Whoops apocalypse!

[grober]

How the American's almost detonated a nuclear bomb over US territory Goldsboro Carolina to be precise - only a single microswitch away from disaster. Makes you wonder how many more near misses there have been.
Goldsboro revisited: account of hydrogen bomb near-disaster over North Carolina ? declassified document | World news | theguardian.com

 

[Howard]

24 MT ! That's a big bomb !

 

[moonloops]

24 MT ! That's a big bomb !

Yep nearly a 20 mile kill zone from just the blast itself!

 

[Dieselman]

24 MT ! That's a big bomb !

Does my bomb look big in this?

 

[Howard]

Biggest nuke ever exploded was only double that !

 

[abecketts]

Imagine the wider implications beyond taking out a large chunk of the eastern coast, JFK just inaugurated, Russians installing missiles on Cuba could have been melt down literally.

 

[Paul/]

It would have put all other man-made disasters in the shade, but perhaps it would have shocked the superpowers in to abandoning the doctrine of maintaining a Mutually Assured Destruction capability?

 

[Dryce]

It would have put all other man-made disasters in the shade, but perhaps it would have shocked the superpowers in to abandoning the doctrine of maintaining a Mutually Assured Destruction capability?

There was no agreed doctrine of MAD. It's not as if the superpowers sat at a table and agreed some treaty in the 50s or 60s. Moreover the concept is possibly a very western one - so the M doesn't necessarily mean much if one side didn't have the same policy.

The reality of what was (and to an extent still is) going on is rather different.

It's unlikely that large weapon accidentally being set off in the NE US would somehow make the Soviets give up or negotiate down their ****nal at that time. It might well have been viewed as something quite different.

 

[redbaron]

Such a shame it wasnt over Birmingham.

 

[moonloops]

Such a shame it wasnt over Birmingham.

It would have created £50m of improvements

 

[PXW]

It would have created £50m of improvements

No chance - Birmingham has already been massively improved from when I was there as a youth. You would have been right some years back though...the only reason Betjeman wrote about Slough was that he hadn't been to 1970s Digbeth. Now, if the bomb had been over Reading....or Swindon.....or <<insert your choice of offensive location here>>

 

[wemorgan]

Bombs did land in Coventry - look at it now.

 

[Paul/]

There was no agreed doctrine of MAD.

Perhaps not in name but it clearly informed US policy. Less so on the Soviets, but they did threaten overwhelming retaliation against nuclear strike.

Mutual assured destruction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's not as if the superpowers sat at a table and agreed some treaty in the 50s or 60s.

...indeed- and if they had, there should have been less justification of a MAD doctrine.

 

[redbaron]

Am unsure of how it would have been a deterrant without MAD. It is an option we sadly lack against enemies these days.

 

[flango]

You could argue the 6 safety devices worked perfectly as the bomb did not trigger even though that was just down to one of the switches

 

[flango]

Am unsure of how it would have been a deterrant without MAD. It is an option we sadly lack against enemies these days.

As long as we are aligned with the USA we still have the power to destroy anything and everything, their ****nal of nukes is still huge and you don't need that many of them to wipe out an entire country this is a good article and photographs, of ICBM capability

Nuclear Missile Silos 1980-2010 Eyeball

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/icbm/lgm-30_3.htm

 

[Colin_b]

Such a shame it wasnt over Birmingham.

This link lets you simulate that....

NUKEMAP2 by Alex Wellerstein

 

[redbaron]

interesting to note that as long as wind direction was correct - I could nuke Oldham and watch from Cheshire drinking Pimms!

 

[Dryce]

Perhaps not in name but it clearly informed US policy. Less so on the Soviets, but they did threaten overwhelming retaliation against nuclear strike.

MAD is an invention after the fact.

It's something that was understood by the public. But it wasn't guaranteed. And behind the scenes there was a lot of planning and thinking going on considering strategies that have not been made public.

MAD was perversely reassuring to the public. Because it created a simple logic that the capability nullified the capability. The "they wouldn't really do it because".

 

[Dryce]

As long as we are aligned with the USA we still have the power to destroy anything and everything,

UK policy on our deterrent has been driven by the concept that the alignment with the US won't protect us.

Moreover UK policy was (is?) based on something other than MAD. It assumes a bit like a bee that the sting is sufficiently painful to deter a larger creature from destroying us - but in now way assumes destruction of that larger creature.

Where the alignment with the US came into play was the coordination of non-SSBN weapons - which were in decline from the 70s in the UK as we shifted our focus to SSBN based retaliation.