According to this, the US military has “lost” 11 nuclear bombs over the years.
There’s a comforting thought.
Authorities are currently searching for one of them off the Georgia coast.
According to this, the US military has “lost” 11 nuclear bombs over the years.
There’s a comforting thought.
Authorities are currently searching for one of them off the Georgia coast.
What’s more comforting is that what they said really doesn’t make much sense.
They identified it as an H-bomb. They also said that the plutonium slug was not in the bomb when it was lost. That leaves only the tritium (the fusion part of a thermonuclear weapon).
Tritium is very difficult to detect from a distance (nee imposible). And it decays rather quickly. So today there would be less than 1/4 of the original tritium still present.
Finally, they said they detected it via its radiation emissions.
That I cannot see as possible. Somewhere in that story, they are not telling us the truth.
Reminds me of one of the better lines from the film “Broken Arrow”: I don’t know what’s scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often that there’s actually a term for it.
Incidentally, when I was in the Navy it was true that “broken arrow” was the codeword for a lost nuclear weapon incident. Don’t know if that’s changed or not since then.