Thermonuclear 'Oops' List

[Dudesky]

Interesting stories

Dark Roasted Blend: The Thermonuclear "Oops" List

Eight years (and several similar accidents) later a bomber from Hunter Air Force Base, Georgia made a severe "oops" when it dropped its cargo of one nuclear device onto the backyard of the Gregg family in South Carolina. Fortunately for the Greggs, and South Carolina, again ONLY part of the bomb that went off was the ordinary component of the warhead which injured six members of that clan and made a nice divot in their garden: a hole 70 feet wide and 30 feet deep. The blast also took out five other houses and damaged a church. For almost irradiating a sizable hunk of the US, the Air Force coughed up $54,000.

My all-time favorite, and the one that spawned this little trip to radioactive weirdness, is this little tidbit of Cold War fear. While it doesn’t rank with 34 missing warheads, you’ll see how that doesn’t necessarily mean that this story has what you’d call a happy ending.

In 1961 a B-52 decided to do a shake-and-shimmy over North Carolina, dropping two 24-megaton nuclear weapons. One of the little toys released its parachute and glided down to a less-than-gentle landing.
The other device though smacked down somewhere in waterlogged farmland. Not at sea, not in 20,000 feet of water, not "off the coast" of anywhere. Farmland, near North Carolina. Anyone live in North Carolina? Come on, a show of hands - gee, quite a few of you. Isn’t North Carolina a great place to live? You might, though, reconsider because even though this little boo-boo happened over twenty years ago the capable US military never recovered that little gizmo. It’s still out there. Tick, tick, tick, tick ....I can hear some of you die-hard optimists mumbling something about "safety" and "redundant backups". Well, you just keep mumbling that comfortable little mantra to yourself while I casually bring up that other bomb, the one that parachuted down.

Well, while they found that little fissionable puppy, the guys that inspected it found something very interesting. You see, a device of that type has six safety devices -

- and five of them had failed.

Good night, America, and all the ships at sea. Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite, and always remember: accidents will happen.