Broken Arrows: Nuclear Weapons Accidents | Hacker News Reader

Broken Arrows: Nuclear Weapons Accidents

atomicarchive.com

21 pointstehlike11 comments

To quote the movie of the same name: „I don't know what's scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.”

One of the most surprising things of the 20th century is that we (apparently) somehow survived the collapse of a nuclear superpower (USSR) with nuclear weapons not only not being used, but apparently not even lost.

Is there any confirmation on the former USSR not losing any at all? I'd assume there's at least a couple, and a few more from years prior that didn't get reported.

I know there were hundreds of nuclear batteries abandoned which became orphan sources.

The only real confirmations are nobody using one, not even in a hot war involving Russia.

> A Broken Arrow is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft, or loss of the weapon.

and then

> The CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) "Oscar II" class submarine, Kursk, sinks after a massive onboard explosion. Attempts to rescue the 118 men fail. It is thought that a torpedo failure caused the accident. Radiation levels are normal and the submarine had no nuclear weapons on board.

I don't understand how this is on the list, if it had no nuclear weapons on board.

>>> I don't understand how this is on the list, if it had no nuclear weapons on board.

The Oscar II class submarine is a nuclear powered submarine.

their own definition, on the top of the page:

> an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons

the term "broken arrow" refers to the launchable weapon itself. there were literally no "arrows" involved in this event.

The documentary “Command and Control” [1] about the 1980 Damascus, AR, incident is more terrifying than any horror movie you will ever see. [1] https://youtu.be/ZCPlm-mQ9Kk

The wikipedia page on military nuclear accidents has a good few more entries than this list, including what I assume is the classified "Spring 1968, Atlantic" entry, which wikipedia says was the loss of the USS Scorpion in May '68 off the Azores, with two nuclear torpedos aboard that were never recovered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...

Funny, I knew the term from the film with John Travolta and Christian Slater, but never knew it was an actual code word in use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Arrow_(1996_film)

Broken Arrow, Bent Spear, Dull Sword. I only ever witnessed the last, but the history of Nuclear Weapons is scary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com