Well, there's another fine reason NOT to visit Georgia.

Don't worry, it's as safe as all those undersea communications cables. Oh wait.

I am pretty sure that a Tom Clancy novel found and dug up that bomb, exercised literary license as it pertained to location, and used it in a fictional story, so there is nothing to worry about.

To find that thing, they would *probably* have to do some sort of grid pattern core samples down through 50 years of sediment. Then they would have to "count" every core sample in several places. A simple analysis of the data will reveal where it is located...but that would cost an ass-load of money. So, just leave it there. It's not ever going to hurt anyone.

Slow news day, the bomb has no chance of going nuclear.

First, they put about a dozen safeties into this thing. Having one go off accidentally would really screw things up, especially in the hair trigger world of the Cold War. Thus the strong motivation to make damn sure that it would be a one in a trillion trillion chance of one accidentally being triggered.

Second, while the theoretical physics of a nuke are easy enough, getting it to work is another matter. Nukes need to undergo regular maintenance and the detonation sequence needs to be precisely timed, especially on an implosion type nuke. Triggering one of the many detonators in the explosive charge would make one hell of a mess, but the nuke would not go critical.

Wherever the bomb hit, it has likely been encased by the environment. The only danger it poses is from the radioactive material and from the lack of radiation, it is likely still intact and just sitting there, sinking farther and farther into the swamp.

Sooner or later someone will find and worship it.

headline: sure, because dropping a heavy weight on a nuclear bomb automatically arms and detonates it.

There are millions of more dangerous bombs floating around international waters and lying on the surface of the land to worry about, that actually kill people, including old WWI and II ordinance. Typical scare article by the MSM. Everybody panic would have been a better headline.

Nuke the whales.

Nash: the reverse of the four letters used to describe vajayjay or used as a perjorative gets filtered that way every time. Butnooclear. See you ehn tee!

nashBridges: nashBridges: butnooclear

What in the holy hell could be wrong with "nuclear" on Fark? That's the second time that filter has popped up.

It filters whenever the letter 'tee' 'enn' 'you' and 'cee' are strung together either backwards or forwards.

/silly, but true

Makes me wonder if any of Xenu's unexploded bombs are still lingering around Hawaii and the Canary Islands after 75 million years.

/bum my thetans out, man

What happens when the sharks find it?


We are so screwed!

It'll probably be found in the last place they look for it.

Didn't Rambo find that thing in Burma? :)

Gotta nuke somethin'.

Who needs it to go off? That much plutonium would fetch a pretty nice price on the black market.

And in the Tom Clancy book, they blew up Denver... too bad they a$$flecked it.

They dropped one in British Columbia Canada too, later on when they found it they went in and took it out and trashed the wreckage of the plane that it went down on

fishrockcarving: I am pretty sure that a Tom Clancy novel found and dug up that bomb, exercised literary license as it pertained to location, and used it in a fictional story, so there is nothing to worry about.

I think you're referring to The Sum of All Fears, and if you are, the nuke in the novel came from an Israeli A-4 that crashed during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. It's a long way from Georgia.

Imagine godzilla image macro here.

Not to worry. I have seen Jack Bauer dismantle these things with only seconds to spare.

Hmmm... I would worry about contamination... Explosion risk is minimal... but if there's enough material, it will self-heat... Then it's a question of how effective the cooling provided by the surrounding water is... but some radioactive material will potentially leach out. Not good.

fishrockcarving 2008-02-02 11:38:44 PM
I am pretty sure that a Tom Clancy novel found and dug up that bomb, exercised literary license as it pertained to location, and used it in a fictional story, so there is nothing to worry about.

No,no,no you got it all wrong. I saw a documentary about how Cuba Gooding Jr found it.

Crosshair: while the theoretical physics of a nuke are easy enough, getting it to work is another matter. Nukes need to undergo regular maintenance and the detonation sequence needs to be precisely timed, especially on an implosion type nuke.

This.

The required conditions to get a nuclear weapon to explode properly are very specific. They can not go off with anything like full force by accident. At most the will just fizzel.

eli pabst: fishrockcarving 2008-02-02 11:38:44 PM
I am pretty sure that a Tom Clancy novel found and dug up that bomb, exercised literary license as it pertained to location, and used it in a fictional story, so there is nothing to worry about.

No,no,no you got it all wrong. I saw a documentary about how Cuba Gooding Jr found it.

hehe

You're talking about it like this is the only lost nuke around.

In fact the US has lost quite a few nukes in the ocean that have never been recovered. Plane crashes and failed missile tests (yep back in the day nuke missile systems had to be tested with live warheads).

The Soviets have also lost some, the numbers are unclear.

Accidental nuclear detonation is impossible. In fact a VERY precise set of circumstances have to happen to create a instantaneous, symmetrical critical mass and IIRC at least some types require a burst of neutrons from a neutron generator trigger at the exact nanosecond. Everything has to work "just so" with functioning brains, and if the brains were still working then it wouldn't allow an accidental detonation because there are safeguards against that inherent to its brain's design. Contaminated explosives and destroyed electronics won't do this.

It's ok, they put it in a boundry box!

/This is our little boundary box. We're gonna take the word flaccid and put it in there with my mom's titties and your erection problem and we gonna close this box and we gonna throw this biatch in the ocean. And the only way that you can get to this box is you gotta be motherfarkin' Jacques Cousteau.

Goldsboro, North Carolina. Jan 24 1961
2-2.4 Megaton H-bombs jettisoned over land.
five of the six interlocks had been set off by the fall (new window)
1 core was never recovered...

UberDave: To find that thing, they would *probably* have to do some sort of grid pattern core samples down through 50 years of sediment. Then they would have to "count" every core sample in several places. A simple analysis of the data will reveal where it is located...but that would cost an ass-load of money. So, just leave it there. It's not ever going to hurt anyone.

Or use a Geiger counter. The neutron radiation might be too weak though.

Don't worry, I can assure you all that the nuke is perfectly safe.

I know this because it's under my kitchen sink.

We solved this problem years ago at Doc's bar. Don't tell me I'm the only Farker who's been there.

Richardson, carrying a two-man crew, was afraid the bomb would break loose from his damaged plane when he landed, so he ditched the bomb in the water before landing the plane at Hunter Air Force Base outside Savannah.

If he landed with the bomb, it could have exploded, and we would have no south anymore. Damn!

Simpsons did it...

/cue photo of 3 eyed fish.

Crosshair
Your words of wisdom are soothing, but i'm thinking the thing is at least worth steeling.

Gee. What a wonderful report for terrorists to read online. Thanks to all that make it possible that reading this, somehow makes it an automatic threat by some quack trying to find and detonate this. Ever hear about "letting sleeping dogs lie???"

TRAINING exercise with live nukes = great planning on someone's part

They couldn't haul up a concrete lump or something in its place?

themeatcleaver: Didn't Rambo find that thing in Burma?

That farking thing did almost seem like a nuke going off didn't it. I don't doubt that plenty of people watching the movie thought it was a very small nuke; however, dude in the movie said that the English dropped that bomb in WW2. The English didn't detonate their firstnooclear weapon until October 3, 1952.

FarkinFarker: firstnooclear

stupid filter. wtf?

It's very hard to set off a nuclear bomb by mistake, and the material may even have decayed to the point where it's impossible. Add to that the fact that the bomb is way underwater, and it doesn't really pose a health hazard.

Lesbian-Jesus: They dropped one in British Columbia Canada too, later on when they found it they went in and took it out and trashed the wreckage of the plane that it went down on

That was the first one they lost. I was never sure if they ever found it or it was dropped in the Pacific.
They sure did a good job taking care of the wreckage with that special forces team though.

SwampTooF TRAINING exercise with live nukes = great planning on someone's part

They couldn't haul up a concrete lump or something in its place?

this happens all the time. squardons are required to do it to retain their nuclear certification.

Nukes don't really last that long.

The conventional explosives will still be there. The radioactive material will still be there. The worst that could happen is some sort of DIRTY BOMB! that explodes and spreads radiactive material around a bit. And everyone knows that these things are almost completely harmless and no reason to worry about...

Did you know that in Germany they still regularly dig up old WWII bombs? Over half a century ago they got dropped from allied planes onto burning German cities, failed to detonate on impact and got burried under rubbel as hundreds of fellow bombs did explode around them. After the war the rubble was cleared and new buldings were build over the bombs. Decades later the building is toen down, sometimes with the use of explosive. Then while buildng something new they might discovers a rustet hunk of metal during excavations.

Do you think, they say to themselves that if the bomb hasn't exploded till now, it probably won't explode anymore at all and thus be completly safe to handle or do you think they decide to call the bomb-squad and evacuate the area? They do the latter. And they have a good reason too. Because every once in a while a hapless construction worker with a backhoe actually manages to hit some corroded piece of scrap that actually still manages to explode.

The lesson here is, that the only bomb that you can be absoultely sure to not explode, is the one that you have just detonatet yourself and even then it pays to be cautious.

cant it corrode & leak its nukey contents?

what about the terrorist fish? All that mercury has got to of made them a little unstable.

mistahtom: Richardson, carrying a two-man crew, was afraid the bomb would break loose from his damaged plane when he landed, so he ditched the bomb in the water before landing the plane at Hunter Air Force Base outside Savannah.

If he landed with the bomb, it could have exploded, and we would have no south anymore. Damn!

Nope. The bomb was missing what would ignite the nuclear explosion, so it would just set off the conventional explosion. I'm uncertain what the enriched uranium would cause, though.

It's pronounced "noo-kyu-ler"


/our president can't be wrong
//bothers me that he's got his finger on the button
///better him than the VP, I guess

eh, nukes are pretty safed if they aren't armed

you could actually shoot it up with an m16 if you wanted to, but that won't make a nuclear reaction start..

ka1axy: //bothers me that he's got his finger on the button

Tain't just a button. It's a football.

/taint

Coronach: We solved this problem years ago at Doc's bar. Don't tell me I'm the only Farker who's been there.

on Tybee?

Loki-L: Yes, old bombs have a habit of going boom if someone messes with them. The Air Force recognizes this problem--note that they say the explosives would make any recovery effort dangerous at this point. The thing is, just because the conventional explosives of the trigger go off doesn't mean the nuke goes off. There are many detonators around the explosives and they must all be fired at *EXACTLY* the right time to get a nuclear yield. You don't want a detonation wave spreading across the explosives, you need one going smoothly in across the entire sphere. The plutonium core must be slammed inwards from all sides at *EXACTLY* the right time.

If the timing isn't perfect all you get is plutonium scattered about. As a dirty bomb it's not even much--plutonium is only an appreciable threat as airborne dust and it's very hard to make plutonium dust stay in the air even for research purposes, it's not going to happen by accident.

In fact, despite numerous authors who seem to think nukes are impossible to disarm, the last resort method for dealing with a ticking nuke is to blow it up.