But they went ahead with the test anyway!

When you read about the near misses and accidents that almost were, it’s hair raising. The book command and control is about this. https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill... https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-05/introduction-near-mi...

This is a good place to add to the reading list: strongly recommend Command and Control as well, by Eric Schlosser: https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

Command & Control[0] details the stupid mistakes very well. There were many, many glitches.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

On the contrary, the USA has accidently dropped nuclear missiles from planes, and have experience all kinds of other incompetence over the decades.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

Obligatory recommendation of the riveting book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

Another similar book is Command And Control by Eric Schlosser.

It goes into a lot of detail about how nuclear weapons and their control systems evolved. Covers a number of accidents and near apocalypses along the way. One of my favorite books of the last decade, informative and very readable at the same time.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

If you take Command and Control[0] to be an authoritative source, then no I don't believe so. We've come close to accidentally launching on both sides but no combat deployment has occurred, if it did it would likely be the end of our current civilization.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser[0] was a fascinating (and chilling) read about many of the incidents people have mentioned in the comments here. It focuses closely on the 374-7 Damascus Incident, but covers many many other “Broken Arrow”[1] incidents that have occurred.

It’s not a short read, but it’s eye-opening from the engineering perspective that nuclear arsenals are wildly complicated beasts with on-going maintenance, like any machine.

EDIT: It’s also available as a documentary on Netflix[2] Not as in-depth, but it covers the Damascus incident pretty well.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143125788

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear...

[2] https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656

I recently finished Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety [0]. I can't recommend the book enough for how eye opening it really is into how blasé we have been with nuclear weapons.

We've been reckless and by all accounts it is a miracle we haven't had a serious accident (there have been a few, just not on our own soil). The number of close calls is just astounding.

Further the book, at one point, talks about America's position on Russia and the attempts to keep them from getting "the bomb". It is exactly what has played out and will continue to play out with North Korea and Iran. History is repeating itself and we sure haven't learned from it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/

I swear I read about this in Schlosser's "Command and Control" a couple of years ago.. maybe not.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

Eric schlossers Command and Control provide accounts of many 'close calls' in the US nuclear program

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

"Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser enumerates accidents related to nuclear weapons, many of which do not end in criticality due to sheer luck in most cases. Illusion of safety indeed.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

There's a great book all about the old decisions on these topics by Eric Schlosser called Command and Control (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/) which is also available as a PBS documentary http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/command-and...

There's some pretty interesting rational behind the creation of those kinds of munition (including the "nuclear rifle") but their argument seems to boil down to 2 things: 1, at the time where the USSR and the Western European states were still living with a divided germany US assessments found that the number of troops we could collectively muster were vastly less than the current standing european force of the USSR. People were very worried there wouldn't be much we could do if a land invasion overran the troops other than immediately retaliate with a full nuclear strike against soviet cities. These were though of as a weird middle ground

2. The Army was getting worried it would be cut out of money and relevance as more and more focus was moved to the Air Force because most weapons at the time were delivered by planes under the control of the strategic air command. They became ever more worried later as submarine launched missiles gave more nuclear firepower to the navy. Afraid they'd be totally left out the Army started requesting hundreds of thousands of "tactical" weapons like nuclear landmines, nuclear man launched missiles, nuclear artillery shells etc.

The book "Command and Control" spends a good amount of time on this plan.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_G.g...

Highly suggest reading "command and control" by eric schlosser (fast food nation). Terrifying but amazing book: https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

I'm really not sure why we're still alive.

That hasn't been historically true. It might be true for newer ones but older designs could have gone off. There's also incidents where the bomb was armed accidentally, say, by it slipping while in a plane. Some of the "intentional" detonators were very simple and could be triggered by a surge.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

I highly recommend reading https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

Turns out the answer to your question is simply: luck.

Command and Control [1] is highly recommended, and discusses this very situation, along with the always/never constraints on nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Weapons should Always go off when used legitimately, and Never go off when not authorized.

Before reading this I had never really thought through the idea of fail-safe, especially that it has an implicit opposite: fail-deadly.

1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

Despite three major armed conflicts fought between nuclear powers by proxy, none thankfully have resulted in nuclear war. Deterrence works. What doesn't work, and a flaw that is growing exponentially with nuclear proliferation is failures in design, command and control. The incredible and incredibly frightening book "Command and Control" (see link at bottom), highlights several near catastrophic misses in the US nuclear arsenal. Now multiply by all nuclear states, the risks of accident are terrifying. The world would do well to open source safeguards so that even rogue states (eg. North Korea) can benefit from control and process that mitigate risk of unintended nuclear detonation.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

From reading Command and Control, a lot of the US arsenal was manifestly unsafe for a long time. Based on the number of accidents, and lack of criticality, I suspect there was some super secret design choice or design flaw which meant many classes of weapon would never go critical at all. Someone probably made the decision that only a deterrent was important, so a bunch of unsafe weapons should instead be rendered largely inert while making other gestures of readiness. I don't have any data to support that other than just the lack of unintentional nuclear detonations.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-re...

You left out the worst incident I know of:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/12/us/north-carolina-nuclear-...

The US was one arming switch away from nuking North Carolina in 1961. This and a bunch of other really scary nuclear-related accidents are covered in Command & Control: http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...

This story is often posted but never often enough. The incident illustrates why there is no "right" to nuclear weapons on the basis of fairness, sovereignty or deterrence - contrary to the zealous cries of recent and aspiring members of the nuclear club. This near global catastrophe is also a reminder that government policy is often tragically imperfect, and that one stubborn independently minded bureaucrat is often the only check and balance available. For anyone interested in the many similar incidents in the US, there is this sobering book, Command and Control, Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident...: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C5R7F8G/ref=oh_aui_sear...

Command and Control, a historical account of failures in safety and other procedures with america's nuclear arsenal:

http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...

"I think the fears about “evil killer robots” are overblown. There’s a big difference between intelligence and sentience. Our software is becoming more intelligent, but that does not imply it is about to become sentient."

It is the period between sentience and "advanced" artificial intelligence that should be worrying for two reasons: First, it is close at hand. More importantly, the unintended consequences of tech are never well thought out in the initial stages of adoption.

I'm reading Eric Schlosser's book on the early days of nuclear weapons and the many, many near misses the US experienced as it adopted nuclear arms without much thought to risk management. I see parallels in the race to develop and deploy pre-sentient A.I. Link below to Schlosser's book.

http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...

For those who are still interested after reading the article the information is taken from the author's book [1], which I just finished and thoroughly enjoyed/was terrified by.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...

"The Dead Hand" combined with "Command and Control" (http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...) makes for very sobering reading. Put the two together, and it's a genuine miracle that nothing bad happened. Of course, we're not out of the woods...

Both are excellent books, BTW, so I agree with the parent poster's recommendation.

The SAC had plenty of nasty screw ups, including littering large areas of Spain and (iirc) Greenland with plutonium dust from nuclear weapons accidents. It's also pretty much dumb luck that we've never had an accidental detonation of an SAC-controlled nuclear weapon:

http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Eric-Schlosser-ebook/d...