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| Re: PHOTO - Genny on its side (1261602) | |||
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Re: PHOTO - Genny on its side |
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Posted by Peter Rosa on Sun Dec 1 21:22:50 2013, in response to Re: PHOTO - Genny on its side, posted by kew gardens teleport on Sun Dec 1 19:42:55 2013. Multiple backups only reduce the risk of catastrophic failure. It is much much less likely that multiple catastrophic failure will happen, but if you do enough tests, one of them may be the one in however many case.Three days after JFK's inauguration in 1961 there was a case of multiple backup failures that very nearly changed the course of American history. An Air Force bomber broke up in the air over eastern North Carolina and in the process dropped two hydrogen bombs, though one of them didn't have a warhead. The bomb with the warhead, an enormous four-megaton warhead for that matter, floated down on a parachute* and was found hanging in a tree by the side of a quiet country road. Atomic bombs were equipped with three safety devices to prevent unintentional detonation in the event of a crash or other accident. All three were engineered to be completely independent of one another, so that the failure of one device would have no bearing on the operation of the other three. Examination of the bomb in the tree showed that all three devices had failed, in what was something like a ten million-to-one situation. Fortunately, a few months earlier the military had added a fourth safety device to bombs, and that one held. * = H-bombs were on parachutes so that in the event of war, the aircraft dropping a bomb could get a safe distance away before detonation My blog |
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