# Another collision...



## Colin1 (Feb 16, 2009)

...this time at sea

BBC NEWS | UK | Nuclear subs collide in Atlantic


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## BombTaxi (Feb 16, 2009)

I would put a fiver on a game of 'tag' leading to this little bump. It's just as well it was a low speed incident, or we could have lost 240 very skilled seamen  

Loved the typically OTT reaction from the CND, one day they will have a mouthpiece who knows what they are talking about...


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## timshatz (Feb 16, 2009)

Aren't these guys supposed to "hide with pride"?


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## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Feb 16, 2009)

Thank god there were no injuries or deaths.


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## ccheese (Feb 16, 2009)

I agree, I'll bet it was a game of tag....

Charles


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## Arsenal VG-33 (Feb 17, 2009)

Given how it could have potentially been a disaster, I'm glad there were no injuries. Still it begs the question, at least for me it does: what are two nuclear attack subs doing by playing cat-n-mouse? I thought this was more the line of work for sub hunters, unless they were trying to avoid a collision and bumped anyway.


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## fly boy (Feb 17, 2009)

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:


> Thank god there were no injuries or deaths.



thank god nukes didn't go off


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## evangilder (Feb 17, 2009)

There are a ton of safeguards to prevent that fly boy. Nukes don't just "go off". There have been times when nuclear weapons have fallen off of aircraft and they did not go off either. They aren't anything like conventional weaponry.


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## SoD Stitch (Feb 17, 2009)

evangilder said:


> There are a ton of safeguards to prevent that fly boy. Nukes don't just "go off". There have been times when nuclear weapons have fallen off of aircraft and they did not go off either. They aren't anything like conventional weaponry.



evan said it; there is a certain sequence of events that need to take place in order for a nuclear weapon to initiate, they are actually fairly complicated pieces of weaponry (fortunately). You could even blow a nuclear weapon up with conventional explosives (from the outside), and all you'd do is scatter the fissile material all over the place, there would be no nuclear reaction.


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## Soundbreaker Welch? (Feb 17, 2009)

I'm suprised that nobody was hurt. They were all very, very lucky, or blessed.


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## fly boy (Feb 19, 2009)

well in wartime condision


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## Vassili Zaitzev (Feb 19, 2009)

Still flyboy, there are a lot of safeguards to prevent nukes from going off. There was a midair collosion a while back(maybe someone can help me with this), four nuclear bombs fell from the aircraft and hit the ocean, not one went off.


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## fly boy (Feb 20, 2009)

one of the crome dome b-52s failed and one bomb still has not been found


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## Catch22 (Feb 20, 2009)

You just proved everyone else's point.


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## RabidAlien (Feb 23, 2009)

Heh. Well...dunno much about the French submarine force, but we did play some wargames with the British and Australian forces back when I was in. Subs from different countries get together fairly regularly (every year or so) to play cat-n-mouse wargames with each other. How else are you going to get any good at tracking other subs? Especially subs that don't sound (underwater) exactly like yours do? You test yourself against other, friendly, nations. But I digress. No offense to my British and Australian friends here, but the two subs we played against could barely find the ocean!  Perhaps they had an inexperienced crew, or someone figured their math wrong, but accidents do happen.

And for the record, "it is not the policy of the US Navy (can't speak for anyone else) to carry nuclear weapons except in time of war". The expense of maintaining them, guarding them, and safekeeping the crews is just waaaaay too prohibitive. As for them blowing up, think of a nuke as a really big chunk of C-4. You can light it, beat it with a sledgehammer, shoot it....it just ain't gonna go boom unless you trigger it the right way. The rest is classified.


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## Bill G. (Feb 24, 2009)

Setting off a nuke is a very complicated process. This may sound weird, but the way it is done is kind of "rube goldberg". By that many things have to happen in just the exact right sequence or no BOOM! And parts are designed to fail if dropped, burned, an exterior explosion or other ways. With those parts gone, well, no way to go BOOM!

And this is just the tip of the iceberg in nuke safety.

Bill G.


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## fly boy (Feb 25, 2009)

oh i did wow i just noticed my IQ


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