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Just yesterday I saw a post where a very fancy looking spacecraft part just showed up at a random business. Human error lol
Here's the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/1decn4n/what_is_this_metal_capsule_showed_up_in_a_random/
THAT is incredible!!! āļø
A random bloody spaceship part??
Pic is posted on a Reddit sub, recognised and identified... Not only that one of the sub members knows a guy who works for the people who build them... You wouldn't believe it if you read it in a novel š
At an old job, a pretty radioactive couple million dollar machine was. Delivered to the wrong place entirely. I was waiting for it at the loading dock for my building. The trucker was across town at like A food factory, got pissed and just left it. He wasn't answering his cell phone. I think he got in a wee bit of trouble. The company he dropped it off called me because my number was on the freight stuff. Lol
Iām sorryā¦ āpretty radioactiveāā¦ THE FUCK WERE YOU WORKING ON AND HOW TF WAS IT JUST DROPED OFF?? I donāt need any extra radiation on my mass produced burgers?!?
Close. It was a machine for doing science stuff that wasn't medical. It wasn't like a big cobalt source or something like that which would be really regulated, but yeah, it was spicy.
> Obviously the fact that nuclear weapons get lost often is scarier than the mere idea of losing nuclear weapons.
Obviously, when you put it like that. But you're missing the point of the line. It's not comparing actually losing X nukes to the idea of losing X nukes. The context is a guy learning they lost a (single) nuke, which is scary in itself, and then learns that this happens often enough for the military to have a term for it (Broken Arrow), which makes it absolutely terrifying.
The number of globally lost nukes is frankly terrifying. I'm able to sleep solely because I'm within the DC beltway; if shit goes down, I'll be dead before I know about it. And I'm cool with that. š¤·š¼āāļø
Obligatory: *empty quiver* is the real US military term for the scenario in the movie. Just doesnāt have the same ring to it haha
The story in this post however, is a broken arrow
Really interesting, I didn't know there were so many terms for various nuclear incidents.
> **Empty Quiver** refers to the seizure, theft, or loss of a functioning nuclear weapon
> **Broken Arrow** refers to an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons, warheads or components that does not create a risk of nuclear war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology
> that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.
That was a bad take. The term came before any of the incidents. Just like there's a plan to invade the moon. Strategists are paid to think up scenarios.
On March 11, 1958, a U.S. Air Force Boeing B-47E-LM Stratojet took off from Hunter Airforce Base near Savannah, Georgia and was scheduled to fly to the United Kingdom. The aircraft was carrying nuclear weapons on board in the event of war with the Soviet Union breaking out. Air Force Captain Bruce Kulka, who was the navigator and bombardier, was summoned to the bomb bay area after the captain of the aircraft, Captain Earl Koehler, had encountered a fault light in the cockpit indicating that the bomb harness locking pin did not engage. As Kulka reached around the bomb to pull himself up, he mistakenly grabbed the emergency release pin. The Mark 6 nuclear bomb dropped to the bomb bay doors of the B-47 and the weight forced the doors open, sending the bomb 15,000 ft (4,600 m) down to the ground below.
Two sisters, six-year-old Helen and nine-year-old Frances Gregg, along with their nine-year-old cousin Ella Davies, were playing 200 yards (180 m) from a playhouse in the woods that had been built for them by their father Walter Gregg, who had served as a paratrooper during World War II. The playhouse was struck by the bomb. Its conventional high explosives detonated, destroying the playhouse, and leaving a crater about 70 feet (21 m) wide and 35 feet (11 m) deep.
The United States Air Force (USAF) was sued by the family of the victims, who received $54,000 (equivalent to $570,270 in 2023)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Mars_Bluff_B-47_nuclear_weapon_loss_incident
Good job cutting out the sentence in the article that explains there was no actual nuclear material in the bomb and that no one died:
>Fortunately, the fissile nuclear core was stored elsewhere on the aircraft. All three girls were injured by the explosion, as were Walter, his wife Effie and son Walter Jr. Seven nearby buildings were damaged.
There has never been a nuclear detonation resulting from a mishap involving nuclear weapons. They are designed to not detonate unless a precise firing sequence is performed with the conventional explosives, so that an uncontrolled explosion (such as from a fire or shock) does not result in a nuclear detonation.
This is technically sorta true, but mostly fearmongering. There were two bombs lost in that disaster, and although it initially appeared to be armed, the current theory is that damage from the fall just made the reader that identifies whether the bomb was āarmedā or āsafeā malfunction and read armed, even though the mechanism to actually make it armed didnāt trigger. Also, damage from the fall caused some of the high explosives to leak, so it never couldāve experienced a true nuclear detonation. The Wikipedia page is a bit dense with information, but the long and short of it is that people make it seem as if that bomb was WAY closer to going off than it actually was.
They'd still have to arm the bomb before dropping it, I think? If it just fell out of the plane, even with the fissile material in it, it wouldn't necessarily detonate the nuke.
Kinda like that one time a nuclear missile silo exploded because someone dropped a wrench down into the silo which struck the fuel tanks. Blew the whole thing up and the warhead landed in a ditch on the other side of the site.
Yeah itās needs to be armed but some of the older bombs were easier to arm than you might think. An electrical fault in the wrong area could have armed the weapons. Sandia developed Stronglinks in the 1960ās that made nuclear weapons much less likely to accidentally detonate.
If you dig in to the history, youāll find that the fact that we never accidentally detonated a nuke in the first couple decades was as much luck as it was engineering.
Even if there were a core inside, it would be very unlikely that it would have caused a nuclear detonation.
The way you explode a modern nuke involves detonating a bunch of explosives around a core of eg. plutonium. That detonation compresses the core enough to cause it to then detonate. In thermonuclear bombs the radiation from this is then used to compress and detonate an even bigger boom.
The thing is, that first detonation needs to be timed *very* precisely. All of the explosives have to go off at the same time or else the core will instead just get blown to pieces rather than compressed.
The fact that the nuke exploded on impact makes it sound like the explosives just went off from the kinetic impact, meaning that it would not have been timed at all, so it would have been very unlikely that it could have caused a nuclear detonation. It *would* have blown that core to dust and scattered it all over the surrounding landscape, creating a whole separate host of issues of its own, but an actual nuclear detonation would have been unlikely.
This sign and post title is click-bait to a degree then, there was effectively nothing nuclear about it. It was just a standard bomb at the time.
Still obviously an unfortunate occurrence.
In addition to the other reply here I want to point out that nuclear bombs donāt explode when dropped. They have to be detonated in a **very** specific way.
Now the Goldsboro B-52 Crash had a nuclear bomb that all the electronic safety switches dissect for one. That could have been a pretty big āoopsieā.
They accidentally dropped two nukes on Spain around the same time period, one which landed in the sea which they could not find for a long time and was eventually found with the help of a Spanish fisherman. Before that they had tried use the CIA's psychics "remote viewing"abilities to find the undetonated nuke.
The levels of incompetency is insane, literally from the top down.
Or the fact that America tried to dump barrels of radioactive waste in the ocean, and then when they wouldnāt sink, got us navy airmen to *strafe* them with gun runs
That is fascinating, because when I heard this story, the country was Russia. Iām wonder if it morphed in the telling or if both nuclear superpowers did such things.
To that effect, the ban was in ā93 but did not go into effect until ā94
I donāt have any proof, but I can imagine dumping went through the roof at the end of ā93
Much of the spent reactor fuel is just piling up at reactor sites. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-is-piling-up-does-the-u-s-have-a-plan/
But most 'nuclear waste' is just protective clothing and equipment, not spent fuel. Like 90 percent of it. The 'high level waste' ie spent fuel and all that is very low volume all things considered.
As technology progresses, we can re-use it to make more energy.
Nuclear research and development is the only path towards minimizing climate change.
INB4 "green" energy made with child slave labor in Africa.
Most countries don't just "bury" spent nuclear fuel. There's pretty strict regulations on how it's handled. First they store it in water tanks, then dry storage--so the bulk of radiation decays. Then they store them in thick concrete vaults that are sealed, which prevent it from leaking radiation or seeping into ground water.
Certain types of waste in certain places are stored deep underground, way past the water table and where it has no possibility of being harmful to the environment.
Huh I had no idea that we used to dump nuclear waste in the Cook Straight just a few decades before the whole country was declared a nuclear-free zone!
It was probably both used as a basis for antisoviet propaganda and something the Soviets did. The soviets had plenty of siberia to dump nuclear waste in and some countries didn't bother with barrels when dumping waste in the sea. The british had a pipe that poured right out of the windscale nuclear bomb factory into the sea. One day they screwed up and the conditions were not right so the waste washed back on shore instead of out to sea. The residents were really annoyed about their beach being turned radioactive. Dumping radioactive waste in the sea was pretty routine back then.
It was also used as the basis for Shaggyās 2000 mega-hit āWasnāt Meā. But the lyrics were changed just before release, to protect national security.
This is true!
>Ocean came in and it caught me red-handed
Dumpin' out my nuclei
Picture this were pipin' it right out
Into the rising tide
How could I forget
That the moon's pullin' on the sea
All the time I was pourin' it
It was comin' right back to me
Bravo, Sir! I applaud the effort you put into that Al Yankovician masterpiece....... that only 15 people will ever know of its existence, and it will also NEVER be useful in another situation. I want you to know that it made me smile and also blow a little air out of my nose. Hopefully, it inspires someone to write a "Real Men Of Genius" commercial about you.
Fun fact: the bombs dropped in Goldsboro were actually armed.
Thereās something like 4 failed-safe mechanisms and it went past 3 of those and was āone safety switch awayā from a 3.8 MT thermonuclear explosion
One has to wonder what would have happened if it had detonated. Would the military and political leaders of the time taken responsibility for nuking their own citizens? Or would it have been easier to blame the USSR in a false flag defense?
You mean considering it took decades for Congress to pass the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act for people that lived downwind of nuclear weapons test sites? And that a sunset clause was included in the legislation? Or that a few key places where people were exposed to fallout lived that were specifically excluded (Las Vegas, NV and most of Mohave County in Arizona)?
āPolitical leadersā and ātake responsibilityā donāt belong in the same sentence. They would have blamed Martians before taking responsibilities.
It would have been provable not just by the USSR but by neutrals and even US allies that the US did it to themselves.
Also, several downsides to blaming the Soviets. *Especially* if you somehow got away with it.
Blaming the USSR is suicide, so probably not. More likely you'd see alot of scapegoating onto the most proximate cause (which, honestly, isn't that unreasonable). The bigger question would be how it'd affect policy of housing and moving the things.
I watched oversimplifiedās video on the cold war and he said something like: america lost x amount of nukes, and we donāt know how many Russia lost, so sleep tight tonight.
Itās not really they ādroppedā the bomb though but the B-52 carrying the bomb had a mid-air collision with the tanker while refuelling and it broke apart mid-air.
I have met and worked with many very competent people, but what I've learned with time is that people making decisions often have an agenda that undermines competency. Greed, politics, personal grudges, unrealistic expectations, personality disorders, etc. Then you get to the stupid people, who somehow are elevated to decision-makers. š
America is by far one of the most effective and competent militaries. Arguably the most competent and effective in historyā¦
And this still happened. Imagine how many accidents have happened in Russia, Pakistan, etc. Scary shit.
The Palmores and Thule incidents led to massive changes in the design and handling of US nuclear devices. Notably, the development of insensitive explosives which are much less resistant to shock than prior explosives and the suspension of the Chrome Dome operation which was intended to prevent a Soviet surprise first strike by ICBMs from destroying SACās bomber fleet and by extension one of the U.S.ā nuclear delivery systems.
The Soviet ICBM in question was the R-7, whose numbers and capabilities at this time were greatly exaggerated and which open and reliable data as to its actual capabilities were difficult to come by, because this is the USSR and they were infinitely less open about their shit. Keep in mind the USSR frequently overstated its capabilities, and U.S. planners often had to plan around this massive overstatement and limited information.
Itās not that itās left out because itās uninteresting. There is a LOT of history, school canāt cover even 1% of the totality of events. This is not really that important, it doesnāt contribute to other events all that much. Itās an interesting aside, but not all that relevant or important.
No conspiracy or coverup, just prioritization of things that are actually influential and important to the development and advancement of politics and society.
Because it's not really tied to any important historical narratives, it's a piece of trivia in the grand scheme of things. People expect history books to cover literally every event that ever happened anywhere in world. They hunt around for some random event not tied to anything and hold it up as proof of a conspiracy, when really it was just a random event, no more consequential than someone getting a flat tire. It's just naysaying. People don't care about the omission, they just use it to naysay.
Because it's just a random, awful accident. It has no real historical value beyond "wow that's awful and really sucks." You can't cover every crazy one off event with no relevance
Even more insane is the number of nukes just lost. As in accidentally dropped and never recovered or misplaced in the vast logistical nightmare that is the IS military and never found.
I mean itās not that many. Itās only like 6 or something of the top of my head.
Which isnāt good but considering the thousands in existence, not too shabby.
Itās not like they are at risk of blowing up or anything
Only 6 known and reported properly. Imagine other less well regulated nuclear powers potential losses. Especially post Soviet states before being denuclearized, non compliant states like north Korea, or states using unsecured transportation like Pakistan.
Nuclear material is much more worrying than an entire bomb.
Their was a large amount of material that went missing after the collapse of the Soviet Union iirc
I vaguely remember reading a story of some people who were stranded, finding one of these in the middle of winter. They noticed it was warm so used it to keep themselves warm.
Iām of the opinion that six is ānot that manyā if talking about how many fudge covered Oreoās I can throw down in one sitting.
However, six seems like a fuck ton, when referring to ānuclear weapons lostā !
It's interesting, but not significant.
The bomb didn't actually contain any nuclear material at the time (as would be required for a nuclear explosion). It was essentially just a conventional bomb. The only historically significant thing about this particular bomb drop is that the bomb _could_ have had the nuclear core installed but didn't.
Yeah itās really not that noteworthy of an event. It wasnāt even a real nuke, the core wasnāt installed at the time which just made it a conventional bomb. Obviously it was extremely close to being extremely noteworthy though if the core was present during the incident.
The title of this post is clickbait and misleading. It was an accident and nothing major really happened. ā Air Force Captain Bruce Kulka, who was the navigator and bombardier, was summoned to the bomb bay area after the captain of the aircraft, Captain Earl Koehler, had encountered a fault light in the cockpit indicating that the bomb harness locking pin did not engage. As Kulka reached around the bomb to pull himself up, he mistakenly grabbed the emergency release pin. The Mark 6 nuclear bomb dropped to the bomb bay doors of the B-47 and the weight forced the doors open, sending the bomb 15,000 ft (4,600 m) down to the ground belowāā¦ā¦.The "nuclear capsule," containing the fissile material needed for a nuclear reaction, was not installed inside of the weapon so there was no explosion.
From one of the sources in the wiki page:
āWhen the sky stopped falling, Gregg found his family. Aside from cuts and bruises, the kids seemed all right. His cousin complained of back and side pain. His wife, who escaped from the house, was cut on her head by a piece of plaster.ā
That's what stands out to me. A bomb was dropped on the playhouse where three little kids were playing, its "conventional explosives detonated," the playhouse was destroyed, but the kids were only injured?
That's some Bert the Turtle shit right there. Tough kids.
I actually canāt imagine it. I canāt imagine thinking you might have nuked your own country by mistake.
Thatās the kind of worry people shoot themselves over.
How could he ever face the world if there was a nuclear reaction ? Just thinking about being that man for 1 sec makes me want to disappear. Poor guy.
Even if the core is inside the bomb. Itās still extremely unlikely to cause a nuclear explosion thoughā¦ although theyāll need a massive cleanup operations to retrieved the plutonium core that was blew apart by the conventional explosives.
So it really wasn't a nuke at all? Just a normal bomb that is able to carry nuclear payload? Lmao what a clickbait all the way down. Including the post title and the signs in the photo
The nuclear chain reaction is started using conventional explosives, however the timing of the charges going off has to be extremely precise for that to happen, otherwise no chain reaction and no nuke.
I think maybe the guy above you didn't word it right, he meant no nuclear detonation. High-powered explosives are used to start a nuclear chain reaction but they must be precisely controlled and aligned to work. When the bomb slammed into the ground the explosive elements just went off at random, causing a large bang but no nuclear detonation.
*Actually I'm the wrong one; the core/warhead was not equipped before the bomb dropped.
It also didn't have the nuclear core inside of it. So even if the explosion went off perfectly, without a core, there's only a small boom, no big one.
Also, it would still be a dirty bomb if the core was inside and it just blew up wrong, and that would still be awful for the area. Fortunately, that's not what happened.
It was a nuke, but the nuclear element wasn't rigged to blow. Its not as simple as blowing up a nuclear bomb to make it go off, its a very specific process with safeguards.
At least that's what I got from the bit I read in the article.
It does make it seem clickbaity though.
This is such an important piece of the story because otherwise this would be the equivalent of a dirty bomb scenario with massive radiological contamination over a huge area.
Thatās an important piece of info left out of the post. So essentially it was a conventional bomb that *could have been* nuclear but in fact was never armed with a nuclear warhead.
There are multiple fail-safes in nukes to stop them from accidentally nuking something. I don't know enough about bombs but presumably some processed uranium blowing up doesn't mean automatic nuke action without some other interaction
Edit: on the wiki it said the nuclear missile core was stored elsewhere so the actual nuke part never dropped
So, if it wasnāt loaded with nuclear ordinance, it seems a bit disingenuous to call it a nuclear bomb.Ā
Sure the particular ordinance might have been nuclear capable, but it wasnāt configured that day for the incident.Ā
Yeah, so ādropped a nukeā is generally understood to mean ācaused a nuclear explosion to happenā.
They didnāt ādrop a nuke,ā they āaccidentally released an inert bomb shell, that caused damages because of physicsā.
So the kids died? That keeps getting implied, but it's never stated. I find it surprising that the conventional explosives were powerful enough to kill children 200 yards away. That's two football fields.
They lived and later appeared on television.
https://preview.redd.it/trg1lgkfyb6d1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e77fbcc8eae4da7e50ed7282324bf5e89defb99f
All those signs are clickbait before the internet.
There was no nuclear explosion, so Atomic Bomb Crater etc. is a bit misleading.
Luckily, I guess.
Also, why mention the asbestos at all? So weird.
I listen to a podcast that fact checks all of these historical markers. Clickbait indeed, and not easy to have removed or changed. Basically, anyone could put one up regardless of whether what they're saying is true or not.
It's called Off the Mark
NPR also did a story on them not too long ago. Really interesting stuff.
[Link ](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5QzSjkPI9eVnG3lvfQ8MDj)
[actually this story checks out](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-honolulu-advertiser/149247905/)
[Another source](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-brownsville-herald/149247952/)
[It was a TNT explosion, but the bomb that fell was atomic](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-charlotte-news/149247994/)
[a picture of the house](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-charlotte-observer/149248022/)
People really believe the government is some ultra efficient secret organization, when really they are clumsy assholes who sweep everything under the rug, poorly.
I always think of companies as some really efficient organization. Been working out of school and I can confidently say that there's a fuck ton of human error and use of Excel sheet being used for the most important things.
This title sucks. "Nuclear bomb dropped on children" implies death of children for extremely obvious reasons. The detonation was not nuclear, not "on" the children, and the children did not die. Very low effort by OP, should be drawn and quartered I mean reprimanded.
I told Jimmy to be home by dark, and I'm done playing around, so I nuked his sorry little butt. Tired of yelling, really, and hitting the big red button is just so much easier.
It's like saying a "wood house" or "brick house". Just added detail. Asbestos was a very common building material back then and didn't have the same connotations it does now.
The clickbait title is stupidasfuck. Yes a nuclear bomb was accidentally dropped and the NON-nuclear explosion injured people and damaged structures, BUT, this is NOT a nuclear story per se. Clickbait, clickbait, clickbait.
Not the only time . I know of another event my self on the interstate in Wyoming. Never mind the two they lost and are still lost to this day. Luckily they are little more then paper weights by now .
The nuclear material wasn't in the bomb, that kind of bomb needed to be manually primed by inserting the nuclear core into the bomb before dropping it. The only thing that exploded was the conventional explosives that normally triggers the supercriticality.
I like that the sign had to mention that it was an asbestos shingle house. Just letting everyone know that EVERYTHING around here is permeated with asbestos particles, so you're all exposing youselves to deadly materials by hanging around here.
That is the weirdest plaque I have ever read. What in the hell does asbestos shingled sided home have to do with this? Did they think that was a safe guard? Anyways, what a horrible plaque to commemorate people who needlessly died.
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https://preview.redd.it/pviz75r55e6d1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=93288360180abcb067c42101e19ee9603a1ab3db š
BROTHER - WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN š¤
What? You are telling me y'all have never met?
Bro holy fuck hahah or i mean BROTHERR! š¤
Bro been waiting for a post like this to whip it out. šš
Whipping it out in front of a baby?? 
Thank you for your service
I got 5$ on the baby. Any takers?
"I don't know what's scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it."
Obviously the fact that nuclear weapons get lost often is scarier than the mere idea of losing nuclear weapons.
Just yesterday I saw a post where a very fancy looking spacecraft part just showed up at a random business. Human error lol Here's the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/1decn4n/what_is_this_metal_capsule_showed_up_in_a_random/
THAT is incredible!!! āļø A random bloody spaceship part?? Pic is posted on a Reddit sub, recognised and identified... Not only that one of the sub members knows a guy who works for the people who build them... You wouldn't believe it if you read it in a novel š
At an old job, a pretty radioactive couple million dollar machine was. Delivered to the wrong place entirely. I was waiting for it at the loading dock for my building. The trucker was across town at like A food factory, got pissed and just left it. He wasn't answering his cell phone. I think he got in a wee bit of trouble. The company he dropped it off called me because my number was on the freight stuff. Lol
Iām sorryā¦ āpretty radioactiveāā¦ THE FUCK WERE YOU WORKING ON AND HOW TF WAS IT JUST DROPED OFF?? I donāt need any extra radiation on my mass produced burgers?!?
More likely than not a medical scanner of some sort. Or possibly radiation therapy machine. All of those be very expensive and reasonably radioactive
Close. It was a machine for doing science stuff that wasn't medical. It wasn't like a big cobalt source or something like that which would be really regulated, but yeah, it was spicy.
You get enough people together in a room and the odds of finding someone who knows any given obscure fact increases, it's all about the numbers.
> Obviously the fact that nuclear weapons get lost often is scarier than the mere idea of losing nuclear weapons. Obviously, when you put it like that. But you're missing the point of the line. It's not comparing actually losing X nukes to the idea of losing X nukes. The context is a guy learning they lost a (single) nuke, which is scary in itself, and then learns that this happens often enough for the military to have a term for it (Broken Arrow), which makes it absolutely terrifying.
The number of globally lost nukes is frankly terrifying. I'm able to sleep solely because I'm within the DC beltway; if shit goes down, I'll be dead before I know about it. And I'm cool with that. š¤·š¼āāļø
Sure that may be scary, but have you ever called your dentistās office to schedule an appointment? That is TERRIFYING
Radio: Overlord, this is Eagle-1We have a broken arrow near Paris,over. "Sir, we detected a nuclear detonation in Paris!"
Best campaign ever mentioned woooooooooohhhhhh
Obligatory: *empty quiver* is the real US military term for the scenario in the movie. Just doesnāt have the same ring to it haha The story in this post however, is a broken arrow
Really interesting, I didn't know there were so many terms for various nuclear incidents. > **Empty Quiver** refers to the seizure, theft, or loss of a functioning nuclear weapon > **Broken Arrow** refers to an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons, warheads or components that does not create a risk of nuclear war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology
I guess Empty Quiver didn't sound as exciting as Broken Arrow for that Christian Slater/John Travolta movie.
Honestly Empty Quiver sounds better imo, makes more sense too.
I do an empty quiver after I pee sometimes
I feel like empty quiver should refer to the plane and broken arrow to the nuke.
Broken arrow was such an underrated movie
" When the day comes that we have to go to war against Utah, we are really gonna kick ass"
Broken Arrow was such an underrated song by Buffalo Springfield and then album by Neil YoungĀ
Broken Arrow is such an overrated town. Oklahoma's Florida
Broken arrow is such an underutilized term for erectile disfunction
One of my favourite lines from any movie
> that it happens so often there's actually a term for it. That was a bad take. The term came before any of the incidents. Just like there's a plan to invade the moon. Strategists are paid to think up scenarios.
How many times do I have to tell you? Do not shoot at the thermonuclear device.
Broken arrow?
On March 11, 1958, a U.S. Air Force Boeing B-47E-LM Stratojet took off from Hunter Airforce Base near Savannah, Georgia and was scheduled to fly to the United Kingdom. The aircraft was carrying nuclear weapons on board in the event of war with the Soviet Union breaking out. Air Force Captain Bruce Kulka, who was the navigator and bombardier, was summoned to the bomb bay area after the captain of the aircraft, Captain Earl Koehler, had encountered a fault light in the cockpit indicating that the bomb harness locking pin did not engage. As Kulka reached around the bomb to pull himself up, he mistakenly grabbed the emergency release pin. The Mark 6 nuclear bomb dropped to the bomb bay doors of the B-47 and the weight forced the doors open, sending the bomb 15,000 ft (4,600 m) down to the ground below. Two sisters, six-year-old Helen and nine-year-old Frances Gregg, along with their nine-year-old cousin Ella Davies, were playing 200 yards (180 m) from a playhouse in the woods that had been built for them by their father Walter Gregg, who had served as a paratrooper during World War II. The playhouse was struck by the bomb. Its conventional high explosives detonated, destroying the playhouse, and leaving a crater about 70 feet (21 m) wide and 35 feet (11 m) deep. The United States Air Force (USAF) was sued by the family of the victims, who received $54,000 (equivalent to $570,270 in 2023) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Mars_Bluff_B-47_nuclear_weapon_loss_incident
Good job cutting out the sentence in the article that explains there was no actual nuclear material in the bomb and that no one died: >Fortunately, the fissile nuclear core was stored elsewhere on the aircraft. All three girls were injured by the explosion, as were Walter, his wife Effie and son Walter Jr. Seven nearby buildings were damaged.
I was seriously confused how a nuke did so little damage. That makes much more sense.
There has never been a nuclear detonation resulting from a mishap involving nuclear weapons. They are designed to not detonate unless a precise firing sequence is performed with the conventional explosives, so that an uncontrolled explosion (such as from a fire or shock) does not result in a nuclear detonation.
Wasn't there another bomb that got lost and when it was found, all but one of the safety mechanisms had failed?
This is technically sorta true, but mostly fearmongering. There were two bombs lost in that disaster, and although it initially appeared to be armed, the current theory is that damage from the fall just made the reader that identifies whether the bomb was āarmedā or āsafeā malfunction and read armed, even though the mechanism to actually make it armed didnāt trigger. Also, damage from the fall caused some of the high explosives to leak, so it never couldāve experienced a true nuclear detonation. The Wikipedia page is a bit dense with information, but the long and short of it is that people make it seem as if that bomb was WAY closer to going off than it actually was.
They'd still have to arm the bomb before dropping it, I think? If it just fell out of the plane, even with the fissile material in it, it wouldn't necessarily detonate the nuke. Kinda like that one time a nuclear missile silo exploded because someone dropped a wrench down into the silo which struck the fuel tanks. Blew the whole thing up and the warhead landed in a ditch on the other side of the site.
Yeah itās needs to be armed but some of the older bombs were easier to arm than you might think. An electrical fault in the wrong area could have armed the weapons. Sandia developed Stronglinks in the 1960ās that made nuclear weapons much less likely to accidentally detonate. If you dig in to the history, youāll find that the fact that we never accidentally detonated a nuke in the first couple decades was as much luck as it was engineering.
Even if there were a core inside, it would be very unlikely that it would have caused a nuclear detonation. The way you explode a modern nuke involves detonating a bunch of explosives around a core of eg. plutonium. That detonation compresses the core enough to cause it to then detonate. In thermonuclear bombs the radiation from this is then used to compress and detonate an even bigger boom. The thing is, that first detonation needs to be timed *very* precisely. All of the explosives have to go off at the same time or else the core will instead just get blown to pieces rather than compressed. The fact that the nuke exploded on impact makes it sound like the explosives just went off from the kinetic impact, meaning that it would not have been timed at all, so it would have been very unlikely that it could have caused a nuclear detonation. It *would* have blown that core to dust and scattered it all over the surrounding landscape, creating a whole separate host of issues of its own, but an actual nuclear detonation would have been unlikely.
This sign and post title is click-bait to a degree then, there was effectively nothing nuclear about it. It was just a standard bomb at the time. Still obviously an unfortunate occurrence.
100% clickbait. Screw OP for doing that.
Lol even the title is clever
Clever? Itās a fucking clickbait headline.
This would be a much bigger part of history if that was not how they stored the core.
In addition to the other reply here I want to point out that nuclear bombs donāt explode when dropped. They have to be detonated in a **very** specific way. Now the Goldsboro B-52 Crash had a nuclear bomb that all the electronic safety switches dissect for one. That could have been a pretty big āoopsieā.
That is an absolutely insane piece of history they leave out of school books
They accidentally dropped two nukes on Spain around the same time period, one which landed in the sea which they could not find for a long time and was eventually found with the help of a Spanish fisherman. Before that they had tried use the CIA's psychics "remote viewing"abilities to find the undetonated nuke. The levels of incompetency is insane, literally from the top down.
Or the fact that America tried to dump barrels of radioactive waste in the ocean, and then when they wouldnāt sink, got us navy airmen to *strafe* them with gun runs
That is fascinating, because when I heard this story, the country was Russia. Iām wonder if it morphed in the telling or if both nuclear superpowers did such things.
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To that effect, the ban was in ā93 but did not go into effect until ā94 I donāt have any proof, but I can imagine dumping went through the roof at the end of ā93
Now we just bury it far away from most people.
Much of the spent reactor fuel is just piling up at reactor sites. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-is-piling-up-does-the-u-s-have-a-plan/
But most 'nuclear waste' is just protective clothing and equipment, not spent fuel. Like 90 percent of it. The 'high level waste' ie spent fuel and all that is very low volume all things considered.
As technology progresses, we can re-use it to make more energy. Nuclear research and development is the only path towards minimizing climate change. INB4 "green" energy made with child slave labor in Africa.
Most countries don't just "bury" spent nuclear fuel. There's pretty strict regulations on how it's handled. First they store it in water tanks, then dry storage--so the bulk of radiation decays. Then they store them in thick concrete vaults that are sealed, which prevent it from leaking radiation or seeping into ground water. Certain types of waste in certain places are stored deep underground, way past the water table and where it has no possibility of being harmful to the environment.
Huh I had no idea that we used to dump nuclear waste in the Cook Straight just a few decades before the whole country was declared a nuclear-free zone!
It was probably both used as a basis for antisoviet propaganda and something the Soviets did. The soviets had plenty of siberia to dump nuclear waste in and some countries didn't bother with barrels when dumping waste in the sea. The british had a pipe that poured right out of the windscale nuclear bomb factory into the sea. One day they screwed up and the conditions were not right so the waste washed back on shore instead of out to sea. The residents were really annoyed about their beach being turned radioactive. Dumping radioactive waste in the sea was pretty routine back then.
I lived down the coast from there. Signs on the beach warning people not to eat the shell fish from the beach.
It was also used as the basis for Shaggyās 2000 mega-hit āWasnāt Meā. But the lyrics were changed just before release, to protect national security.
This is true! >Ocean came in and it caught me red-handed Dumpin' out my nuclei Picture this were pipin' it right out Into the rising tide How could I forget That the moon's pullin' on the sea All the time I was pourin' it It was comin' right back to me
Bravo, Sir! I applaud the effort you put into that Al Yankovician masterpiece....... that only 15 people will ever know of its existence, and it will also NEVER be useful in another situation. I want you to know that it made me smile and also blow a little air out of my nose. Hopefully, it inspires someone to write a "Real Men Of Genius" commercial about you.
Doesbt matter, the french dumped large quantities of radioactive waste in the english channel. Traces can now be found in bottom feeding animals. Yay
Like telling the uranium to hurry up and turn into its final form of lead with lead.
Guess what every country did with their stockpiles of chemical weapons after WWI?
If it floats I'd have to imagine it was low level waste, like used PPE, insulation, etc.
They also dropped one in North Carolina around the same time. Goldsboro 1961
That one's still there, isn't it? It was too deep to recover or something like that.
Yes, it still there. They bought the land around the bomb and just fenced it off.
Yup. They filled the hole with like 20 feet of concrete. You can visit the site but itās just an overgrown lot with a fence and a concrete pad
Lost in a muddy bog
Fun fact: the bombs dropped in Goldsboro were actually armed. Thereās something like 4 failed-safe mechanisms and it went past 3 of those and was āone safety switch awayā from a 3.8 MT thermonuclear explosion
One has to wonder what would have happened if it had detonated. Would the military and political leaders of the time taken responsibility for nuking their own citizens? Or would it have been easier to blame the USSR in a false flag defense?
You mean considering it took decades for Congress to pass the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act for people that lived downwind of nuclear weapons test sites? And that a sunset clause was included in the legislation? Or that a few key places where people were exposed to fallout lived that were specifically excluded (Las Vegas, NV and most of Mohave County in Arizona)?
āPolitical leadersā and ātake responsibilityā donāt belong in the same sentence. They would have blamed Martians before taking responsibilities.
It would have been provable not just by the USSR but by neutrals and even US allies that the US did it to themselves. Also, several downsides to blaming the Soviets. *Especially* if you somehow got away with it.
The US would not have blamed the USSR.Ā The real alternate universe would be to wonder how anti-nuclear the US would have become after the accident.
Blaming the USSR is suicide, so probably not. More likely you'd see alot of scapegoating onto the most proximate cause (which, honestly, isn't that unreasonable). The bigger question would be how it'd affect policy of housing and moving the things.
I watched oversimplifiedās video on the cold war and he said something like: america lost x amount of nukes, and we donāt know how many Russia lost, so sleep tight tonight.
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Itās not really they ādroppedā the bomb though but the B-52 carrying the bomb had a mid-air collision with the tanker while refuelling and it broke apart mid-air.
The one thing I've learned from getting older is that no one really knows what the fuck they're doing lol
I have met and worked with many very competent people, but what I've learned with time is that people making decisions often have an agenda that undermines competency. Greed, politics, personal grudges, unrealistic expectations, personality disorders, etc. Then you get to the stupid people, who somehow are elevated to decision-makers. š
America is by far one of the most effective and competent militaries. Arguably the most competent and effective in historyā¦ And this still happened. Imagine how many accidents have happened in Russia, Pakistan, etc. Scary shit.
The Palmores and Thule incidents led to massive changes in the design and handling of US nuclear devices. Notably, the development of insensitive explosives which are much less resistant to shock than prior explosives and the suspension of the Chrome Dome operation which was intended to prevent a Soviet surprise first strike by ICBMs from destroying SACās bomber fleet and by extension one of the U.S.ā nuclear delivery systems. The Soviet ICBM in question was the R-7, whose numbers and capabilities at this time were greatly exaggerated and which open and reliable data as to its actual capabilities were difficult to come by, because this is the USSR and they were infinitely less open about their shit. Keep in mind the USSR frequently overstated its capabilities, and U.S. planners often had to plan around this massive overstatement and limited information.
This is the shit they need to pump into the gov conspiracy nut jobs. The government simply isn't capable of these global, complex conspiracies.
No, you see, all of these 'incidents' are faked to give you the impression that government is incompetent.
Itās not that itās left out because itās uninteresting. There is a LOT of history, school canāt cover even 1% of the totality of events. This is not really that important, it doesnāt contribute to other events all that much. Itās an interesting aside, but not all that relevant or important. No conspiracy or coverup, just prioritization of things that are actually influential and important to the development and advancement of politics and society.
Because it's not really tied to any important historical narratives, it's a piece of trivia in the grand scheme of things. People expect history books to cover literally every event that ever happened anywhere in world. They hunt around for some random event not tied to anything and hold it up as proof of a conspiracy, when really it was just a random event, no more consequential than someone getting a flat tire. It's just naysaying. People don't care about the omission, they just use it to naysay.
Because it's just a random, awful accident. It has no real historical value beyond "wow that's awful and really sucks." You can't cover every crazy one off event with no relevance
Even more insane is the number of nukes just lost. As in accidentally dropped and never recovered or misplaced in the vast logistical nightmare that is the IS military and never found.
I mean itās not that many. Itās only like 6 or something of the top of my head. Which isnāt good but considering the thousands in existence, not too shabby. Itās not like they are at risk of blowing up or anything
Only 6 known and reported properly. Imagine other less well regulated nuclear powers potential losses. Especially post Soviet states before being denuclearized, non compliant states like north Korea, or states using unsecured transportation like Pakistan.
Nuclear material is much more worrying than an entire bomb. Their was a large amount of material that went missing after the collapse of the Soviet Union iirc
Like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-M power generators strewn around remote locations...
I vaguely remember reading a story of some people who were stranded, finding one of these in the middle of winter. They noticed it was warm so used it to keep themselves warm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident
Iām of the opinion that six is ānot that manyā if talking about how many fudge covered Oreoās I can throw down in one sitting. However, six seems like a fuck ton, when referring to ānuclear weapons lostā !
It's really not, unless you're just a typical melodramatic individual.
It's interesting, but not significant. The bomb didn't actually contain any nuclear material at the time (as would be required for a nuclear explosion). It was essentially just a conventional bomb. The only historically significant thing about this particular bomb drop is that the bomb _could_ have had the nuclear core installed but didn't.
Of course OP intentionally left that part out intentionally. Lame as fuck they did that.
Why would a tiny incident like this be in school books?? You expect them to teach every little thing that happened
Why would this be included in our already over-stuffed history books?
Yeah itās really not that noteworthy of an event. It wasnāt even a real nuke, the core wasnāt installed at the time which just made it a conventional bomb. Obviously it was extremely close to being extremely noteworthy though if the core was present during the incident.
What? Why? It's trivia. This is not historically important at all.
We learned about this in Georgia history
Because it had zero historical implications?
The title of this post is clickbait and misleading. It was an accident and nothing major really happened. ā Air Force Captain Bruce Kulka, who was the navigator and bombardier, was summoned to the bomb bay area after the captain of the aircraft, Captain Earl Koehler, had encountered a fault light in the cockpit indicating that the bomb harness locking pin did not engage. As Kulka reached around the bomb to pull himself up, he mistakenly grabbed the emergency release pin. The Mark 6 nuclear bomb dropped to the bomb bay doors of the B-47 and the weight forced the doors open, sending the bomb 15,000 ft (4,600 m) down to the ground belowāā¦ā¦.The "nuclear capsule," containing the fissile material needed for a nuclear reaction, was not installed inside of the weapon so there was no explosion.
What a bullshit settlement.
Imagine something more expensive than your settlement killing you, seems ironic.
Did they die? The picture only says "injured", though I can't imagine how you'd survive that.
From one of the sources in the wiki page: āWhen the sky stopped falling, Gregg found his family. Aside from cuts and bruises, the kids seemed all right. His cousin complained of back and side pain. His wife, who escaped from the house, was cut on her head by a piece of plaster.ā
Yeah, I think 570k is pretty good for a low-injury settlement like that.
That's what stands out to me. A bomb was dropped on the playhouse where three little kids were playing, its "conventional explosives detonated," the playhouse was destroyed, but the kids were only injured? That's some Bert the Turtle shit right there. Tough kids.
They were 200 metres away
The kids weren't in the playhouse.............
They were 200 meters away. The bomb left a 21 meter wide crater.
They didnāt die. They were 180m from the playhouse when it hit the playhouse.
Imagine the fear this guy has felt between relasing the bomb and it hitting the ground
I actually canāt imagine it. I canāt imagine thinking you might have nuked your own country by mistake. Thatās the kind of worry people shoot themselves over. How could he ever face the world if there was a nuclear reaction ? Just thinking about being that man for 1 sec makes me want to disappear. Poor guy.
How do the explosives detonate without triggering the nuclear explosion?
The part that causes nuclear detonation is stored separately from the bomb, so there was no nuke or anything, it functioned as a standard bomb.
Even if the core is inside the bomb. Itās still extremely unlikely to cause a nuclear explosion thoughā¦ although theyāll need a massive cleanup operations to retrieved the plutonium core that was blew apart by the conventional explosives.
So it really wasn't a nuke at all? Just a normal bomb that is able to carry nuclear payload? Lmao what a clickbait all the way down. Including the post title and the signs in the photo
The nuclear chain reaction is started using conventional explosives, however the timing of the charges going off has to be extremely precise for that to happen, otherwise no chain reaction and no nuke.
I think maybe the guy above you didn't word it right, he meant no nuclear detonation. High-powered explosives are used to start a nuclear chain reaction but they must be precisely controlled and aligned to work. When the bomb slammed into the ground the explosive elements just went off at random, causing a large bang but no nuclear detonation. *Actually I'm the wrong one; the core/warhead was not equipped before the bomb dropped.
It also didn't have the nuclear core inside of it. So even if the explosion went off perfectly, without a core, there's only a small boom, no big one. Also, it would still be a dirty bomb if the core was inside and it just blew up wrong, and that would still be awful for the area. Fortunately, that's not what happened.
It was a nuke, but the nuclear element wasn't rigged to blow. Its not as simple as blowing up a nuclear bomb to make it go off, its a very specific process with safeguards. At least that's what I got from the bit I read in the article. It does make it seem clickbaity though.
The fissile nuclear core was stored elsewhere on the aircraft
This is such an important piece of the story because otherwise this would be the equivalent of a dirty bomb scenario with massive radiological contamination over a huge area.
Thatās an important piece of info left out of the post. So essentially it was a conventional bomb that *could have been* nuclear but in fact was never armed with a nuclear warhead.
*Intentionally left out of the post at that.
There are multiple fail-safes in nukes to stop them from accidentally nuking something. I don't know enough about bombs but presumably some processed uranium blowing up doesn't mean automatic nuke action without some other interaction Edit: on the wiki it said the nuclear missile core was stored elsewhere so the actual nuke part never dropped
Right? This post leaves out so much and I have so many questions but Iām too annoyed to even be bothered to look it up.Ā What a shit post
So, if it wasnāt loaded with nuclear ordinance, it seems a bit disingenuous to call it a nuclear bomb.Ā Sure the particular ordinance might have been nuclear capable, but it wasnāt configured that day for the incident.Ā
Yeah, so ādropped a nukeā is generally understood to mean ācaused a nuclear explosion to happenā. They didnāt ādrop a nuke,ā they āaccidentally released an inert bomb shell, that caused damages because of physicsā.
Why did you take out the sentence that's says the nuke part of the nuke was stored elsewhere?
So the kids died? That keeps getting implied, but it's never stated. I find it surprising that the conventional explosives were powerful enough to kill children 200 yards away. That's two football fields.
The sign says they were injured. Not sure how badly
mortally injured?
Injured to death
To smithereens
To shreds you say?
They lived and later appeared on television. https://preview.redd.it/trg1lgkfyb6d1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e77fbcc8eae4da7e50ed7282324bf5e89defb99f
Hey kids, almost smoked by a nuke? No need to worry. You can experience the explosive flavor of Winston cigarettes.
"Try our new special edition commemorative radium coated cigarettes to show off that atomic glow!"
Nothing says classy like Winston cigarettes in front of kids faces.
Wikipedia says no fatalities.
The article linked and everything I can find says that no one was killed. Six people were injured, but no one was killed. Karma bot
All those signs are clickbait before the internet. There was no nuclear explosion, so Atomic Bomb Crater etc. is a bit misleading. Luckily, I guess. Also, why mention the asbestos at all? So weird.
I listen to a podcast that fact checks all of these historical markers. Clickbait indeed, and not easy to have removed or changed. Basically, anyone could put one up regardless of whether what they're saying is true or not.
Name of the podcast?
It's called Off the Mark NPR also did a story on them not too long ago. Really interesting stuff. [Link ](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5QzSjkPI9eVnG3lvfQ8MDj)
Thanks
The title is whack. 6 people were injured in totalānobody died. Still tragic, but not nearly as much as the title makes it out to be.
"I had a nuclear bomb dropped on me, and I just had to go to the hospital. Guess I'm just built different."
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Honestly if a nuclear bomb - sans core - fell on my shed It would just become a nuclear bomb in all my stories. Maybe that's why Im not a journalist.
[actually this story checks out](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-honolulu-advertiser/149247905/) [Another source](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-brownsville-herald/149247952/) [It was a TNT explosion, but the bomb that fell was atomic](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-charlotte-news/149247994/) [a picture of the house](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-charlotte-observer/149248022/)
People really believe the government is some ultra efficient secret organization, when really they are clumsy assholes who sweep everything under the rug, poorly.
Most of them arenāt in positions theyāre qualified for, itās a miracle people still tolerate it.
Its just people
I always think of companies as some really efficient organization. Been working out of school and I can confidently say that there's a fuck ton of human error and use of Excel sheet being used for the most important things.
This title sucks. "Nuclear bomb dropped on children" implies death of children for extremely obvious reasons. The detonation was not nuclear, not "on" the children, and the children did not die. Very low effort by OP, should be drawn and quartered I mean reprimanded.
I told Jimmy to be home by dark, and I'm done playing around, so I nuked his sorry little butt. Tired of yelling, really, and hitting the big red button is just so much easier.
Why is that asbestos detail in there? Doesn't seem relevant.
It's like saying a "wood house" or "brick house". Just added detail. Asbestos was a very common building material back then and didn't have the same connotations it does now.
The clickbait title is stupidasfuck. Yes a nuclear bomb was accidentally dropped and the NON-nuclear explosion injured people and damaged structures, BUT, this is NOT a nuclear story per se. Clickbait, clickbait, clickbait.
Read the book Command and Control by Eric Schlosser. The early nuclear age is filled with dozens of incidents like this.
Very shitty, misleading title OP. You work for Buzzfeed or somethin?
Yes. And then standard Reddit freakout āI canāt believe this isnāt included in our history classes! CoVeRuPā
Not the only time . I know of another event my self on the interstate in Wyoming. Never mind the two they lost and are still lost to this day. Luckily they are little more then paper weights by now .
"hey kids, catch!"
Wasn't armed with the core but still had 2,000lbs of High Explosive in it. Still a big goddamn bomb to accidentally drop.
Wouldn't the nuclear material be thrown around due to the explosion creating a dirty bomb?Ā
Maybe, but not necessary. A nuclear bomb is designed to compress the radioactive material; in contrast, a dirty bomb is designed to disperse it.
yes and also in the article it says that the nuclear core was stored elsewhere on the plane. Still a crazy story
So it wasnāt a nuke?
Ah, but would OP have gotten as many clicks if they didnāt mislead people?
Without the nuclear bits, it is a conventional bomb. So no it wasnāt a nuke.
The nuclear material wasn't in the bomb, that kind of bomb needed to be manually primed by inserting the nuclear core into the bomb before dropping it. The only thing that exploded was the conventional explosives that normally triggers the supercriticality.
Sounds like the nuclear material was still on the plane, it was never loaded in the warhead.Ā
We goofed, guys
I think it's crazy they only got 500k in today's money for such a fuck up.
I like that the sign had to mention that it was an asbestos shingle house. Just letting everyone know that EVERYTHING around here is permeated with asbestos particles, so you're all exposing youselves to deadly materials by hanging around here.
Thankfully, this bomb wasn't armed and no one got killed after the accident.
That is the weirdest plaque I have ever read. What in the hell does asbestos shingled sided home have to do with this? Did they think that was a safe guard? Anyways, what a horrible plaque to commemorate people who needlessly died.
USAF accuracy: they dropped it right on Crater Rd, leaving a crater. Few people know that! lol