32 Lost Nuclear Bombs that Might Nuke Any Minute

January 17th 1966 10:30 in the morning a Spanish fisherman watches a bizarre White Spot falling from the sky and then silently Landing in the outborn sea meanwhile in the neighboring fishing Village of palomares locals witness a completely different scene two gigantic balls of fire hurtling toward them at a tremendous speed in a matter of second the peaceful rural Idol was destroyed homes quaked from the shock wave fragments cut through the ground and debris rained down from the sky for several weeks newspapers worldwide reported on a terrible accident two American military planes collided in airspace over Spain those bombers were carrying nuclear payloads and after the crash four thermonuclear weapons known as b28s fell near palom marus Village one of them dangled from a tree and was found intact two had their conventional charges detonate leaving house-sized craters on both sides of the village and scattering radioactive plutonium across Farmland as for the fourth bomb it was never located this put the United States in an awkward position and the people in the area in Mortal Danger the Pentagon turned two engineers at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico to help determine where the missing bomb might have landed the facts suggest it landed in the sea but the exact coordinates remain unknown it still hasn't been found to this day and it's not the only nuclear warhead that's gone missing today we know about 32 lost atomic bombs and these are only the officially confirmed ones so what makes those lost nuclear bombs so dangerous and how is it possible to lose nuclear weapons anyway after the first use of an atomic bomb to force Japan to surrender in the second world war the US military geared up for a new era of nuclear warfare this time they were up against the Soviet Union and even though this struggle was called the Cold War both superpowers put their own existence at risk by conducting secret nuclear weapons tests John Clearwater an expert on the Canadian nuclear program claims that in just the first 24 years of the atomic age the US and the Soviet Union lost 32 nuclear bombs in that deadly race undoubtedly the Soviet Union posed the greatest threat to the United States then however there's a case where the US almost detonated nukes on their own soil on January 23rd 1961 in North Carolina a Boeing keep 19 was on a 24-hour Mission along the Atlantic coast of the United States the plane was armed with two Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs each one had a yield of 3 to 4 megatons when the B 52 was refueling midair from a tanker the crew reported fuel leaking from the aircraft's right wing the B52 had no choice but to turn toward the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina for an emergency landing during The Descent the bomber lost control and its right wing fell off wasting no time the crew bailed out of the plane up in the air the B52 split in half and two Mark thir 39 bombs were ejected one of them slammed into a field at speeds exceeding 1,000 km per hour and ended up buried 54 M deep when that bomb hit the ground three out of four safety mechanisms went haywire the signal to detonate the nuclear core had already been sent but fortunately something went wrong and the charge didn't go off but the scariest part of this story is that after the bomber crash they never found the second bomb 8 days after the accident a team of sappers discovered a part of the Warhead in a field while the other part the one with the nuclear payload vanished Without a Trace in hindsight Engineers concluded that installing the mark 39 bomb on the B52 aircraft was a big mistake the military's negligence could have led to irreversible consequences what if both bombs had really detonated the explosion of two Mark 39 bombs would have instantly killed thousands of people in the crash Zone in North Carolina and according to Radioactive follow calculations made by the nuclear secrecy Blog the radiation could have spread across the entire East Coast from Washington to Baltimore Philadelphia and even New York City looking at a made by Andrew wellerstein American Institute of physics historian it's clear that millions of Americans would have found themselves in the danger zone it's a miracle this catastrophe didn't happen but how many similar incidents have been kept hidden from the public eye investigative journalist Eric Scher claims that he's uncovered at least 700 major accidents linked to the usle nuclear Arsenal between 1950 and 1968 according to him the government went to Great Lengths to keep nuclear weapons testing Under Wraps mainly to prevent enemy access to weapon information right from the start the first mission was shrouded in secrecy the American conve b36 Peacemaker was the first InterContinental bomber able to carry nuclear weapons to any corner of the glob globe and after months of negotiations the military managed to persuade the atomic energy commission to provide them with a markv atomic bomb for testing on February 13th 1950 a b36 plane known as flight 2075 took off from the Eon Air Force base near Fairbanks Alaska this test flight aimed to simulate a bombing scenario over a major city in the Soviet Union the b36 was supposed to fly 8,850 km from Alaska to Montana then to San Francisco and finally land at the Carswell Air Force Base in Texas however shortly after takeoff ice started accumulating on the bombers fuselage the excess weight of the WarHeads put an enormous strain on the engines causing three of them to catch fire the b36 began losing altitude at a rate of 152 m per minute following military protocol the crew tried to ditch the atomic bomb into the ocean to avoid disclosing nuclear weapon testing but when one of the pilots hit the Salvo button to drop the bomb nothing happened on the second attempt the bomb bay door opened releasing the Mark 4 over the Pacific Ocean according to the crews reports that's where the bomb detonated fortunately the pilots managed to eject to locate their crew members and the wreckage of the bomber the combined forces of the US and Canadian military initiated a massive search and rescue mission that involved 40 aircraft US military officials interviewed the 12 surviving pilots and each one confirmed that the bomb had been detonated before the crash however the US Air Force search team couldn't find any traces of the bomb explosion or the crashed plane the military concluded that the pilots had violated protocol and ejected without releasing the bomb they belied the plane had plunged in the ocean along with the bomb 3 years later a Canadian search and rescue operation initially looking for a missing oil worker stumbled upon the bomber's wreckage at top mount K turns out the plane hadn't gone down in the ocean after all all only in 1954 a team of explosive experts finally reached the down b36 famously known as flight 2075 to destroy the remaining secret equipment it seemed like the end of the story but in 2003 an investigative team led by John Clearwater headed to the crash site for their own assessment they found that the bomb shackles that held the suspended weaponry on the aircraft remained undamaged Clearwater concluded that the bomb had indeed been ditched before the crash and was supposed to detonate over the ocean the problem was that search teams who had examined the incident site in the hours after the crash found no evidence of an explosion so where did the atomic bomb disappear to Clearwater is sure that the remains of the markv are still lying deep on the ocean floor L though finding them after all these years is very unlikely that means we may never know for sure what happened to that Warhead the flight 2075 incident marked the first documented case of a missing nuclear warhead sadly it wasn't the only one and by the way both the military and scientists know the whereabouts of some of these lost nuclear bombs but instead of attempting to disarm them experts have chosen to do nothing what are they waiting for Specialists say some of these lost nuclear bombs are better off left untouched otherwise we may cause irreversible damage on February 5th 1958 a thermonuclear Warhead known as a mark 15 was loaded onto a b47 bomber for an extensive training Mission Mark 15 is a hydrogen thermonuclear bomb with an explosive force of up to 4 megatons this is roughly 190 times more powerful than the Fatman bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945 the goal of the mission was to simulate an attack on the Soviet Union however instead of Moscow the bomber was supposed to fly over the American city of Radford in Virginia but on the return Journey to the base the craft encountered another military training mission in South Carolina the objective of that group was to intercepted one of the b-47s however they didn't notice the second plane carrying nuclear weaponry as a result the b47 with the atomic bomb on board was damaged the pilot decided to drop the Warhead into the water and then make an emergency landing the bomb dropped from a height of 9,000 144 M into the sea near taibe Island it's a miracle it didn't go off maybe the Big Bang didn't happen because the bomb was missing a crucial piece the capsule also known as the plutonium tip was officially stated to be absent from the bomb because it was a training flight nevertheless it could be added to the weapon at any time if needed the military knew where to find the lost bomb but AR argued there was no point in expending resources on it after all it didn't have a nuclear payload but there is a version of events suggesting that the payload might have really been there in 2019 in his book researcher Christopher barado described how truly dangerous the mark 15 could be barado claimed that according to the then deputy secretary of defense testimony the Lost weapon was a a fully functional bomb with a nuclear capsule if that's true the mark 15 could still set off a thermonuclear explosion it's believed that today the bomb lies on the seabed under 4 1/2 M of Sil but it still could go boom for example if it takes a hard hit Christopher barado claims that if the bomb really contained a plutonium Detonator the explosion could create a fireball with a radius of over 1 1/2 km and devastate a significant portion of the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina but what if the bomb lacks the plutonium part well it could still go off and create a gigantic crater there's also the chance that the explosion could punch a hole in the Florida aquafer contaminating it with uranium and salty water that aquafer happens to be the primary source of fresh water for at least four states Florida Alabama Georgia and South Carolina in 2001 the US Air Force nuclear weapons and counter proliferation agency published a report on the Lost Mark 15 bomb they confirmed Baron's concerns the explosives inside the bomb could pose a serious threat so it's probably best not to touch that Warhead or try to lift but you see letting things be is not always the best strategy you'll get what I mean when I tell you a story that happened in India during the Cold War Yes you heard that right in India in those days not only the US and the USSR felt the heat of the nuclear arms race residents of a village in the Indian Himalayas are sure that due to past nuclear weapon experiments dozens of populated areas are still at risk today in 1964 China conducted its first nuclear test which seriously concerned the US in the region where the experiments were taking place the Americans lacked satellite technology so they couldn't properly spy on their opponents the only way to keep an eye on China's activities would be a base in the Himalayas so the US government struck a deal with India to place a nuclear surveillance device on the summit of the nand Devi Mountain the mission was to install a plutonium 238 powered sensor and gather evidence of Chinese nuclear tests in addition to the 56 kg nuclear device they needed to transport a 3M antenna transceivers and short pulse generator to the summit to handle all this equipment there was assembled a team led by Indian Mountaineer moohan sing Ki when the team almost reached the Mountaintop at an altitude of 7,300 M they got hit by a snowstorm to protect the nuclear device the captain ordered his teammates to dig a hole in a snowdrift and place the equipment inside several months later they returned and found that the device had vanished without a trace it was Swept Away by an avalanche until 1974 the nandadevi mountain and the surrounding Sanctuary were off limits for expeditions but in the late 70s under pressure from the media India's prime minister moraji Desi disclosed the secret American Indian mission in the Himalayas starting from 1965 multiple search operations were conducted in the Himalayas but the nuclear device was never found and that's reason to be alarmed because it contained radioactive plutonium 238 with a halflife of approximately 88 years unlike a nuclear bomb the Lost device can't explode but it could trigger a catastrophe in a whole different way for example plutonium can contaminate the primary water artery of benal in the Northwestern states of India the Ganges River for a long time those were just concerns but in 2020 one during the chimle floods local villagers claimed that the Lost nuclear device led to the glacial breach in Nanda Devi around 50 people died as a result but was that old spy device actually behind the chole disaster scientists believe the flooding began when a chunk of Glacier fell into the water and blocked the mountain stream later the water broke free and a huge wave rushed down river yet the people in riny Village nestled high in the Himalayas are convinced it's not the glacier's fault at all they think the Lost device with plutonium is still up in the mountains giving off heat that melts the snow and ice around it in turn the country's authorities argue that it's unlikely although they haven't found the device yet there are still about 30 years left until the plutonium decays this means that that at this point it just can't emit enough heat to melt so much snow at once but while this lost nuclear device has been sought for over half a century to prevent a potential catastrophe certain organizations are hunting for atomic bombs for profit on April 12th 1970 a fire broke out on the Soviet nuclear submarine K8 during exercises in the Bay of bisque The Vessel managed managed to surface successfully and the captain ordered the crew to abandon ship a toeb arrived at the scene and began evacuating the submarine to the shore however it was so damaged that it dragged the towing vessel to the bottom resulting in the death of 52 crew members the details of the tragedy remain highly classified to this day but it's claimed that four of the 24 nuclear Torpedoes on board are still operational alongside the remains of the ship they rest at a depth of over 4 1/ 12,000 M underwater roughly 400 km Northwest of Spain however researcher Jeffrey Lewis claims that the hunt for the Lost nuclear weapons is not over after all suspicious Expeditions often appear in the areas where Atomic submarines have sunk what's important is that we can't allow nuclear weapons to fall into private hands is in that case a nuclear warhead or its components may end up in the possession of terrorist organizations but sometimes it's not just the treasure Hunters who search for lost nuclear weapons governments are in the game too the sinking of the Soviet submarine k219 in the Atlantic Ocean remains one of the most mysterious disasters of the entire Cold War on October 3rd 1986 there was an explosion and subsequent fire in one of the missile tubes on the submarine the vessel wasn't towed to the shore in time and went down not far from the Bermuda Islands this is where the most intriguing part begins in 1988 Soviet research ship called academician myav Kish discovered the wreckage of k219 using Sonar the submarine had been torn in half due to immense pressure but several hatches of the missile silos were found open and the research team spotted clear tool marks the submarine carried 34 nuclear warheads each yielding one Megaton all of them vanished the Soviet Union claimed that the accident happened due to a collision of the submarine with the American combat ship austa however the US Navy flatly denied these claims despite this there's a theory that the United States is responsible for stealing the nuclear weapons from that Soviet vessel there's also speculation that a private company got its hands on the submarine's nuclear Arsenal after all even if the Warhead itself was damaged its components could be sold for a tidy profit I don't even know which of these scenarios scares me more American researcher Jeffrey Lewis considers it unlikely we'll ever find the missing nukes and not only because they might have already been snatched from the ocean floor it's just incredibly hard to find them to do that you need to assemble search teams that would have to manually explore every meter of the ocean floor Lewis says it's a grueling and inefficient process that would require the involvement of thousands of divers and hundreds of submarines fortunately safety protocols have changed since the cold War today airplanes during exercises cannot carry nuclear warheads on board though the exception to this Rule still includes nuclear submarines currently the US operates 14 vessels with ballistic missiles France and the United Kingdom have four submarines each to function as nuclear deterrent forces these vessels must remain undetected during their operations at Sea this means they can't send any signals to the surface so as to avoid revealing their whereabouts they rely on gyroscopes that calculate the submarines coordinates based on its last known position direction and speed this system is far from being perfect as it often leads to accidents for example in November of 2018 a British nuclear submarine nearly collided with the STNA Superfast 7 fairy in the Irish sea and yet Lewis believes that even though lost atomic bombs are extremely dangerous and could lead to numerous casualties and destruction in the event of a disaster they're not what we should be most afraid of there's a weapon that poses an even bigger threat the explosion of a tactical nuclear bomb can render an area uninhabitable for several years covering about 60 square km in the meantime as a result of Russia's military aggression the total mined area in Ukraine today reaches 174,000 Square km that's like two austrias or just a bit more than the territory of the State of Florida according to the mines Advisory Group as of 2023 Ukraine is the most heavily mined country in the world 30% of its land is littered With Grenades mines and artillery shells experts estimate it'll take at least 10 years to fully demine these territories the most challenging task will be clearing coastal areas as we've already learned how difficult it is to locate objects on the ocean floor that lack special radio beacons in total 32 nuclear warheads have been lost in the world meanwhile hundreds of thousands of conventional Munitions are lost in Ukrainian soil and they kill people every single day so are nuclear weapons really the most dangerous thing Humanity possesses in the 21st century

Channel: Ridddle

Views: 70,894

Keywords: ridddle, #eldddir, #eldddir_space, #eldddir_earth, #eldddir_homo, #eldddir_animals, #eldddir_disaster, #eldddir_ocean, #eldddir_bombs, science

Id: DiMqHgrocx8

Length: 25min 15sec (1515 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023