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A Philsophical Inquiry Into the Nature of Stupidity »
September 21, 2013
Nuclear Bomb 250 Times More Powerful Than The Hiroshima Bomb Almost Detonated Over North Carolina in 1961
I don't have really anything to add to this, but it's one of those stories you really have to read.
A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.
The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.
The full article is
over at The Guardian. Additionally, if anyone can come up with a probable reason why the British press keep scooping American media on American news, I'm all ears. Besides the standard "our media is a bubbling cesspool of bias and incompetence", that is.
posted by JohnE. at
11:40 AM
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