Kind: captions
Language: en
ever since the invention of nuclear
weapons Humanity has almost accidentally
destroyed itself many times over this is
a video about just some of those times
it's about nuclear bombs and missiles
accidentally detonated
it's about hydrogen bombs being lost
and it's about false alarms that could
have led to the end of the world
on the 17th of January 1966 a B-52
bomber was flying over the coast of
Spain
it was carrying four hydrogen bombs each
one 75 times more powerful than the bomb
dropped on Hiroshima
this sounds crazy but in the mid-1960s
during the height of the Cold War this
was routine
this was part of a military operation
known as chromedome where bombers flew
around the United States and skirted the
borders of the Soviet Union with
hydrogen bombs on board
the thinking was that if the USSR
initiated a first strike the U.S could
rapidly retaliate by having bombers
already up in the air and closer to
their targets
the flight took off from North Carolina
and crossed the Atlantic Ocean with the
plan to fly by the border of the Soviet
Union and return home
the plane would be in the air for more
than 24 hours the flight was so long it
required two mid-air refuelings
but long flights and mid-air refuelings
were commonplace flights like this
happened every day
the first refueling went smoothly
after flying by the Soviet Union and
turning around the plane needed to be
refueled again so at 10 30 a.m over the
coast of Spain above the small fishing
Village of palomares the refueling
tanker pulled up in front of the B-52
Larry Messinger the pilot of the bomber
recalled we came up behind the tiger and
we were going a little bit too fast
there's a procedure they have or the
room operator if you get a dangerous
position
it calls Breakaway Breakaway Breakaway
and you immediately cut the throttles
and drop down below well there was no
such skull we were dropping down below
the tanker and all of a sudden something
happened there was an explosion of some
kind
two planes collided the boom arm which
held the refueling nozzle hit the B-52
breaking off its left wing the resulting
explosion was big enough that it was
witnessed by another B-52 which was
flying a kilometer and a half away all
four men on the refueling tanker and
three of the seven on the B-52 were
killed in the accident
the four bombs fell to Earth
each one of them had a yield of 1.1
megatons of TNT about 75 times more
powerful than the bomb dropped on
Hiroshima
a hydrogen bomb gets most of its power
from the fusion of tritium and deuterium
which are isotopes of hydrogen with
extra neutrons when these Isotopes fuse
into helium a little bit of mass is lost
which is released as energy
but it takes a tremendous amount of
energy to get that reaction started
which is why a hydrogen bomb is actually
three bombs in one a conventional bomb
which when detonated triggers the
plutonium fission bomb which then
creates high enough temperatures and
pressures and releases enough energetic
x-rays to trigger the fusion reaction
the conventional explosives in two of
the four bombs detonated on impact
fortunately to trigger the fission
reaction the explosion needs to be
symmetrical
but since the conventional explosives
detonated on impact with the ground the
shock wave wasn't symmetrical and so the
fission and fusion bombs weren't set off
unfortunately the conventional explosive
blew up the plutonium core contaminating
A 2.6 square kilometer area of the
Spanish Coastline with radioactive
material
the area is still contaminated with
radioactive atoms to this day
[Music]
but after the crash the villagers were
told to eat no locally produced food and
there was an embargo on it in nearby
markets the third bomb was found intact
in a nearby riverbed but the fourth bomb
was missing Somewhere Out There off the
sunny coast of southern Spain and h-bomb
is missing it's been missing now for
over three weeks Mr Ambassador how was
your swim this morning did you by any
chance stab your toe on the bomb while
you're out there today wish you had 29
U.S army ships were involved in the
search and it still took 81 days for the
bomb to finally be located and recovered
I want to say this again there was a
hydrogen bomb that was 75 times more
powerful than the one dropped on
Hiroshima and it was missing for nearly
three months this is not an isolated
incident it's common enough that the US
military has a term for accidents
involving nuclear weapons the D-Day
clock thus begun ticking with a
potential Broken Arrow message from
Nellis Air Force Base they call them
broken arrows the Pentagon officially
lists 32 such accidents between 1950 and
1980 five of them occurred during
Operation Chrome Dome cases when a B-52
carrying hydrogen bombs crashed in 1961
the first year of Operation Chrome Dome
a B-52 had a fuel leak and it crashed
over North Carolina three members of the
crew died in the accident it was
carrying two four Megaton bombs
both bombs fell to Earth one had its
parachute deploy and it landed on the
ground mostly intact the other slammed
into a field and broke into pieces
the good news is that the conventional
explosives did not explode so
radioactive plutonium was not strewn all
over North Carolina the bad news is that
the conventional explosives didn't
explode and so there was a chance that
the hydrogen bombs could be armed and
ready to detonate with full force
recalling the incident 52 years later
Lieutenant Jack Revell who was
responsible for the safe disposal of the
bombs said and as we started digging
down trying to find the second bomb one
of my sergeants says hey lieutenant I
found the arm safe switch
and I said great he says Nah not great
it's on arm at the time a spokesman for
the Department of Defense said the bombs
were unarmed and could not have
accidentally exploded but in a report
Declassified in 2013 it was stated that
the bomb was armed
a single switch could have triggered the
detonation
by the way the bomb is still there
lodged about 50 meters under the field
after the bomb fell on the field there
was a flash flood which meant that it
couldn't be recovered so to make sure
that no one could dig up the bomb the
U.S military placed a 120 meter diameter
slab of concrete over the whole area
according to the Pentagon report there
is no detectable radiation and no hazard
in the area but a portion of one weapon
containing uranium is missing
there are dozens more events like this
like the plane crash over Greenland in
1968 the four hydrogen bombs it was
carrying burned up in the fire the
decontamination of the surrounding area
took four months
that same year the Soviet k-129
submarine sank in the Pacific Ocean
killing all 98 of its crew it was also
carrying three nuclear warheads part of
the submarine was covertly recovered by
the CIA
another standout incident occurred in
1965 about a hundred kilometers off the
coast of Japan
A Douglas A4 jet carrying at least one
hydrogen bomb fell off the aircraft
carrier during a training exercise the
plane the bomb and the pilot were never
recovered so for more than half a
century there has been a one Megaton
hydrogen bomb lying on the sea floor
four kilometers below the surface of the
ocean
it is one of at least six U.S nuclear
weapons that have been lost and never
recovered in 1998 Alexander lebed
Russia's former Chief of National
Security asserted that there are more
than 100 one kiloton nuclear bombs that
are unaccounted for
the most well-known Broken Arrow event
happened in September 1980. inside a
silo in rural Arkansas a team was
conducting routine checks on the Titan
II intercontinental ballistic missile
the missile was fueled ready to launch
at a moment's notice in its nose cone
sat a 9 Megaton hydrogen bomb
as one of the repairmen was walking
around The Silo the socket from his
ratchet wrench fell off
it fell 24 meters hitting the fuel tank
of the missile and puncturing a hole
the highly flammable Rocket Fuel began
to leak Into The Silo the missile
complex and surrounding area were
evacuated but a number of military
personnel remained on site to try to
Defuse The Situation the maintenance
team had an indication of an engine fire
and a rise in in Vapor concentration
inside the The Silo at 3 A.M about eight
and a half hours after the puncture of
the fuel tank the leaking fuel Vapors
ignited resulting in an explosion
this explosion led to one death and 21
injuries the 740 ton door keeping the
silo sealed flew more than 60 meters
into the air it was recovered 200 meters
away
the Warhead containing the hydrogen bomb
was also blown out of The Silo Landing
some 30 meters away luckily it did not
detonate
and these are just the near misses that
we know about of the 32 Broken Arrow
events listed by the Pentagon one which
occurred in the spring of 1968 remains
classified there are likely many dozens
more nuclear mistakes and near misses
the public knows nothing about from
every nation that has a nuclear Arsenal
the worry of a nuclear mishap is not
just the immediate Damage Done by a
hydrogen bomb explosion it's also the
misunderstanding and retaliatory strikes
that could arise imagine that in 1966
instead of hydrogen bombs falling off
the coast of Spain the plane crash
occurred closer to the border with the
Soviet Union
Humanity has been on the brink of
nuclear war many times and so far we've
been lucky
the closest we've likely ever come was
in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile
Crisis the U.S Navy began dropping
signaling charges into the water to
bring a Soviet submarine to the surface
the tensions were high and the submarine
had not been in radio contact with
Moscow for days the captain of the
submarine decided that war had broken
out and he was about to launch a nuclear
torpedo but the launch required the
authorization of three men two out of
the three authorized the launch but
vasili arkapov did not a full-blown
nuclear exchange between the United
States and the Soviet Union was avoided
by the rational decision of one person
the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr
later noted that this was not only the
most dangerous moment of the Cold War
it was the most dangerous moment in
human history
and during the Cuban Missile Crisis with
the tensions between the U.S and USSR at
an all-time high both countries still
conducted high altitude nuclear tests
the U.S set off a 410 kiloton bomb 50
kilometers above the Pacific Ocean and a
smaller seven kiloton bomb at an
altitude of 147 kilometers two of the
300 kiloton tests conducted by the
Soviets occurred in space
it's pretty hard to justify these
actions but if one of these tests was
thought to be a nuclear First Strike
leading to all-out war because false
alarms happen for something a lot more
innocuous than nuclear tests in space on
the 26th of September 1983 the Soviet
satellite-based early warning system
detected the launch of an
intercontinental ballistic missile and
their policy dictated that if any
inbound missiles were detected there was
to be an immediate counter-attack
against the United States this would
have likely led to all-out war but the
Soviet officer on duty at the time of
the detection stanislav Petrov was
skeptical of the reading he reasoned
that if there was a genuine first strike
the US would launch hundreds of icbms
simultaneously not just one the
detection system then warned Petrov of
another four missiles headed towards the
USSR but these two he dismissed as a
glitch Petrov was right he made the
right decision and his clear thinking
likely saved millions of lives the
warning system malfunctioned it confused
sunlight reflecting off high altitude
clouds for ballistic missiles after this
incident Petrov took an early retirement
and later suffered a nervous breakdown
another close call happened on January
25th 1995 when scientists launched a
rocket off the coast of Norway their
rocket was there to study the northern
lights but Russian radar picked up this
launch as it had a similar flight
pattern and speed as the submarine
launched Trident ICBM the incident was
serious enough that a briefcase
containing the nuclear launch codes was
taken to the Russian president Boris
Yeltsin
I think most people believe the biggest
threat posed by nuclear weapons is their
deliberate use there is this idea that
as long as Nations only have them and
don't use them they could act as a
deterrent keeping us safer but all of
these incidents demonstrate the real
risk of nuclear weapons is some freak
accident
so far Humanity has been lucky but how
long until our luck Runs Out
but there is hope in 1986 there were
more than 70 000 nuclear weapons
in 2022 that number had dropped to
twelve thousand seven hundred and five
and more are being dismantled
but as long as there are any nuclear
weapons remaining the future of humanity
is not safe
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