Despite serving as inspiration for countless doomsday flicks, video game franchises and J. Robert Oppenheimer's various existential crises (probably), nuclear weapons are somehow even creepier than their terrifying reputation. Since their invention in 1942, the global nuclear arsenal has served as a silently looming threat, terrifying the world with its potential for possibly humanity-ending destruction.
From how the U.S. military lost several weapons (they forgot to cherish them) to our thwarted plans to nuke the moon, here are 20 explosively creepy facts about nuclear weapons.
1
“The most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated was over 3,000x more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. It was large enough to completely level the entire state of Rhode Island.”
2
“TIL that an underachieving Princeton student wrote a term paper describing how to make a nuclear bomb. He got an A but his paper was taken away by the FBI.”
3
“TIL: America’s Nuclear Sponge. Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado contain the nuclear silos that would be a primary target of WW3.”
4
“TIL the last nuclear explosion happened in 2017. It was performed in North Korea by an underground thermonuclear weapon. It was the county’s sixth nuclear test.”
5
“The U.S. military is missing 6 nuclear weapons - the longest missing nuclear weapon hasn't been seen in 71 years, and it is unlikely it will be found anytime soon.”
6
“A US nuclear submarine that sank in deep water in 1968 is still resting at the bottom of the sea at a known location. Its nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons have never been recovered.”
7
“TIL of the Letters of last resort. Each UK nuclear submarine has a safe which contains a letter written by the Prime Minister, with instructions on what to do in the case of nuclear war. They're only to be opened when the UK has been hit by nuclear weapons.”
8
“The number of nuclear weapons in the world is actually down from 70,000 in 1986 to around 14,000 today.”
9
“In 2007 six US cruise missiles with the nuclear warheads were mistakenly loaded onto a bomber, not reported missing, and remained mounted for 36 hours with no security precautions for nuclear weapons implemented.”
10
“In 1957, five men stood directly underneath a 2-kiloton nuclear bomb detonated at 18,500 feet to demonstrate how safe it was. One looked up at the explosion through regular sunglasses. They all lived into their 70s or 80s.”
11
“In 1945, Kodak accidentally discovered the US were secretly testing nuclear bombs because the fallout made their films look fogged.”
12
“A Single Nuclear Bomb over Kansas Could Cause An EMP Over All of the Continental US.”
13
“TIL of the Fisher Protocol, an idea where nuclear launch code would be implanted in a volunteer. If the President really want to launch a nuclear strike, he had to kill the volunteer.”
14
“In 1942 some scientists theorized that detonating a nuclear bomb could produce such intense heat that it would cause a chain reaction which would set the atmosphere itself on fire, killing all life on Earth.”
15
“In 1958, the US Air Force made plans to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon and wanted it to visible by the naked eye on earth. They hoped it would boost American morale to counter the USSR's advances in the space race.”
16
“In 1958, the US Air Force lost a nuclear bomb in the waters near Savannah, Georgia that has still not been found.”
17
“In 1958 a military plane accidentally dropped an Atom Bomb on a farm near Florence, South Carolina. The nuclear reaction didn't occur, but there was still enough explosive to create a [roughly 70] foot crater!”
18
“In 1969 Colorado tried fracking with a nuclear bomb - it worked, but the oil and gas are too irradiated to be used even today.”
19
“The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC displayed a working "Little Boy" Atom Bomb that lacked only uranium until 1986. Then the Department of Energy took the bomb from the museum to remove its inner components, so it could not be stolen and detonated with fissile material.”
20
“The atomic bomb that detonated in Hiroshima only had 1.7 percent of it's material fission and was considered very inefficient.”
