
A Burning B-52 Nearly Caused A Nuclear Catastrophe - vinnyglennon
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29945/the-time-when-a-burning-b-52-nearly-caused-a-nuclear-catastrophe-worse-than-chernobyl
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W-Stool
If this topic is an area of interest to you I can't recommend Eric Schlosser's
book enough: "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and
the Illusion of Safety". It is a whole history of known accidents in the
missle and aircraft domains that involved nuclear weapons.

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kenned3
Agreed, this was a really good book.

"American Experince" also turned the book into a film, which was pretty true
to the book and worth a watch.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_\(film\))

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interestica
Ah, I didn't know it was based on a book. Now I need to find the book. I
suspect they will be very different experiences. Seeing the deep emotion of
the interviewed really did well to convey the human elements.

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kenned3
[https://www.amazon.ca/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-
Illu...](https://www.amazon.ca/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-
Illusion/dp/0143125788/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=command+and+control&qid=1569188814&sr=8-1)

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phillco
> Worse still – and unmentioned by Batzel – a design flaw in the B28 bomb
> meant that if exposed to prolonged heat, two wires too close to the casing
> could short circuit, arm the bomb, trigger an accidental detonation of the
> HE [high explosives] surrounding the core, and set off a nuclear explosion"

P0 - WontFix

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7952
It's a feature really. A bomb that is too safe has lower detterance value. And
because we really don't want to have a nuclear war it would be _irresponsible_
to have bombs that are too safe.

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toomanybeersies
Dr Strangelove? Is that you?

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7952
yee haw!

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tyingq
Took nearly 10 years after this for a decision to first modify, then later,
decommision the W69, based on how unsafe it was in a fire.
[https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-
xpm-19900524-1990-05-24-9...](https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-
xpm-19900524-1990-05-24-9005240182-story.html)

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leeoniya
here's another close call which almost ended very badly:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash)

"He also said the size of each bomb was more than 250 times the destructive
power of the Hiroshima bomb, large enough to create a 100% kill zone within a
radius of 8.5 miles (13.7 km)."

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tyingq
_" Lieutenant, we found the arm/safe switch." And I said, "Great." He said,
"Not great. It's on arm."_

Oof.

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lazyant
iirc this incident is one of several captured in the book "Command and
Control", awesome read.

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mikhailfranco
B-52 collides with KC-135 during in-flight refuelling.

Four H-bombs rain down on sleepy Spanish fishing village ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash)

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qwerty456127
Aren't nuclear warheads supposed to only detonate when triggered the right
way?

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caf
The W69 in particular was an older warhead that lacked the Enhanced Nuclear
Detonation Safety system.

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nodesocket
Clearly I am wrong, but my understanding was a fire would not be enough to
initiate the nuclear reaction. Don't two unstable masses have to slam into
each other at super high velocity to release enough nuetrons to start the
chain reaction?

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moltensodium
If the conventional explosives around a warhead go off in an uncontrolled
manner then they are almost certainly not going to kick off a nuclear chain
reaction. Things have to happen at a very specific time.

But what you're going to get is a massive plume of weapons grade plutonium
flying in all directions. Depending on where this happens and the wind this
could be the end of a few million people.

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dboreham
If you read the literature it turns out that's in some cases wishful thinking.
You'd never get full yield, but no chain reaction turns out to not be
guaranteed in the older designs.

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moltensodium
Can you point me towards what you read on this outside of the article? Not
doubting you it's just been like 500 years since I studied nuclear chem and
I'm not sure what literature you're talking about.

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agurk
A good introduction is Eric Schlosser's Command and Control. For the points
here the concept of one-point safe is the idea of if a nuclear device is
likely to detonate in an uncontrolled situation. A good definition I found
was[0]:

> What is one-point safe?

> Apart from preventing unauthorized use, it is equally important to ensure
> that the weapons do not explode accidentally. For example, if it is
> accidentally dropped dur­ing transportation (such incidents have occurred),
> it should not explode. A nuclear weapon is one-point safe if, when the High
> Explosive inside the weapon is initiated and detonated at any single point,
> the probability of producing a nuclear yield exceeding 4 pounds TNT
> equivalent is less than 1 in one million.

A surprising number of early nuclear devices were not one-point safe.

[0]
[http://www.nucleardarkness.org/nuclear/nuclearandconventiona...](http://www.nucleardarkness.org/nuclear/nuclearandconventionalweapons/)

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chvid
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash)

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doggydogs94
Worse than Chernobyl, not even close.

