Nuke Over North Carolina

[Ben]

I'd never heard of this incident. I suppose one could take the story in one of two ways. Either by the grace of God the bomb didn't detonate, or else the "low voltage switch", while sounding dramatic, simply did its job and prevented the detonation.

Either way, it gives one pause. We would be a drastically different country had this nuke exploded.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/21/atomic-bomb-nearly-exploded-over-north-carolina-in-161-report-says/

[Fly320s]

Heard about that on the radio this morning. That story said there were many more incidents with the nukes. I wonder what those were.

What caused the inflight break up of the B-52?

[MillCreek]

I have read a number of books and papers on the various crashes and explosions that have affected our nuclear force.  There have been a number of them, and a few warheads have never been recovered.  No high-yield nuclear explosions yet, though.

[TommyGunn]

IIRC there's still a nuke missing from the late 1950s somewhere off the coast of Savannah Georgia.  A bomber accidently lost it and it splashed into the ocean and buried itself in the bottom muck.
Still there to this day ....... tick ...... tick ..... tick ....... tick .....

[never_retreat]

After seeing many years of what salt water will do to anything, I highly doubt any off them would have been dangerous for more then a year.
After that the salt water would have destroyed most of it. Last time I check nukular bombs were not made of stainless steel or titanium.

[230RN]

Fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City, according to the report.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/21/atomic-bomb-nearly-exploded-over-north-carolina-in-161-report-says/#ixzz2fYFq5FRQ

A wiseguy friend acquaintance of mine guy I met only once and don't know his name smart-alecked... "This is bad... how?"

I immediately looked around for UAVs possibly watching, listening, reporting, picking up on my router signals...

Terry

[charby]

I thought this was another one in NC, I heard about the '61 nuke many years ago in some conversation I overheard.

[lupinus]

IIRC there's still a nuke missing from the late 1950s somewhere off the coast of Savannah Georgia.  A bomber accidently lost it and it splashed into the ocean and buried itself in the bottom muck.
Still there to this day ....... tick ...... tick ..... tick ....... tick .....

1958, B-47 collided with an F-86 during a simulated mission and they tossed it to decrease weight. Still debated if the bomb was ever capable of a full on detonation. Initial reports and practice for the type of bomb loaded at the time would have had a lead mock up on place of the actual cap used to initiate the reaction. Later reports said different and IIRC it's still debated.

Biggest worry would be contamination if/when the thing full on corrodes. Which is depended largely on just how deep it buried itself and where, the sands in the area move around a lot.

[French G.]

Atomic weapons and mishaps are two of my favorite wikipedia traps, gotten lost there for days. Never found the Goldsboro bomb after digging a good way into the impact area. The land is now federal owned and fenced off.

[Waitone]

This story appears to be old news.

APS discussed it here
http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=28248.0

From the article cited in the thread

The two weapons separated from the aircraft as it began to break apart -- five of the six arming devices on one of the bombs became activated, causing them to carry out many of the steps needed to arm themselves. A military analyst determined that the pilot's safe/arm switch was the only one of the six arming devices on the bombs that prevented detonation.

I assume the bomb to which both articles refer was the one that parachuted into a tree and not the one that free fell into the ground.

I suspect the Goldsboro incident was a clear example of the problem; the really new news was the number of incidents.

[Scout26]

Nuking North Cackalacky would have been a problem how?  Call it the last shot of the Civil War.


And the USAF had a few Nuclear Oooopsies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents

[MillCreek]

My regret is that I have never found a good source for reading up on Soviet military nuclear accidents.  I am sure they must have had some.

[gunsmith]

I heard N.C was asking for it, and was playing offensive videos

[Brad Johnson]

Biggest worry would be contamination if/when the thing full on corrodes. Which is depended largely on just how deep it buried itself and where, the sands in the area move around a lot.

Not much to worry about really. If the core material is intact (likely given the density) then it's too heavy to do much more than sit there.  I would be way more worried if the explosives had detonated on an unarmed physics package. That would have spread material everywhere and contaminated everything in sight.

Brad

[Boomhauer]

My regret is that I have never found a good source for reading up on Soviet military nuclear accidents.  I am sure they must have had some.

With the intense secrecy of the Soviet Union I doubt we will ever know about a lot of them. We do know they had a whole lot of nuclear submarine f***ups, though.

[just Warren]

Is the bomb that got buried still there? Could an enterprising terrist sort find and use it in some way

[HankB]

IIRC there's still a nuke missing from the late 1950s somewhere off the coast of Savannah Georgia.  A bomber accidently lost it and it splashed into the ocean and buried itself in the bottom muck.
Still there to this day ....... tick ...... tick ..... tick ....... tick .....

Once spent some time talking to a guy who maintained nukes . . . he didn't get into too much detail, but it seems that nukes need periodic skilled maintenance in order to remain viable. (I think he said something about spalling off the surface of the pit?) Something that's been sitting unattended for 5 decades might not even fizzle . . . especially if it's been under salt water all this time.

And if it was an H-bomb . . . don't they use tritium? With a half life of just over 12 years, by now it would be down to ~1/16 or less of the tritium it started out with.

[charby]

Not much to worry about really. If the core material is intact (likely given the density) then it's too heavy to do much more than sit there.  I would be way more worried if the explosives had detonated on an unarmed physics package. That would have spread material everywhere and contaminated everything in sight.

Brad

Plutonium decay is a common college algebra problem, stuff does decay pretty quickly compared to other radioactive materials

[RoadKingLarry]

The solution
To pollution
Is dilution

[TommyGunn]

Once spent some time talking to a guy who maintained nukes . . . he didn't get into too much detail, but it seems that nukes need periodic skilled maintenance in order to remain viable. (I think he said something about spalling off the surface of the pit?) Something that's been sitting unattended for 5 decades might not even fizzle . . . especially if it's been under salt water all this time.

And if it was an H-bomb . . . don't they use tritium? With a half life of just over 12 years, by now it would be down to ~1/16 or less of the tritium it started out with.

The "tick ... tick .... tick" implying that the bomb might some day blow up was a joke.

Many years ago, I believe it was in the 1980s I read a book that I then loaned to my father.   IIRC it was by Clive Cussler, and the basic theme was that there had been, secretly, a third attempted nuclear strike on Japan to end WW2 but the B-29 that had carried the bomb had crashed at sea.  Decades later (contemporary to the publication of the book or maybe a few years ahead...) some Japanese evil tycoon type discovers this  and locates the crashed B-29 and recovers the weapon.  It was a pretty cleverly written book and involved the protagonist in a Byzantine plot that really kept one's interest piqued.
After reading it my father (who was an engineer and actually did know something about nuclear weapons) suggested a problem with the storyline.  I guessed that after half a century immersed under the ocean, plus what must have been a fairly violent crash, the chances of a nuke being in working order were slim to ziltch.  Yea ... that was pretty much what my father was thinking.  


But, hey, just for the fun of it; "tick .... tick .... tick ..... "

[RevDisk]

Is the bomb that got buried still there? Could an enterprising terrist sort find and use it in some way

Sure. If they ground it up, and spread it widely. Plutonium poisoning is no joke.

Nuclear weapons have a shell. Varies on each design, but say 10-20 years. Mind you, that is with an environmentally controlled bunker.  Out in the elements? Fraction of that.