WEBVTT - The Broken Arrow Episode 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.479 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:16.240 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm the host Job and Strickland. 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:19.280 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:22.480 tech are you? So here on tech Stuff, we've actually 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:26.239 covered the subject of nuclear weapons a few times. So 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.600 way back on April fourth, twenty twelve, Chris Pollette, my 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:32.839 original co host, and I we did an episode on 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.440 how nuclear weapons work. I'm probably going to go over 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.559 some of that same material again in this one, but 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:40.680 you know, it's been more than a decade, so hopefully 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.680 that's okay. In twenty seventeen, I did an episode titled 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:48.800 Close but No Nuclear War about the handful of times 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:53.120 circumstances could have precipitated into what we in the eighties 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.200 would have referred to as the Big One. But thankfully, 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.600 cooler heads prevailed we did not have a nuclear war, 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.680 and I got to thinking about nuclear weapons again because I, 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:08.640 like a lot of other people, watched the Fallout streaming series. Now, 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:11.200 I've played a couple of the Fallout games, a few 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:13.280 of them in fact, and I really enjoy them. There's 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:16.840 some of my favorite games, particularly Fallout New Vegas, which 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:18.839 I think for a lot of people is the favorite. 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:23.080 And then I was curious about the streaming series and 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:27.360 no spoilers, But overall, I really enjoyed the adaptation. It's 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:30.640 not a direct adaptation of any particular game, though it 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:33.840 does contain elements that are found in several of the 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.760 other games, and I thought that generally speaking, they did 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:40.200 a really good job with it. I got a few quibbles, 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:44.960 but you know, nothing major. Now. The entire setting for 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.640 the Fallout series, it's a world that's trying to rebuild 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:52.320 itself after a nuclear war that this nuclear war had 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:56.160 happened like two hundred years in the past, and this 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:02.560 is the fallout of that conflict that you are thrust into. 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:07.200 And it got me thinking about nuclear weapons. So today 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:11.320 I want to talk about lost nuclear weapons. So we're 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:14.520 going to talk about the half dozen times the United States, 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:18.440 you know, misplaced a nuclear bomb and wasn't able to 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:21.240 get it back, which you know, that's an awful lot 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:24.040 of times when you're talking about weapons capable of truly 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:28.720 massive amounts of destruction. And also, this would just be 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:33.560 six incidents that we know about. In fact, I'll end 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:38.800 the episode with one that is disputed as a potential seventh. Now, 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:41.600 I'm not saying that there are a ton more than 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:44.800 six incidents in which the United States lost a nuclear 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:47.120 weapon and was unable to retrieve it. I have no 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:49.600 way of knowing that it could be that there's more. 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:52.160 It could be that six or seven is exactly how 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:54.800 many there are. It is possible, though, I think that 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:59.320 the public hasn't learned about certain cases that may have happened. 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.679 I mean, it's turns out the United States military and 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:07.480 the Department of Defense isn't super eager to spread information 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.240 about lost nuclear weapons for reasons that are both I 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:14.960 think totally legitimate and some that are probably not. Now, 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:19.040 there have been way more than just six accidents with 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:22.760 nuclear weapons. If we're talking about, you know, big accidents, 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:26.040 there have been at least thirty two. That's just the 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:29.360 officially acknowledged ones. In the United States. We have this 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:33.600 charming little name for incidents in which essentially the United 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:37.920 States loses control of a nuclear weapon, and that nickname 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.960 is called broken Arrow. That nickname insisted long before John 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:44.960 Travolta and Christian Slater made a movie based on the 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:48.400 premise of a thermonuclear weapon going walk about Hands up 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.200 if you actually remember that film, it's one that I 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.200 have seen. I would say that as action films go, 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:59.680 it's not great. It's not terrible, but you know, not great. Now, 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:01.840 before we get into the whip sees, let's talk a 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:05.320 little bit about how nuclear weapons actually work from a 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:09.000 very high level, and in some ways, at least an 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:13.080 initial part of a nuclear weapon detonation is has got 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:17.719 some similarities to the way that nuclear fission power plants work. Now, 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:20.280 obviously with a power plant, we want to have a 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:25.440 nuclear reaction that is really well controlled. And in nuclear weapons, 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:27.760 the whole goal is to kind of get the sucker 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:30.640 to go into a chain reaction that you know, goes well, 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:33.279 not ballistic, that's the wrong the wrong word, but you know, 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:37.400 out of control. Nuclear weapons, however, do not just use fission. 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:41.599 That's just part of it, at least for modern thermonuclear weapons. 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:46.280 That's not the whole entirety of the explosion. Detonating a 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:52.000 nuclear weapon these days actually involves three explosive processes. So 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:56.360 you got your bog standard chemical based explosives, just your 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:01.200 regular non nuclear explosives. This is what kind of initiates 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:04.440 the whole sequence of events and the purpose of these 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:07.920 explosives is not to blow up the nuclear material. It's 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:12.800 to compress it, to put intense pressure on that material 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:16.000 and compact it down in order to get to what 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:19.360 we call critical mass. So the nuclear material that is 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:24.680 typically in nuclear weapons is either highly enriched uranium, like 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.560 a more than ninety percent content of uranium two thirty five, 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.520 for example, or plutonium more than ninety three percent plutonium 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:36.240 two thirty nine. Now, the special thing about these particular atoms, 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:39.440 you two thirty five andonium two thirty nine, is that 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:41.960 they belong to a subset of atoms that will break 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:46.320 apart under certain circumstances. Sometimes they decay on their own 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:48.600 and they break apart, but they can also be induced 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:52.359 to break apart. They are fissile, in other words, because 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:56.320 they can undergo fission, they can split. Now, not all 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:59.960 fissile atoms will cause a chain reaction, but uranium two 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:05.080 five and plutonium two thirty nine totes can. And when 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.800 they are induced to break apart, these atoms don't just 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:12.040 split into smaller atoms. They also release a tremendous amount 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:14.480 of energy. You know, stuff like X rays and gamma rays. 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:16.800 You get a ton of light and heat. They also 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:21.919 shoot out excess neutrons. Now, if you've got a mass 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:26.080 of this stuff and those atoms are packed close enough together, 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:31.120 then some of these escaping neutrons can collide with these 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:35.360 other atoms and then induce the exact same reaction. Those 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:39.240 atoms will then split apart, then they'll release neutrons. So again, 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.760 if the material is packed closely enough, these neutrons can 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.240 start this chain reaction, and that's what makes this escalate 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:50.200 very quickly. If the material is not very close together, 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.280 then the neutrons can miss the other atoms, and you know, 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:55.600 you will get a release of energy, but it'll be 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:58.920 a limited release. You won't get this chain reaction. That's 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:03.400 really the devast aiding part of nuclear weapons. So it's 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:09.080 a very specific approach to weaponizing this energy. You know, 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.120 that chain reaction, that runaway reaction is really what you 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:15.720 want to really cause massive destruction. Now, the very first 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:19.120 nuclear weapons, which really the atomic weapons is what we 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.480 would really call them. They relied solely on fission to 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:25.960 release destructive energy upon a target. You add Little Boy, 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:29.600 which was the nickname for the first such atomic bomb, 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:33.360 and Little Boy had a hollow cylinder made from uranium 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:37.320 two thirty five that upon detonation of a charge explosive 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.840 would then shoot toward a target plug of U two 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:43.280 thirty five. So you can think of it like a 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.200 target and a bullet. So this little bullet of you 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:49.320 two thirty five gets shot to collide with a target 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:53.320 of U two thirty five. Now, separately, these two masses 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:57.760 of uranium two thirty five did not have enough mass 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:02.920 to maintain fission, but upon on collision, the two would 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:08.600 form critical mass that could maintain this fission reaction. Now, 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:12.240 the second bomb, fat Man, did not use uranium two 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:16.000 thirty five. It used plutonium. The scientists who are working 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.280 on fat Man could not get the gun type method 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:22.920 that worked for uranium two thirty five based bombs to 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:25.280 work with plutonium, so they had to come up with 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:27.360 something else. In fact, originally the idea was that there 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:30.520 was going to be a thin Man bomb because it 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:35.320 would use this gun approach that the Little Boy did. 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:38.800 But because they could not get that to work, they 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:43.920 had to go with explosives, conventional explosives that would compress 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:47.240 the plutonium in order to initiate the fission chain reaction. 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:52.080 That implosion explosive charge meant that the bomb had to 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.520 be much larger than was anticipated originally when they want 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:57.720 to do the gun method. Thus you get fat Man 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:01.880 because it's bigger around. The plutonium atoms would get squeezed 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:05.240 together tightly enough to reach critical mass, and then you 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:07.839 could get the same sort of fission reaction. However, as 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:11.360 I mentioned, modern nuclear weapons also have a fusion component 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:15.400 to them. Fusion is the atomic process of two lighter 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:19.000 atoms fusing together to make a heavier atom. This is 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:21.440 what goes on in the Sun in which hydrogen is 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:24.840 built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees. 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:29.280 So the fission reaction in a modern thermonuclear weapon can 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:33.720 also be called the primary blast or primary charge, and 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:37.480 the fusion component is the secondary charge. So the lighter 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:42.920 atoms used for fusion are typically hydrogen and hydrogen isotopes. 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:45.520 And just to be clear, the actual process inside and 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:49.560 exploding thermonuclear device gets way more complicated than what I'm 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:53.280 covering here. There are different elements in both the primary 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:57.199 and secondary charges, but that would require a full episode 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.720 by itself. In fact, we did one back in twenty twelve, 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.160 so we've spent enough time on the basics of how 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.400 these bombs work. Now we do have to talk about 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:08.320 what happens when these bombs detonate. Now, I mentioned that 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:12.319 fission and fusion as well will release an enormous amount 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.520 of energy. The energy takes lots of different forms. We're 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.640 talking heat and light and radiation. And the blast creates 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:23.480 an incredible shock wave, So you get this massive increase 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:27.080 in air pressure that's like a wrecking ball slamming into 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:32.600 everything outward. The explosion creates this enormous fireball, and that 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.160 fireball is about as hot as the surface of the 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:39.400 Sun is initially. Remember again, fusion is how the Sun shines, 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:43.840 So this is like igniting a miniature sun in Earth's atmosphere, 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:48.400 and that heat vaporizes everything within that fireball and pushes 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.320 it upward into the atmosphere, and that stuff forms the 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.719 iconic mushroom cloud that we associate with a nuclear explosion. Now, 0:10:55.760 --> 0:11:00.880 among all that stuff is radioactive material from the bomb itself, 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.480 and this kind of mixes and bonds with other things 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:07.640 that are vaporized in that explosion. These tiny particles condense 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.120 and we end up with radioactive dust that eventually is 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:12.679 heavy enough to start to fall back to earth. This 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:15.960 is the so called fallout. It's the stuff that can 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:20.280 contaminate things like soil and water and cause problems for ages. Now, 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:25.400 obviously we're talking tremendous immediate destructive power, not to mention 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:29.040 the problems of dealing with radioactive material that will remain dangerous. 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:33.800 Most of it actually kind of degrades fairly rapidly, like 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:38.439 within a couple of weeks you get down to survivable conditions. 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:41.720 There's this thing called the seven ten rule that means 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:46.560 the amount of radiation reduces tenfold for every sevenfold increase 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.720 in time. So the really dangerous stuff that can be 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:55.400 decreased dramatically within a few hours to a day, like 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:58.680 within a day, fallout is going to give off more 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.559 than eighty percent of its inner energy, and within again 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:06.040 two weeks you're down to you know, survivable ambient radiation. Now, 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:10.480 to be clear, radioactive contamination is not immediately life threatening too. 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:16.000 Like again we have this perception that this is all 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:20.440 a death sentence immediately. That's not necessarily the case. One 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:24.520 thing that can you can do if you were, you know, 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:28.120 near a nuclear blast, not obviously outside of the blast 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:30.760 zone itself, because if you're near that then that's that's 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:34.640 game over, right. If you're a few miles out, however, well, 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:38.800 you can decontaminate yourself. You can strip off the you know, 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:42.280 whatever clothing you were wearing when you were exposed to 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:45.840 the nuclear dust, and you can take a shower with 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.040 mild soap and and you can decontaminate yourself. Of course, 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:51.800 it is hard to figure out a way to do 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:56.680 all this without tracking a radiated dust into the area 0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.200 where you're taking your shower, but that actually could be 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:04.160 a pretty effective way to get rid of any radioactive 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:07.240 material that has settled on you, which gives a bit 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:09.800 of a different picture than what we get with fallout, right, 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.319 in which the world remains this radioactive wasteland two hundred 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.920 years after the conflict. And you know, radiation is this 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:21.840 invisible thing, this destructive, invisible thing, and it's really scary. 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:24.800 And in fact, one of the really big challenges that 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:29.320 experts have identified as far as nuclear weapons go is 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:32.160 how do you communicate to the public what to do 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:34.720 in the wake of a nuclear event, whether it's an 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:37.760 accident or an attack or whatever, so that folks don't 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:41.000 go and make the problem even worse. And to be clear, 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:45.400 a nuclear blast is truly terrifying. It's awful. And again, 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:48.600 if you are closer, like within a few miles of 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:52.600 the blast zone, your chances of survival are incredibly small. 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:56.000 But on the flip side, it is different from the 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:59.840 way it's depicted in shows and games like Fallout. Okay, 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:02.000 we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.160 we're going to start talking about the actual Broken Arrow 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:10.480 events and why these remain these kind of scary incidents 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:13.720 that can every few years come back and fire up 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:17.439 imaginations and make people really anxious. That's not my goal, 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:21.040 but we are going to talk about these things. First though, 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:33.560 Let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. All Right, 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:37.880 We're going to now talk about the broken Arrow events 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:41.040 in which some sort of misha involving at least one 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.720 nuclear weapon have happened, or, as defined by the Department 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:47.200 of Defense, an incident in which at least one of 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:51.200 the following things occurred. And I'm quoting from a declassified 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.280 document from nineteen eighty one here, So here are the 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:59.680 parameters for a broken Arrow event. Accidental or unauthorized launching, firing, 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:03.520 or use by US forces or supported allied forces of 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:07.080 a nuclear capable weapon system which could create the risk 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:11.000 of an outbreak or war. Nuclear detonation, that one seems 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:15.000 like it's no brainer, right, Non nuclear detonation or burning 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:19.160 of a nuclear weapon or radioactive weapon component, including a 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:24.120 fully assembled nuclear weapon, an unassembled nuclear weapon or radioactive 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:29.920 nuclear weapon component, radioactive contamination, seizure, theft or loss of 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:34.680 a nuclear weapon or radioactive nuclear weapon component, including jettisoning, 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:39.120 public hazard actual or implied. Those are the parameters. Now, 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:41.400 as I mentioned earlier, there have been thirty two of 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:45.000 these on record, with six incidents in which the US 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:48.080 of A has been unable to retrieve the loss nuclear weapon. 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:51.640 And again, this is the Pentagon's official tally. I have 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.160 no way of knowing if that number is actually accurate. 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:57.560 In fact, a letter from the Defense Atomic Support Agency, 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:02.480 which has since evolved into the Defence Threat Reduction Agency, 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.560 and both of these are part of the overall Department 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:08.320 of Defense, it lists more than two hundred and ten 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.840 pages worth of accidents and incidents between the years nineteen 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:16.120 fifty seven and nineteen sixty seven alone, just a little 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:18.920 more than a decade here. But to be clear, some 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:22.720 of these cases are fairly minor in the grand scheme 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:27.680 of things. Incidents involving improper handling or transportation are on there, 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.360 for example, So I guess it really comes down to 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.160 how you define a big problem. Also, these thirty two 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.440 incidents that are detailed in this Department of Defense document 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:42.560 happened between nineteen fifty and nineteen eighty, and again that 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.600 makes you wonder have there been any more that have 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:49.400 happened in the forty plus years since. However, we also 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:52.200 have to acknowledge that there has been a massive change 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:55.840 in the technology around nuclear weapons in that time because 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:57.920 in the old days, you know, when we talked about 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:00.560 nuclear weapons, we were talking about bomb that would be 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:03.400 delivered by an aircraft or maybe a little later by 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:07.760 a submarine. These days, we have intercontinental ballistic missiles and such, 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:11.680 so it's a different story and there are fewer opportunities 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:15.760 to misplace a bomb, although a nuclear armed submarine could 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.400 still be such an incident. So we're going to talk 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:21.359 about the six times America lost a nuclear weapon and 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:23.840 couldn't get it back. And first up is the very 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:27.600 first of the incidents listed in that declassified letter. So 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:31.399 the letter starts with an incident in which the bomb 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:35.560 was not recoverable. It happened on February thirteenth, nineteen fifty, 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:38.520 so a day before Valentine's Day. Talk about a bummer. 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:41.960 A crew was piloting a B thirty six bomber as 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:46.080 part of a simulated combat mission. They were flying from 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:50.480 an Air Force base in North Starborough, Alaska. They were 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.520 headed all the way to Carswell Air Force Base in 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.240 Fort Worth, Texas, which is a journey that's like three 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:00.679 thousand miles more than that. So, according to the the 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.720 weapon carried by the crew had a quote unquote dummy 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:07.400 capsule in it, so, in other words, it lacked the 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:12.359 actual nuclear core needed to make it a viable thermonuclear weapon. 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:16.000 It did still have at least some radioactive material inside it, 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:19.600 just not like the two charges needed to create the 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:24.240 big fusion boom. Six hours into the flight, the aircraft 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:27.119 started to have some pretty serious problems, big enough to 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:29.520 force the crew to shut down three of the B 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:32.720 thirty six's engines. Now, the B thirty six had a 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:36.600 ton of engines, Like initially the earliest B thirty six 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:41.919 models had just six piston engines driving propellers, right, but 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:43.840 you had six of them, so shutting down three you 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:47.520 still have half of your engines left. Later on, they 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:50.840 had four jet engines added to it as well, so 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:55.760 like the later B thirty six aircraft were ten engine planes. 0:18:55.840 --> 0:19:00.000 That's kind of incredible. Now, on top of these engine problems, 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.160 the aircraft also had issues with ice building up on 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.840 the plane's wings, and the aircraft was at twelve thousand 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:11.120 feet altitude, and the military determined that the conditions were 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.800 beyond risky considering the presence of a nuclear weapon on 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:17.280 board the aircraft, So the call was made for the 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.560 aircraft to deviate from its flight path, to fly out 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.600 over the Pacific Ocean and to drop the bomb with 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:27.119 the dummy capsule at eight thousand feet. Now, according to 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:31.800 the declassified letter quote, a bright flash occurred on impact, 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:35.160 followed by a sound and shockwave. Only the weapons high 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:39.800 explosive material detonated the crew aboard. The aircraft bailed out 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.159 over Princess Royal Island, and the aircraft itself crashed on 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:47.880 Vancouver Island. And that is our first lost bomb out 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:51.359 of the way. The second time America lost a nuclear 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:54.760 bomb was on March tenth, nineteen fifty six. That we 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.720 apparently went six whole years without another totally lost bomb 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:02.800 is nice because, as we will soon see, sometimes we 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:05.960 were looking at incidents that were happening a year or 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:08.919 two apart, or sometimes in the same year. Anyway, a 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.840 group of four aircraft, including a B forty seven Stratojet, 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:16.120 were en route from McDill Air Force Base in Florida 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:21.960 to quote and overseas air base end quote which overseas airbase, 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:24.600 I honestly don't know. It's not mentioned in the Department 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:28.080 of Defense document. Anyway. The B forty seven carried quote 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:32.679 two nuclear capsules in carrying cases in the quote, and 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:35.040 that sounds a lot like a suitcase bomb, right, But 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:38.240 according to the DoD, a nuclear detonation of this stuff 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:42.040 was impossible, like it did not have the initial charges 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.200 that would work in order to actually create a nuclear bomb, 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.359 but it was the material that could be used inside 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.200 a nuclear weapon. So I guess it's a good thing 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.600 that it wasn't like a bomb raay to explode or anything. 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:59.720 And tragically the aircraft and its crew were lost above 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:03.680 the terranean c The accident happened as the aircraft were 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:07.040 all changing altitude because they had to go through a 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:10.800 mid air refueling operation, so they had been at a 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:14.119 cruising altitude much higher up, but in order to refuel, 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.520 they needed to descend to fourteen thousand feet between them, 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:22.720 and fourteen thousand feet was a solid cloud formation, according 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:25.680 to the document, so descending through this meant that your 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:28.960 visibility was obviously really limited. The base of the clouds 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:31.960 was somewhere at the altitude of fourteen thousand, five hundred feet. 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:36.720 The B forty seven, carrying this case filled with nuclear capsules, 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:41.240 never made contact with the refueling tanker, and despite extensive searches, 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:43.600 the military was not able to locate the vehicle or 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:46.760 the crew piloting it, or, for that matter, the carrying 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:51.520 case with the nuclear capsules inside of it. So that's lost. 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:55.720 Bomb number two. Next up, we have an incident that's 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:58.359 very close to home for me, well sort of close 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:02.000 to home for me. It is the so called Tybee bomb, 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:05.680 which happened two years after the incident we just talked about. 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:09.520 On February fifth, nineteen fifty eight, a B forty seven 0:22:09.640 --> 0:22:12.720 took off from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, and 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:16.119 it was on a simulated combat mission. The B forty 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:19.080 seven carried a nuclear weapon that, according to the DoD 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:22.680 did not contain a nuclear capsule inside of it, which 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:25.000 you know, that's a good thing, but the weapon still 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:28.640 had plenty of conventional explosives which would have caused an 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:31.840 issue right like cause again you've got the chemical based 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:34.560 explosives in there too. And as it turned out, the 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:37.560 story that the bomb only carried a dummy trigger would 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:41.080 later be disputed, and it was said that in fact, 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:45.040 the bomb aboard the B forty seven was, as Emperor 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:50.240 Palpatine of Star Wars Fame would say, fully operational. So 0:22:50.560 --> 0:22:53.320 around three point thirty in the morning, while flying over 0:22:53.480 --> 0:22:58.080 coastal Georgia, calamity struck. A pilot flying an F eighty 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:02.240 six Saber Jet fighter was descending from a higher altitude 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:06.480 and did not see the B forty seven flying beneath him, 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:08.600 Like he wasn't showing up on his radar. He didn't 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:12.480 notice it, and so he descends and collides with the 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:16.439 B forty seven. This is like one of those crazy accidents, 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:20.480 like it really required a wild coincidence for this to happen. 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:24.600 But these two aircraft did collide, and Lieutenant Clarence Stewart, 0:23:24.600 --> 0:23:27.160 who was the pilot of the Saber Jet, was able 0:23:27.160 --> 0:23:30.199 to eject from his vehicle and he safely landed in 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:32.960 a swamp, which, you know, not the best place to 0:23:33.040 --> 0:23:35.960 land if you're not really a big fan of leeches 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:39.720 and snapping turtles and snakes and the occasional alligator, all 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:43.159 of which are native to this part of Georgia, but 0:23:43.240 --> 0:23:46.000 still is a good ending for him considering that one 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:49.440 of the wings of his saber Jet got completely ripped off, 0:23:49.520 --> 0:23:51.240 so the fact that he was able to eject and 0:23:51.359 --> 0:23:55.359 land safely was a pretty phenomenal thing. The B forty 0:23:55.400 --> 0:23:59.000 seven was in slightly better shape than the saber Jet, 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:02.320 but it was still very damaged. So the pilot attempted 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:05.320 to make an emergency landing at Hunter Air Force Base 0:24:05.359 --> 0:24:08.239 in Georgia, but he was not able to get the 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:11.320 air speed of the aircraft down enough to make us 0:24:11.320 --> 0:24:15.040 safe landing, so the call was made to jettison the 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:18.560 bomb before attempting a landing in order to avoid having 0:24:18.600 --> 0:24:22.200 a high explosive going off in an American Air Force base. 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:26.520 So the pilot was able to jettison the bomb off 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:30.000 the coast of Tybee Island, which again is off coastal Georgia, 0:24:30.640 --> 0:24:33.399 And I've been to Tybee Island several times in fact. 0:24:33.760 --> 0:24:36.399 But yeah, they dropped the bomb not too far from 0:24:36.440 --> 0:24:39.480