Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/communities/belle_fourche/fifty-three-year-old-nuclear-missile-accident-revealed/article_653347a4-04e8-5c29-a778-3a6a6c3cfd84.html#tracking-source=home-latest-1

by tomohawk • 9 years ago

406 244 9 years ago

rapidcityjournal.com

nerdponx• 9 years ago

Hicks said the metal of the screwdriver contacted the positive side of the fuse and also the fuse’s grounded metal holder, causing a short circuit that sent electricity flowing to unintended places.

Is there some company out there making non-conductive screwdrivers designed for electrical work? I can understand that maybe the materials science to make strong plastic screwdrivers didn't exist in the 1950s, but surely they exist today, right?

planteen2• 9 years ago

Oh yeah they exist. There are ceramic ones and I have also seen plastic ones.

I've seen other fun specialized types of screwdrivers in my career:

Screwdrivers with conductive plastic in the handle, to deal with ESD requirements in the spacecraft industry. Alternatively, take a normal plastic screwdriver handle and wrap it in copper tape.

Beryllium screwdrivers (non-ferrous) for use around MRI machine bores thanks to the insane magnetic fields. You also have to wear ceramic hard-toed shoes.

saagarjha• 9 years ago

Wait, isn’t Beryllium toxic? I was under the impression that you don’t want to be around it.

aptwebapps• 9 years ago

And steel sheathed with plastic. The end still conducts, but that's not usually a problem.

gebeeson• 9 years ago

Absolutely. And when dealing with nuclear weapons (i.e. Specials) they are the only tools authorized. Nylon and the like.

lostapathy2• 9 years ago

Yes, tons of options https://www.kctoolco.com/insulated-tools/

Justin_K• 9 years ago

Insulated tools won't prevent a short from a metal tipped tool. The operator should have used a plastic fuse puller.

GCU-Empiricist• 9 years ago

The proper tool is a fuse puller not a screwdriver. These days similar maintenance evolutions are heavily controlled operation performed under reader/worker controls.

Animats5• 9 years ago

He was supposed to be using a fuse puller, but he didn't have one. This is a fuse puller.[1] It's a pair of pliers made from nylon. Before good plastics, they were made of hardwood.[2] Standard electrician tool for a century.

[1] https://www.jensentools.com/gc-waldom-9356-fuse-puller-molde... [2] https://www.etsystudio.com/listing/552201603/antique-wooden-...

leeoniya2• 9 years ago

oh, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash

"The two 3–4-megaton MK. 39 nuclear bombs separated from the gyrating aircraft as it broke up between 1,000 and 2,000 feet (300 and 610 m)."

For reference, Little Boy's (Hiroshima) yield was 15 kilotons.

gilleain• 9 years ago

Using the nukemap, with a target of Faro:

http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=4000&lat=35.5111142&l...

leeoniya2• 9 years ago

the default there is airburst, but at Faro it would have detonated at the surface which reduces the radius a lot and casualties by a factor of 3, (prolly since less of densely-populated Goldsboro is affected)

_Microft• 9 years ago

There was a frightening number of close calls over the course of decades on the american side alone. One can just assume what must have happened on the sites of other nuclear powers that just doesn't get reported.

You can find a timeline of these almost accidents here: https://futureoflife.org/background/nuclear-close-calls-a-ti...

It's certainly time to reduce the number of warheads from a nuclear-winter-guaranteeing one to an at least nuclear-deterrence-still-works-but-an-accident-is-terrible-but-no-longer-civilization-ending one.

gozur883• 9 years ago

The incident in the article isn't a "close call". There was never any danger the warhead would go off.

HarryHirsch2• 9 years ago

If the warhead had damaged the fuel tank there would have been an explosion, and the radioactive materials in the bomb would have been spread around the site. It would have looked like the Palomares explosion, and that was a mess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash

There was an incident (this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...) when a serviceman dropped a spanner while working on a missile. There was a fuel leak and an explosion, thankfully the warhead was thrown clear of the silo by the blast.

retSava2• 9 years ago

There have been many accidents, of a kind where even one is one too many. Given the potential damage, I certainly don't feel comfortable with your assessment that there wasn't any danger it would go off.

Likely these things happen more often than is publicly known, yet we've not (yet) seen a full-on swiss cheese kind of accident.

mrbill• 9 years ago

I swear I read about this in Schlosser's "Command and Control" a couple of years ago.. maybe not.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

throwaway7645• 9 years ago

This comes up on HN every few months (I've commented on it before)and that documentary is shocking and terrifying. The Arkansas one was crazy. We almost lost a rather sizeable area and the radiation zone is out to Memphis.

pvg2• 9 years ago

The bulk of Command and Control is about a different accident but this one is briefly summarized as well in a couple of paragraphs (p311).

rrggrr• 9 years ago

This is why nuclear non-proliferation is important. Its difficult enough for a super power to safely store and control its WMD. Each new nuclear state magnifies the risks, and all the more so because they lack the after action experience that a half century of mishaps delivers.

vkou3• 9 years ago

Arms reduction is even more important. I'd rather live in a world where 20 countries have 50 warheads each, then one where two countries have 4,000 warheads each.

A weapon detonating by accident is terrible. Thousands of weapons on hair-trigger alert is civilization-ending. It's absolutely insane that we're conditioned to believe that this is not only normal - but the best possible state of affairs.

notheguyouthink2• 9 years ago

What's the realistic approach to this though? I don't know anything about this area, but to me it seems like hoping for 20 countries having 50 each would be effectively the same as hoping for 20 countries having 0 each.

That is to say, we're in the arms race because each country did have N each. But then one country had N+1, and so the others raced for N+2, and so on. If we hoped for 50 each, wouldn't it drop back to the same pattern, and someone would become 50+1?

Note that 4,000 of course doesn't solve the N+1 issue, but my point is if you're going to aim for 50 - I'm not sure what problems it solves. May as well shoot for 0, no? 0 seems equally impossible to me as 50, but at least it solves a single problem.. nukes, in general.

ars• 9 years ago

I'd rather live in a world where 20 countries have 50 warheads each, then one where two countries have 4,000 warheads each.

I absolutely would not. Those 2 countries know far more about the process then those other countries, and they have the budget to do it right. You would have to duplicate labs, and computers, and other efforts 20 times in your scenario, and each of those labs will not be as good as the 2 higher funded ones.

A weapon detonating by accident is terrible. Thousands of weapons on hair-trigger alert is civilization-ending.

Look at it from a fear point of view: No one will detonate a thousand weapons unless they are declaring total war. So all one needs to do is read global moods and see if total war is likely (it's not). (i.e. war might happen, but not total war)

An accident on the other hand can happen randomly, you would be permanently and constantly worried about one.

drzaiusapelord• 9 years ago

I'd rather live in a world where 20 countries have 50 warheads each, then one where two countries have 4,000 warheads each.

Now instead of two political leaders to worry about, you have 20. Not sure if that's what you really want.

nawgszy• 9 years ago

I don't really think that we believe either of those things; it seems a lot has been written on how MAD is a rather poor sentiment to rest our future upon.

But all that aside, 20 countries each having 50 warheads seems a lot likelier to end up with 20 countries each having thousands of warheads than 2 countries having thousands of warheads and everyone else none does, no?

clarkmoody2• 9 years ago

Wouldn't you rather live in a world where all governments had zero nuclear weapons each?

A nuclear bomb serves no other purpose than killing huge numbers of civilians in a short period of time. Shouldn't we strive for a world where nobody has that capability? Not to mention that in the United States, one man has unilateral and final authority to launch a nuclear first strike.

Edit: countries -> governments

joshlegs• 9 years ago

I don't disagree that nuclear non-proliferation is important. But I think the arguments you're using are kind of a bit of false logic. Essentially your argument boils down to "this thing X is hard to do safely. Therefore only people who have done X should do it [because they've failed a lot of times before]." And I don't think that is a legitimate argument for any topic, really.

keiferski• 9 years ago

This is completely a valid argument when the "learning mistakes" of X have disastrous consequences.

iaw• 9 years ago

Of the broken arrow incidents I'm aware of this was one of the least dangerous in terms of detonation threat.

Its difficult enough for a super power to safely store and control its WMD.

There has never been an accidental detonation of a nuclear device. The problem this article describes was one in rocketry, insulation, and adherence to protocols.

Nuclear non-proliferation is important, but this article is not the reason why. The reason non-proliferation is important is because of the ramifications of using the devices, not challenges in storing them.

79522• 9 years ago

But these devices always exist as one part of a wider technical and human system. It seems unwise to separate the two when safety could be comprised by a failure in any part of the system.

le-mark• 9 years ago

There's a LOT of cold war history up there in the central plains. The Strategic Air Command museum just outside of Omaha Nebraska has really incredible displays and a surprisingly large aircraft collection (to me at least). Including an SR-71. Highly recommended for anyone interested in that kind of thing.

http://sacmuseum.org/

sandworm1012• 9 years ago

> without hitting the missile and causing an explosion. > caused a short circuit that resulted in an explosion. > Luckily, the cone did not do enough damage to the missile to cause the missile to explode.

To clarify: There was absolutely no chance at any point of a nuclear explosion. The article suggests that some big explosion was on the edge of possibility which, given the context, one might think would be a nuclear explosion. The warhead, the "physics package", was never really a worry. Getting those to detonate requires some careful triggering.

This was also a SOLID fuel rocket. While you wouldn't want to damage it, it wasn't full of the nasty pressurized liquids of other missiles. Getting its fuel to actually ignite would require more than hitting it with a hammer. You need something akin to a blasting cap. Shuttle used something more like a giant flamethrower. The solid retro rockets were not directly triggered by a the short circuit. I'd bet good money that their ignition system felt the short rather than the fuel being ignited by the short.

bjt2n3904• 9 years ago

Not an aerospace engineer or anything. I think the fear was that the rocket may tip over and collapse under its own weight. I wouldn't be too surprised if that could trigger an ignition of the rocket fuel at the very least, risking nuclear contamination.

While the physics package surely has numerous safeties, I'd be concerned that the safeties would be damaged in a way that no one could really predict after falling 80 feet. They served their purpose well, but you can bet all the engineers were in the lab for the next 72 hours straight looking for various failure modes.

sandworm1012• 9 years ago

> ...one could really predict after falling 80 feet.

I'd say that deep within the archives is a report detailing exactly this scenario. Drop testing of munitions is standard stuff.

See https://www.rtc.army.mil/Resources/Capability%20Sheets/Insen...

robryk3• 9 years ago

Any damage to the warhead would likely make it impossible to have a nuclear reaction. In order to do that, the warhead would have to explode multiple precisely shaped conventional explosives with precise timing. If any one of them was deformed, nothing (apart from the small conventional explosion) would happen, even if all the safeguards incorrectly decided to explode the warhead.

dsfyu404ed3• 9 years ago

There was absolutely no chance at any point of a nuclear explosion

Exactly. Even if the conventional primer went off it's not gonna cause a create the conditions necessary for fission because it wasn't set off by the detonator.

lostlogin7• 9 years ago

There have been other accidents where multistage fail safes failed at multiple stages. I’d stand back.

cmurf• 9 years ago

That's a big part of Command and Control, the farther back in time you go, the greater the likelihood the design of the warhead was not one point safe and it wasn't at all assured that it'd take careful triggering to get a full or partial nuclear explosion. A decent chunk of later nuclear tests were to help make bombs one point safe. But even then, it there were absolutely rudimentary fail safes that basically worked on the honor system, for well over a decade.

Anyway you still have a mess on your hand if the explosives detonate but there's no chain reaction.

oconnor663• 9 years ago

This was also a SOLID fuel rocket.

Oh cool, I was wondering why they didn't just defuel the rocket first thing.

skellertor• 9 years ago

“I wasn’t there,” Smith said of the explosion, “but I know there were two technicians who ruined their underwear. 'Cause that ain’t supposed to happen.”

Best line of the story. I'm curious how close we've been to nuclear annihilation and we had no idea.

leeter• 9 years ago

As bad as this story may seem... it's nothing to the Demascus Titan Explosion... that really could have gone off

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...

roywiggins• 9 years ago

Interesting that both incidents caused by using the wrong tool (screwdriver here, socket there). Such a tiny thing, a hand tool in the wrong place...

knappe3• 9 years ago

I recently finished Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety [0]. I can't recommend the book enough for how eye opening it really is into how blasé we have been with nuclear weapons.

We've been reckless and by all accounts it is a miracle we haven't had a serious accident (there have been a few, just not on our own soil). The number of close calls is just astounding.

Further the book, at one point, talks about America's position on Russia and the attempts to keep them from getting "the bomb". It is exactly what has played out and will continue to play out with North Korea and Iran. History is repeating itself and we sure haven't learned from it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/

fokinsean2• 9 years ago

Thanks, you just reminded me about this book. Gonna pick it up this weekend!

Lately I have been feeling very anxious about the North Korea situation, but for some reason reading about nuclear accidents, close-calls, stories, etc. calms me in a morbid way.

I guess it has to do with "facing your fears" or something like that.

abandonliberty2• 9 years ago

Hey it's not all bad, we managed to convince Ukraine to destroy their nuclear weapons and it worked out really well for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

nyolfen3• 9 years ago

not to mention gaddafi

batter• 9 years ago

It worked so 'well' that it lost part of it's territory. From Budapest Memorandum Wiki: 'The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.' Now it will be a lesson for others: nukes are way more reliable than some piece of paper, which no one is gonna follow: http://www.dw.com/en/ukraines-forgotten-security-guarantee-t...

countryslicker2• 9 years ago

It worked out even better for Libya.

InclinedPlane• 9 years ago

Not sure if you're joking...

valuearb• 9 years ago

Have we been reckless?

We've never had a serious accident. So maybe it's not luck, maybe there are a lot of controls that actually work well.

dboreham3• 9 years ago

In recent times, perhaps. But if you read the literature on the accidents and incidents that have occurred -- it is definitely due to luck.

knappe3• 9 years ago

There are not a lot of controls that work really well. And a lot of the controls that do exist were fought for tooth and nail. That is the entire point of the book. :)

For example, the locks in place at each Titan II facility all had exactly the same code (1111). And they were left unlocked.

Regarding the accidents, here are a few examples:

Thule Airbase crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash

Damascus incident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...

How about the two hydrogen bombs that were accidentally dropped from a B-52: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bo...

Or what is probably the worst incident to date, the B-52 that caught fire and almost blew up with 75,000 people within the blast radius: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-08-13/news/910328029...

The list goes on and on. That is the reason why the book specifically called out that it was a miracle we haven't had any (known) detonations.

Here is a list of the _known_ broken arrow events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear...

Keep in mind that the article we're discussing is about a 53 year old event that was _just_ revealed. There are more of them -- we just don't know about it, yet.

tzs• 9 years ago

Further the book, at one point, talks about America's position on Russia and the attempts to keep them from getting "the bomb". It is exactly what has played out and will continue to play out with North Korea and Iran. History is repeating itself and we sure haven't learned from it.

Is it actually similar, though?

The US got the bomb in 1945.

The Russians got theirs in 1949.

Given the size of the Soviet Union, how far it is from the United States, the available spying and reconnaissance technology (no satellites, no stealth aircraft), and that the US was only four years out of World War II, I don't think there is any way the US could have made a creditable threat to use military force to stop the Russians.

Also, China and Russia were still on good terms back then. China might not have stayed out of it if the US attacked their ally and neighbor.

Compare to North Korea and Iran. In both cases the US can make a creditable military threat. From a purely military point of view, the US could easily wipe either (or both) of them out.

Furthermore, neither has any powerful allies who want them to get nukes.

With North Korea, their only powerful ally is China and I don't think China actually cares if North Korea gets destroyed as long as (1) it doesn't send a lot of refugees across the Chinese border, and (2) whatever replaces it continues to function as a buffer zone between them and South Korea because they do not want a US ally right on their border.

scrumper• 9 years ago

That’s not quite an accurate read though, at least as far as NK. The US can’t really make a credible military threat because of the north’s proximity to the south, an important US ally and a country all but guaranteed to be mortally wounded in the event of north/USA hostilities.

cat199• 9 years ago

Given the size of the Soviet Union, how far it is from the United States, the available spying and reconnaissance technology (no satellites, no stealth aircraft), and that the US was only four years out of World War II, I don't think there is any way the US could have made a creditable threat to use military force to stop the Russians.

That whole 'massive military presence in western europe and asia minor' thing notwithstanding of couse..

yk• 9 years ago

Trouble with NK is, they don't have second strike capability, so a disarming first strike from the US is possible and NK knows that. That puts NK in a use it or lose it situation with their nuclear weapons and it may be, that the regime calculates that they (the generals) can survive one. Or they don't, they calculate that their only chance is rapid escalation and basically calling the bluff of the US, or they may just prefer to go out with a bang rather than with a wimper. That means that the nuclear threshold for NK may be a lot sooner than it would be if they have second strike capability. And the US knows that, and knows that they may have to use a disarming first strike before NK decides it's only chance is rapid escalation. NK knows that the US knows. Toss twitter into the mix and you have a pretty toxic stew, even though nobody is actually very unhappy about the status quo.

georgeecollins• 9 years ago

China cares a lot if North Korea became reunified and the US still kept military bases in Korea. China doesn't want US forces on its border any more than the US wants Chinese forces on its border. They support NK because it is a buffer.

vetinari2• 9 years ago

the US was only four years out of World War II, I don't think there is any way the US could have made a creditable threat to use military force to stop the Russians.

The UK and US thought about attacking the USSR, right after the WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

gedy2• 9 years ago

We've been reckless

I worked around nuclear weapon systems and TBH came away with the opposite impression. I grew up terrified of the military and panic mongering about of "THE BOMBS!" from family, media, etc. But after this, I ironically came away feeling much safer seeing how professional and serious people took their jobs.

knappe3• 9 years ago

I'd be curious what your takeaway is from the book.

At one point one of the regulators in the Safety Commission stopped receiving reports about accidents because the Air Force knew that this would be used as ammunition to fix the Titan II safety issues that had been in place for decades.

forapurpose• 9 years ago

I grew up terrified of the military and panic mongering about of "THE BOMBS!"

It's probably not intended that way, but the above is a bit of a strawman. There are many serious reasons to be concerned.

For example, a few years ago it was discovered that the Air Force units operating the missiles had very low morale, there was widespread cheating on qualification exams, significant disregard for safety regulations, and a problem with drug use. Also, the general in charge had a drinking problem so bad that he went on a binge in Moscow.

Before that, it was discovered that the Air Force lost track of several nuclear weapons. The Secretary of Defense at the time, Bob Gates, fired multiple Air Force leaders.

Outside the missile field, maybe 10 years ago peaceful civilian protestors penetrated a complex storing highly enriched uranium or plutonium (weapons-grade materials, IIRC), and spent something like 20 minutes adjacent to the building containing the materials before security discovered them.

IMHO, with something this dangerous, the greatest threat is complacence and trust. We are dealing with human beings who we are requiring to be vigilant over a period of generations - something people are very poor at for even a short time. Trust, but verify said Reagan of the Soviet Union, and that applies to our side too.

agumonkey2• 9 years ago

Some nuclear plant worker told the same on reddit. We're all very concerned about nuclear plant since Fukushima and we all saw mistakes. But the guy basically said he wouldn't work in any other place considering how well it was done and operated.

baby• 9 years ago

This is probably what will happen with terrorist attacks. There is no way they will stop now that medias love to talk about them, and there is no way they will decrease. We'll just grow tired of them.

bborud2• 9 years ago

The problem is not that we are blasé about nuclear weapons. For the most part we are completely ignorant about them.

No, the problem is that we assume that we wouldn’t put clowns in charge of something this dangerous. So when we put clowns in charge of nuclear weapons and they inevitably fuck up (and not just a bit), we either refuse to believe it is even possible or we assume it is a rare accident.

dboreham3• 9 years ago

If you read the literature, there were plenty of people in the industry who were well aware of these problems and worked tirelessly to fix them (making them clown-proof), since around 1960. The military brass actively worked to thwart their efforts.

FabHK3• 9 years ago

it is a miracle we haven't had a serious accident

Or maybe it's evidence for the many-worlds-interpretation of quantum mechanics... we're in one of the few universes where we didn't blow ourselves up.

j_s• 9 years ago

This actually makes a great search tag: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=B00C5R7F8G&type=comment

Animats5• 9 years ago

This wasn't really that big a deal. By the Minuteman era, warheads were safe against fires and crashes. Nuclear weapons from several B-52 bombers hit the ground hard in crashes without a nuclear explosion. (Sometimes the implosion charges did go off, but not symmetrically, as is needed to get implosion.) The Minuteman missile itself had a solid fuel engine. This was nowhere near as bad as the incident described in "Command and Control". That one was a liquid-fueled missile with hypergolic propellant.

See Wikipedia's list of nuclear accidents.[1] This wasn't one of the big ones.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...

collinmanderson• 9 years ago

That sounds right:

Incredible as it may sound to a civilian, Hicks said he spent no time worrying about the thermonuclear warhead. He had been convinced by his training that it was nearly impossible to detonate a warhead accidentally. Among other things, he said, the warhead had to receive codes from the launch-control officers, had to reach a certain altitude, and had to detect a certain amount of acceleration and G-force. There were so many safeguards built in, Hicks later joked, that a warhead might have been lucky to detonate even when it was supposed to.

gh02t• 9 years ago

Yep, a modern nuclear bomb takes a very coordinated sequence to actually have the confinement needed to get good utilization of the fissile fuel (i.e., be a nuclear-driven explosion), otherwise they just fly apart before any significant fission/fusion can occur.

The fuel used for a nuclear weapon is also basically radiologically inert by necessity so if it does explode conventionally there is not a significant release of radiation. It's pretty toxic chemically, but there's not a lot of it so it's not nearly as bad the fallout that would precipitate from a nuclear explosion.

Animats5• 9 years ago

"Radiologically inert" is a bit much. Both uranium and plutonium are alpha emitters. This basically means that if you can keep the stuff outside your body, you're OK. A chunk of metal is safe; breathing dust is lethal.

cmiles74• 9 years ago

Supposedly static electricity could trigger the detonator in a nuclear weapon. There was a near accidental ignition during the development of "the Gadget" and my understanding is that the ignition system was virtually unchanged for decades.

https://books.google.com/books?id=lJ6JDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA41&ots=...

Animats5• 9 years ago

Lightning bolt, maybe. Static electricity, no way. The detonators used are exploding-wire devices. They're just hugely overloaded resistors.[1]

Regular detonators have a primary explosive which is triggered by a modest electric pulse. The primary explosive detonates and its energy detonates the secondary explosive. Those can go off by accident, cook off, etc.

The ones used in nuclear weapons are just inert wires. Without a hulking big electrical pulse (about a megawatt for a microsecond, which is one joule) they can't do anything. A big capacitor bank is required to fire such things. It's done this way because all the detonators have to go off within nanoseconds of each other to get the symmetrical implosion squeeze to work. Otherwise the thing just blows itself apart without a nuclear reaction. That's happened a few times in plane crashes.

Newer (post-1950s) nuclear weapons don't even have a full critical mass in them. The core is squeezed down by the implosion to achieve criticality at a density higher than the normal density of the material. Without a symmetrical implosion, not much happens.

This physics makes for a much safer device. It's why nobody has ever had one go off by accident.

(The Hiroshima bomb, though, was very unsafe. It was a gun bomb, basically a 5-inch gun with conventional detonators and propelling charge. The crew of the Enola Gay was told that if they had to return to base without having dropped the bomb, drop it in deep water. Don't try to land with it. A crash or fire on landing probably would have detonated the device. That design was only used once.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding-bridgewire_detonator

twobyfour• 9 years ago

Makes you wonder what's going on right now that nobody's telling you about...

jt93• 9 years ago

We've been very lucky so far not to have had any serious incidents.

slezakattack• 9 years ago

I found that the side-story as to how they even got this story was pretty fascinating: http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/revealing-a--year-old...

jacquesm• 9 years ago

This article sounds like a recruitment effort.

mtuker• 9 years ago

This was really a big deal

tomcatv2• 9 years ago

That sounds pleasant

nikkig• 9 years ago

It's amazing we've not had a major incident because of our recklessness.

tomcatv2• 9 years ago

its good

pwaai• 9 years ago

Incidents like this shows us that things will inevitably go wrong with increasing frequency and gravity.

Furthermore, I fear regional conflicts involving mass scale conventional face-off (ex. dmz) are converting to a low operating cost high risk situations in the form of mutually assured destruction.

East Asia is venturing into a potential double whammy of naval and nuclear arms race--smaller countries like South Korea are entering a phase of normalization for nuclear armament with pressure mounting from the public to have a deterrence and a back up plan yet cannot have land based missile silo's, instead relying on nuclear submarines that will host the IRBMs. The cost is much higher than the "previous generation", as smaller countries will most certainly be decimated, land based silos do not make sense.

zedpm• 9 years ago

If you happen to visit Badlands National Park, or western South Dakota in general, make time to visit the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site mentioned in the article. I toured Delta-01 last summer, and it was fascinating. The tour guide did a fantastic job of conveying the gravity of the mission and just how scary the Cold War was.

markrages• 9 years ago

When I visited, the guide was retired veteran from that missile site. He spent a lot of time discussing the living situation, and the maintenance schedule, and the phone setup. The guy had internalized that bureaucracy over his entire career, and wanted to explain in in painstaking detail.

The underground control center was amazing though.

meej• 9 years ago

I really wanted to visit this in 2009 while driving across the state. Unfortunately there were no signs on the highway to guide us (it was a relatively new historic site at the time) and me and my traveling companion missed it.

thrillgore• 9 years ago

This article didn't seem like that much of an incident. The warhead didn't fire, at least. SL-1 is more of what I would think would be a real .mil-sector nuclear accident.

Havoc• 9 years ago

The irony of calling people working underground "airmen" is strong...

royala_block• 9 years ago

In my experience it is like US nukes in Turkey.

anovikov• 9 years ago

Well in a solid fuel missile, there was simply no way it was going to explode due to any kind of external damage (or at all, solid fuel does not explode). Good that nuclear safety of the warhead itself worked well, as none of the explosive lenses gone off.

Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

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