Accidental Nuclear War and Russell’s “Early Warning”

Abstract

84 Reviews c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3401\rj 3401 193 red.docx 2014-05-14 8:54 PM ACCIDENTAL NUCLEAR WAR AND RUSSELL’S “EARLY WARNING” Ray Perkins, Jr. Philosophy / Plymouth State U. Plymouth, nh 03264–1600, usa perkrk@earthlink.net Eric Schlosser. Command and Control: NuclearWeapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety. NewYork: Penguin P.; London: Allen Lane, 2013. Pp. xxiii + 632. isbn: 978-1594202278. us$36; cdn$38; £25. ric Schlosser has given us a very important and much needed look at the history of us nuclear weapons safety. The book is well researched and, despite its subtitle, is more than a history of nuclear weapons safety. In the course of developing his thesis that nuclear weapons have been—and continue to be—a shockingly dangerous part of the post-wwii world, we get not only a tutorial on nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but a fascinating and eyeopening account of the dynamic of the nuclear arms race, replete with interservice rivalries, ideological fanaticism, and the struggle for civilian control. It was this dynamic which gave us obscenely bloated nuclear arsenals and a military leadership that too often favoured weapons reliability over safety. The story is cogently covered in the course of recounting in considerable detail what has to be one of the most frightening of us nuclear weapons accidents (and there were hundreds1 )—viz. the 18 September 1980 accident in 1 A Sandia Laboratory study found at least 1,200 “serious” accidents involving nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1968. The most serious are called “broken arrows” in Defense Department parlance. These include unauthorized launch, release of a b= Reviews 85 c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3401\rj 3401 193 red.docx 2014-05-14 8:54 PM Damascus, Arkansas involving a Titan ii icbm with a nine-megaton warhead .2 During a check for a possible fuel system leak, a mechanic near the top of the missile (in a hardened silo beneath ground) dropped a nine-pound wrench socket which fell 70 feet and punctured the fuel tank; eight hours later, despite efforts to contain highly flammable fuel vapours, the missile exploded covering the complex in a huge fireball and toxic gases. The warhead, the largest in the us arsenal at the time, was catapulted 1,000 feet into the air and landed a quarter mile away, largely intact. By good luck (and the grace of God?)3 , there was no thermonuclear detonation—especially fortuitous since the warhead had long been identified by its designer (Sandia Laboratory) as one of the least safe in the us arsenal, i.e. one of the most likely to detonate in “abnormal environments” (such as intense heat). Sandia had petitioned the Pentagon for more than a decade to retire or retrofit the warhead (p. 334). The Damascus incident concerns, directly or indirectly, most of the book. But the story is told rivetingly with many detours into weapons history, technical information and a cast of interviewees connected with the nuclear military -industrial complex at various levels. One of Schlosser’s most important characters, and from whom he gets much of his information, is Bob Peurifoy, a longtime nuclear weapons engineer and vice-president at Sandia who waged a heroic thirty-year campaign against Pentagon resistance to nuclear weapons safety. With the help of the Freedom of Information Act and recently declassi fied material, Schlosser provides the reader with literally scores of examples of terrifying nuclear accidents, including events that could easily have led to weapon, fire, explosion, release of radioactivity or full-scale detonation. dod reported only a small percentage of accidents until 1959, after which they reported about 130 per year (p. 327). Most of Schlosser’s data on nuclear accidents—and he cites dozens of examples throughout his book—come from the declassification of dod material since the end of the Cold War and skillful use of the Freedom of Information Act. There has long been some information regarding nuclear mishaps accessible to careful readers of the us press—to be sure only a tiny percentage, but enough to justify public concern. Bertrand Russell’s was a voice that sounded early warnings based upon information that...