The U.S. military is missing six nuclear weapons (2021)

I rather enjoyed reading <i>Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety</i> which covers a few of these events in more detail, as well as the 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion[1] and some broader history about the security and management of US nuclear weapons.<p>[1]: The missile itself exploded, not its nuclear payload. See Wikipedia for an overview: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...</a>

1950 - Plane with engine trouble dropped over Pacific Ocean so that when it might crash it wouldn&#x27;t crash with a nuclear bomb on it.<p>1956 - B-47 ran out of gas over Mediterranean.<p>1958 - B-47 having difficulty to land jettisoned somewhere near Wassaw Sound near the mouth of the Savannah River so that it wouldn&#x27;t crash with a nuclear bomb bon it.<p>1961 - B-52 crashed shortly after taking off. Most of it was dug up. (Dr. Jack ReVelle obituary from Jan 2023 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncrabbithole.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;jack-revelle-goldsboro-nc-broken-arrow-obituary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncrabbithole.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;jack-revelle-goldsboro-nc-bro...</a> )<p>1965 - A-4E rolled off the deck of the USS Ticonderoga into the Pacific Ocean near Japan (Japan wasn&#x27;t happy about it)<p>1968 - USS Scorpion attack sub sank somewhere near the Azores Islands.<p>---<p>This isn&#x27;t a &quot;hey, there are a bunch of nukes out there in the hands of (more) irresponsible people.&quot;

Could they have been delivered to another nation in a clandestine way and reported missing to cover that loss? To me it seems viable and probably if my hypothesis is correct there&#x27;s a country that became a nuclear power soon after we stopped losing them

Article is from 2021. And the last nuke lost was in 1968. Wondering if all the nukes lost are still viable as a weapon?

The Black Vault was one of my favorite websites when I was a kid. It really opened my eyes up to how much of a joke our world is.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theblackvault.com&#x2F;documentarchive&#x2F;broken-arrow-incidents&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theblackvault.com&#x2F;documentarchive&#x2F;broken-arrow-i...</a>

Makes me wonder how many weapons the other nuclear-armed nations have lost and not recovered. Like the US, Russia has thousands of them, and had tens of thousands more during the cold war. How many of them went missing?

If US lost &quot;only&quot; 6, one has to wonder how many the Soviets may have lost. Are these bombs still usable? When they decay on some seabed for decades what happens eventually?

What&#x27;s scary, this article, or considering how much has been lost by other countries (Soviet Union, China, ..)

&quot;I don&#x27;t know what&#x27;s scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there&#x27;s actually a term for it.&quot;

I learned with kids that everything is better is you say &quot;Just&quot;.<p>&quot;US military is missing just six nuclear weapons.

Classic and apropos LRB essay <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lrb.co.uk&#x2F;the-paper&#x2F;v36&#x2F;n15&#x2F;mike-kirby&#x2F;diary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lrb.co.uk&#x2F;the-paper&#x2F;v36&#x2F;n15&#x2F;mike-kirby&#x2F;diary</a>

If one reviews the historical total number of B-36 and B-52 crashes and their causes, the continual operation of &quot;alert&quot; aircraft by SAC back in the cold war era was really quite risky.

&gt; Somewhere near Goldsboro, North Carolina, a uranium core is likely buried in a field. &gt; The United States Army Corps of Engineers purchased a 400-foot circular easement over the buried components to restrict digging.<p>Is an easement sufficient protection? If there isn&#x27;t someone around to prevent anyone from digging, then we&#x27;re just relying on evildoers being afraid of violating property laws?

I put an Apple air tag on my cat and when he goes missing I can see where he is on Apple Maps.

The Palomares Incident is a good story too. All 4 lost bombs were recovered. Three on land had exploded (in a non-nuclear manner) and scattered so much radioactive contamination that the US government had to scrape off 6000 barrels worth of Spanish topsoil and ship it back to the states. The fourth bomb fell in the ocean and was recovered through Bayesian analysis with the assistance of an observant Spanish fisherman.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1966_Palomares_B-52_crash" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1966_Palomares_B-52_crash</a><p>(I used to know one of the scientists who helped in this recovery. He wrote a book about it.)

Notable to mention the Greenland Thule air base crash which effectively created a dirty bomb around the area after the B-52 crash.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_cra...</a>

Conspiracy: they are planted in Russiam and Chinese cities.<p>Reality: it would make more sense to fabricate the weapon in secret and hide its existence to begin with than to document it well and use it for secret stuff.

That they will admit.<p>But somewhere out there might be a nuclear weapon that is internet enabled under the guise of monitoring.<p>Remember how the first few generations of military drones didn&#x27;t even use encryption?

(2021)

I&#x27;d worry far more about if the Russians have lost any of theirs. Their record is not good on this.

Given the last bomb was lost in 1968, this is just fear mongering.

Everybody seems to be counting their plutonium currently

ocean, ocean ocean, ocean, mud, ocean, ocean

Everyone check your pockets.

Did anyone look on ebay?

Well I got clickbaited.

I think I&#x27;ve seen this movie...

At some point we have to assume time travellers are taking all the bombs that did start Armageddon, alternatively our luck might be extremely close to running out.