US nearly nuked N.Carolina - 1961

This story absolutely blows my mind. In a Star Trek sort of way. History would have been completely changed from 1961 onwards if not for a small highly vulnerable low voltage switch not clicking on.  If it had of, North Carolina would have copped a bomb 260 times more powerful than Hiroshima. I believe the term is "the butterfly effect", when simply the flapping of a butterfly's wings can snowball into events that change the whole course of history.

US author Eric Schlosser, in researching for a new book of his has come across declassified documents telling of this incredible story. This happened despite assurances from the US gov that the US public has never been in danger from it's nuclear arsenal.

It happened when a B-52 carrying two bombs had trouble and fell to bits, sending the bombs plummeting to earth. One of the bombs went into bomb mode (I guess that's what they're supposed to do when they're plummeting to earth out of a plane) and it was only that one low voltage switch that kept the bomb from detonating after all the other fail safes, well, failed. 

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

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Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes. more

Being a Kiwi I of course am against nuclear bombs and nuclear power (including those pesky nuclear powered warships). In Australia they have a small reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney for cancer treatments but I can live with that. Not exactly the same as a nuclear bomb flying overhead that'd destroy half the bloody state.

The declassified documents have also been published online by The Guardian. Here's one of the pages:

I just can't help thinking how different history would have been, had it not been for that one tiny little switch. New York may well have ended up irradiated or uninhabitable. Would the US have been able to be what it's been for the last 50 years? Or would the devastation have been too great, crippling the country for decades? Would the Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan wars have even happened? In Star Trek terms, it would've created a whole different time line.

The butterfly effect indeed.