The fact that nuclear weapons are still never alone accidentally did not explode – purely an accident 
Photo from open sources Let’s start with a simple, amazing fact. In the 68 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not one has exploded nuclear warhead, with the exception of planned tests nuclear weapons. It’s not surprising that nuclear weapons never participated in the hot war. The guarantee from this was elementary human sanity – an understanding of all destructiveness the consequences that could be caused by modern far more powerful devices. The truly amazing thing is that starting 1945, not a single unit of nuclear weapons exploded on randomness.
Today, this topic is here in the United States, or among the first nuclear Powers seem almost irrelevant. We perceive nuclear weapons as a given. Perhaps this is not the case in the Middle East, or Indian subcontinent, or North Korea. But we British Americans, Russians, French and Chinese have almost forgotten about him, and certainly we will not use it in anger.
Not that it no longer exists. According to the local the Washington Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, at The United States has about 4,650 strategic missiles, 1950 of which are deployed, the rest are in stock. Figures are not published, but generally agreed maintenance, maintenance and modernization of nuclear forces cost as much as at least $ 50 billion a year.
Drive a car through the plains of North Dakota, Wyoming. or Montana, you will notice small areas sprinkled with gravel near the road, with some technical bulging out of the ground devices protected by barbed wire and ferocious “Not get closer! “. You would think that it’s electric substation. You are actually driving through one of 450 reinforced concrete launching mines in the northern plains in which intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) “Minuteman III” with monoblock warhead, each of which is able to align with ground 27 Hiroshima.
However, it is as close physically as people with streets in general can approach America’s SNF. The rest is on on board the bombers inside the impermeable vast perimeters airbases abroad, or hidden below the surface of the ocean at 14 the Trident submarines are out of sight and completely forgotten.
But it was not always so. If you want to get an idea what maybe read Eric Schlosser’s fascinating book “Command and control”, in which the history of means is intertwined US containment after 1945 and frame-by-frame recovery circumstances of the most resonant case of finding a country on a little hair from a random Armageddon.
It happened on September 18, 1980 at a rocket mine in a rural Arkansas In the mine was a Titan II missile equipped with a warhead W-53, the strongest in the US arsenal, with a capacity of 9 megatons, which is 600 times larger than Hiroshima.
The maintenance worker dropped the key, which fell into the shaft and damaged the shell of the rocket’s fuel tank. IN closed spaces quickly accumulated fuel vapors. After 4 hours “Titan II” exploded, leaving the mine completely destroyed, 740-tonne launcher protective cover, rotating, went into the night sky, and the warhead fell in the form of precipitation at 50 yards. The protective devices withstood and it did not explode, but one a man died and 26 were injured. Local residents were evacuated – but if the worst happened, it would be completely different.
However, in his research, Schlosser unearthed an even more frightening pre-emergency situation, which took place 19 years earlier. IN January 1961 in the air over North Carolina fell apart loaded with two hydrogen bombs B-52. Bombs hit the ground among the wreckage, and one of them triggered three out of four mechanisms for installing a fuse on a combat platoon. Withstood only last fuse without letting a disaster happen that would wiped out most of the US East Coast or turned it into a place unsuitable for living. Compared with this the Caribbean crisis was, in fact, an event of little significance.
And that was just one of at least 700 serious “incidents” that occurred in the United States from 1950 to 1968. The question is how many more cases have not been reported. Imagine also critical situations that should have taken place during this period in Soviet Union. But as far as we know, none of them brought to an unintentional full-blown nuclear explosion.
Since then, thanks to inventory reduction and improvement security procedures like “incidents” have become much smaller. But the human factor can never be ruled out. So, in 2007 in some strange way, in violation of the rules established after North Carolina, a transfer was made without permission air from North Dakota to Louisiana six cruise missiles, with mounted on them equipped with a nuclear warhead. Judging by to all, the persons in charge of loading confused the false warheads with real ones.
And human weakness made me wonder even at this last couple of weeks. In one strange episode, the three-star Admiral, former second senior officer in Strategic US command, whose personal business includes service in nuclear drums the country’s forces, was suspended from duty after how I was caught using fake poker chips at the casino in Council Bluffs (Iowa), located directly across the river from Strategic Command headquarters at Offut’s airbase Omaha (Nebraska).
A few days earlier, from the post of commander of the 20th Air the army in charge of those very missile silos Minuteman III in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, and centers of their launch, Major General Michael Carey was fired. In both cases involved “regrettable personal behavior”, told the news agency Associated Press senior Pentagon spokesperson, emphasizing less that the country’s nuclear deterrence forces are “safe, reliable and effective. ”
But the new sensations of last week are surprising. At the beginning of this year two of the three missile wings of the 20th Air Army showed unsatisfactory reliability and safety test results, and 17 personnel were required to undergo retraining. More In addition, AP said, in two cases, doors to launch control centers missiles in violation of the rules were left unlocked – in one of them when the ordered lunch was delivered to the duty station. Of course, the guy from Domino’s Pizza couldn’t just wander off the street and click on the button, but even so …
Such is the surreal routine of America’s nuclear forces. No wonder what was said about low morale at the start ICBM sites – the latest line in the battle formations of a war, which never will be. Back in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, in the height of the cold war, America’s greatest nuclear threat was emergency explosion of American weapons. It remains fair and Today. Let’s hope that blind luck will continue to us to accompany.
USA Doomsday War
