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Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

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Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#211

Post by MertsA »

goialoq wrote: post #176
knappe wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not a lot of controls that work really well. And a lot of the controls that do exist were fought for tooth and nail. That is the entire point of the book. :) For example, the locks in place at each Titan II facility all had exactly the same code (1111). And they were left unlocked. Regarding the accidents, here are a few examples: Thule Airbase crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_c…

The other way to interpret these facts is that it takes a lot of work to actually detonate a nuclear weapon, so they are pretty safe by default and can handle abuse.

To actually detonate a nuke it pretty much has to be armed and intentionally dropped. That said, there's a much lower barrier for scattering nuclear material all over the countryside.

As an example, an implosion type bomb needs to be detonated at several places around the bomb simultaneously. It's designed such that if you don't have detonation of the explosives all at the exact same time then the pit won't make a nuclear blast.

They're very safe in terms of accidental nuclear detonation, but still, if the explosives are detonated it's going to make quite a mess to say the least.

Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#212

Post by rmetzler »

batter wrote: post #84
abandonliberty wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey it's not all bad, we managed to convince Ukraine to destroy their nuclear weapons and it worked out really well for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

It worked so 'well' that it lost part of it's territory. From Budapest Memorandum Wiki: 'The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.' Now it will be a lesson for others: nukes are way more reliable than some piece of paper, which no one is gonna follow: http://www.dw.com/en/ukraines-forgotte…

> It worked so 'well' that it lost part of it's territory.

Yeah, but the US got the Ukrainian gold.

Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#213

Post by ObeyTheGuts »

jpatokal wrote: post #181
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what would Ukraine have done if they had nukes? Nuked the enemy troops in the Crimaea, with their own population in the way? Or bomb some Russian city and start a nuclear war ...against the second larges nuclear power? Honestly, use of nuclear weapons just sounds like pure madness, no matter what the threat one is under. I mean, unless we're talking about an alien invasion (and I'm not impartial to keeping around…

The difference is deterrence: Russia would have thought twice before invading a nuclear-armed neighbour.

Ukraine is russia, ukraines nukes were rusian, ukraine is birthplace of russia, eastern side of ukraine is ethnicaly russians, u r saying nonsense

Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#214

Post by vetinari »

anticodon wrote: post #204
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what would Ukraine have done if they had nukes? Nuked the enemy troops in the Crimaea, with their own population in the way? Or bomb some Russian city and start a nuclear war ...against the second larges nuclear power? Honestly, use of nuclear weapons just sounds like pure madness, no matter what the threat one is under. I mean, unless we're talking about an alien invasion (and I'm not impartial to keeping around…

Ukraine doesn't consider Crimea inhabitants Ukrainians. They call them traitors and hate them (it's not an official position, just guessing from comments in social media - if you can read Russian, you'll find such comments easily)

They never were Ukrainians - they were an autonomous republic since '54 for a reason.

Even the 1954 transfer was only 'administrative'. By all accounts, Ukraine should not have kept Crimea in 1991.

Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#215

Post by hedora »

adventured wrote: post #177
goialoq wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Why would US bomb its main trading partner because NK bombed the US?

That depends on the context. If the US loses one city, that'll be an extreme tragedy that the US can absorb, while obliterating NK in response. If the US loses its top dozen (or more) cities in a nuclear exchange with North Korea, there's no scenario under which the American public won't demand retribution against the enabling power/s that made that outcome possible. China would be guaranteed to get nuked as a conseq…

Ths US population lives down-wind of China. I’m guessing the demand for more nuclear fallout will be at an all-time low after dozens of US cities are nuked.

Also, I’ve seen MASH. The US’s pointless war was as responsible for North Korea as anything else.

Anyway, I really doubt there will ever be significant popular demand for nuclear war.

Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#216

Post by vetinari »

tzs wrote: post #114
knappe wrote: post #54

I recently finished Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety [0]. I can't recommend the book enough for how eye opening it really is into how blasé we have been with nuclear weapons. We've been reckless and by all accounts it is a miracle we haven't had a serious accident (there have been a few, just not on our own soil). The number of close calls is just astounding. Fur…

> Further the book, at one point, talks about America's position on Russia and the attempts to keep them from getting "the bomb". It is exactly what has played out and will continue to play out with North Korea and Iran. History is repeating itself and we sure haven't learned from it. Is it actually similar, though? The US got the bomb in 1945. The Russians got theirs in 1949. Given the size of the Soviet Union, how…

> the US was only four years out of World War II, I don't think there is any way the US could have made a creditable threat to use military force to stop the Russians.

The UK and US thought about attacking the USSR, right after the WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#217

Post by crdoconnor »

dragonwriter wrote: post #113
hangonhn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Now it will be a lesson for others: nukes are way more reliable than some piece of paper, which no one is gonna follow" Is it really though? Even if Ukraine had nukes, would it have threatened and actually have the will to use it over the lost of the Crimea? The conflict was low intensity warfare, which nukes are not particularly well suited for. I don't think nukes are the be-all-end-all weapons people think they a…

> Even if Ukraine had nukes, would it have threatened and actually have the will to use it over the lost of the Crimea? Over a conventional invasion by a neighboring nation-state with massive conventional superiority with a paper-thin cover story? Probably. I mean, that’s why the USSR didn't pull that stunt against any of the NATO countries bordering its satellites, ever, even though they did similar things to other…

>paper-thin cover story?

Crimea is 70% ethnically Russian and the majority wanted to become part of Russia. Russia invaded and held a vote. Ukraine's response to that was that the vote should not have happened not because it was undemocratic, but because it was unconstitutional.

Their story was pretty solid.

Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#218

Post by krallja »

Animats wrote: post #200
cmiles74 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly static electricity could trigger the detonator in a nuclear weapon. There was a near accidental ignition during the development of "the Gadget" and my understanding is that the ignition system was virtually unchanged for decades. https://books.google.com/books?id=lJ6JDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA41&ots=...

Lightning bolt, maybe. Static electricity, no way. The detonators used are exploding-wire devices. They're just hugely overloaded resistors.[1] Regular detonators have a primary explosive which is triggered by a modest electric pulse. The primary explosive detonates and its energy detonates the secondary explosive. Those can go off by accident, cook off, etc. The ones used in nuclear weapons are just inert wires. Wit…

What design was used for bombing Nagasaki?

Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#219

Post by jnwatson »

crdoconnor wrote: post #217
dragonwriter wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if Ukraine had nukes, would it have threatened and actually have the will to use it over the lost of the Crimea? Over a conventional invasion by a neighboring nation-state with massive conventional superiority with a paper-thin cover story? Probably. I mean, that’s why the USSR didn't pull that stunt against any of the NATO countries bordering its satellites, ever, even though they did similar things to other…

>paper-thin cover story? Crimea is 70% ethnically Russian and the majority wanted to become part of Russia. Russia invaded and held a vote. Ukraine's response to that was that the vote should not have happened not because it was undemocratic, but because it was unconstitutional. Their story was pretty solid.

That logic would justify quite a few invasions.

Re: Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed

#220

Post by jnwatson »

hedora wrote: post #215
adventured wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on the context. If the US loses one city, that'll be an extreme tragedy that the US can absorb, while obliterating NK in response. If the US loses its top dozen (or more) cities in a nuclear exchange with North Korea, there's no scenario under which the American public won't demand retribution against the enabling power/s that made that outcome possible. China would be guaranteed to get nuked as a conseq…

Ths US population lives down-wind of China. I’m guessing the demand for more nuclear fallout will be at an all-time low after dozens of US cities are nuked. Also, I’ve seen MASH. The US’s pointless war was as responsible for North Korea as anything else. Anyway, I really doubt there will ever be significant popular demand for nuclear war.

Korea was a UN action.
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