Atomic Trucker. Two decades after helping to design the first atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, was asked to describe how he felt after the bomb’s first test. “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky," he quoted from the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita, "that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” When bombs that he helped design were unleashed over two cities in Japan in August 1945, they detonated at temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun. So began the Atomic Age, a period that would blow apart our ideas about warfare and technology, send the Americans and Russians into a perpetual state of fear, and set the world on a course of nuclear power – the unintended effects of which are being felt once again in Japan.
A lot, says John Coster-Mullen. Nuclear Accidents. 5 Times We Almost Nuked Ourselves By Accident. We spent the Cold War in perpetual fear that the US and USSR would start an intentional nuclear conflict. The truth is, we came far closer to blowing ourselves up with nuclear weapons than we ever came to WWIII. Nuclear incidents have a bunch of ominous military code names, like Broken Arrow, Faded Giant or NUCFLASH. There are actually dozens of instances like these, but here are five major ones that happened in the US. If we were to consider Soviet activity, the list could go on for hours.
The Russians either lost a nuclear sub, lost a sub with nuclear weapons on board, had a nuclear sub’s reactor melt down, or all three roughly every other week. Kompetentnyh? Nyet. Travis Air Force Base, 1950 – Broken Arrow During the Korean War, US military and political officials gave serious consideration to the use of atomic weapons. Shortly after take-off, one of the B-29s had engine trouble. The Air Force covered up the incident, blaming it on conventional bombs loaded for a training flight. Video Shows Location/Country Responsible For All Nuclear Explosions From 1948-1998.
Capturing the Atom Bomb on Film - Audio & Photos. Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse.