We Almost Lost The East Coast

UPDATE:  I mentioned the Schlosser book (below) and covered in a longer piece at The Nation, but now comes a bombshell, so to speak: Schlosser, perhaps to add publicity for book, gave The Guardian the FOIA document he obtained that outlines the single worst (near) nuclear accident here in the U.S.  Their story just now by Ed Pilkington opens:  "A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Fallout might have killed millions along the East Coast right up to NYC.  Of course, the U.S. lied about all this for decades.  The great cover-up after Hiroshima helped lead to this, as chronicled in my Atomic Cover-up book.

Earlier:   Eric Schlosser's much-awaited book on nuclear accidents in U.S. (from losing that H-bomb in 1961that might have detonated--we were lied to about that--to the 1980 silo catastrophe) published today.   See good summary here and first chapter.   And you wonder why I've written so much on nuclear danger--maybe more than anyone--since early 1980s.