Nuclear weapons are the most devastating weapons ever devised by man.
With the power to completely level a city, a single bomb can kill millions and bring
a nation to its knees.
With their first use in World War II by the United States against a stubborn Japan that
refused to surrender, nuclear weapons have only grown in yields over the decades, growing
to devices of nightmarish power.
While the original Little Boy released 15 kilotons of energy, or an equivalent of 15,000
tons of TNT, the modern B83 gravity bomb has a yield of 1.2 megatons, or 1,200,000 tons
of TNT- over 80 times more powerful than Little Boy.
Yet nuclear weapons are capable of much, much more than that, with the Soviet Union's Tsar
Bomba, detonated in 1961, producing a 50 megaton blast, or 3,333 times the explosive yield
of Little Boy.
While Little Boy devastated a city, the Tsar Bomba was capable of devastating an entire
county, wiping out tens of millions of people if dropped in a heavily populated area like
Los Angeles or Moscow.
Today we're capable of even greater yields though, and even before the Russians had detonated
their Tsar Bomba, Edward Teller, the Hungarian-American inventor of the hydrogen bomb, had already
drawn up plans for a 10 gigaton- or 10,000 megaton- bomb.
Such a bomb would have been capable of devastating the entirety of England and Ireland combined,
or both North and South Korea.
Ultimately such a proposal was deemed way too impractical to be effective, and ultimately
unnecessary.
With the development of Multiple Impact Re-entry Vehicle technology, a single nuclear missile
could deliver a scattershot payload of nuclear weapons that would devastate a countryside.
Once a full nuclear strike had been carried out, there would have been little point to
devastate the rest of the nation- every military and civilian target would have been eradicated,
and most survivors would then die from the societal collapse that followed.
With so much power in such small devices it can be terrifying to think about them being
involved in any sort of accident, and yet throughout history that's exactly what's happened
time and time again.
Nuclear weapons safety policy in the United States is known as “always and never”,
in that a nuclear weapon must always be reliably counted on to detonate when deployed, but
must never detonate when not specifically intended to do so- no matter the circumstances.
This policy was immediately put to the test as nuclear weapons joined the growing military
arsenal of the United States and other nations, and incredibly, despite some major accidents,
the safety standard of always and never has held.
Now let's look at some of the worst nuclear weapon accidents in history:
1950 British Columbia
On the 14thof February, 1950, a US Air Force Convair B-36 was tasked with conducting a
simulated nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.
This was the beginning of the Cold War and well before the advent of intercontinental
ballistic missiles, so nuclear weapons could only be delivered via aircraft.
Yet any such strike mission would have to cross over the North Pole, facing bitterly
cold temperatures and other flight challenges- especially so if war broke out during the
winter.
Realizing that they needed to ascertain just how feasible such a strike would be, the US
military approved and then carried out the simulated nuclear strike.
For the nuclear exercise the B-36 would take off from Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska
and then fly just off the coast of the Alaskan panhandle and British Columbia, cross inland
over Washington state into Montana, and then climb to 40,000 feet (12,000 meters) for a
simulated bomb run on San Francisco in California.
Then the plane would continue its non-stop flight to Fort Worth, Texas where it would
land.
The mission would last 24 hours and for added realism, the bomber carried a Mark IV atomic
bomb- although the weapon only carried uranium and 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of conventional
explosives.
The plutonium core necessary for a nuclear detonation was not present.
Extreme cold weather on the ground at Eielson AFB immediately affected the bomber, causing
some minor technical difficulties.
Eventually though the plane was cleared for take off, only for seven hours later to have
flames begin shooting out of three of the six engines.
To prevent the engines from being severely damaged, the three engines were shut down
and the plane continued on its mission on just three operational engines.
However, the three engines eventually were unable to provide full power, causing the
plane to lose altitude.
The crew decided to abandon the aircraft as it could not stay aloft for much longer.
In order to spare his crew from parachuting into the freezing cold North Pacific, the
aircraft commander steered the plane inland.
Before bailing, the atomic bomb was jettisoned somewhere over the Inside Passage in British
Columbia, with the weapon detonating in mid-air.
As it did not have its plutonium core though the weapon did not achieve a nuclear yield-
although the conventional explosives would have spread radioactive particles across a
wide area.
Thankfully the territory was extremely remote, and to date no casualties from the explosion
have ever been reported.
2007, North Dakota
Modern nuclear weapon operations require the highest degrees of security and safety both,
and even the most basic of maintenance operations has a long list of stringent security guidelines
that must be strictly adhered to.
Yet in 2007 six nuclear cruise missiles went missing from their storage depot and flown
cross-country with nobody involved being aware.
At 0800 hours on the 29thof August, 2007, a breakout crew of US Air Force airmen from
Minot Air Force Base prepared twelve AGM-129 air-launched cruise missiles for transport
to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana . This was the sixth of twelve planned ferry missions,
with each flight carrying 12 cruise missiles with dummy warheads for storage in Barksdale.
Yet as the airmen prepared the weapons for loading onto a waiting B-52, instead of using
the standard electronic tracking system for the missiles, they relied on an informal process
that failed to identify six of the missiles as being loaded with fully functional W80-1
variable yield nuclear warheads.
If you're wondering what that means, it's military speak for “the airmen got lazy
and complacent and cut corners to get the job done quickly.”
As the breakout crew began a final inspection of the missiles however, the transport crew
arrived early and began to hook up the missiles for transport to the waiting plane.
Once more failing to adequately do their jobs, the breakout crew simply allowed the transport
crew to remove the missiles without finishing their final check, which would have discovered
the live warheads and put a halt to the entire incident.
Instead the transport crew towed the missiles to the waiting aircraft were they were then
loaded on the external wingtip pylons at approximately 0925.
For over 23 hours the nuclear weapons sat completely unguarded on the Minot Air Force
Base flight line as the crew loaded them onto their pylons and then left the plane sitting
out overnight for the next day's mission.
The next morning one of the aircraft's flight officers arrived and prepped the plane for
takeoff, closely inspecting the six missiles on the right wing which were loaded with training
warheads, but signing off on the flight manifest without then inspecting the six missiles on
the opposite wingtip- once more complacency ensured the live nuclear weapons would remain
undetected and unguarded.
The B-52 then took off and landed at Barskdale Air Force Base in Louisiana a few hours later,
where it remained in a far corner of the flight line completely unguarded for nine hours.
That night a munitions team arrived to remove the missiles, upon which one of the crew members
noticed something unusual about the six missiles containing nuclear warheads and immediately
contacted his supervisor.
A skeptical supervisor arrived shortly after and immediately confirmed that the weapons
were indeed armed and live, and immediately reported the incident up the chain of command.
The mere movement of nuclear weapons from an active flight line to their storage bunkers
requires a security force of no less than 60 heavily armed security personnel made up
of several fire teams, four heavy weapon escorts, and numerous ATV off-road roving scouts to
monitor avenues of approach.
While present on an aircraft the weapons require at minimum a 15 man Quick Reaction Force that
can arrive on-scene to the plane within 5 minutes, with two stationary patrols made
up of 2 guards each with a third 2-man mobile patrol constantly monitoring the perimeter.
Yet for 36 hours the nuclear weapons involved remained completely unguarded, tucked away
in a far corner of two different flight lines, with all personnel involved completely oblivious
to their presence.
Worse yet, for that entire duration the United States military had lost track of six of the
most powerful nuclear devices in its inventory, and nobody had any idea.
1966, Spain
In 1966 intercontinental ballistic missiles were still a ways off from being reliable
means of delivering nuclear weapons, and thus the bulk of the nuclear strike capability
of the United States still rested on its bomber fleet.
Known as SAC, the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command was responsible for delivering
nuclear armageddon against the Soviet Union, and to maintain this capability regularly
engaged in training scenarios meant to keep its readiness levels up.
On the 17thof January, 1966, A B-52 took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North
Carolina.
It's mission was to conduct a long-range simulated nuclear attack run against the Soviet Union
and its allies, and thus would fly across the Atlantic Ocean, over the Mediterranean
Sea, and then east off the Italian coast before turning around and flying back home, reaching
within just a few dozen miles of the Soviet Union's borders.
Because war could break out at any time, the aircraft was loaded with four B28RI hydrogen
bombs for its training mission, which could be turned into a live fire mission at any
time in worst case scenario.
The flight plan would take over 24 hours and involve two in-flight refuelings, a dangerous
affair that requires careful coordination between the tanker and receiving aircraft-
specially with aircraft as large as the B-52 involved.
At 10:30 AM while flying at 31,000 feet (9,450 meters), the B-52 met up with a KC-135 tanker
aircraft flying out of Moron Air Base in Spain.
As the two aircraft met just off the sunny coast of southern spain, it was clear that
the B-52 was coming in too fast as the KC-135 extended its refueling boom.
The boom operator aboard the KC-135 is supposed to warn the approaching aircraft to break
away if this happens, yet the operator said nothing which led the pilots of the B-52 to
assume nothing was wrong as they tried to slow their plane down.
Yet the approach speed was far greater than any of the men realized, and the nozzle of
the refueling boom struck the top of the B-52 fuselage, tearing through a load-bearing longeron
and snapping off the left wing.
This resulted in an explosion which devastated both aircraft- in the end only four of the
eleven men across both aircraft would survive.
The four hydrogen bombs were torn free from the tumbling aircraft and plummeted below.
Three of the bombs struck farm fields near the fishing village of Palomares, with two
of the bombs having their conventional explosives detonate on impact- though the weapon's safety
mechanisms prevented a nuclear explosion, the conventional explosion still spread radioactive
fallout over a wide area.
The third weapon was found relatively intact in a dry riverbed.
The fourth weapon however had drifted out over the ocean as it fell, and would take
years to recover via remote drone.
As a result of the nuclear fallout, the US government ended up having to buy several
farmer's fields and conduct extensive cleanup operations.
To help ease the fears of a very worried public, Spain's minister for information and tourism,
and the United State's ambassador made a public show of swimming in a beach just 9 miles (15
km) away, and then later swam at a second beach close to the impact site.
While the fallout continues to affect the area to this day, with the US still monitoring
the situation closely, what is truly incredible is that the weapon that was found relatively
intact had actually undergone all arming procedures as it fell to earth, and only a single last
ditch safety measure had prevented the weapon from achieving a nuclear yield.
Nuclear weapons are clearly robustly designed devices, yet what's equally clear is that
the one weak point in every nuclear weapon safety and security measure is the human element.
With thousands of live nuclear weapons still in active inventory around the world, some
believe that it's only a matter of time before the worst comes to pass, and if it does, it
may lead to an accidental nuclear war by a confused United States and Russia that still
hold on to plenty of Cold War hostility.
Can nuclear weapons be kept safe forever?
Or are accidents and a full-scale nuclear detonation inevitable?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, make sure you check out our other video, Can One Person Destroy The World?
See you next time!