WI: US Response to an Accidental Nuclear Detonation

Delta Force

Banned
The United States had several Broken Arrow incidents in which armed nuclear weapons came very close to full detonation. For example, two 3.8 megaton W39 bombs involved in the 1961 Goldsboro North Carolina B-52 crash may have failed to detonate only because the pilot hadn't armed the bomb (the other 5 safeties had tripped). Other nuclear weapons had inherently dangerous designs. The early nuclear bombs were vulnerable to detonation from lighting strikes, while the Mk 101 Lulu depth charge bomb could accidently detonate if it rolled off an aircraft carrier's deck. Given these close calls, what would the American response be to a NUCFLASH event on an American military asset or over populated American territory?
 
The United States had several Broken Arrow incidents in which armed nuclear weapons came very close to full detonation. For example, two 3.8 megaton W39 bombs involved in the 1961 Goldsboro North Carolina B-52 crash may have failed to detonate only because the pilot hadn't armed the bomb (the other 5 safeties had tripped). Other nuclear weapons had inherently dangerous designs. The early nuclear bombs were vulnerable to detonation from lighting strikes, while the Mk 101 Lulu depth charge bomb could accidently detonate if it rolled off an aircraft carrier's deck. Given these close calls, what would the American response be to a NUCFLASH event on an American military asset or over populated American territory?

Enough heads roll to be sold off cheaply as bowling balls.
 
Everyone in the military command is killed. I'm not sure who us killing them but I know they'll bee killed. If it's near a major naval base like Norfolk or San Diego then those cities are fucked violently.
 
Everyone in the military command is killed. I'm not sure who us killing them but I know they'll bee killed. If it's near a major naval base like Norfolk or San Diego then those cities are fucked violently.

You mean if the US Airforce stuffs up and accidently nukes North Carolina you're going to get US Army Generals commanding in Korea being executed? Yeah that makes sense. :rolleyes:
 
More likely, a whole shitload of people lose their jobs, and anti-nuclear movements get a major boost. Pretty big propaganda victory for the Soviets if this happens during the Cold War.

Of course, a lot's going to depend on the exact circumstances of the accidental detonation.
 
Enough heads roll to be sold off cheaply as bowling balls.

Yes, there will be a major investigation and a lot of people, both military and civilian, will lose their jobs over this. Whichever party the President happens to be of will almost certainly lose spectacularly at the next elections, or at least take a drubbing. Socially, this probably means a massive spike in anti-nuclear and pro-disarmament sentiment, with interesting long-term consequences. Depending on what kind of weapon goes off and under what circumstances, I can see airborne alert and possibly ICBMs becoming very unpopular. The Navy might end up as the leader of the triad, provided it's not a Navy weapon that does it.

And everyone in military command won't be killed...if it's an Air Force incident, I doubt the Army or Navy will be doing anything than grabbing spoils, same if it's a Navy accident but with the Air Force and Army taking their pick. Hard to see how their brass could be implicated, especially the Army's (since they didn't have many nuclear weapons compared to the other two services, particularly in the '70s and '80s).
 
The Goldsboro accident was somewhat of a best-case scenario, as far as accidental H-Bomb detonations over inhabited areas go.

It occurred over a sparsely-populated area, on a bitterly cold night when almost everyone within line-of-sight would be indoors, and the prevailing winds were blowing straight out to sea. Snow and rain would have limited the spread of forest fires.

Even so, fatalities would have been ~ 16,000 [1]. Not the phone call Kennedy wants to get woken up to, his first week in office.

A much nastier scenario would've been for this to occur a week earlier, on the 19th. South-southwesterly winds ahead of an approaching blizzard would have dumped the fallout onto Washington D.C. (packed with inaugural visitors), Philadelphia, and New York City.

[1] (based on 1960 population of Greene county, which would've been inside the 5-psi overpressure radius)
 
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Anaxagoras

Banned
There would be a flood of conspiracy theories, made seemingly plausible by the lies senior military officials would tell in desperate attempts to save their own asses.
 
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