Declassified Report: Two Nuclear Bombs Nearly Detonated in North Carolina
Here’s some cheery news for a lazy Friday afternoon, as a newly declassified document reveals new details from an incident in January 1961, when the US Air Force nearly nuked North Carolina — twice.
(CNN) — On a January night in 1961, a U.S. Air Force bomber broke in half while flying over eastern North Carolina. From the belly of the B-52 fell two bombs — two nuclear bombs that hit the ground near the city of Goldsboro.
A disaster worse than the devastation wrought in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have befallen the United States that night. But it didn’t, thanks to a series of fortunate missteps. …
Or, as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it back then, “By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted.”
More: Report: Two Nuclear Bombs Nearly Detonated in North Carolina
Just noticed that at 40 seconds in, the CNN announcer in the video above says one of the bombs “could emit 3.8 megatons of gas.”
Uh — what now? She thinks nuclear weapons are horrible because they… emit gas?
We have our lolwut of the day, folks.
