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Near Nuclear disaster

beanzbeanz
edited June 2014 in Chit chat
Just read this, had not heard of it before. Thought others might find it interesting too.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/us/north-carolina-nuclear-bomb-drop/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Post edited by beanz on

Comments

  • deadpan666deadpan666
    edited June 2014
    beanz wrote: »
    Just read this, had not heard of it before. Thought others might find it interesting too.

    http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/us/north-carolina-nuclear-bomb-drop/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

    Yeah, read about that a few months back...really makes you wonder about what other close calls haven't been declassified!
    The Black Cauldron (PC)
  • ZupZup
    edited June 2014
    Maybe not widely know, but has an entry on wikipedia.
    I was there, too
    An' you know what they said?
    Well, some of it was true!
  • WinstonWinston
    edited June 2014
    These sort of things went on a lot. The US lost a couple of nukes in Spain, too, and one near the Thuie monitoring base. The Thule one was the most worrying because it could have been easily mistaken for a Soviet attack since it would have taken out an important missile early warning site.

    However, this all pales in comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis. One Soviet sub commander wanted to use a nuclear torpedo when he was being depth charged, thinking the depth charges were real rather than practise rounds (the US were dropping them to "communicate" with the sub to try to get him to surface). His first officer convinced him not to fire.

    If you have a few hours to spare, there is an alternate history online about what would have happened had the first officer tripped over and been knocked unconscious before being able to convince his captain not to nuke the US ships...

    The Cuban Missile War: Timeline - http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?p=1582327&highlight=million#post1582327
  • AmfootAmfoot
    edited June 2014
    The chilling bit in the Wiki page for this event is where it concludes:

    "ReVelle, speaking to a writer in 2011 of the bomb that he said nearly detonated: ?As far as I?m concerned we came damn close to having a Bay of North Carolina. The nuclear explosion would have completely changed the Eastern seaboard if it had gone off.? He also said the size of each bomb was more than 250 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb, and large enough to have a 100% kill zone of seventeen miles. Each bomb would exceed the yield of all munitions (outside of testing) ever detonated in the history of the world by TNT, gunpowder, conventional bombs, and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts combined"

    Ouch!
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