.
You'll have to excuse the grandparent post; he inadvertently had a triple safety failure and went full retard.
They killed an unarmed cow? How could they?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Presumably that's why there were four instead of two or three.
The fourth switch has been since discontinued due to budget cuts.
I'd like to know more...
Who is John Cabal?