Nuclear weapons are the most devastating weapons
ever devised by man.
With the power to completely level a city,
a single bomb can kill millions and bring
a nation to its knees.
With their first use in World War II by the
United States against a stubborn Japan that
refused to surrender, nuclear weapons have
only grown in yields over the decades, growing
to devices of nightmarish power.
While the original Little Boy released 15
kilotons of energy, or an equivalent of 15,000
tons of TNT, the modern B83 gravity bomb has
a yield of 1.2 megatons, or 1,200,000 tons
of TNT- over 80 times more powerful than Little
Boy.
Yet nuclear weapons are capable of much, much
more than that, with the Soviet Union's Tsar
Bomba, detonated in 1961, producing a 50 megaton
blast, or 3,333 times the explosive yield
of Little Boy.
While Little Boy devastated a city, the Tsar
Bomba was capable of devastating an entire
county, wiping out tens of millions of people
if dropped in a heavily populated area like
Los Angeles or Moscow.
Today we're capable of even greater yields
though, and even before the Russians had detonated
their Tsar Bomba, Edward Teller, the Hungarian-American
inventor of the hydrogen bomb, had already
drawn up plans for a 10 gigaton- or 10,000
megaton- bomb.
Such a bomb would have been capable of devastating
the entirety of England and Ireland combined,
or both North and South Korea.
Ultimately such a proposal was deemed way
too impractical to be effective, and ultimately
unnecessary.
With the development of Multiple Impact Re-entry
Vehicle technology, a single nuclear missile
could deliver a scattershot payload of nuclear
weapons that would devastate a countryside.
Once a full nuclear strike had been carried
out, there would have been little point to
devastate the rest of the nation- every military
and civilian target would have been eradicated,
and most survivors would then die from the
societal collapse that followed.
With so much power in such small devices it
can be terrifying to think about them being
involved in any sort of accident, and yet
throughout history that's exactly what's happened
time and time again.
Nuclear weapons safety policy in the United
States is known as “always and never”,
in that a nuclear weapon must always be reliably
counted on to detonate when deployed, but
must never detonate when not specifically
intended to do so- no matter the circumstances.
This policy was immediately put to the test
as nuclear weapons joined the growing military
arsenal of the United States and other nations,
and incredibly, despite some major accidents,
the safety standard of always and never has
held.
Now let's look at some of the worst nuclear
weapon accidents in history:
1950 British Columbia
On the 14thof February, 1950, a US Air Force
Convair B-36 was tasked with conducting a
simulated nuclear strike against the Soviet
Union.
This was the beginning of the Cold War and
well before the advent of intercontinental
ballistic missiles, so nuclear weapons could
only be delivered via aircraft.
Yet any such strike mission would have to
cross over the North Pole, facing bitterly
cold temperatures and other flight challenges-
especially so if war broke out during the
winter.
Realizing that they needed to ascertain just
how feasible such a strike would be, the US
military approved and then carried out the
simulated nuclear strike.
For the nuclear exercise the B-36 would take
off from Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska
and then fly just off the coast of the Alaskan
panhandle and British Columbia, cross inland
over Washington state into Montana, and then
climb to 40,000 feet (12,000 meters) for a
simulated bomb run on San Francisco in California.
Then the plane would continue its non-stop
flight to Fort Worth, Texas where it would
land.
The mission would last 24 hours and for added
realism, the bomber carried a Mark IV atomic
bomb- although the weapon only carried uranium
and 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of conventional
explosives.
The plutonium core necessary for a nuclear
detonation was not present.
Extreme cold weather on the ground at Eielson
AFB immediately affected the bomber, causing
some minor technical difficulties.
Eventually though the plane was cleared for
take off, only for seven hours later to have
flames begin shooting out of three of the
six engines.
To prevent the engines from being severely
damaged, the three engines were shut down
and the plane continued on its mission on
just three operational engines.
However, the three engines eventually were
unable to provide full power, causing the
plane to lose altitude.
The crew decided to abandon the aircraft as
it could not stay aloft for much longer.
In order to spare his crew from parachuting
into the freezing cold North Pacific, the
aircraft commander steered the plane inland.
Before bailing, the atomic bomb was jettisoned
somewhere over the Inside Passage in British
Columbia, with the weapon detonating in mid-air.
As it did not have its plutonium core though
the weapon did not achieve a nuclear yield-
although the conventional explosives would
have spread radioactive particles across a
wide area.
Thankfully the territory was extremely remote,
and to date no casualties from the explosion
have ever been reported.
2007, North Dakota
Modern nuclear weapon operations require the
highest degrees of security and safety both,
and even the most basic of maintenance operations
has a long list of stringent security guidelines
that must be strictly adhered to.
Yet in 2007 six nuclear cruise missiles went
missing from their storage depot and flown
cross-country with nobody involved being aware.
At 0800 hours on the 29thof August, 2007,
a breakout crew of US Air Force airmen from
Minot Air Force Base prepared twelve AGM-129
air-launched cruise missiles for transport
to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana . This
was the sixth of twelve planned ferry missions,
with each flight carrying 12 cruise missiles
with dummy warheads for storage in Barksdale.
Yet as the airmen prepared the weapons for
loading onto a waiting B-52, instead of using
the standard electronic tracking system for
the missiles, they relied on an informal process
that failed to identify six of the missiles
as being loaded with fully functional W80-1
variable yield nuclear warheads.
If you're wondering what that means, it's
military speak for “the airmen got lazy
and complacent and cut corners to get the
job done quickly.”
As the breakout crew began a final inspection
of the missiles however, the transport crew
arrived early and began to hook up the missiles
for transport to the waiting plane.
Once more failing to adequately do their jobs,
the breakout crew simply allowed the transport
crew to remove the missiles without finishing
their final check, which would have discovered
the live warheads and put a halt to the entire
incident.
Instead the transport crew towed the missiles
to the waiting aircraft were they were then
loaded on the external wingtip pylons at approximately
0925.
For over 23 hours the nuclear weapons sat
completely unguarded on the Minot Air Force
Base flight line as the crew loaded them onto
their pylons and then left the plane sitting
out overnight for the next day's mission.
The next morning one of the aircraft's flight
officers arrived and prepped the plane for
takeoff, closely inspecting the six missiles
on the right wing which were loaded with training
warheads, but signing off on the flight manifest
without then inspecting the six missiles on
the opposite wingtip- once more complacency
ensured the live nuclear weapons would remain
undetected and unguarded.
The B-52 then took off and landed at Barskdale
Air Force Base in Louisiana a few hours later,
where it remained in a far corner of the flight
line completely unguarded for nine hours.
That night a munitions team arrived to remove
the missiles, upon which one of the crew members
noticed something unusual about the six missiles
containing nuclear warheads and immediately
contacted his supervisor.
A skeptical supervisor arrived shortly after
and immediately confirmed that the weapons
were indeed armed and live, and immediately
reported the incident up the chain of command.
The mere movement of nuclear weapons from
an active flight line to their storage bunkers
requires a security force of no less than
60 heavily armed security personnel made up
of several fire teams, four heavy weapon escorts,
and numerous ATV off-road roving scouts to
monitor avenues of approach.
While present on an aircraft the weapons require
at minimum a 15 man Quick Reaction Force that
can arrive on-scene to the plane within 5
minutes, with two stationary patrols made
up of 2 guards each with a third 2-man mobile
patrol constantly monitoring the perimeter.
Yet for 36 hours the nuclear weapons involved
remained completely unguarded, tucked away
in a far corner of two different flight lines,
with all personnel involved completely oblivious
to their presence.
Worse yet, for that entire duration the United
States military had lost track of six of the
most powerful nuclear devices in its inventory,
and nobody had any idea.
1966, Spain
In 1966 intercontinental ballistic missiles
were still a ways off from being reliable
means of delivering nuclear weapons, and thus
the bulk of the nuclear strike capability
of the United States still rested on its bomber
fleet.
Known as SAC, the US Air Force's Strategic
Air Command was responsible for delivering
nuclear armageddon against the Soviet Union,
and to maintain this capability regularly
engaged in training scenarios meant to keep
its readiness levels up.
On the 17thof January, 1966, A B-52 took off
from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North
Carolina.
It's mission was to conduct a long-range simulated
nuclear attack run against the Soviet Union
and its allies, and thus would fly across
the Atlantic Ocean, over the Mediterranean
Sea, and then east off the Italian coast before
turning around and flying back home, reaching
within just a few dozen miles of the Soviet
Union's borders.
Because war could break out at any time, the
aircraft was loaded with four B28RI hydrogen
bombs for its training mission, which could
be turned into a live fire mission at any
time in worst case scenario.
The flight plan would take over 24 hours and
involve two in-flight refuelings, a dangerous
affair that requires careful coordination
between the tanker and receiving aircraft-
specially with aircraft as large as the B-52
involved.
At 10:30 AM while flying at 31,000 feet (9,450
meters), the B-52 met up with a KC-135 tanker
aircraft flying out of Moron Air Base in Spain.
As the two aircraft met just off the sunny
coast of southern spain, it was clear that
the B-52 was coming in too fast as the KC-135
extended its refueling boom.
The boom operator aboard the KC-135 is supposed
to warn the approaching aircraft to break
away if this happens, yet the operator said
nothing which led the pilots of the B-52 to
assume nothing was wrong as they tried to
slow their plane down.
Yet the approach speed was far greater than
any of the men realized, and the nozzle of
the refueling boom struck the top of the B-52
fuselage, tearing through a load-bearing longeron
and snapping off the left wing.
This resulted in an explosion which devastated
both aircraft- in the end only four of the
eleven men across both aircraft would survive.
The four hydrogen bombs were torn free from
the tumbling aircraft and plummeted below.
Three of the bombs struck farm fields near
the fishing village of Palomares, with two
of the bombs having their conventional explosives
detonate on impact- though the weapon's safety
mechanisms prevented a nuclear explosion,
the conventional explosion still spread radioactive
fallout over a wide area.
The third weapon was found relatively intact
in a dry riverbed.
The fourth weapon however had drifted out
over the ocean as it fell, and would take
years to recover via remote drone.
As a result of the nuclear fallout, the US
government ended up having to buy several
farmer's fields and conduct extensive cleanup
operations.
To help ease the fears of a very worried public,
Spain's minister for information and tourism,
and the United State's ambassador made a public
show of swimming in a beach just 9 miles (15
km) away, and then later swam at a second
beach close to the impact site.
While the fallout continues to affect the
area to this day, with the US still monitoring
the situation closely, what is truly incredible
is that the weapon that was found relatively
intact had actually undergone all arming procedures
as it fell to earth, and only a single last
ditch safety measure had prevented the weapon
from achieving a nuclear yield.
Nuclear weapons are clearly robustly designed
devices, yet what's equally clear is that
the one weak point in every nuclear weapon
safety and security measure is the human element.
With thousands of live nuclear weapons still
in active inventory around the world, some
believe that it's only a matter of time before
the worst comes to pass, and if it does, it
may lead to an accidental nuclear war by a
confused United States and Russia that still
hold on to plenty of Cold War hostility.
Can nuclear weapons be kept safe forever?
Or are accidents and a full-scale nuclear
detonation inevitable?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, make sure you check out our other video,
Can One Person Destroy The World?
See you next time!
