US came close to nuclear disaster?

[Naina_Marbus]

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Hydrogen bomb almost detonated in North Carolina ?
CBS News report - September21, 2013 A newly disclosed document reveals a U.S. hydrogen bomb almost detonated near Goldsboro, N.C., back in 1961. According to a new book by author Eric Schlosser- "Command and Control" - that near-miss is not an isolated event.The closest to a major disaster occurred in January 1961.

According to Schlosser, "There was a B-52 bomber that started leaking fuel. While it was preparing emergency landing, there was a weight imbalance, and the plane started to break apart mid-air. There were two hydrogen bombs on the plane, and as the plane was breaking apart mid-air there were so many wires that if one of those wires had crossed with the arming wire of the bomb, there would have been a full-scale detonation of this hydrogen bomb in North Carolina. There would have been huge firestorms, and the lethal radioactive fallout could have extended as far north as Washington, D.C." He also said: "The Defense Science Board issued a report just this year saying that our nuclear command-and-control system might be vulnerable to being hacked."
"Our controls and our systems aresuperior to that of any other nation, but when you look at the long list ofaccidents and near-misses that we've had, despite our expertise, it gives youenormous pause about other countries like Pakistan, India, North Korea having nuclear weapons."
The Hindu reports:
“US came close to nuclear disaster in 1961”
Two hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped overGoldsboro, North Carolina in January 1961 after a B52 bomber broke up inflight. A newly published book says thata U.S. hydrogen bomb nearly detonated on the nation’s east coast, with a singleswitch averting a blast which would have been 260 times more powerful than thedevice that flattened Hiroshima.
…….a recently declassified document, reported in a newbook by Eric Schlosser, shows how close the U.S. came to a major catastrophe. Thedocument says just “one simple, low-voltage switch” which could easily havebeen shorted prevented “bad news n spades.”
……Mr. Schlosser discovered the document through theFreedom of Information Act.

 

[vgane]

I do not know why the U.S Federal Government had decided to keep an event of such magnitude in wraps for 52 years...It has tremendous ramifications across not only the Globe in America per se which is stock piling some of the deadliest weapons in the world..How can it take preventive actions if it is shielded from public...We talk about disaster recovery and business continuity planning..
Any such weapon should have adequate safety measures installed to prevent any emergency

As per Guardian:US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina ? secret document | World news | The Guardian

Quote

Writing eight years after the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs that dropped over North Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made his inaugural address as president, were inadequate in their safety controls and that the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst. "It would have been bad news – in spades," he wrote.

Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes

Unquote

Hope the US Government issues a clarification on this (Not sure if they will ever do)

 

[talwan]

Thank God.A toggle switch saved a major disaster.

Alwan

 

[Visalakshi Ramani]

Does Uncle Sam want to do in a large scale :boom:

what the suicide bombers are doing in small scale??? :scared:

 

[tks]

System of government at least allowed for such a news to come out in the open ...

 

[Nara]

Hydrogen bomb almost detonated in North Carolina ?.

This is not the only incidence. Eric Schlosser says in an interview in Democracy Now, "The official list of nuclear weapons accidents that the Pentagon puts out lists 32. But the real number is many, many higher than that ...." For more click here.

 

[vgane]

This is not the only incidence. Eric Schlosser says in an interview in Democracy Now, "The official list of nuclear weapons accidents that the Pentagon puts out lists 32. But the real number is many, many higher than that ...." For more click here.

OMG! It means US has got the toggle switch for entire mankind!

 

[Naina_Marbus]

This is not the only incidence. Eric Schlosser says in an interview in Democracy Now, "The official list of nuclear weapons accidents that the Pentagon puts out lists 32. But the real number is many, many higher than that ...." For more click here.

This was reported by CBS News, as per the first link given in my OP.

"The Pentagon has issued an official list of broken arrows - of serious weapon accidents that could threaten the public - and there are 32 accidents on that list," said Schlosser. "I found that 32 is actually a small fraction of the number of accidents that occurred. One document that I obtained from the Sandia National Laboratory, which is one of our big weapons laboratories, listed 1,200 nuclear weapons involved in accidents or incidents that threatened the safety between 1950 and 1968."

 

[Visalakshi Ramani]

So now we have to be afraid of

our own selves more than our enemies! :faint:

Often Imperfections save lives.

That way it is better than perfection!!!

 

[Visalakshi Ramani]

First it was just the fear of the itchy fingers

and the devastating deadly bombs.

Now the third dimension is the possible mishaps in

storing, moving and handling these deadly weapons.

 

[sarang]

With indian whiz kids (and tambrams) now associated with such projects, potential risks must have dropped a hundred fold post 1968.

 

[kk4646]

First it was just the fear of the itchy fingers

and the devastating deadly bombs.

Now the third dimension is the possible mishaps in

storing, moving and handling these deadly weapons.

It is applicable to any Nuclear device including Atomic Reactors.. The Kundankulam Scientists yet to say where & how they

will store the Nuclear waste...which can kill the mankind slowly..


TVK

 

[renuka]

With indian whiz kids (and tambrams) now associated with such projects, potential risks must have dropped a hundred fold post 1968.

I was just thinking of this and wanted to post the same and Lo Behold you beat me to it..

I was going to write "Why Fear when TBs are Here..Naan Than Sakalakala Vallavan!"

 

[Vaagmi]

Looking at this from another angle:

1) There is a limit to the number of safeguards you can build into a system to prevent it from an accident. Usually the complexity of such safeguards and their required number is determined by careful assessment of failures and analysis of the probability of failure.

2) If a toggle switch did not fail it means it was not supposed to fail: that it was designed not to fail at the critical moment.

3) Accidents happen not because of failure of safeguards but despite the safeguards. There is a hidden hand playing the levers.

4) I am sure the scientists who designed the system were not so dimwitted that they never foresaw a situation in which the bomb will have a free fall from an aircraft/missile and hit the ground with full force without the need to immediately explode.

5) The toggle switch not short-circuiting the connection means it was adequately well insulated to withstand very high electrical jolts.

Moral of the story: Either we should have nuclear weapons with such safeguards in place or dispense with them completely. But are the nations ready for that?

 

[Anand Manohar]

Dr Ross

I trust you've read about USS Indianapolis - a merchant navy vessel retrofitted for naval duty during
World War II. Supposedly on board was a cargo of two nuclear warheads and was torpedoed by the
Japanese off the coast of Guam. These were meant to be air dropped on Japanese cities.

The cargo never reached, yet two cities in Japan just evaporated ! Now, the cargo that was carried by USS Indianapolis
must be sitting somewhere at the bottom of the ocean in the South Pacific !

So, one is left with more questions than answers - How many more such were built ? How many were lost in transit
across the Pacific ? What are the potential dangers of nuclear contamination ? What if one / two were to
self-detonate from the ocean bed ? What will be effect on the already unstable tectonic plates in case such
detonations do take place around 'the ring of fire ' ? The list can just go on.................

The 'official' version will probably be in the 'denial mode' - that USS Indianapolis was a 'decoy'.

But nobody found WMD in Iraq, right ?

My guess is that the world came closer to a nuclear disaster much earlier and more frequently than
what we've been told to believe.

Yay Yem

 

[sarang]

Ellarum hanuman madiri; perumai teriyalle. Jambavan ippo venum!!!

I was just thinking of this and wanted to post the same and Lo Behold you beat me to it..

I was going to write "Why Fear when TBs are Here..Naan Than Sakalakala Vallavan!"

 

[Visalakshi Ramani]

It is applicable to any Nuclear device including Atomic Reactors.. The Kundankulam Scientists yet to say where & how they

will store the Nuclear waste...which can kill the mankind slowly..


TVK

I am reminded of a funny story.
A young man was a chain smoker.
An old man advised him,
"Don't smoke son! Tobacco is a slow poison"
The old man least expected the reply given by the young man.
He said, "No problem sir! I am not in a hurry!"
The detonation of the atom bomb will kill instantly.
The nuclear wastes will kill slowly.
But where is the need to hurry really???

 

[Visalakshi Ramani]

NOW I believe that Ignorance is Bliss!!!
The less we know the less we worry.
The less we worry the less sleep we lose!
The new born is the happiest since it it knows next to nothing.
Suckle... Sleep...Suckle.. Sleep !!!:baby:

 

[Visalakshi Ramani]

23. Tabula Rasa « A to Z Schools of Thought

Tabula Rasa




“Tabula rasa” is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content. All their knowledge comes from experience and perception.

The proponents of the Tabula rasa thesis favor the “nurture” side of the Nature vs Nurture debate, when it comes to aspects of one’s personality, social and emotional behavior, and intelligence.

The term in Latin equivalent to the English “blank slate” or “erased slate”. The word comes from the Roman tabula the wax tablet used for writing notes. The writings were erased or “blanked” by heating the wax and then smoothing it to give a tabula rasa.

Traces of the idea that came to be called the tabula rasa appear as early as the writings of Aristotle. He wrote the first textbook of Psychology in De Anima or On the Soul, Book III, chapter 4.

However the notion of the mind as a blank slate went largely unnoticed for more than 1,000 years.

In the 11th century, the theory of tabula rasa was developed more clearly by the Islamic philosopher, Ibn Sina. He argued that the “human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to know”.

The knowledge is attained through familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts.

This is developed through a syllogistic method of reasoning; ” Observations lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts.”

He further argued that the intellect itself “possesses levels of development from the material intellect, that potentiality can acquire knowledge to the active intellect. The state of the human intellect at conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge.”

In the 12th century, Ibn Tufail demonstrated the theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment. He depicted the development of the mind of a feral child from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society, on a desert island through experience alone.

The translation of his novel entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published in 1671, had an influence on John Locke’s formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay concerning Human Understanding.

Tabula rasa is also featured in the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. He depicted personality traits as being formed by family dynamics.

Freud’s theories imply that humans lack free will, but also that genetic influences on human personality are minimal. In psychoanalysis, one is largely determined by one’s upbringing.

Tabula rasa is also used by 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau in order to support his argument that warfare is an advent of society and agriculture, rather than something that occurs from the human state of nature.

Since tabula rasa states that humans are born with a “blank-slate” Rousseau uses this to suggest that humans must learn warfare.

The tabula rasa concept became popular in social sciences in the 20th century. The idea that genes (or simply “blood”) determined character took on racist overtones.

By the 1970s, some scientists had come to see gender identity as socially constructed rather than rooted in genetics – a concept still current although strongly contested.

This swing of the pendulum accompanied suspicion of innate differences in general and a propensity to “manage” society, where the real power must be – if people are really born blank.

 

[Naina_Marbus]

... scientists who designed the system were not so dimwitted that they never foresaw a situation in which the bomb will have a free fall from an aircraft/missile and hit the ground with full force without the need to immediately explode.

With science and technology, a negative, unexpected detrimental result and/or a perverse contrary effect to what was originally intended is always a possibility - the “law of unintended consequences” – synonymous with the “man proposes, God disposes” statement of the vox populi.

 

[vgane]

With science and technology, a negative, unexpected detrimental result and/or a perverse contrary effect to what was originally intended is always a possibility - the “law of unintended consequences” – synonymous with the “man proposes, God disposes” statement of the vox populi.

Let us take the example of Fukushima disaster on account of the triple whammy of Earthquake of magnitude 9.0, followed by Tsunami and power failure resulting in nuclear core meltdown causing hydrogen explosions...They had built emergency power..But in this case the diesel generator and AC power supply equipment were inundated making them unusable and cooling sea water pump also became dysfunctional...When disaster strikes there are lots of possibilities that cannot be envisaged in the drawing board...Anything can go wrong...We require a different mind set to work on disaster & recovery planning

 

[Naina_Marbus]

Let us take the example of Fukushima disaster on account of the triple whammy of Earthquake of magnitude 9.0, followed by Tsunami and power failure resulting in nuclear core meltdown causing hydrogen explosions...They had built emergency power..But in this case the diesel generator and AC power supply equipment were inundated making them unusable and cooling sea water pump also became dysfunctional...When disaster strikes there are lots of possibilities that cannot be envisaged in the drawing board...Anything can go wrong...We require a different mind set to work on disaster & recovery planning

Since you had earlier said

I am sure the scientists who designed the system were not so dimwitted that they never foresaw a situation in which …

Are you now saying that scientists can be dim-witted?

 

[vgane]

Since you had earlier said
Are you now saying that scientists can be dim-witted?

The second part of the quote ie

I am sure the scientists who designed the system were not so dimwitted that they never foresaw a situation in which …

is by Vaagmi vide # 14...

As per me scientists do try various permutations and combination while planning for disaster...In fact it is a key part ofdesign FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis)...But they too can go wrong...Also you can never design with 100 % probability.. then the design cost would be humongous!