This video was made possible thanks to our friends over at Hollywood Health and Society
who sponsored this video.
Hey there!
Welcome to Life Noggin.
Just a heads up I'm going to mispronounce nuclear in this video.
I never seem to get it right, and the viewers that have been with me for a while already
know this.
Sorry in advance.
Nuclear bombs are devastating weapons—and even though the world's stockpile of nukes
has decreased considerably since its peak in the mid-1980's, there are still over ten
thousand nuclear weapons around the world.
That's a lot when you think about the power of a single nuclear blast… and the power
of human error.
Since the 1950s, a bunch of dangerous incidents involving nuclear weapons have occurred around
the world.
In fact, they're frequent enough that we actually have names for different types of nuclear
incidents depending on their severity.
For example, lost or missing bombs are called "empty quivers" and breaches in security and
transportation of nuclear weapons are referred to as "bent spears."
But perhaps the scariest of all are the "broken arrows," or events where a nuclear bomb was
damaged, leaked, caught on fire, or even launched.
One of the first broken arrows occurred in Canada in 1950, when a B-50 aircraft suffered
engine trouble and, as a matter of protocol, dropped a nuclear bomb over the St. Lawrence
River.
This wasn’t just out in the middle of nowhere either — it happened around 300 miles from
the major city of Montreal.
The bomb detonated in the air, but fortunately its plutonium core had been removed prior
to the flight so it didn't cause a nuclear explosion.
However, nearly 100 pounds of uranium were still strewn about nearby as a result.
Just seven years later, in 1957, something similar happened down in New Mexico.
While in transit to the nearby Kirtland Air Force Base, a B-36 aircraft accidentally dropped
a hydrogen bomb over Albuquerque.
It should be noted that a hydrogen bomb can be up to 1,000 times more powerful than an
atomic bomb due to its use of fusion to produce explosive energy.
Albuquerque was very lucky when no /nuclear/ detonation occurred, but the bomb’s conventional
explosives that were meant to trigger the device still went off, leaving a crater that
was over 12 feet deep and 25 feet in diameter.
This was one of the scarier accidents, as some believe the bomb might have been one
of the most powerful ever made.
It was thought to have had an explosive yield of around 10 megatons.
To put that in perspective, this single hydrogen bomb had the same explosive power as around
600 Hiroshima bombs . According to NUKEMAP, an online tool that uses unclassified data
to estimate the effects of nuclear weapons, if a 10 megaton hydrogen bomb were dropped
over Albuquerque today, it would result in over half a million fatalities and injuries,
with the radioactive fallout reaching as far as Nebraska.
Fast forward to 1980 at a Strategic Air Command silo near Damascus, Arkansas.
An airman was performing some routine maintenance on a Titan II Missile when he dropped a wrench
socket between a work platform and the weapon itself.
The socket fell 70 or 80 feet and pierced the missile, causing it to leak toxic fuel,
which ultimately triggered the missile to explode—and eject its nuclear warhead.
Luckily, the warhead did not detonate.
If it had, the results would have been catastrophic.
But at least we know what happened to those bombs.
There are multiple instances of lost or missing nuclear weapons—so-called "empty quivers."
In 1961, a US bomber broke up over some swampy farmland in North Carolina, dropping not one
but two powerful nuclear bombs.
One was fully recovered, but the other sank down into the muddy terrain and its uranium
core was never found.
It’s likely still buried there to this very day.
And remember, these are just a few of the nuclear weapons incidents that have been officially
recognized.
There could be even more we don't know about!
Still, all of these cases highlight how close we’ve come to unintended nuclear catastrophe.
That’s pretty troubling when you consider that there are an estimated 14,575 nuclear
weapons around the world today, and as long as these weapons exist, there's always a danger
that one — or more — will result in a nuclear detonation.
Even if it's by mistake.
So can humans just like, be careful?
Ya know?
Cause I really like existing.
Are there any other events in history that you'd like us to talk about next?
Leave it in the comment section below, or ask me your most burning question.
Thank you so much to our friends over at Hollywood Health, and Society.
To find out more about what they do, and see how you can help their great causes, click
the link in the description.
As always, my name is Blocko, this has been Life Noggin, don't forget to keep on thinking!