Ever have one of those days where you just *fumble* something? Like spilling coffee on your shirt, or maybe dropping grandma’s Meissen vase down the stairs. Perhaps flushing your wedding ring down the drain while doing the dishes?
Well, on January 17, 1966, the U.S. Air Force said, “Hold my beer,” and fumbled four hydrogen bombs over a little Spanish farming village called Palomares! I kid you not.
Here’s the setup: A B-52 bomber and a refueling tanker had a mid-air collision. Both planes exploded, and because gravity is a harsh mistress, both planes or whatever is left of them, including the B-52’s payload—four nukes, each 250 times more powerful than Hiroshima— crashed to the ground. Seven dead servicemen and four nuclear bombs rained down on the sunny countryside in Spain.
The good news? Three bombs were found on land, one actually had a parachute that worked — which was nice. They didn’t go *boom*. Although the conventional explosives detonated on impact, blowing radioactive plutonium dust all over the pristine farms, in effect becoming a “dirty bomb”, the nuclear part was a dud. Hooray! The fourth? It took a swim as it had the decency to fall into the Mediterranean Sea and the US Navy played a very expensive, very stressful game of “Where is Waldo?” for 80 days before finding it. Then using the famous Alvin submarine, they finally fished it out from 2,500 feet deep. The search involved thousands of servicemen, 150 divers and dozens of ships of all kinds.
Casualties from radiation? Zero! Immediately. However!
The cleanup involved 1,600 servicemen. Their high-tech gear? Shovels. They scraped the topsoil into barrels and shipped 1,400 tons! of contaminated Spanish soil back to America. Then the US government told the locals, and the troops, “Go back to farming!”, “Don’t worry, it’s safe! Spoiler alert: It wasn’t / isn’t.
The half-life of plutonium 239 (primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons,) is 24,000 years and it spread across an estimated 2.5 square kilometers of farmland.
So, I guess farmers have a bit of wait on their hands before going back to farming.
And decades later, the “Atomic Veterans” who scrubbed that beach with their bare hands started dropping like flies. Cancer, rare diseases, you name it. When they asked the government for compensation, Uncle Sam essentially said, “Nice try, but you can’t prove “your” cancer is *our* cancer. Denied.”. Apparently, gently glowing in the dark doesn’t count as a disability.
And here’s the kicker: Palomares wasn’t a fluke. It was just the most famous fumble. Since 1950, there have been 32 “Broken Arrow”** incidents.
A “Broken Arrow” is Pentagon-speak for “Oops, we lost/dropped/burned a nuclear weapon.” Not in a war or anything, just … a little “uh-oh.”
So, if you ever visit Palomares, enjoy the beaches. They glow slightly in the dark so you don’t need lights. Just kidding! (Mostly.)
And the next time you misplace / loose /drop something don’t feel too bad, at least it won’t have the chance to turn your neighborhood into a glass parking lot for the next 10,000 years.
Oh, before I forget, currently the U.S. Military Is Missing 6 Nuclear Weapons. That is SIX. Missing. Meaning no one knows where they are.
I hope you sleep better knowing you only last grandma’s heirlooms.