Accidents Involving USA Nuclear Weapons

From the UK, the Guardian reports that hydrogen bombs were DROPPED by B-52 accidentally over North Carolina in 1961 and nearly went off: one remaining switch was not turned to the on position.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/sep/20/goldsboro-revisited-declassified-document

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In a related topic, there’s also a book out about nuclear accidents called Command and Control. It sensationalizes fires in proximity to nuclear weapons with nuclear explosions. Conventional explosions and raging fires near a nuclear device may "cook off" the explosives, but won’t cause a nuclear explosion because the detonations need to be precisely synchronized.. Here is a very intelligent review of that book:

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser (3 stars)
Good overview of nuclear weapons safety with one HUGE flaw, September 19, 2013
By M Hanson

Overall the book was an interesting read.

Firsthand accounts from weapons designers all the way down to the individual airmen whose jobs it was to design, maintain, and deliver the nation's nuclear arsenal. Schlosser details the history of the US nuclear weapons program, paying particular attention to Curtis Lemay's take no prisoner approach to the organization of SAC and the nation's nuclear deterrent, with Lemay's legendary demand for perfection from all his subordinates. Lemay's transformation of SAC from a Chinese fire drill to the crack organization he turned it into was particularly good. Even with Lemay's organizational changes, there were many many accidents involving nuclear weapons. Schlosser touches on most of the notable ones and spends considerable time on a Titan II launch complex just north of Damascus Arkansas. Although I dislike the way he staged it in the book, it was still an interesting read.

I'd rate the book higher had Schlosser not given into the fear mongering babble though. While all the incidents Schlosser covered were serious, the actual risk for an accidental nuclear explosion from an external event (fire, explosion, impact) is infinitesimally small. In order for a nuclear weapon of the kind in the Titan II missile to be set off a very precise set of choreographed events have to take place. Nuclear weapons consist of a hollow sphere of plutonium surrounded by a shell of conventional explosives. These conventional high explosives are detonated within a few millionths of a second creating a perfectly spherical shockwave that crushes and compresses the plutonium pit in a perfectly uniform manner. Then chain reaction occurs and we get a mushroom cloud. Its designed to be so precise, because it has to be. There have been accidents involving nuclear weapons where the weapons were mutilated and fire set of the high explosive shell with no detonation of the core.

The books a good read for its prose and its information, but the glaring omission I detailed above throws a wet blanket on many of Schlosser's conclusions from the probability of an accidental explosions (realistically zero) to the need for global disarmament as the only way to prevent this non event from taking place.

http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-ebook/product-reviews/B00C5R7F8G/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R3CUGXZFP2US3E