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August 1, 1976 – Protesters occupied part of the Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear power plant site to protest the dangers of nuclear power.  This was just one of thousands of nonviolent protests or demonstrations staged worldwide over the last sixty years since dangerous nuclear power reactors were introduced into the energy grid.  In addition to high-profile deadly accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, many other frequent leaks, accidents, discharges to water aquifers, rivers and oceans, along with the terrorist targeting threat and proliferation risks make civilian nuclear power plants a completely unreasonable, nontransparent risk to global populations.  Comments:  Although California has taken the lead in declaring itself the first nuclear-free-state after the last nuclear plant in that state at Diablo Canyon is scheduled to shut down permanently in 2025, there remain serious concerns about nuclear safety at many U.S. civilian power plants and military nuclear weapons production facilities (such as the leaking million gallon nuclear waste tanks at Hanford Reservation, Washington), private for-profit nuclear waste dumps in Texas, and even at research reactors across the nation and the planet.  The dramatic decrease in solar energy costs have largely made nuclear  power uneconomical despite the fact that the nuclear lobby, the Obama Administration, and many in Congress continue to support using government-funded taxpayer subsidies to build new reactors such as the Bechtel Corporation’s multi-billion dollar Unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar, Tennessee, completed in 2015.  (Sources:  Harold Marcuse.  “Seabrook, NH Plant Occupation Page.”  July 30, 2007 updated Feb. 18, 2012, http://www.marcuse.org/harold/page/seabrook.htm, Aaron Miguel Cantu.  “New Yorkers Fear Gas Pipeline Near Nuclear Reactors Could Spell Disaster.”  Dec. 3, 2015, http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2015/ny-pipeline-near-nuclear-reactor-sparks… and Fred de Sousa.  “Bechtel Salutes TVA, Work Force on Major Milestone for U.S. Nuclear Plant.”  Aug. 15, 2015,  http://www.bechtel.com/newsroom/releases/2015/08/bechtel-milestone-watts-bar-substantially-complete/ accessed July 21, 2016.)

August 8, 1994 – – In one of the twenty known incidents of the attempted illicit sale of Russian bomb-grade fissile materials in the last 25 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, security officials at Munich International Airport in Germany arrested individuals who were caught in possession of 363.4 grams of plutonium – enough to make one or more radiological weapons or dirty bombs. Extensive forensic analysis by U.S. and French nuclear scientists have shown that several samples of fissile materials offered up for sale in the past two decades in a number of Western and former Soviet bloc nations have reportedly come from the same stockpile – the Russian nuclear weapons facility known as Mayak Production Association located in Ozersk in the Ural Mountains almost 1,000 miles east of Moscow.  Athough Russian President Putin has steadily cut back his nation’s overall nuclear security cooperation with Washington in 2015-16 on the grounds that it no longer needs U.S. financial or technical assistance to safeguard its fissile material stockpile, a recent CIA report reaffirmed a long-held U.S. position that it is unlikely that Russian authorities have been able to recover all of the stolen nuclear materials.  Comments:  Although some significant progress in securing and protecting nuclear materials from theft or diversion has been allegedly confirmed by Russia and other Nuclear Club nations at the four biennial nuclear security summits (2010-16), much more needs to be accomplished in the United Nations and other international fora to prevent the use of fissile materials to unleash weapons of mass destruction whether the materials diverted come from civilian nuclear plants or military nuclear weapons facilities.  In addition to concerns about the resulting mass casualties and short- and long-term radioactive contamination from such a catastrophe, there is also the frightening possibility that in times of crisis such an attack might inadvertently trigger nuclear retaliation or even precipitate a nuclear exchange.   (Source:  Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey Smith.  “The Fuel for a Nuclear Bomb is in the Hands of an Unknown Black Marketeer from Russia, U.S. Officials Say.”  Center for Public Integrity, November 12, 2015 reprinted in Courier:  The Stanley Foundation Newsletter, Number 86, Spring 2016, pp. 7-14.)

August 9, 1945 – Before Japanese leaders had time to assess the tens of thousands of deaths (130,000) and injuries that resulted from the August 6^th U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and after the Soviet Union’s August 8^th declaration of war against Japan and resulting extensive attack on Japanese-occupied Manchuria (also on August 8), the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on the largely civilian population of Nagasaki killing another 70,000 people and injuring tens of thousands more.  U.S. Army Air Force Major Charles Sweeney commanded the B-29 bomber nicknamed “Bock’s Car” which dropped the plutonium-fueled atomic bomb (“Fat Man”) at 11:02 a.m. local time.  The bomb exploded 1,650 feet above the city of Nagasaki with the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT.  Many military and scientific leaders believed the atomic bombings were unnecessary and excessively cruel.   Before the bombings, General and later President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, argued, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing…”  Years after the war ended, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy publicly stated, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.”  Nevertheless President Truman and his closest advisers disregarded these objections focusing instead on the need to intimidate the Soviet Union in the postwar years by demonstrating this super weapon in time of war. The human impact of these two atomic bomb attacks was horrendous, from the initial super-heated vaporizing blast to other terrifying effects including the impact of thermal radiation on people farther from ground zero.  Other results of the explosions were the shock wave and the short- and long-term biological impacts of the ionizing radiation as well as the long-lasting social and psychological impacts on the surviving habakushas.  In subsequent decades, tens of thousands more Japanese died as a result of debilitating cancers and long-term illnesses inflicted on hundreds of thousands of survivors of the August 1945 atomic bombings. (Sources:  Dan Drollette, Jr. “Hiroshima and Nagasaki:  The Many Retrospectives.”  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Aug. 8, 2014.  http://thebulletin.org/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-many-retrospectives7366, Gar Alperovitz.  “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb:  And the Architecture of An American Myth.”  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. 3-6, 15, 672, and Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.  “The Untold History of the United States.”  New York:  Gallery Books, 2012.)

August 15, 1984 – A Vladivostok-based Soviet army unit was reportedly issued a coded message placing units on a war-footing but the order was withdrawn a short time later.  This followed a joking reference the previous day by President Ronald Reagan that he had signed legislation “outlawing the Soviet Union,” adding that, “We begin bombing in five minutes.”  Comments: President Reagan unwisely made this radio gaffe despite serving for over three years as President and after holding the office of Governor of California.   Although he reportedly was emotionally scarred by the November 20, 1983 ABC-TV dramatization of a nuclear war (“The Day After”), with these reckless comments, he nevertheless made light of a possible nuclear world war.  Consider the tasteless jokes, the off-the-cuff or made-in-anger rash public comments, tweets, and unabashedly reckless and/or inaccurate statements made over the last few decades by Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, a person who has never in his entire life served the public interest in any political office.  Now imagine this individual as Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. armed forces with access to the Nuclear Codes.  Objectively it appears certain that the ongoing risks of accidental, unintentional, inadvertent, or even intentional nuclear war will increase if Donald Trump is elected the 45^th President of the United States.  While the Democratic Presidential candidate supports spending $1 trillion over the next thirty years to modernize and expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal and laboratory complex and has made a few objectionable nuclear threats against Iran, the risks of nuclear war increasing are not nearly as high with Hillary Clinton as President as compared to Donald Trump.  (Source:  “Soviet War Alert in August Reported by Japanese Newspaper.”  The Baltimore Sun.  Oct. 2, 1984, p. 4.)

August 20, 2010 – In a Scientific American article titled, “Laying the Odds on the Apocalypse,” former National Security Agency director Admiral Robert Inman estimated that there was a one in thirty chance of a global thermonuclear war in the next decade in which hundreds of millions of people would die.  An even less optimistic assessment by MIT Professor of Cryptography and Information Theory, Dr. Martin Hellman, placed the odds of such a war at ten percent!  Comments:  Mainstream news media and politicians, especially since the Cold War ended in 1991, predominantly downgrade the odds of a nuclear war and charge those expressing concerns about its likelihood as appeasers or unrealistic peaceniks, but serious thinkers including historians, political scientists, philosophers, and other scientists clearly recognize that time is not on humanity’s side in regards to the nuclear threat.  John Scales Avery, a theoretical chemist and historian of science, Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist, and Associate Professor of Quantum Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen makes a powerful argument along these lines, “The elimination of nuclear weapons is a life or death question.  We can see this most clearly when we look far ahead.  Suppose that each year, there is a certain finite chance of a nuclear catastrophe, let us say two percent.  Then in a century, the chance of survival will be 13.5 percent, and in two centuries, 1.8 percent, in three centuries, 0.25 percent, in four centuries, there would be only a 0.034 percent chance of survival and so on.  Over many centuries, the chance of survival would shrink almost to zero.  Thus, by looking at the long-term future, we can clearly see that if nuclear weapons are not entirely eliminated, civilization will not survive.”

August 27, 2016 – Approximate date that the initial eight-week long advertising campaign (which began in late June) on 14 King County Metro Transit buses by the local peace group Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action publicizing the U.S. Navy’s construction of a new $294 million taxpayer-funded underground nuclear storage complex located just 20 miles west of the city of Seattle will end.  This massive facility will eclipse a similar base with six nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) located at Kings Bay in Georgia which houses the SWFLANT (Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic) storage facility.  The new Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific (SWFPAC) and the eight Ohio-class SSBNs with Trident II nuclear-armed missiles, homeported at the adjacent Bangor Submarine Base, are located just a few miles outside downtown Seattle.  The SWFPAC and the locally based submarines are thought to store more than 1,300 nuclear warheads with a combined explosive power equal to more than 14,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs.  After the New START Treaty requires a downsizing of the submarine missile tubes from 24 to 20, the warhead total will drop to about a thousand.  Nevertheless, this Naval Base Kitsap Complex (the SWFPAC and the Bangor Submarine Base) will remain the largest and most important nuclear weapons base in the U.S. in the ensuring decades.  Comments:  A growing citizen’s movement to substantially reduce and make significant progress toward zeroing out global nuclear arsenals is not only an American phenomenon but a planet-wide one as well.  The newly-elected 45^th President of the U.S. will be heavily pressured to not only enforce existing arms control agreements such as the New START Treaty but to push harder for even greater multilateral, bilateral, and unilateral actions that will:  (1) De-alert the hair-trigger alert status of U.S., Russian, Chinese and other nuclear arsenals including Israel’s; (2) Declare a No-First-Use Policy; (3) Ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; (4) Reduce Overseas Basing of Military Forces; (5) Phase-Out Global Nuclear Power By 2030; and enact other changes to realize a truly global peace dividend that was never fully implemented after the Cold War ended in 1991. (Source: Hans M. Kristensen. “Navy Builds Underground Nuclear Weapons Storage Facility; Seattle Buses Carry Warning.” Federation of American Scientists.  June 27, 2016, http://fas.org/blogs/security/2016/pacific-ssbn-base/ accessed July 21, 2016.)

August 29, 2007 – Six nuclear-armed cruise missiles were mistakenly loaded onboard a B-52 bomber named “Doom 99” at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota and flown 1,500 miles to Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana and offloaded where they sat unguarded on the tarmac for nine hours.  This incident violated a long-standing rule that live nuclear weapons should not overfly U.S. territory.  Another serious violation of security protocols was the fact that no one noticed the weapons were missing for 36 hours or more.  A February 2008 Defense Science Board report on the incident concluded that investigators found “a basic lack of understanding on the safety and authorization required to handle nuclear weapons.”   Comments:  Many of the thousands of serious violations of security protocols, accidents, and other nuclear weapons incidents involving all nine nuclear weapons states still remain partially or completely classified and hidden from public scrutiny.  These near-nuclear catastrophes provide an additional justification for reducing dramatically and eventually eliminating global nuclear weapons arsenals.  (Sources: Eric Schlosser.  “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.”  New York:  Penguin Press, 2013 and U.S. Department of Defense.  Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.  “The Defense Science Board Permanent Task Force on Nuclear Weapon Surety:  Report on the Unauthorized Movement of Nuclear Weapons.” February 2008. http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/defenseReviews/NPR/DSB_TF_on_NWS_Welch_Feb_2008.pdf  accessed July 23, 2016.)

July 1, 1991 – On this date, the Warsaw Pact (established in 1955 as a response to the 1949 establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), also known in the Soviet bloc as The Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance signed by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, formally dissolved as a communist military alliance.  Yet NATO, 1949-present, not only continues to exist but has grown and expanded in order to further “contain Russia and protect former Soviet republics and Eastern European nations from Russian military aggression.”  But from Moscow’s perspective, not just current President Putin but former General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and many other Russians and Western scholars too, this eastern NATO expansion has violated an agreement made during the George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) presidency.  According to long-time Soviet/Russian scholar Professor Stephen Cohen, “President George H.W. Bush and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl made an agreement (May 17, 1990) with General Secretary Gorbachev that if the Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Eastern Europe and East Germany in particular and ended the Warsaw Pact, in return NATO would not expand east.  Gorbachev also allowed the reunification of Germany (September 12, 1990 treaty), and that nation’s inclusion in NATO as long as the Western Alliance would not expand as then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker promised, ‘one inch east.’”  Although a number of other experts say there was no such written agreement or even a so-called “verbal gentleman’s agreement” to circumvent NATO military expansion east (see Steven Pifer.  “Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge?  Gorbachev Says No.” The Brookings Institution, Nov. 6, 2014), the debate continues.  Nobel Peace Prize winner and retired Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s testimony has been used by both sides to argue the case.  In October 2014, Gorbachev stated, “The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993.  I called this a big mistake from the very beginning.  It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990.”  Comments:  Professor Cohen and a plethora of other anti-nuclear scholars, activists, politicians, experts, and global citizenry are deeply concerned that this expansion (and Russian moves in Ukraine and elsewhere) have substantially increased the risk of nuclear war.  The buildup of NATO forces (including the unprecedented stationing of a German regiment “on the Eastern front”), accompanying Russian countermeasures, and the deployment of tactical nuclear forces by both sides brings the world a step closer to unintentional, accidental, unauthorized, or even intentional nuclear conflict triggered by another “trip wire” like the Ukraine Crisis of 2014-15.  (Sources:  Thom Hartmann. “Why is the Western Media Ignoring the New Cold War? with Professor Stephen Cohen.”  RT.com, June 8, 2016, Maxim Korshunov.  “Mikhail Gorbachev:  I am Against All Walls.” Russia Beyond the Headlines. http://rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbachev_i_am_against_all_walls_40673.html, and Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  “Warsaw Pact.” www.britannica.com/event/Warsaw-Pact accessed June 15, 2016.)

July 9, 1962 – Before the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, negotiated by President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev and approved by Congress in an amazingly short period of approximately six weeks, outlawed nuclear testing in the atmosphere and in outer space, the U.S. conducted one of five nuclear weapons test explosions hundreds of miles above Earth.  A test, code-named Starfish Prime, was conducted on this date at approximately 240 miles altitude with a magnitude of 1.4 megatons from a Thor missile launched from Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean.  The atomic blast caused unanticipated electromagnetic pulse (EMP) impacts over a large region knocking out 300 street lights and shutting down telephone lines in Hawaii and damaging six satellites.  Comments:  This incident brings to light a serious concern.  Would the U.S. or other members of the Nuclear Club resist responding with nuclear strikes on nations or subnational entities responsible for exploding nuclear weapons in outer space high above those nations’ territories despite the extensive EMP damage inflicted on e-commerce as well as other elements of the targeted nation’s military and civilian infrastructure?  In the interests of peace and the paramount avoidance of future nuclear escalation and conflicts, not to mention the need for public transparency, the U.S. and other Nuclear Club members should open this matter to public scrutiny and debate in order to seek broad international consensus opposing nuclear retaliation to EMP or other related attacks such as cyberwar infrastructure strikes as clear violations of international and humanitarian law.  (Source:  Phil Plait.  “The 50^th Anniversary of Starfish Prime:  The Nuke That Shocked the World.”  Discover Magazine.  July 9, 2012, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/09/the-50th-anniversary-of-starfish-prime-the-nuke-that-shook-the-world/#.V2Ge1eTmqM8 accessed June 15, 2016.)

July 14, 2015 – The Iran nuclear deal negotiated in the “P5 + 1 Talks” by China, France, Germany, the U.K., U.S., and Russia with the Islamic State was concluded in Vienna on this date and was later approved as “The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” by the U.S. Congress in September.  According to the U.S. Department of State website “Under the agreement, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98 percent, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for 13 years. For the next 15 years, Iran will only enrich uranium up to 3.67 percent.  Iran also agreed not to build any new heavy-water facilities for the same period of time. Uranium-enrichment activities will be limited to a single facility using first-generation centrifuges for 10 years. Other facilities will be converted to avoid proliferation risks. To monitor and verify Iran’s compliance with the agreement, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will have regular access to all Iranian nuclear facilities. The agreement provides that in return for verifiably abiding by its commitments, Iran will receive relief from U.S., European Union, and the U.N. Security Council’s nuclear-related sanctions.”  Comments: Statements by presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (pending the final vote of the Super Delegates on July 25, 2016) over the last decade give cause for concern, especially her nuclear-saber rattling on ABC-TV’s Good Morning America program on April 22, 2008, “…if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel, the U.S. would retaliate against the Iranians,”  adding, “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”  This criticism comes despite the recognition of the seriousness of Iran’s longstanding public pronouncements to destroy Israel.  More recently at the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) meeting in Washington, D.C., Ms. Clinton stated that, “The U.S. should provide Israel with the most sophisticated defense technology so that it can deter and stop any threats.  That includes bolstering Israeli missile defenses with new systems like Arrow Three and David’s Sling.”  While this statement is much less confrontational and troubling, it does bring up the issue of America’s quiet, covert support of Israel’s nuclear arsenal (numbering 50-300 warheads).  While it is certainly true that publicly the U.S. government has never openly supported an Israeli nuclear capability, it is also true that it has rarely mentioned this issue creating a silent assent to the Jewish State’s arsenal.  However by not acknowledging Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the U.S. can’t ever hope to reduce and eliminate it.  And, inadvertently, by not publicly forcing Israel to acknowledge its existence, it creates a hidden incentive for Iran and other Arab nations to acquire its first nuclear weapon in order to deter Israel, or, in the case of Pakistan, an incentive to enlarge its arsenal to counter both traditional rival India and a potential future rival in Israel.  (Source:  “Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC Speech.” Time.com, March 2, 2016, http://time.com/4265947/hillary-clinton-aipac-speech-transcript accessed June 15, 2016.)

July 21, 1948 – A top secret Pentagon briefing on the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s future war plans was given on this date.   The briefing discussed Operation Halfmoon, a short-range emergency war plan to prevent Soviet takeover of Western Europe by dropping 50 (a figure later amended to 133) atomic bombs on Soviet cities including eight warheads on Moscow and seven on Leningrad.  Comments:  Over the last 70 years, in addition to false alerts, Broken Arrows and hundreds of nuclear accidents by the members of the Nuclear Club as well as extensive planning for preemptive nuclear war, and related nuclear crises like the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, the NATO Able Archer exercise of November 1983, and the Black Brant Incident of January 1995, the world is extremely fortunate that no nuclear weapons have been used in combat since the two atomic bombings of Japan in August 1945.  (Source:  Eric Schlosser. “Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.” New York:  Penguin Press, 2013, p. 83.)

July 25-28, 2016 – One week after the Republican Party’s National Convention is to meet (July 18-21) in Cleveland to select their party’s presidential candidate, the Democratic Party will hold their presidential nominating convention in Philadelphia during these dates. Comments:  While secret presidential policy positions on the seminal political issues confronting the American people won’t become public knowledge until later, the official website of the Democratic Party (https://www.democrats.org) lists just 12 issues and nuclear weapons, the nuclear threat, or reducing the U.S. and/or global nuclear arsenals are not mentioned! Note that under the banner “National Security” are the words, “…modernizing our nuclear arsenal is a top priority.”  And this is consistent with President Obama’s recent commitment (publicly supported by Hillary Clinton) to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize our nuclear arsenal by building new nuclear weapons platforms like a new long-range bomber and new cruise missiles.  Also part of this package are new smaller “more usable” nuclear warheads.  The only positive is under the same banner of national security:  “…strengthen our ability to keep nuclear and biological weapons out of the hands of terrorists.”  Although Bernie Sanders has committed to campaigning for Hillary Clinton and he has allegedly done so only after obtaining a promise that the party platform will be far more progressive in scope than that envisioned by mainstream Democrats, even he has not extensively mentioned reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons during his campaign speechmaking.  One of possible many exceptions (as the mainstream media usually has a bias against reporting progressive topics) to this is Sanders’ statement during his April 8, 2016 appearance on The Today Show:  “The goal is to move to get rid of nuclear weapons, not to get into an arms race.  We have other more important things to spend our money on.”  Four years ago, the 2012 Democratic Party Platform did mention “preventing the spread and use of nuclear weapons,” but such platitudes weren’t backed up by actual executive or legislative action during the two terms of the Obama Administration to substantially work toward Global Zero.  For the sake of the planet, human civilization, our species and  countless other creatures living on this Pale Blue Dot, let’s all hope that the 45^th  President of the United States and the newly elected Congress will make substantial progress on these critical nuclear issues:  ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, forging a newly enhanced Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty, eliminating nuclear weapons modernization with the exception of extensive improvements in safeguarding the existing arsenal by enhancing safety protocols until it can be substantially reduced through a new multilateral agreement with Russia, de-alerting the U.S. arsenal in concert with similar Russian moves, phasing out all civilian nuclear power plants globally by 2025-30 with the U.S. military-industrial-complex converting substantially from arms production to nuclear remediation, dismantling, decommissioning and cleaning up thousands of global military and civilian nuclear and related toxic wastes, and other similar tasks.  (Source:  “Bernie Sanders on the Issues.” http://berniesanders.com/issues accessed June 15, 2016.)

July 28, 1957 – Two of the three Mark V hydrogen bombs on board a U.S. Air Force C-124 Globemaster cargo aircraft, which departed from Dover Air Force Base, were jettisoned from the plane when two of the four engines lost power and the aircraft suffered a significant loss of altitude.  To ensure the survival of the aircraft and its crew, the pilot had no choice but to quickly lessen the weight of the plane by dropping two H-bombs into the Atlantic Ocean.  Thankfully, no nuclear or conventional (of the high explosive charges bracketing the core of the warhead) explosions ensued.  This incident occurred about 100 miles southeast of Naval Air Station, Pomona, New Jersey, where the aircraft landed safely. One bomb is believed to have sunk 50 miles off the coast of Atlantic City and the other 75 miles away from land.  Although the U.S. Air Force, over the years since this incident (and others), claims the bombs did not contain plutonium capsules, many nuclear experts like retired Colonel Derek Duke have pointed out that in November of that same year, SAC Commander General Thomas Powers bragged to the news media that, “Day and night, I have a certain percentage of my command in the air (and the), planes are bombed up and they don’t carry bows and arrows.” Comments:  While it is very unlikely that these long-lost and probably corroded nuclear bombs could detonate in a fusion explosion, there remain deadly serious concerns about very long-term radioactive contamination from this incident and hundreds of other similar Broken Arrows. These nuclear threats can impact human and other species virtually forever unless these devices are found and disposed of properly. After all, the radioactive isotopes found in thermonuclear weapons or in the reactor cores of naval surface ships and submarines lost at sea since 1945 possess an extremely long half-life of decay – 713 million years for uranium-235 and 4.5 billion years for uranium-238!  (Source:  Colonel Derek L. Duke, Retired, “Chasing Loose Nukes.” Dungan Books, 2007, http://www.fdungan.com/duke.htm  accessed June 15, 2016.)

July 30, 1980 – In an Independent News Alliance article (“Flaws in Systems of Command and Control: Nuclear War by Accident.”) published on this date, Professor Louis Rene Beres noted that a spring 1977 test, code-named Prime Target, of the Pentagon’s World Wide Military Command and Control System found that serious computer problems and failures occurred 62 percent of the time.  These failures included false alerts and incidents of detection of nonexistent Soviet first strike nuclear attacks on the U.S. and/or its allies.  Comments:  While most observers would reasonably assume that much more sophisticated, accurate, and modern high-tech hardware and software has virtually eliminated these problems with the U.S. nuclear command and control system, such an assumption would be in error.  In point of fact, a recent GAO (Government Accountability Office) report released on May 25, 2016 (“Information Technology:  Federal Agencies Need to Address Aging Legacy Systems.”) noted that a Pentagon system used to send and receive emergency action messages for U.S. nuclear forces is running on a 1970s-era IBM computing platform that still requires the use of antiquated eight-inch floppy disks to store data.  Comments:  So it appears that saving money is more important than the safety, security, and reliability of the most dangerous weapons ever invented.  The same was true in 1980 and unfortunately in today’s world.  Because of this revelation and other flaws in the command and control systems of the Nuclear Club members, there remain very credible concerns that an unauthorized, accidental, or unintentional nuclear war could be triggered especially today during the heightened tensions of Cold War II.  (Source: Louis Rene Beres. “Apocalypse:  Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics.” Chicago and London:  The University of Chicago Press, 1980.)