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A Sneak Peek at Eric Schlosser's Terrifying New Book on Nuclear Weapons
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/eric-schlosser-command-control-excerpt-nuclear-weapons
A Sneak Peek at Eric Schlosser's Terrifying New Book on Nuclear Weapons
His six-year investigation of America's mishaps and near-misses will scare the daylights out of you.
—By Michael Mechanic | Sun Sep. 15, 2013
On January 23, 1961, a B-52 packing a pair of Mark 39 hydrogen bombs suffered a refueling snafu and went into an uncontrolled spin over North Carolina. In the cockpit of the rapidly disintegrating bomber (only one crew member bailed out safely) was a lanyard attached to the bomb-release mechanism. Intense G-forces tugged hard at it and unleashed the nukes, which, at four megatons, were 250 times more powerful than the weapon that leveled Hiroshima. One of them "failed safe" and plummeted to the ground unarmed. The other weapon's failsafe mechanisms—the devices designed to prevent an accidental detonation—were subverted one by one, as Eric Schlosser recounts in his new book, Command and Control:
Unable to deny that two of its bombs had fallen from the sky—one in a swampy meadow, the other in a field near Faro, North Carolina—the Air Force insisted that there had never been any danger of a nuclear detonation. This was a lie.
Here's the truth: Just days after JFK was sworn in as president, one of the most terrifying weapons in our arsenal was a hair's breadth from detonating on American soil. It would have pulverized a portion of North Carolina and, given strong northerly winds, could have blanketed East Coast cities (including New York, Baltimore, and Washington, DC) in lethal fallout. The only thing standing between us and an explosion so catastrophic that it would have radically altered the course of history was a simple electronic toggle switch in the cockpit, a part that probably cost a couple of bucks to manufacture and easily could have been undermined by a short circuit—hardly a far-fetched scenario in an electronics-laden airplane that's breaking apart.
The anecdote above is just one of many "holy shit!" revelations readers will discover in the latest book from the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation. Easily the most unsettling work of nonfiction I've ever read, Schlosser's six-year investigation of America's "broken arrows" (nuclear weapons mishaps) is by and large historical—this stuff is top secret, after all—but the book is beyond relevant. It's critical reading in a nation with thousands of nukes still on hair-trigger alert.
<snip>
A Sneak Peek at Eric Schlosser's Terrifying New Book on Nuclear Weapons
His six-year investigation of America's mishaps and near-misses will scare the daylights out of you.
—By Michael Mechanic | Sun Sep. 15, 2013
On January 23, 1961, a B-52 packing a pair of Mark 39 hydrogen bombs suffered a refueling snafu and went into an uncontrolled spin over North Carolina. In the cockpit of the rapidly disintegrating bomber (only one crew member bailed out safely) was a lanyard attached to the bomb-release mechanism. Intense G-forces tugged hard at it and unleashed the nukes, which, at four megatons, were 250 times more powerful than the weapon that leveled Hiroshima. One of them "failed safe" and plummeted to the ground unarmed. The other weapon's failsafe mechanisms—the devices designed to prevent an accidental detonation—were subverted one by one, as Eric Schlosser recounts in his new book, Command and Control:
When the lanyard was pulled, the locking pins were removed from one of the bombs. The Mark 39 fell from the plane. The arming wires were yanked out, and the bomb responded as though it had been deliberately released by the crew above a target. The pulse generator activated the low-voltage thermal batteries. The drogue parachute opened, and then the main chute. The barometric switches closed. The timer ran out, activating the high-voltage thermal batteries. The bomb hit the ground, and the piezoelectric crystals inside the nose crushed. They sent a firing signal...
Unable to deny that two of its bombs had fallen from the sky—one in a swampy meadow, the other in a field near Faro, North Carolina—the Air Force insisted that there had never been any danger of a nuclear detonation. This was a lie.
Here's the truth: Just days after JFK was sworn in as president, one of the most terrifying weapons in our arsenal was a hair's breadth from detonating on American soil. It would have pulverized a portion of North Carolina and, given strong northerly winds, could have blanketed East Coast cities (including New York, Baltimore, and Washington, DC) in lethal fallout. The only thing standing between us and an explosion so catastrophic that it would have radically altered the course of history was a simple electronic toggle switch in the cockpit, a part that probably cost a couple of bucks to manufacture and easily could have been undermined by a short circuit—hardly a far-fetched scenario in an electronics-laden airplane that's breaking apart.
The anecdote above is just one of many "holy shit!" revelations readers will discover in the latest book from the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation. Easily the most unsettling work of nonfiction I've ever read, Schlosser's six-year investigation of America's "broken arrows" (nuclear weapons mishaps) is by and large historical—this stuff is top secret, after all—but the book is beyond relevant. It's critical reading in a nation with thousands of nukes still on hair-trigger alert.
<snip>
