Nuclear security

An Accidental Nuclear Detonation "Will Happen"

But Schlosser's coup de grâce was a list he obtained (via freedom of information requests) detailing a litany of nuclear fuckupsby the Air Force. Although the brass typically blamed human error, the record in its totality suggested that America's systems for safeguarding its nuclear weapons were profoundly broken, were they ever working in the first place. Some incidents were fairly minor and others reflected organizational ineptitude—an accidental shipment of missile nose-cone fuses to Taiwan, nukes sitting around in barely guarded storage igloos on foreign tarmacs, things like that. But the scariest part by far was the tale after tale of actual near-misses: nuke-laden B-52s fragmenting in midair, crashing and scattering radiation; immensely powerful warheads exposed to fire and intense heat and hurled or dropped into American fields and swamps. Yet somehow, by the grace of God, there was never an accidental nuclear detonation on American soil.