A man dressed in a smart suit walks into a hotel cigar lounge, whereupon a guy at the
other side of the bar motions to him with a sly movement of his hand.
The requisite security question is asked in a hushed voice, “Why can’t the pirate
play poker?” to which the other guy confirms he’s the right person by replying, “He’s
sat on the deck.”
These two extremely shady characters then get down to talking about the sale of enriched
uranium that can be used as an ingredient to make a nuclear weapon.
In the movies this never quite works out for the criminals.
There’s always some goody two-shoes special agent that gets in the way, who at the very
last minute saves the world from total destruction.
Here at the Infographics Show we have inquisitive minds, and what we want to know is why don’t
those sketchy characters just don’t go right to the source?
What’s the point in all that trafficking business when there are stockpiles of bombs
to steal?
Better still, wouldn’t it just be possible to blow up a nuclear site?
Let’s now investigate.
Ok, so first you need to know some information about the USA’s nuke sites.
In all, the country has 6,185 nuclear warheads.
2,385 of them have already hit retirement age and a further 3,800 are stockpiled.
1,365 are good-to-go in case one of the other eight nuke-carrying countries decides to ruin
things here on Earth.
By good-to-go we mean they’re deployed on either intercontinental ballistic missiles,
submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or strategic bombers.
That’s a lot of bombs, and you might wonder if the U.S. would notice if one went missing.
You can just imagine the results of an inventory when some guy reports that on the last count
there were 6,184 warheads.
“Hmm, looks like we might have lost one,” says the boss, “Count again.”
We don’t need to tell you that that’s not a plausible scenario, but the U.S. does
take looking after the warheads very, very seriously.
You can go to government websites and read about various special protections, protections
that are so important because of the bombs’ “destructive power”, or because someone
could deliberately prearm them, or God forbid, detonate or launch them.
The Department of Defense also states that one can’t be too careful in regard to loss,
theft or sabotage.
The government has good reason to be worried, but we’ll come back to this matter soon.
Just to make some of you feel concerned we’ll tell you where the nukes are stored.
Hey, you can find this information online, we’re not giving out secrets to evil people.
The largest of the main ten sites in the U.S. is located at Naval Base Kitsap in the Kitsap
Peninsula in Washington state.
There you’ll find 2,364 bombs.
That’s a lot, so of course you’d expect nothing less than world class security measures,
enough to keep someone like a James Bond villain out, or at least a pensioner with fragile
hips and ailing eyesight.
That’s why it was surprising when in 2009 five protestors and an 82-year-old priest
named William J. Bichsel, S.J. cut their way through a couple of fences and got very close
to a bunker where two nuclear warheads were stored.
Maybe security has been bolstered since then.
Let’s hope so.
The second largest site is at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
There you’ll find 1,914 bombs.
Most of them are inactive or in reserve, waiting to be taken to a massive plant in Amarillo,
Texas.
That’s where the dismantling happens.
Just because the bombs are inactive doesn’t mean that they aren’t dangerous or couldn’t
be of use to the kind of faceless man that strokes a cat while planning the annihilation
of the human species.
Those bombs have plutonium cores, cores that could cause megatons of nuclear explosions.
If you work in that plant in Texas, you have a dangerous job.
The media has talked a lot about the fact that there is too much plutonium around and
someone could get their hands on it.
One guy said this, “We are in a much more dangerous situation today than we were in
the Cold War.”
The same article where we found that quote also told us that very bad people would only
require 11 pounds (5 kg) or less of plutonium to make a bomb.
This is why once the plutonium is removed it’s made unusable for bombs and either
used for fuel for reactors or stored in casks.
That’s if it’s not stolen first.
Now you’re sufficiently frightened, let’s move on.
You’ll find more warheads stored at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, Francis E. Warren
Air Force Base in Colorado and Wyoming, Kings Bay Submarine Base in Camden County, Georgia,
Malmstrom Air Force Base in Cascade County, Montana, Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada,
Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
There are also research and development facilities, but we won’t include those today.
If the baddies don’t want to risk stealing bombs or parts of bombs in the U.S. they could
always opt for travelling to Germany, Turkey, Netherlands, Belgium, or Italy, where U.S.
nukes also reside.
Ok, so back to stealing the bombs or losing the bombs or someone detonating the bombs.
The Department of Defense says in this regard that public safety is “paramount.”
It says all facilities have advanced security systems, including surveillance technology,
physical security procedures, and armed forces.
It doesn’t matter what cycle the bombs are in, whether deployed, stocked, or being dismantled,
security is always strict...sometimes not strict enough, as you’ll find out.
The DoD does actually acknowledge threats and says if such a threat appears on the radar
then that particular facility will introduce corresponding security measures.
Even when there isn’t a threat, the only people that can have access to weapons have
to be authorized.
If you don’t have a high security clearance you must be screened in what’s called a
“Personnel Reliability Program.”
Even then, there’s a two person rule, meaning you have to be with at least one other person
to gain access to the bomb.
If one person starts doing sketchy things with the bomb, the other person has to be
educated enough to know what’s going down.
If you want an idea of what the formal rules sound like, here’s a snippet:
“Two authorized personnel shall be physically positioned where they can detect incorrect
or unauthorized procedures with respect to the task or operation being performed.”
Not only that, there are zones that people have to go through to get closer to the bomb
or bombs.
There’s a perimeter security system, an inner area, a limited zone and an exclusion
zone.
If someone dodgy-looking is hanging around, they will soon be weighed up as a “potential
adversary.”
If the security system picks them up, which it should, it considers these steps: “deterrence,
detection, delay, and denial.”
What will happen next if the threat is validated is automatic systems and/or personnel will
“nullify” or “repulse” or “terminate” the threat.
Ok, so we know that breaking into a facility aint easy at all.
We guess that old priest only got so far and then was “repulsed.”
It’s kind of nice he didn’t get terminated, which likely is only a little bit better than
being nullified.
Let’s stay with the priest.
This is an important part of the story, and should make you all feel ill at ease to say
the least.
After he got out of prison for his first break-in, he did the same again at a facility called
the Y-12 National Security Complex.
This place, based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, produces major bits of nuclear weapons and
stocks massive amounts of enriched uranium.
A year later, an 82-year nun named Megan Rice broke into the same facility and spray-painted
a storage structure containing weapons-grade uranium.
Make love, not war, was the sentiment of her graffiti.
At her ripe old age she got through fences, past security sensors, and was in the protected
area for hours before she was repulsed by one single guard.
The facility was later blamed for its “troubling displays of ineptitude.”
What’s worse, is that this place was nicknamed the “Fort Knox of Uranium.”
It turned out to be about as secure as a tennis club.
At the time the aged nun did her Oceans 11 act it was protected by four perimeter fences,
five state-of-the-art armored vehicles, fast-firing Gatlin guns, motion detectors, video cameras,
and 500 security personnel who had the authorization to light up anyone who was found in the protected
areas.
The nun, along with some friends from the Scarboro Church of Christ, first scoped the
joint using Google Earth.
They then white-boarded an infiltration plan and were good to go.
Once in the facility they found a wall and painted the words, “Woe to the empire of
blood.”
When they were finally spotted, they were huddled in a group singing, “This Little
Light of Mine.”
The guard was more than a little shocked, but on quickly realizing he wasn’t dealing
with Dr. Evil he got on the radio and said, “It appears we have intruders in the protected
area.”
He didn’t terminate them, although they all ended up in prison.
This might be troubling to many of our viewers, and it should be, but the truth is that fences-
or exterior- security is only one part of the onion layer of security measures meant
to protect nuclear weapons or material.
Those bunkers are called ‘bunkers’ for a reason, they are almost impossible to blast
through from anywhere but the door, and the doors themselves are several inches thick
and solid steel, sink into the floor and thus need to be jacked up in order to be opened,
and are often protected by a stack of three, several thousand-pound blocks of solid concrete
which need a forklift to be moved.
While a fenceline could be easily penetrated, as has been shown, the reality is that someone
wanting to actually access a nuclear weapon or nuclear materials would need to bring a
lot of explosives to get through all those physical barriers- and would then have to
deal with the 30+ man response force and 60+ augmentation force that would come running
to respond to the threat.
Sure, you can cut through a fence and get inside the grounds of a nuclear facility,
but good luck getting into the actual storage bunkers.
With that in mind, now’s the time to ask if anyone has successfully gotten into a facility
and taken away material that could cause a lot of havoc.
We’ll start with the good news.
So far, there have been no reports of anyone stealing Category I Special nuclear material
from a facility.
That’s basically special strategic nuclear material that could be used to make a nuclear
weapon.
The bad news is that there have been a reported 18 cases of highly enriched uranium and plutonium
being stolen around the world, but from what we can see, the material didn’t go missing
from any place we’ve mentioned so far in this video.
Most of these thefts have actually been in Russia, which after the fall of the Soviet
Union had such atrocious security in place that the United States for years sent money
and personnel to help Russia secure its facilities.
It’s thought that if someone were to get close to the weapons it’s unlikely they
wouldn’t try to hold the place for ransom or even steal a warhead.
They’d more likely make what’s called a “Dirty Bomb.”
This is a device that spreads radioactive material over a large space.
To make one, all someone would need is some conventional explosives and the radioactive
material found on the site.
Once detonated, it wouldn’t cause a huge explosion, but would make people in the vicinity
sick and cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage.
That’s why living near a facility could spoil your day, and it’s also a reason why
you don’t want your facility to be vulnerable to folks in their 80s.
They might have been activists only wanting to spread a message, but there are far worse
people in the world.
So, what’s the biggest threat?
Even though we’ve established that unseasoned criminals can breach facilities, there is
probably more to worry about.
Here’s a scary story.
In 2016, a 60-ton Trident II D5 missile was tested by the UK.
These things are capable of carrying eight 100 kiloton nuclear warheads.
The missile was fired from a submarine; it thrust through the water, and when it was
ready its rockets fired and it went on its journey at almost five times the speed of
sound, around 13,600 mph (21,600 km/h).
It was launched from the HMS Vengeance that was under water somewhere off the coast of
Florida.
The missile’s route was supposed to take it somewhere off the coast of Africa.
That never happened, and instead it flew at an incredibly high speed in the direction
of mainland USA.
This was something of a shock to the British, and even though the missile didn’t have
any nuclear warheads on it at the time, firing a Trident missile at your best friend is what
the Brits might call a poor show.
The good thing was that once the missile realized it was not going in the intended direction
it self-destructed.
You won’t have heard about it at the time because the misfire wasn’t made public knowledge.
It later became a bit of a scandal.
In a way, the launch proved to be something of a success because the self-destruction
mode worked.
The British government even turned the disaster on its side and reported that the launch was
“successful.”
It proved that even if someone ever managed to hack a missile, it would give up the ghost
rather than travel down the wrong path.
What’s worrying, though, is the fact it went the wrong way.
It’s also a major concern these days that weapons systems could be hacked.
And then there’s the matter of misinformation.
Maybe someone could hack a military computer and make the generals think they were under
attack, and so they naturally counter-attack.
In that case, a nuclear war happens because a very intelligent troll sent some fake news.
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility.
Rather than break into a nuclear facility, what’s more a cause for concern is what
happens when someone exploits a vulnerability in the technology.
Now you really need to watch, “How To Survive Nuclear Explosion.”
Or,, “50 Facts About Nuclear Weapons You Didn't Know.”