[bertiewhykovich]

I recently watched "Command And Control" (http://www.commandandcontrolfilm.com) on a whim. I hadn't read up about the film before seeing it, so I understood "nuclear missile accident" to mean, presumably, almost accidentally firing a warhead -- a more-or-less standard nuclear nightmare.

This, of course, is not what happened. The Damascus Titan accident did not involve a nuclear weapon being mistakenly, but intentionally, armed. The very real fear was, instead, that the explosion of a damaged missile could accidentally detonate the warhead as well -- or, in a case only slightly better, blast it into radioactive dust.

I'd never considered the risk entailed by the simple existence -- intentional use entirely aside -- of nuclear weapons. Reading the list of (public!) broken arrow incidents is harrowing.