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View Full Version : North Carolina almost nuked??



DanISSELisdaman
09-20-2013, 05:00 PM
I don't know if this is true or not, but if so, it would have been devastation like no one has ever seen.



Newly Released Secret Document Reveals That NC Was Just
One Simple Circuit Away From Being Nuked With 4 MT Bomb
Posted By: Watchman
Date:
Friday, 20-Sep-2013 14:33:45
A secret document,
published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today,
reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom
bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the
device that devastated Hiroshima.
The document, obtained by
the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information
Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a
disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were
accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The
bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the
devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in
warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one
low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.
Each bomb carried a
payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had
the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington,
Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of
lives at risk.
Though there has been
persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US
government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put
Americans’ lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published
document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for
the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that “one simple,
dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a
major catastrophe”.
Writing eight years after
the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs that dropped over North
Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made his inaugural address as
president, were inadequate in their safety controls and that the final switch
that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt,
leading to a nuclear burst. “It would have been bad news – in
spades,” he wrote.
Jones dryly entitled his
secret report “Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the
H-Bomb” – a quip on Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satirical film about nuclear
holocaust, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

The accident happened
when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air
Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast. As it went
into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell
into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of
a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy’s Road.
Jones found that of the
four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended
detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a
firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that
final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. “The MK 39 Mod 2
bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the
B-52,” Jones concludes.
The document was
uncovered by Schlosser as part of his research into his new book on the nuclear
arms race, Command and Control. Using freedom of information, he discovered
that at least 700 “significant” accidents and incidents involving
1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.
“The US government
has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in
order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy,”
he said. “We were told there was no possibility of these weapons
accidentally detonating, yet here’s one that very nearly did.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north-carolina-1961

NESARA- Restore America – Galactic News

CitizenBBN
09-20-2013, 05:10 PM
Looks real to me, the Guardian is a legit news source and they have posted the declassified report that found that 5 of the 6 safety interlocks on the bomb had been disabled when they found it in a field outside Goldsboro.

Kind of a shame, I know a guy in Goldsboro who owes me money.... ;)

No doubt we've had a lot of similarly close calls where at least some of a series of safeties, either procedural or mechanical, failed and we were 1-2 more failures away from a disaster. That's why we had 6 safeties on it, not 2.

It does of course point to just how much the government lies to the American people, which is the point I take away from this. They've denied there was any close call for more than 50 years, when obviously it was an extremely close call. If you look at my signature I think it sums up the situation pretty well. Never trust "your" government, b/c it's not yours.

UKHistory
09-20-2013, 06:32 PM
I had read the quote before but until tonight I had not read who it was attributed to. A tip of my hat.

If you need me I will be in my bunk wearing my brown coat.


Looks real to me, the Guardian is a legit news source and they have posted the declassified report that found that 5 of the 6 safety interlocks on the bomb had been disabled when they found it in a field outside Goldsboro.

Kind of a shame, I know a guy in Goldsboro who owes me money.... ;)

No doubt we've had a lot of similarly close calls where at least some of a series of safeties, either procedural or mechanical, failed and we were 1-2 more failures away from a disaster. That's why we had 6 safeties on it, not 2.

It does of course point to just how much the government lies to the American people, which is the point I take away from this. They've denied there was any close call for more than 50 years, when obviously it was an extremely close call. If you look at my signature I think it sums up the situation pretty well. Never trust "your" government, b/c it's not yours.

CitizenBBN
09-20-2013, 07:35 PM
I had read the quote before but until tonight I had not read who it was attributed to. A tip of my hat.

If you need me I will be in my bunk wearing my brown coat.

Always knew you were a fine person of discerning taste. You wouldn't be the hero of Canton by any chance? :)

It's a great quote, and so true, esp. in things like this. I'm not sure the Goldsboro thing requires us go dig up graves and hang people long dead, but it does show just how easily the government seems to be able to cover up its actions and mistakes. In the end the mistake Leftism makes is assuming that 'government' is some kind of non-human entity like electricity, that it isn't really just as susceptible to the failures of man as anything else no matter how many laws you pass.

America follows the rule of law as much or more than any other place on Earth and it's still clear that our government is just an assemblage of men who do as they please, with very little constraint and answerable to no one if they just cover their tracks well enough. How many people KNEW we nearly nuked ourselves in the 60s and never said a word? How many just hoped that the DoD learned from it and improved the safety systems, not knowing if anything was ever really done despite the fact that at that time we were doing a LOT of B52 test flights over the US and elsewhere?

Just like all those who have known about the NSA's actions, or the IRS' actions, etc. It's just so easy for government to go off the rails of the letter of the law, bc it's not like there are 20 other competing governments in the US looking over their shoulder. No one is. that's why this case against Holder is so important. If even the Congress can't be a check and balance against the actions of executive agencies what keeps them following the law, doing what is right when it's harder than what covers their careers and furthers their political goals?

It also highlights how even when 95% of people in the government are good people trying do to the right thing, the system can still be corrupted. I have a bunch of friends in Washington, don't think a one of them is a person devoid of ethics or morals, but a lot of people with strong ethics knew we nearly nuked ourselves and said nothing b/c they needed the job or they thought the political fallout would hurt a cause in which they believed, etc. They didn't do anything "wrong", but its like mob psychology. The group acts far different en masse than the individuals ever would on their own. That's true without regard to government, companies and even churches behave the same way and we see it every day, but b/c government has no check against itself it is all the more dangerous. The Founders put in a bunch of them for that reason, but one by one we've torn them down, taken them out, and made it only worse in the end.

There's a reason I identify with Firefly so strongly. I don't like government any more than Mal. :)

UKHistory
09-21-2013, 02:00 PM
"That is what government's are for. Getting in a man's way."

It is a fine balance. Human weakness and faults get in the way at both extremes.

Less government is better than more. No law allows the powerful to step on the little guys too.

It is a tough balance.

kingcat
09-24-2013, 09:06 PM
http://www.thegoldsborobrokenarrow.com/