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Holy shit

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-27-mn-14421-story.html%3f_amp=true

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —

Newly released government documents reveal that a 42,000-pound hydrogen bomb, one of the most powerful ever made, accidentally fell from a bomber near Albuquerque 29 years ago, a newspaper said today.

Non-nuclear explosives, which are used to trigger armed nuclear devices, detonated in the unarmed Mark 17 bomb when it hit the ground 4 1/2 miles south of Kirtland Air Force Base’s control tower, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

The newspaper said it obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

No one was injured when the bomb hit an uninhabited area owned by the University of New Mexico, creating a crater about 12 feet deep and 25 feet in diameter, the newspaper said.

The documents said minor radioactive contamination was detected in the crater.

“It is possibly the most powerful bomb we ever made,” said Stan Norris, a research associate with the Natural Resources Defense Council and a specialist on nuclear weapons. 

The government documents did not show the exact explosive yield of the bomb, but Norris said most researchers believe that it was more than 10 megatons. A megaton is the equivalent of 1 million tons, or 1,000 kilotons, of TNT.

Norris said the largest nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal today has a yield of about 9 megatons.

The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II had a yield of about 16 kilotons.

The “Nuclear Weapons Databook” said the Mark 17 was “the first droppable thermonuclear bomb to be tested.” The Mark 17, made at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1952, was 24 1/2 feet long and 5 feet in diameter.

The Mark 17 “was very primitive by today’s standards, in terms of safety devices,” Norris said. “But it didn’t go off, and we don’t know how serious the accident was.

I’m gonna go ahead and say it was a pretty serious whoopsie.

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We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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12 hours ago, thelawlorfaithful said:

Holy shit

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-27-mn-14421-story.html%3f_amp=true

I’m gonna go ahead and say it was a pretty serious whoopsie.

Nukemap simulator says that could have potentially killed 90,000 and injured 350,000+, completely obliterating Kirtland in the process and breaking every window in a 15 mile radius.

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

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This is an interpretation of what George Washington might look like today. I totally understand his “most badass guy in every room” aura now.

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f77537ee1ad7fc2313e1a00c47c51e9a.jpg

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We’re all sitting in the dugout. Thinking we should pitch. How you gonna throw a shutout when all you do is bitch.

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