This being October, not only is it the time for me to work my butt off every weekend, necessitating use of the pre-scheduling post setting, it's also time for scary stories. You want scary? Check out Robyn's post about nuclear testing. Yeah, those were some scary times... the U.S. was so afraid of the Soviet threat, it became an even bigger threat to its own existence. Robyn has that covered too.
Personally, I think the scariest of all of the proposals in the New Clear Age of the Atom was Project Plowshare:
No, that wasn't a satire. I sure wish it were!
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If you think Plowshare was the scariest of the time, let me recommend to you a book called 'Command & Control' by Eric Schlosser. Once you discover some of the actual accidents that somehow didn't become disasters, and you realize that for decades the military was strongly OPPOSED to nuclear safety because they feared it would reduce the reliability or effectiveness of the warheads when used in way, you'll have a much better sense of what a miracle it was that we all got through those cold war years.
Check out the January, 1961 Godboro incident. A B-52 broke up in flight and two MK-39 thermonuclear bombs separated. One of them managed to completely arm itself - including charging the capacitors that fire the implosion. Now some may argue that blowing North Carolina off the map would have been a good thing, but it's only by a miracle or utter blind coincidence that it didn't happen...
Egrets...I've had a few...
~
Well if you're so smart, B^4, what's your plan for excavating artificial harbours and news canals through Central America?
Atomic Powered Bulldozers?
Not to cause anyone to freak out (Ebola!) but as far as I am aware, there are still over 5000 active nuclear weapons on this planet.
Using the family atomics against the Shield Wall is not in breach of the Compact.
The CIA had Howard Hughes's Global MArine build a specialized ship to raise a Russian sub from deep on the ocean floor not too far from Hawaii. The 2005 book Red Star Rogue, claims the reason the sub sunk was due to a failsafe device which detonated a nuclear missile launched at Pearl harbor without the proper authorization codes. This interpretation is controversial.
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