On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 8:51 AM, James Padfield
<james.padfield@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 17 January 2017 at 06:31, Pierce Nichols <piercenichols@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I've read the book, but haven't seen the film. My biggest takeaway from the
book is that nuclear weapons typically pose a much more serious practical
threat to the nations that build and possess them than they do to anyone
else. The fact that no nuclear weapons have ever detonated by accident or
through misuse is an incredible run of luck, because it sure as hell wasn't
by design. Back to your questions...
Perhaps getting a little off-topic here....
I am not so sure I agree. I used to teach a (Masters-level) course on
nuclear weapons (in particular focusing on the explosives and the
explosive train). The assignment I used to set the students was to
research and present on a nuclear weapon accident. Naturally the
Titan II accident at Titusville, along with several others,
particularly the B52 crashes at Thule in Greenland and at Palomares in
Spain, came up regularly. One of the things that I took away from it
every year was that actually it was really difficult to get a nuclear
weapon to detonate unintentionally.
