Mistakenly Dropping Bombs, A Bit Too Often

WHEN TEH HEAVIEST METALS in the universe were discovered in the late nineteenth and dearly twentieth centuries and added to the bottom right of the periodic table of the elements, it soon became obvious that rapidly separating the atoms of even a small quantity of any of these metals, such as uranium, would release a whole bunch of energy all at once, create an explosion, and serve as an excellent bomb, an excellent military weapon. When world Wat Two broke out, and really even before, the major industrial military powers of the world began engaging in serious research to discover how such an explosion, involving a chain reaction in which the sudden separation of one atom triggered the same response in many other nearby, closely packed atoms, could be achieved, under human control, so that the resulting explosion would take place when and where the president, Fuhrer, field commander, or whomever, wanted it to, rather than of its own natural accord. Einstein, fresh from Germany, wrote the famous letter to Roosevelt which persuaded FDR to get the United States started on building a nuclear bomb, since Einstein alone had the social status and scientific credibility to convince the president, and since Einstein, who knew Germany, and knew Hitler's monstrosity, fully understood that the Fuhrer would, beyond doubt, be building his own bomb, such was his nature. The rest, as we like to say, is history. The Germans were indeed building a bomb, but were lacking in a few key technical essentials, and in America, the Manhattan project, led by German scientists Hitler had unwisely expelled from Germany, built one, or more specifically two, for the U.S., both of which were dropped on hapless, already defeated japan, in anger, and as a means of showing off to the world and in particular the Russians, even though the war with japan was over before the bombs were dropped. So much for restraint. Flash forward a few decades, and the world is full of atomic and hydrogen bombs, which are far more powerful than mere atomic bombs, some whose whereabouts are known, many of which are missing and presumed in wrong hands. The Union of Concerned Scientists tells us that we are within two minutes of midnight, a mere moment away from self human annihilation. Yes, climate change threatens our existence, as do sundry beasties like pandemics of bacteria and viruses, chemical warfare, and all the other usual suspects, including sudden death by asteroid impact, but when it comes right down to it, when it come right down to bomb dropping, good old fashioned nuclear warfare, triggered either accidently or purposefully, remains, even after all these years, our greatest bugaboo. A "broken arrow" is defined by the American military as an incident in which somebody does something really stupid with a nuclear warhead, either by accidently dropping it or losing it, an incident which though not considered "threatening" by virtue of not having the immediate capability to start a nuclear war, is nonetheless alarming in that it occurred at all. The military acknowledges that thirty two, yes, thirty two such incidents have happened since World War Two, most of them in the nineteen fifties and sixties, which gives us some, but not much relief, since the latest one occurred as recently as 2007 over Minot, North Dakota, when a B52 accidentally dropped half a dozen or so cruise missiles, without realizing that it had done so, or that said missiles were fully nuclear, armed, and ready to rumble. Hell, in 1958 a bomber dropped a pair of nukes into a swamp in south Carolina, and a few of the guys who spent several secret weeks digging them up and out say that they still tremble when they go down memory lane. Its hard to blame them. Then there was the time when an American bomber dropped a load of nukes into the Mediterranean, which was never found, and still missing, swimming with the fishes, as it were. Some mechanic near Little Rock, Arkansas in the nineteen eighties dropped a wrench which fell onto and into a fuel tank of a fully loaded nuclear missile, after which the fuel tank exploded, killing the poor guy, and flinging the missile about a football field's length away. The nuke could have gone off, but, luckily, didn't. Atomic and hydrogen bombs have been inadvertently dropped over Spain, Texas, and who knows were else, for every reason under the sun, reasons such as pulling the wrong lever, pushing the wrong button, looking out the wrong window, bad training, bad diet, bad day, you name it. The lesson here is, (if you haven't already guessed); we have simply got to get rid of these things (nuclear bombs), before somebody gets seriously hurt, because, let's face it; we aint qualified to handle them, since, after all, we're only human.