Nuclear accidents... EDIT: Fixed :P

[Actaeon]

Oops, hit the wrong buttons....

Lemme edit

EDITx2: After reading the bunker thread, I decided to look up some nuclear stuff... found some very interesting nuclear accidents that had occured which I had no idea about.

Text

January 23, 1961
A B-52 bomber carrying two 24 megaton bombs crashes at Goldsboro, North Carolina. On one of the bombs, five of six interlocking safety devices fail, and a single switch prevents detonation. The explosion would have been 1,800 times more powerful than the bomb exploded at Hiroshima.

:Q

 

[pulse8]

*nods*

 

[brigden]

Yes.

 

[NathanBWF]

Indeed.

EDIT: Whoa...that would have sucked...

 

[K1052]

Thats why nuclear weapons can only be detonated by their firing systems. Impact or fire can not cause the explosives to detonate and result in a nuclear yield.

 

[Azraele]

:Q

 

[PowerMacG5]

Originally posted by: K1052
Thats why nuclear weapons can only be detonated by their firing systems. Impact or fire can not cause the explosives to detonate and result in a nuclear yield.

Exactly, in the worst case scenario that the explosion or crash is somehow powerful enough to break the wall that surrounds the core and explosive material, then you'll get something to the effect of a dirty bomb, where you have radiation that is dispersed over a large radius, but no nuclear detonation.

 

[Heisenberg]

There have been several times over the last 60 years where we've come uncomfortably close to blowing ourselves off the planet.

 

[phonemonkey]

I think there was an accident over Greenland where the plane crashed, and the wall that surrounds the core was damaged and nuclear material was spread over the area.

There was a show on the History Channel a while ago where they talked about some of the accidents. I never knew about the interlocks failing, tho.

 

[So]

Why do you think they put *6* on? Because five werent enough. It could have failed, but it didn't.