Atom bomb nearly exploded over North Carolina in 1961 secret documents reveal In the document, Parker Jones, a senior engineer in the Sandia National Laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons, concluded that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low-voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe." Jones' report, titled "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I Learned to Mistrust the H-bomb," was written eight years after the accident in which one hydrogen bomb fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, and the other into a meadow. He found that three of four safety mechanisms designed to prevent unintended detonation failed to operate properly in the Faro bomb. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device and it was only the final, highly vulnerable switch that averted a disaster. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concluded. The Guardian said the document was found by Schlosser as he was researching a new book on the nuclear arms race, "Command and Control."