
The Secret Nuclear Threat - miraj
http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/265119365
======
cmdkeen
Sailors spin dits (that's "tell stories" to mere mortals), especially to baby
sailors. There are plenty of "we thought we were going to die" stories about
submarines, yet for some reason the RN doesn't actually lose them. Perhaps it
is because highly experienced personnel, whose lives are equally on the line,
know more than someone doing a 3 month training patrol.

AB McNeilly went onboard with the intent of "whistleblowing" \- the effect of
this can be seen in the biased way he reports on the concept of trainees being
onboard. People have to be trained on submarines, the V boats are excellent
platforms to do it, and the people he was "distracting" are a) used to it and
b) would have no compunction about telling a trainee to go away if things got
busy.

Finally - you don't need to smuggle a bomb on board to sink a submarine, any
member of the crew can do it, in just the same way that you could sink a
surface ship without explosives.

~~~
GunterGiggidy
Your criticisms:

1\. William McNeilly is an inexperienced trainee,

2\. William McNeilly is not preceded by other whistleblowers from the same
field,

3\. William McNeilly is a whistleblower who intended to blow the whistle,

4\. William McNeilly does not have good writing skills,

5\. William McNeilly cannot prove that the world will end.

You need to carefully investigate your own motivations behind these
criticisms.

According to this logic, the only legitimate whistleblowers are those who have
been in their industry for 15+ years, have the writing skills of a well-versed
journalist, and have blown the whistle after a series of other whistleblowers
(with the above qualifications, of course) from the same industry.

This is piss poor (or convenient, your choice) criteria to dismiss
whistleblower revelations. It is however an excellent way of reframing the
issue by focusing on the whistleblower rather than the issue itself,
effectively avoiding the debate on the revelations and their implications.

My advice is that you watch Citizenfour, in which a lengthy scene describes
whistleblowers' and journalists' valid anxieties and experience with shills,
commentators, and the public, all of whom are more interested, for a
multiplicity of reasons, in delegitimizing a whistleblower's persona rather
than the content of the leaks s/he provided.

~~~
cmdkeen
Always nice when a newly registered account pops up talking of shills and
Citizenfour. I didn't mention 2, 4 or 5 at all in my post which undermines you
a tad.

The point is that a "top of class" trainee is making basic factual errors (65m
as the "safe depth" for a submarine) and accepting every second hand story he
heard as the gospel truth. Anyone who has spent any time in any military will
tell you that service personnel, especially those cut off from the world for 3
months, like to tell exciting stories which get embellished with the
retelling.

Submariners, even more so than the rest of the Navy, are "all in the same
ship" when it comes to safety. Incidents like the fire on HMS TIRELESS which
killed two submariners are drilled into young personnel as examples of the
dangers involved. I'd prefer to side with the rest of the crew, all far more
experienced, over a trainee conducting his own crusade.

As for the concept of material defects - nuclear submarines are probably the
most complicated machines in the world, operating in a hostile environment,
things break all the time. Patio11 is still fixing bugs in Bingo Card Creator,
I think we can accept that there might be problems on a submarine, that's why
they embark engineers.

~~~
GunterGiggidy
> Always nice when a newly registered account pops up talking of shills and
> Citizenfour.

A habit of yours, I see. For all you know, I'm a pink pony who devours
dickbutts and pukes rainbows; deal with it.

Now go back to the original text, which you can find here[1], and see if you
can bring yourself to talk about the content. You can do it; we believe in
you.

[1] [https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/](https://wikileaks.org/trident-
safety/)

------
junto
Are there any other examples of British whistleblowers who broke the Official
Secrets Act and were pardoned?

I can't imagine that David Cameron is going to pardon this and 'make a
mockery' of both the British Navy and the OSA.

This is not my opinion I hasten to add, but the British government tends to be
pretty militant when it cones to this kind of thing. The OSA is treated as
'sacrosanct'.

The ex-MI5 officer David Shayler had a similar situation, when he released the
information about the state sponsored assassination attempt on Libya's
Gadaffi:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler)

    
    
       At the trial Shayler represented himself, claiming that
       the Official Secrets Act was incompatible with the Human 
       Rights Act and that it was not a crime to report a crime 
       although these arguments were dismissed by the court with 
       the latter being ruled irrelevant. Shayler's defence 
       attempted to argue that there were no other avenues to 
       pursue his concerns with the service and its performance. 
       The judge ruled that while this was true it was irrelevant.
       The judge instructed the jury to return a guilty verdict 
       and that the House of Lords had ruled in another case that 
       a defendant could not argue that he had revealed information 
       in the public interest. After more than three hours of 
       deliberation the jury found him guilty.
    
       In November 2002 he was sentenced to 6 months in prison, 
       of which he served three weeks in Belmarsh prison and just 
       under five weeks in Ford Open Prison, with the four months 
       served on remand in France being taken into consideration.

~~~
andyjohnson0
Katherine Gun [1]. She was prosecuted, but the case quickly collapsed. Not a
pardon though - they are very rarely used in the UK.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun)

------
andyjohnson0
Some context: [http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/18/navy-
whistleb...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/18/navy-
whistleblower-on-run-alleged-trident-safety-failings)

~~~
cmdkeen
Not really given it mostly quotes directly from the "article" and makes basic
errors - I'm sure Chief Petty Officers would like to think they are "senior
officers" but that doesn't make it so. He leaked this to all the national
papers and they are pretty much all running it on the human interest angle,
not the nuclear safety angle, which should tell you a lot about this "story".

~~~
andyjohnson0
I agree that is doesn't add much if you read UK media. For the majority of the
world, which doesn't, I thought it gave some useful context: the sailor is "on
the run", the MOD are downplaying his claims, the SNP reaction, etc.

~~~
cmdkeen
Ah, fair play, you're right.

------
rememberlenny
Is anyone here interested in the nuclear abolition movement?

Im in an international buddhist organization that is represented at the United
Nations. As a software engineer, I'd love to meet other people who are
interested in solving these problems.

~~~
gnvkay
Whichever org you're a part of, you're overstating its qualifications. The
only NGOs "represented" at the United Nations[1] are the Red Cross/Crescent,
IPU, IOC and Knights of Malta.

[1] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_observers#Other_entities)

~~~
huxley
Being represented at the UN doesn't necessarily mean being an observer at the
General Assembly, lots of NGOs have consultative status on ECOSOC, the UN
Economics and Social Council.

------
Aoyagi
_" The further the submarine descented the more the weight of the submarine
increased due to pressure."_

How does that work? I thought pressure under water is the same from all
directions.

~~~
logfromblammo
The mass of the submarine increases due to pumping water into the ballast
tanks. The weight of the submarine remains proportional to the mass, and
varies a tiny amount according to depth (deeper = heavier). The net downward
force upon it increases, due to reduced upward force from buoyancy, which is
dependent upon density, which is proportional to gas pressure.

The author was correct, but for the wrong reasons.

The weight of the submarine increased due to the additional mass of water in
the ballast tanks. The weight of the submarine increased due to the increase
in Earth's gravitation at points nearer the center of mass. The apparent
weight increased due to a reduction in buoyancy.

But in no way can you increase the weight of something by squeezing it. (Aside
from invented hypotheticals like two gas giant planets wrapped in unbreachable
envelopes, lightly touching, without rotation.)

------
outworlder
I've just skimmed the document due to lack of time. But I haven't found
anything truly earth-shattering.

People lose their ids, the pin system is not working, anyone can get in and
release the nukes! Unless the submarine is crewed by monkeys, I don't expect
anyone not in the navy avoiding detection for long. Humans are great pattern-
matchers.

The rest of the issues... I get it. Things break. Submarines are hard. This is
why they have multiple, redundant systems.

The more useful question would be: how well does it fare against the potential
enemies? It could turn out that the potential opponents are much worse off.

But I wouldn't expect a single, young sailor to know the answer for that.

~~~
cmdkeen
It's worth comparing this with the HMS ASTUTE shooting [1] when a sailor with
a loaded weapon did decide to cause problems on board a submarine. That led to
a major culture shift in the Royal Navy and a lot of soul searching.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Astute_%28S119%29#2011_fata...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Astute_%28S119%29#2011_fatal_shooting)

------
shenanigoat
Article deleted from Scribd. Seems the Illuminati got to it before I did.

------
marvel_boy
Just frightening.

~~~
fit2rule
Whats most frightening about this story is how folks react to it - reading the
comments is definitely not one way to maintain faith in humanity. The
unadulterated hatred which some feel is their right to express is just ..
astounding ..

~~~
madaxe_again
That would be damage control doing their thing. First response to leaking is
defamation and denigration - make the source look like a complete and utter
tool, like an idiot, like someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.

I for one can vouch that much of what he's said harks true, from the horror
stories a friend who serves on these boats has told over the years -
apparently being a submariner mostly comprises wading around in (occasionally
electrified) sewage with a headache, waiting for something to catch fire or
break.

------
PhantomGremlin
Wikileaks published a similar (earlier?) version just yesterday. The HN
Illuminati didn't have much to say about it.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9561854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9561854)

