An Article in today’s edition of Der Spiegel, building on the furor created by the recent BBC story on the US MK28 Thermonuclear Weapon that was lost beneath the ice near Thule AFB, makes the startling claim that up to Fifty Nuclear Weapons have been lost during the Cold War days. The United States confesses to the loss of eleven, and given our track record on such matters, who among us really knows what the actual number is? The issue is what happens as these weapons gradually decay in the environments they were lost in? Several of these Nukes were not lost in the Ocean depths as one might suppose, they were lost distressing close to populated areas. Additionally, there is evidence that the failsafe systems designed into the US weapons may not be quite as failsafe as was originally thought by the Los Alamos engineers. When I was in the Service, we were always told that there was absolutely no way that such a weapon could ever detonate on it’s own accord. Of course, I always firmly took it as an article of faith that there was absolutely, positively, no way that any launching system could accidentally be loaded out with Nuclear Weapons, too.

The legacy of these lost weapons lives on. The Spanish have discovered more "Hot Spots" as new construction excavation occurred in the vicinity of Palomares, where a B-52 Bomber carrying four MK28 Hydrogen Bombs collided with a KC-135 Tanker Aircraft and exploded. Two bomb’s conventional explosive components exploded upon impact with the Earth, which, incidentally, was yet another failsafe failure, as design features were supposed to prevent exactly this behavior. The resultant blast pulverized the highly toxic Plutonium core, creating a very poisonous dust which fell upon about 600 acres of local farmers’ crops. A massive cleanup effort ensued, with over 1500 Tons of contaminated soil eventually being shipped back to the Savannah River Site, South Carolina. We are scheduled to mount yet another decontamination attempt early next year and more contaminated soil will be shipped back here. But as we know, for all practical purposes, Nuclear Radiation is forever (Actually, a mere 24,000 years for the Plutonium Isotope, P239, used in Nuclear weapons).

The real news is where the other unrecovered bombs lie. There has been a Hydrogen Bomb lost within 12 miles of Savannah, GA! Today it rests somewhere in Wassaw Sound. Another Bomb was buried by it’s impact in the swamps of North Carolina 50 miles from the City of Goldsboro. We had best all hope they age gracefully, as these bombs have approximately 1000 times the power of the 20,000 Kilotons of TNT that the "Little Boy" Weapon used at Hiroshima had. Lets all hope they age gracefully…