7 Nuclear Weapon Screw-Ups You Won't Believe We Survived

From the 1950s up through the early 1990s, the specter of nuclear war cast a shadow over the world like a giant, gloomy mushroom tattoo. Hollywood and our own morbid imaginations came up with any number of scenarios that would wipe out humanity in a series of blinding flashes: robots, Russian and American policies of mutually assured destruction. But Kubrick was probably closest when he imagined the nuclear era as a game of poker between cocky, absent-minded lunatics. Only he probably didn't go far enough. After all, he could have never imagined ...



:tsarbomb:

Tsar Bomba

During the Cold War, American and Soviet military leaders temporarily forgot why nuclear bombing yourself was a bad idea. The "nuclear weapons tests" conducted on home soil were officially for research purposes. In reality, each explosion was the military equivalent of punching your fist into your open hand and pointing at the guy whose ass is totally grass...


:plowshere:

Operation Plowshare

The code name came from the Old Testament passage in which enemies are instructed to turn their swords into gardening weapons and garden together instead of killing each other. Applying that logic to nuclear weapons, the United States posed the question: Why use carefully placed dynamite when you could create a new harbor in seconds with nuclear weapons? Edward Teller, the American who invented the hydrogen bomb, suggested lining up 26 of them across the Isthmus of Panama for the purpose of instantly creating a second Panama Canal....



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