Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
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Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#2[dead]
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#3It must be emphasized up front that there is no official confirmation that the image was taken at Volkel Air Base, that the bent B61 shape is a real weapon (versus a trainer), or that the damage was the result of an accident (versus a training simulation).
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#4It must be emphasized up front that there is no official confirmation that the image was taken at Volkel Air Base, that the bent B61 shape is a real weapon (versus a trainer), or that the damage was the result of an accident (versus a training simulation).
Exactly. Quite the chain of speculation built from a single image.
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#5I remember hearing about bad OPSEC at Volkel. Something about how there was sensitive national security secrets indirectly being leaked bc soldiers didn’t set their Quizlet flashcards to private when studying for their exams.
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#6Regarding secrecy: a few years ago secret information got out because soldiers used flash-card apps to learn it, and those cards were released/available publicly.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#7Exposing an accident like this via a picture added to a student briefing would be a lot more stupid than the flashcards fiasco. This is just wild speculation based on a single out of context picture.
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#8Ok and then the water supply and all the farms got contaminated and that’s why they are closing all the farms
If you’re in NL can you buy a Geiger meter and take a really long cycle ride and validate the hypothesis?
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#9Would they be wearing protective gear if it was an actual accident? Also, the dude with the clip board doesn't look very concerned...
Re: Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
#10It must be emphasized up front that there is no official confirmation that the image was taken at Volkel Air Base, that the bent B61 shape is a real weapon (versus a trainer), or that the damage was the result of an accident (versus a training simulation).
Exactly. Quite the chain of speculation built from a single image.
Officially there's no explanation for the image at all, but "It's some teenagers at my local high school, plus a lot of Photoshop" doesn't feel at all likely, does it?
The idea that it's Volkel seems reasonably solid unless somebody has photographs known to be from somewhere else which look like that. We know Volkel's B61s are stored in a place exactly like that, we know most US airbases don't look exactly like that even in Europe.
So the biggest open question is: Did they prang a real bomb or is that a training unit. I mean, one reason you put so much work into training is that people do prang real bombs and it's important they don't freak out and instead follow procedure. So both are actually likely.