WI: North Carolina Gets Nuked

"On a January night in 1961, a U.S. Air Force bomber broke in half while flying over North Carolina. From the belly of the B-52 fell two bombs -- two nuclear bombs that hit the ground near the city of Goldsboro."

What the consequences if the bomb goes off?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/us/north-carolina-nuclear-bomb-drop/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter

For institutional memory:
WI: Goldsboro bomb's 4th safety mechanism had failed (January 2014),
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=304895&highlight=Goldsboro
US H-bombs itself (October 2013),
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=293395&highlight=Goldsboro
WI: Nuclear explosion over North Carolina (Septermber 2013),
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=291927&highlight=Goldsboro
AH: The Goldsboro Atom Bomb Detonates (September 2013),
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=291963&highlight=Goldsboro
WI: US Response to an Accidental Nuclear Detonation (June 2013),
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=283042&highlight=Goldsboro
 
i remember that case

a B-52 brake up in air and loose it two 4 megatons Bombs

one bomb fell from sky and holed into ground, lucky that destroy the electronic of warhead and piece of the detonator.

second Bomb got somehow activate, deployed it parachute and try to start it detonator sequence
lucky a fail save pin remain in place and prevent detonation.
Goldsboro_Mk_39_Bomb_1-close-up.jpeg


the USAF had to fly in nuclear bomb technician team to defuse the second Warhead
while another team was digging out the remains of first bomb
Goldsboro-B-52_buried_bomb.jpg



so What if second Bomb had detonate ?
everything in 10 km radius would be gone
Town of Goldsboro, Wilson, Farmville, kingston would be damage.
but the Biggest problem is the Fallout of W39 nuclear warhead, it was dirty in design.
on very bad wind condition the Fallout could have reach Washington D.C.
sadly i don't have the weather report of North Carolina on January 24, 1961.
 
I wonder if this incident would destroy SAC as a orginization? Having one of their own bombers carrying a nuke having a accidential detonation on US soil. This might destroy the US public's tolerance for carrying US nuclear weapons on bombers and push the US towards a all ICBM nuclear force.
 

Sabot Cat

Banned
One of the responses in one of the linked threads about this very topic suggested that it wouldn't go nuclear; is there documentation to corroborate this?
 
One of the responses in one of the linked threads about this very topic suggested that it wouldn't go nuclear; is there documentation to corroborate this?

From my understanding it is confusion over initiation and a explosion. What was close to going off was the explosive part of bomb, which was just conventional explosive. However the nuclear initiation part of the detonation sequence had not started so the explosion going off would have just scattered nuclear material over the local area. People read into the report and see the word explosion, Nuclear Bomb and assume a nuclear initiation. You then have reporters coming in and trying to make the story so it will grab your attention.
 
So it could have detonated an in-effect dirty bomb that scattered radioactive material?

Three Mile Island did not destroy nuclear power as an option, I don't think a non-exploding nuke would destroy SAC or its mission.

After all without it, what's the alternative? Soviet domination?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
An H Bomb requires multiple stages for full thermonuclear detonation. I suppose one possible outcome is the the primary goes off but not the secondary so you get a nuclear explosion of X KT in power and lots of nuclear material scattered all over the place. Another possible outcome is a fizzle where the primary doesn't even get much yield. Etc...

I suspect that anyone that is really qualified to explain the various realistic outcomes couldn't legally do so.

Michael
 

Saphroneth

Banned
From my understanding it is confusion over initiation and a explosion. What was close to going off was the explosive part of bomb, which was just conventional explosive. However the nuclear initiation part of the detonation sequence had not started so the explosion going off would have just scattered nuclear material over the local area. People read into the report and see the word explosion, Nuclear Bomb and assume a nuclear initiation. You then have reporters coming in and trying to make the story so it will grab your attention.
Yeah, that's pretty much the case. For them to be carrying armed and ready-to-initiate bombs over US territory, even in the case of an actual ongoing nuclear war, would be unlikely in the extreme (because if an aircraft is shot down then the bomb would initiate.) It's similar to how nuclear missiles only arm after they're certainly in a ballistic trajectory.

It's one of the great ironies of popular culture that people imagine nuclear weapons as initiating at the drop of a hat, whereas what's actually in there is a few explosive lenses (about equal to an early WW2 bomb, at a guess) and lots of uranium... it can go off in a dirty bomb way, but you could saw a nuclear weapon in half, destroy it with a naval gun or tap-dance on it without it initiating.
 
Defence of the Realm is one of my favourite films and now we are all saying that even if the F111 had hit the runaway teen it wouldn't have detonated its nuke...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Defence of the Realm is one of my favourite films and now we are all saying that even if the F111 had hit the runaway teen it wouldn't have detonated its nuke...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Just pretend it's a Gun-type uranium one. Those are highly unstable and can initiate from a crash - which is one reason the Manhattan project phased them out pretty much straight away.
 
Defence of the Realm is one of my favourite films and now we are all saying that even if the F111 had hit the runaway teen it wouldn't have detonated its nuke...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

No. Most movies get nuclear device setups wrong. Like in Broken arrow. The detonators on weapons are build so rugged that unless the specification condition is replicated that the nuclear weapon would be under for normal initiation it will not go off. For example a Minuteman warhead detonator is built so even if you took the warhead you couldn't set it off unless you replicated the conditions that the warhead would experience during re-entry from space. No special codes and keys with timers as depicted in the movies.
 
For them to be carrying armed and ready-to-initiate bombs over US territory, even in the case of an actual ongoing nuclear war, would be unlikely in the extreme
I don't think they had a choice, hydrogen bombs are all one piece unlike atomic ones where the nuclear part is separate and has to be inserted.

According to Command and Control by Eric Schlosser the only safety system that worked was the ready/safe switch being set to SAFE.

If it had been set to GROUND or AIR the bomb would have detonated.

The question is could something happen to change the switch during the accident, or at least make the bomb think the switch had changed?
 
So it could have detonated an in-effect dirty bomb that scattered radioactive material?

Three Mile Island did not destroy nuclear power as an option, I don't think a non-exploding nuke would destroy SAC or its mission.

After all without it, what's the alternative? Soviet domination?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
All SBLMs, all the time. 1960 is early enough that they could phase it in and out over the next decade.

I mean, im not saying its a good plan. But it is an alternative.
 
on very bad wind condition the Fallout could have reach Washington D.C. sadly i don't have the weather report of North Carolina on January 24, 1961.

"THE WEATHER AND CIRCULATION OF JANUARY 1961"
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/089/mwr-089-04-0137.pdf

Summary: it was bitterly cold, and winds were from due west (so the fallout would have been blown straight out to sea, not north over Washington D.C.).

One week earlier would've been a much nastier scenario ; it was the eve of Kennedy's inauguration, and the winds were blowing straight towards D.C.
 
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