Lost Nuclear Bomb Found Off Georgia Coast? 820
securitas writes "Both CNN and ABC News report that a hydrogen thermonuclear bomb lost off the Georgia coast in 1958 may have been found. The 'Mark 15, Mod 0' nuclear bomb was jettisoned into the Atlantic Ocean off Savannah after a B-47 bomber and an F-86 fighter collided in mid-air. 'The 7,600-pound, 12-foot-long thermonuclear bomb contained 400 pounds of high explosives as well as uranium' and it was found off Tybee Island by retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Derek Duke,, who said that radiation levels were from seven to 10 times higher than normal. If it is the bomb that Duke has found, the question now is what, if anything, should be done with it?"
Answer to this question (Score:3, Insightful)
I think.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't just leave it there... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, for another thing, you want to go retrieve it before someone else does. Nuclear - or should that be "nu-cu-lar"? - material lying there just waiting to be had is a potential goldmine for a terrorist organisation, etc. The symbolism of using an American nuke to make the material for its own nuclear device, dirty bomb, or whatever against the very people that built it would be just the kind of thing that Al Qaeda would love.
Bottom line: it's there, you know where it is, so go get it so it's out of play.
Re:Get Rid Of It (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm, the mosque in my community is an arab group.
Let's keep the racial bigotry, subconcious or not, to a minimum.
Re:Get Rid Of It (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not a neo nazi group, a christian group or a mormon group with a submarine horse drawn cart? Singling out any of the above shows equal understanding of how many groups have a chip against the US Government.
Re:boom (Score:1, Insightful)
disappointed in US government (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in a country with a 300 billion dollar annual PEACETIME military budget, and they can't locate an accidentally dropped nuclear bomb in 12 feet of water to recover it?
Instead, a hobbiest treasure hunter with a civilian boat and a WalMart geiger counter has to do the job for them and send the US military a GPS point.
That makes me sick to my stomach, no wonder we can't find Osama or WMD's.
Tell me again who's the real winner when it takes a 5 billion dollar nuclear aircraft carrier to deploy a 20 million dollar plane flown by a pilot with a million dollar education, dropping a ten thousand dollar bomb just to kill some Iraqi kid hiding in a hole with a $20 russian surplus rifle?
This to me is symbolic of everything that's wrong with our bloated defense budget.
Vote libertarian!!
Still (Score:4, Insightful)
But there is still the problem that most likely this thing would be difficult to recover. Its not like jumping into the deep end of the pool and retrieving a plastic toy that sunk down there.
Re:Interested (Score:3, Insightful)
OT: agreed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, folks, let's not judge or label a group by the loonies who attach themselves to it. That's the same sort of stupid reasoning Rob Enderle has against Linux, isn't it?
The grandparent should have used "terrorist," a behavioral label, rather than implying some ethnic group = terrorist.
WTF (Score:2, Insightful)
Those who built it created it with the intent of protecting the free world. Go read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and see if you feel the same about these people you'd put at risk.
Good lord. What a dick.
Re:Because those groups aren't so wacko. (Score:1, Insightful)
How about just saying "religious radicals", because they are all very, very deadly. Right now it's the stupid muslim extremists, but there could very well be a lot of timebomb groups just waiting to go off on a rampage.
Re:I think.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called the American people. We decided as a whole that given the circumstances we had to build atomic bombs. Was that the right choice? I dunno, but don't kid yourself, we all acquiesced to this course of action with our votes.
Re:No so dangerous... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because Americans have an aversion to putting themselves in harms way to save money. An American soldiers life is worth untold millions in defense spending. You may not think so, but the majority of Americans do, and they vote to support that position. The Islamic fundamentalists have no such aversion, they willingly raise their children to hate non-Muslims so violently that they will strap bombs on themslves to make a statement, Americans just send in missiles and bombers. Sure they cost more than an American child on a suicide mission, but we are willing to pay that price.
Besides, it's not like we're pouring the money down a rat hole, the defense industry produces lots of jobs and lots of tax revenue to support the costs. So does NASA and a lot of other "frivilous" govt programs. Better just get used to it, it's not likely to change soon. It sure doesn't matter in this regard who gets elected President, both candidates know how to spend your money to excess, it's just a matter of what they spend it on, not whether they will, that's a given.
Well keep the the fuck away from them! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I think.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Manahttan Project was one of the more secret projects undertaken by the US military during the Second World War, and remained secret even up until the dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima and Fat Man on Nagasaki. I kind of doubt there was a referendum to the American people to even start the Manhattan Project, let alone drop atomic weapons on those two cities.
-1, Fearmongerish (Score:2, Insightful)
From Wikipedia: Radioactive contamination means the distribution in an environment of radioactive material. This differs from direct radiation because the radioactive material may be moved around by wind or water, or it may be taken up by organisms.
BTW, IAAIP (I Am An Ignorant Person)
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:3, Insightful)
We see really big costs and tons of money going down the drain, but the only thing the guy in the cockpit needs to do is get an 'okay' and hit the button.
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:3, Insightful)
Believe it or not, the one who's not dead.
What to do with it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Put it up George W. Bush's ass and detonate the fucker.
WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Because those groups aren't so wacko. (Score:2, Insightful)
2- "Radical" (rather, extremist) muslim arabs such as OBL are not intent on killing as many people as possible. Ignorant comments such as you make guarantee you'll never find political actions that could undercut their popular support.
Since you're posting on
Re:Experiment? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe yes, maybe no. But one thing is certain, if invaders bomb/kill all your innocent family including your 7 years old daughter whose birthday you celebrated yesterday, would you die to avenge them?
I would.
Re:OT: agreed... (Score:0, Insightful)
Good thing you aren't arrogant about it.
And what about what the Chechnian's did to Russia?
What Europeans did to American Indians?
Germans did to Jews?
What Europeans did to Africans?
Jews did to the wtc? (Alright, no, but the temptation was too much)
What we're dealing with in all of these cases is either a vocal minority, or indoctorination as to the sub-humanness of the enemy.
How about this? You get your ass kicked and your balls cut off for calling for the death of innocent men, women, and children?
You fucktards who can't understand that no one deserves to die for the acts of another make me sick.
Oh, and the islamic leaders? America is occupying their country dumb fuck. If anyone tried to do that to you, you'd be fighting your damndest, but because we did it, it's ok?
Re:Get Rid Of It (Score:2, Insightful)
Locally -Halifax, NS, Canada-, Dr Badawi (Imam, professor of business and religious studies at St Mary's University, Halifax) has been extremely vocal, even tireless in his advocacy. You'll see him occasionally on CBC or Vision, but I haven't seen many of his ilk on CNN or other American media.
There are a lot of Imams that are doing a lot to denounce terrorism on all sides. If they don't seem vocal enough, it's almost certainly not their fault.
Re:WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interested (Score:3, Insightful)
I infer from the article that the fissionable material is enriched uranium, i.e. U235 (mixed with U238). U235 has a half life of 700 million years. (http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/urani
So there is still a chunk of weapons-grade uranium in this thing. (I agree nothing else would be of use to a would-be nuclear weapon maker.)
* Quick summary: Fission = heavy nuclei spliting. Fusion = light nuclei combining. A nuclear bomb (e.g. Hiroshima) works by fission. A hydrogen bomb works by fusion, but needs a nuclear bomb to trigger it.
Re:OT: agreed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wise words. Unfortunately no one will listen. One person I know who follows that creed still finds it all too easy to blame the entire "Christian Right" for the acts of a few loonies at abortion clinics. Hypocrisy is the lifeblood of intolerance...
Ex-Libertarian (Score:1, Insightful)
Sure, I'm still a fervent believer in the US Constitution, property rights, civil liberties, capitalism, and relative isolationism.
I also believe in killing the fsck out of crazy ratbastards that have killed or are planning to kill me and my neighbors. Better that the money earned by the sweat of my brow, then taken by the government, goes to killing bad guys than to feeding lazy ones.
If I'm not alive, my Libertarian tendencies don't mean jack squat.
RIGHT (Score:5, Insightful)
A thermonuclear bomb (at least as made in the fifties) is essentially a tank of deuterated and tritiated lithium hydride (LiH) that will explode with great fury if quickly raised to a temperature of millions of degrees within a span of milliseconds. It's very difficult to create the required temperatures quickly with chemical explosives- the easiest way to do it is to surround the tank with numerous small fission devices, which heat the tank to millions of degrees quickly and easily and are responsible for the radioactive fallout still associated with fusion bombs. (The "neutron bomb" was a planned attempt to replace the fission warheads with chemical explosives, creating a thermonuclear explosion with no radioactive fallout- a truly impressive feat if it were possible.)
Since the bomb was lost 46 years ago, which is about 4 tritium half lives, the maximum possible yield has in theory been reduced to 1/16 of what it was in 1958, and the actual yield is probably zero, as you would expect of a fusion device that has spent many tritium half lives on the seafloor. The tank is probably full of lithium oxide and all sorts of crap, although it may still contain enough H isotopes to make it worth recovering. But the Pu is undoubtedly going to be salvaged. In dollar terms, Pu makes Au look like Si.
Re:I think.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that the vote was unanimous. Was there ever a referendum on this? Was someone elected on a "let's build atomic bombs platform"?
In fact, I seem to recall that the first civilians to even be aware of the existence of the USA's atomic weapon program were residents of Hiroshima. By the first time the American public learned about Atomic weapons, the die was already cast.
Defense also produces useful advancements (Score:3, Insightful)
Now it's not like this had to start as a military project, this could be done purely as a civilian endevor, but the point is that it's not like money that goes to the military just disappears. We do get returns on it outside of just the defense the military provides.
Re:Retrieval (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RIGHT (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Big Concern (Score:5, Insightful)
Let us not forget the home-grown nutcases and whack-jobs of the ilk of McVeigh, Koresh and Kaczynski (?sp). But heck, the Americans would probably invade Iran (or whoever is next on the Axis of Terror) if the IRA admitted igniting the damn thing.
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Big Concern (Score:3, Insightful)
Name me a major terrorist attack since the OKC bombing that was not carried out by Islamic extremists.
there are enough home grown idiots with grudges against the government to go out there with the bass-boat, a winch and a case or two of beer.
If two good-ol' boys with a bass boat and a winch can manage to excavate a 7,000 bomb buried under decades worth of sediment, the Terrorists Have Already Won(tm).
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Iraq is that the US has only really seen one effective model for an invasion that pacify the population and turns them into democratic allies by using overwhelmingly destructive tactics. The people of Japan were not wooed into liking the US by offering a Democracy. They were thoroughly beaten. Their armies were destroyed, their cities were burned to the ground, and countless civilians died. The end of both Germany and Japan came through complete and total defeat of not just their militaries, but of their people. When it was all said and done, the war had been so bloody and so horrific, normally very spirited people no longer had the will to fight.
The Iraq model is something very different. The US crushed the Iraqi military, but made no attempt to crush the population. In fact, the military was not even crushed in the traditional sense of the word. Generally an army either fights to the death or surrenders. The Iraq army simply deserted under US firepower.
The point is that Iraq is a new way of fighting for the US. To put it bluntly, the US doesn't know what it is doing. They had some theories as to how to fight such a war, and most of those theories have been blown out of the water. They are not trying to kill Iraqis. On the contrary, they are trying very hard not to, and have willingly given up cities they could have easily kept through raw military force simply to spare them the destruction. The reason why there are no US troops in Filuja is not because the US doesn't have the might to take the city, but because they US doesn't know how to take the city without turning it into a heap of rubble.
Personally, I think it is a shitty situation no matter how you look at it. The US fucked up the place and they have an obligation to set thing right. On the other hand, they don't know how to set things right. They know the Afghanistan model where you just let the locals run law and order doesn't work. They know you can't carpet bomb cities any more. I have a feeling that the US will slog it out until January when Iraq holds elections. At that point, I think you can expect the new government to ask the US to leave, and the US to get the fuck out, stopping just long enough to buy souvenirs on the way to the airport. In the end, the Iraq doesn't want the Americans there, and the Americans don't want to be in Iraq.
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's all right if Britian nukes Vatican City, and they will have no one to blame but the IRA, since they knew the price the Catholic world would pay?
Turning Iran into a smoking crater would take care of their nuke program and send a powerfull message to Syria, et al.
Yes; the fact that you're a violent sociopath who won't hesitate to kill hundreds of millions of people. To which every major country in the world would have no other option but to gang up to stop.
The mass murder of innocents is never acceptable. And when you start killing, you've got a lot of killing ahead of you, because even those who aren't in your current kill-zone and aren't willing to get involved for justice, might get involved so they don't have to worry about you getting pissed off at them.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, as Martin Luther King said. And your plan doesn't even come close to reaching the civility of an eye for an eye.
Re:I think.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think.. (Score:5, Insightful)
We had created two nukes and used them. We didn't have to build more. But the American people elected JFK in part because he tolds us that we needed to build more nukes to achieve parity with the Soviet Union. We elected Eisenhower who was building more nukes. If the American public hadn't wanted nukes, they had more than enough opportunity to tell their presidents and congressmen that.
Not that America is alone in this; India, the UK, France and Israel are other democratic nations that chose to join the nuclear club, even knowing what they were capable of. Even after widespread knowledge of their nuclear programs, none of those nations has voted to dismantle their nukes.
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:3, Insightful)
Not casually. Vengence is a dish best served cold, and there are much more efficent things given time then just strap a bomb on my chest.
Re:RIGHT (Score:5, Insightful)
True - worthless to nations like the US and Russia... Not so worthless to others who have more nefarious designs.
Oh man... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to pipe up here, just to make certain that particular important concepts are remembered; that surely, of all things, dropping a nuclear weapon on a civilian population is a crime against humanity.
Just as much as rounding unarmed civilians up and sticking them in gas chambers is a crime against humanity, so is dropping a nuke on them.
If that isn't a crime against humanity, then surely there is no such thing.
For those butchers who would argue that thousands of American soldiers would surely have died in an attempt to invade Japan, yes thousands of American military personell would have died.
Better the death of ten thousand soldiers than the nuking of an entire civilian population. The nuking of babies, old folk, pregnant women, children at school, nurses in the hospital. The list goes on. Innocent life for the lives of the military; the American military (primarily).
"Those who live by the gun should damn well die by the gun. But those that live by the nuke would take everyone else down with them."
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:1, Insightful)
And yet, sadly, they are still much better off than if Saddam was in power. If 2-3X that number is killed per year for the next 20 years it will be break even. At least now there is a chance that things will get much better for the Iraqi people. Otherwise they would have had Saddam's sons to look forward to as rulers, one of whom was too psycho-vicious for even Saddam's taste, and the other one more calculating and cruel.
Civilian population? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, we had massive incendary raids that were necessary to have any real impact on production capacity. And, unlike many places even in Germany that regarded the end of the war as a good thing, Japanese were conditioned to believe that suicide was far, far preferrable to the Emperor losing the war. When conventional forces landed on Saipan and Okinawa they were met with senseless attacks by civilians and mass suicides. Think of 10 villagers attacking a patrol with pitchforks. Women holding babies jumping off cliffs to avoid being captured and (as they were told) raped and tortured.
Because of this, it is not difficult to believe there were actually fewer civilian casualties from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than there would have been if we had invaded the "home islands". If the military wasn't finally convinced that we would burn the island down to bare rock they might never have surrendered and fought to the last civilian, all while the Emperor and military leaders quietly evacuated.
Error In Article (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RIGHT (Score:5, Insightful)
it wouldn't have gone nuclear - (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called a "one-point-safe" design, a single point of detonation won't set off the weapon. Some bombs are even designed to be set off in this random fashion as a self-destruct mechanism if you don't want it to fall into enemy hands, but don't want to vaporize a few square miles.
Re:Dirty Bomb (Score:3, Insightful)
And if FUD fscks up the economy, or politics, or whatever, it affects me. Thus, it *is* important.
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on how you look at it. Those particular people (the ones who are dead) are arguably no better off than they would have been under Saddam. But more to the point, do you really want to be the country that "isn't quite as bad as Saddam was"?
Suppose the cops came in to a bank robbery in progress, where the robbers were killing hostages right and left and demanding millions of dollars and a limo to escape in. The cops kill the robbers, shoot a handful of the customers for goods measure, take a few hundred thousand dollars and escape in their own car. They weren't nearly as bad as the robbers, were they?
Call me old fashoned, but I'd rather be on the side of good than on the side of victory. Sure, both would be nice but if our goal is to be "statistically not as evil as Saddam Hussain, on average" we are unlikely to be either.
-- MarkusQ
Re:lol... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with you in principle, but you also have to take into account the perceived threat of WMD being used on America.
Regardless of their location or availability now, the intelligence community believed they existed and could be used to arm terrorists to attack the US.
Stopping Saddam's murderous regime is an ancillary humanitarian benefit, and what we tell ourselves to sleep better at night. But, ultimately the go/no go decision was based on possible attacks to the US. If we were out to eliminate genocidal crazy regimes, we'd have 100k troops in Darfur right now instead of Baghdad.
Re:Don't just leave it there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, just letting it sit there and contaminate the fish isn't a good idea.
Depends on the amount of radiation. Its on the bottom of a silty sea floor, isn't it? The background radiation is probably fairly low. The upper levels of the ocean receive more radiation (due to sunlight), and other parts of the ocean floor are also probably more radioactive (due to radioactive isotopes in the ground).
I wouldn't be surprised if the total radiation of the bomb + background radiation is less then some other parts of the ocean.
Re:Experiment? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure where you get thorium in smoke detectors. Most that I know are based off of Americium-241.
You'd more likely detect Thorium in your gas lamp mantle, or from antique glassware.
Americium-241 comes directly from PU-241 as it decays. The byproducts of AM-241 are Np-237, decaying in turn to Pa-233 and U-233. The AM-241 decay chain ends with bismuth-209, a stable (non-radioactive) element.
BTW, the halflife of AM-241 is 432.7 years.
Re:disappointed in US government (Score:4, Insightful)
People have short attention spans. Clearly you forget that The Secretary of Defence, Colin Powell, stood in front of a TV camera several months before 9/11/2001 and specifically said that Iraq posed absolutely no threat to the United States. Why? Because they had no weapons of mass destruction, they had no means of delivering them if they did, and the embargo that the country had been under for the past ten years had crippled any plans that Saddam Hussein had for pretty much anything.
What Iraq had (or currently has) to do with Al Quaeda is an utter mystery, since the country had a secular government, whereas Al Quaeda is a collection of religious nuts who allied themselves with other religious nuts like the Taliban. And of course, they're not even from Iraq, but from a country that has been deeply nervous about them for the past 15+ years, enough to ally themselves with a bunch of infidels.
But you know, there's lots of oil in Iraq, and America is running out of places to get it. It's quickly coming down to a choice between killing all the caribou or overthrowing regimes that they propped up in the first place. The choice just gets easier when your population is screaming for blood.
How do You loose a 7600 pound bomb (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Because those groups aren't so wacko. (Score:2, Insightful)
What matters is present boundaries. Some half-assed historical answers are only going to piss off people that are already angry.
Re:I think.. No you DON'T! (Score:3, Insightful)
How about the fact that those two nukes ended the war in a couple of days, vs. the several years and millions of lives it would have cost otherwise?
How about the incendiary attack on Tokyo? That was a beauty, made Hiroshima look like a weenie roast.
I've gotta add you're pretty cavalier with those soldiers too.
Re:Interested (Score:3, Insightful)