<story><title>The U.S. military is missing six nuclear weapons (2021)</title><url>https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/us-military-missing-six-nuclear-weapons-180032</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tikhonj</author><text>I rather enjoyed reading &lt;i&gt;Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety&lt;/i&gt; which covers a few of these events in more detail, as well as the 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion[1] and some broader history about the security and management of US nuclear weapons.&lt;p&gt;[1]: The missile itself exploded, not its nuclear payload. See Wikipedia for an overview: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wishfish</author><text>Was 9 years old and living in Little Rock at the time. Just 20 or 30 miles away. Remember the news reports and my proto-survivalist mom going into action. Telling me everything we’d have to do if the nuke went off.&lt;p&gt;Had relatives who lived not too far off from Damascus. I remember driving that way past the silos. Even as a kid, you could easily pick out the silos. They were hidden behind foliage with no identifying signs. But each and every one had the exact same driveway and culverts. Very different than the farm entrances and dirt roads. It was a weird time. Driving past a bunch of possible world-enders on the way to see Aunt Gloria.&lt;p&gt;That scene in The Day After, when the ICBMs were launched from the silos based out of a farm, hit me particularly hard. That’s what rural central Arkansas would have looked like.</text></comment>
<story><title>The U.S. military is missing six nuclear weapons (2021)</title><url>https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/us-military-missing-six-nuclear-weapons-180032</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tikhonj</author><text>I rather enjoyed reading &lt;i&gt;Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety&lt;/i&gt; which covers a few of these events in more detail, as well as the 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion[1] and some broader history about the security and management of US nuclear weapons.&lt;p&gt;[1]: The missile itself exploded, not its nuclear payload. See Wikipedia for an overview: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lelandfe</author><text>Looking up broken arrow incidents is pretty horrifying. Wikipedia&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;military nuclear accidents&amp;quot; list isn&amp;#x27;t even a full list - just notable ones - and it&amp;#x27;s still absurdly long: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_military_nuclear_accidents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_military_nuclear_accid...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;July 28, 1957, two nukes jettisoned from airplane into the Atlantic, never recovered. February 5, 1958, bomber collides mid-air, jettisons nuke off coast of Georgia, never recovered. July 6, 1959, cargo plane crashes on takeoff, explosives do not go off in the fire. January 24, 1961, bomber catches fire while in air, two hydrogen bombs dropped over North Carolina, one comes close to detonation.&lt;p&gt;And on, and on, and on. America in the Cold War kept nuclear weapons continuously aloft along the Soviet border, but the program experienced so many crashes that it had to be scuttled. In the final one, the nuclear payload ruptured: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>