Well I’d like to announce that today is the first anniversary of my blog zerohostel – a place to hang out where we zero in on interesting military (and other) tech news.
Since I grew up in the shadow of the “big one” as we used to say in the Cold War days, I learned early about mutually assured destruction, the arms race, nuclear loaded B-52’s in
flight 24/7.
Terms like “fail-safe line” and “duck and cover” were in our everyday lexicon and we ate candy called “Atomic Fireballs”. Now in this modern age of nuclear proliferation, dirty bombs and suitcase nukes it appears we don’t have a face to the enemy but we still have weapons at the ready – except that we seem to have more trouble keeping up with them.
First we have the story where six nuclear warheads on cruise missiles were mistakenly carried on a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana last week, prompting a major investigation. Spokesmen said the United States had agreed in a Cold War-era treaty not to fly nuclear weapons. “It appears that what happened was this treaty agreement was violated,” he said.
The crew was unaware that the plane was carrying nuclear weapons, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the extraordinary sensitivity and security surrounding the case.
Then today we have the story that the United States mistakenly shipped components that would be used in a nuclear missile to Taiwan and recovered the four assemblies after learning of the incident last week, a year and a half after the shipment, US officials said Tuesday.
To that I’d just like to light the biggest birthday candle of them all and say – It’s been an interesting year! And thanks to all my visitors!
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