DailyDirt: It's 11:57pm... Do You Know Where Your Nuclear Bombs Are?
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
The Doomsday Clock says it's 3 minutes to midnight -- the same time it was in 1949. Sure, plenty of people are saying we're not building new nuclear bombs, and we have some pieces of paper that say some countries (ahem, Iran) aren't going to build new nukes. But... tick tock. Are we really any safer from nuclear self-annihilation?- The US Air Force is developing an upgrade to the B61 thermonuclear bomb called the B61-12. This new version has improved targeting capabilities due to a tail kit assembly that has GPS functionality, and some anti-nuke folks argue that the B61-12 is more than just an upgrade. [url]
- In 1957, we were still testing nuclear weapons above ground -- with human guinea pigs (not all volunteers) at ground zero to document the effects. It's pretty amazing how little we knew about radiation and yet still pressed on with crazy dangerous experiments. [url]
- Nine nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea -- control about 16,000 nuclear weapons, down from over 60,000 during the Cold War. That's still a lot to keep track of.. not to mention the ones we've simply lost over the years. What are a measly few nuclear bombs between friends, right? [url]
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Filed Under: b61, b61-12, bombs, doomsday clock, nuclear bombs, nuclear powers, nuclear testing, weapons
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Let me goooo!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxE0t-y5G8c
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Guess What The ...
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The number of "weapons"...
A lot of folks don't realize that the SALT/START treaties of the 70's & 80's only reduced the number of launchers, not the warheads. So the US and (the then) USSR destroyed a number of rockets, bombers, and submarines. While that's OK, the warheads that were deployed on said rockets, bombers, and submarines still existed and were placed in bunkers and munitions depots in various places. Hopefully like regular munitions the triggering devices were stored elsewhere.
Rockets, bombers, and submarines can be used for other missions that do not involve nuclear weapons. At least one Minuteman squadron has satellite packages, not warheads. But a nuclear warhead can only be used for it's designed mission. How many warheads are enough? We could debate that question endlessly. Like other issues in the present day the public got mis-lead with SALT/START into thinking that the world would be safer with fewer 'weapons'. That would be a great sentiment had they destroyed actual weapons instead of only the launcher.
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Re: Guess What The ...
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Last Year Tonight
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