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I reviewed a documentary that showed at the Film Forum in NYC in
September that can now be seen on PBS at 9pm EST tonight. From my review:
The film is directed by Robert Kenner and based on a 2014 book by Eric
Schlosser titled “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus
Accident, and the Illusion of Safety”. No, this is not Damascus, Syria
(although people like Engdahl would likely jump to that conclusion) but
Damascus, Arkansas, the site of a Titan II Missile Complex that had a
disastrous fire caused by a minor accident on September 18, 1980.
A single Titan II missile in the Damascus underground silo had a 9
megaton H-Bomb warhead that packed an explosive power three times as
great as every bomb dropped during WWII, including those over Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. Its firestorm could cover 1000 square miles and a
radiation plume much greater in distance.
For comparison’s sake, a B-52 broke apart accidentally over Goldsboro,
North Carolina on January 24, 1961, dropping two 4-megaton H-Bombs in
the process. When searchers recovered one of the bombs, they were
shocked to discover that three of the four safety devices had failed.
This was according to a declassified document obtained by Schlosser and
revealed in his book. So even if that was half the payload of the
Damascus bomb, the death toll would have been over 100,000 while
millions would have suffered debilitating chronic diseases from
radiation exposure.
Director Robert Kenner was able to get the approval of a Titan II museum
in Green Valley, Arizona to use their facilities to recreate the
seemingly trivial accident that could have killed hundreds of thousands
of people in a couple of days. Using archival footage of the Damascus
explosion mixed with recreations at the museum, you really feel as if
you are there on the day of the fateful incident.
full: https://louisproyect.org/2016/09/13/command-and-control/
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