Big Picture Big Sound

Not Enough Control

The Tribeca Film Festival of 2016 showcased quite a bit of quality films this year and one of those that made an enormous impression on me was Robert Kenner's documentary, "Command and Control", based on the book by Eric Schlosser. In truth, it didn't just make an impression. It scared the hell out of me.

One night, about 50 years ago in South Carolina, there was an enormous explosion in a family's backyard. No one was sure what caused the explosion, at first. When daylight came, there was a 50-foot hole in the backyard, with an unknown object sitting in the large hole. It was an atomic bomb. The bomb had fallen out of a U.S.A.F plane. The good news was that the bomb was not armed with nuclear components. The explosion was from the explosives intended to trigger the nuclear device.

The lesson to be learned from this incident is that one mistake or one bad act could end it all. If that realization doesn't scare you, then nothing probably will. However, Kenner doesn't just try to frighten us by showing us the thin line that separates all of us from doom. Instead, Kenner presents an inside look at those tasked with working in a field where anything less than perfection can end very badly.

The incident described in greatest detail has come to be known as the Damascus accident of 1980, when a Titan II missile exploded in Damascus, Arkansas, after a repairman dropped a socket wrench that ended up piercing a fuel tank. The explosion sent a warhead into a ditch 200 yards away. Many other incidents have occurred around the world, wherever nuclear weapons exist.

The conclusion it is difficult to not arrive at is that for all of the smart people involved in nuclear weapons programs, it's a miracle that we haven't had more problems with nuclear weapons going off at the wrong time and place, not that there is any right time and place for a nuclear explosion. How much longer can we keep pushing our luck?