In all these years, aren't you surprised that a nuclear missile hasn't been launched by accident?
What the hell is Kevin's problem? Oh well! The answer is no. It is impossible to fire a missile accidentally. Certain codes must be input first, then two men have to simultaneously turn the switch in two separate locations. Besides, the warheads have to be activated or they won't do anything.
Do you not remember or have you not read about the Cuban Missile Crisis??? Russia, not our ally at the time, but an enemy, placed nuke tipped missiles in cuba, which is about 600 miles from the US You have NO clue how close we came to an all out war with Russia (Then the USSR) Other than that.....it takes 2 separate keys and a code before the missiles will ready/arm. That was early in the days of nuke missiles....... Today it takes the president (who is always carrying the footbal), and at least 2 more remote codes to ready arm......then they will need to be given GPS coordinates There are MANY MANY checks before a missile will launch.....failing a software glitch which is HIGHLY unlikely
no i'm not surprised at all. any country with any intelligence at all realizes that if they launch a nuclear missle, no matter what the target, will likely cease to exist within a week. So many nuclear missles exist in this world and even countries like ukraine, have much higher scurity on these things than you might realize. I don't find ukraine to be stupid or radical, and they realize the consequences of an accidental launch. The only countries i fear are the ones in the middle east, they have radical governments, and don't consider the recoil of radical actions. (by the way i'm not saying they have nuclear capability, although i suspect...)
Not really. There are all kinds of redundant safeguards to stop an accidental launch and the major powers all understand the consequences and truly do not want to start a Nuclear war. If you ask this same question in another 20 years I would probably change my answer to say yes since right now there are unstable Governments getting Nuclear capabilities, Iran is the best example.
In the seventies there was an incident in Arkansas I think, where there was a malfunction when a crew was doing maintenance and a Minuteman fired, then shut down shortly after leaving the silo, and the missile just landed on the ground not too far away. The warhead wasn't armed, so there was no detonation. There was an incident in the fifties where a crew had an unarmed A-bomb in a plane and accidently dropped it, and it landed in the sea off the Carolina coast somewhere. They looked for it but never found it. I think I heard there was an expedition recently to see if they could track it down and retrieve it.
