The possibility that the world powers have accidentally misplaced atomic bombs and that these may fall into the hands of some villain or evil organization with intentions of global domination sounds like the plot of a spy novel or film.
It is absurd to think that an advanced government could misplace a nuclear weapon and, more crucially, never find it again.
However, in the first years of the nuclear race, the new technology demanded that multiple tests be conducted in which, due to technical failures or human error, the trace of some of its devices was lost.
Official sources have given several explanations to "deactivate" the fears and risks of these blunders, but they have not been entirely satisfactory.
But how many cases exist of missing nuclear weapons?
Broken Arrow
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This hydrogen bomb is in an exhibition in Russia, but there are several others that are lost.
According to naval historian and defense analyst Eric Grove, the United States has lost about seven bombs, most in the 1950s, at the start of the Cold War.
"As soon as they began to deploy nuclear weapons, accidents occurred, planes crashed or bombs dropped by mistake," Grove told the BBC.
The Cold War generated countless nuclear tests in air, sea and land.
During the Cold War the accumulation of nuclear weapons was immense. They were everywhere. The Americans had planes flying overhead, loaded with thermonuclear weapons. Things went wrong from time to time.
"The reason why the pumps have not recovered is because the conditions to reach them are so difficult, it is difficult to submerge at a depth of 6,000 meters," Professor Grove explained.
Accidents during the handling of a nuclear weapon or its components without a detonation or risking an atomic conflict are known in US military jargon. as "broken arrow".
One of the most intriguing - or disturbing, from the point of view - of a broken arrow occurred near the town of Savannah Georgia, United States, in 1958.
A B-47 military aircraft of the US Air Force with a hydrogen bomb on board returned from joint exercises with other aircraft launching and intercepting nuclear attacks.
It was midnight, with a full moon, when an error occurred with serious consequences.
"There was a high-altitude collision, the pilot of the other plane managed to jump by parachute but the pilot bomber told his crew not to leave the ship as an immediate emergency landing was planned at the Savannah airport," he told the BBC the retired lieutenant colonel of the US Air Force, Derek Duke.
The B-47 bomber of the United States Air Force was designed for long-haul flights at high altitudes to evade the interception of enemy aircraft.
But the emergency landing did not go as planned. That night, it so happened that the airport runway was under construction.
"There was a lot of tension on board and on the ground, the pilot decided it was much better to get rid of a 6,500 kg nuclear weapon and ordered the navigator to discard the cargo."
This was done, off the coast of Georgia, without burning or any explosion, said Lieutenant Colonel Duke. "When they landed later, they kissed the earth, happy to be alive" ... until they remembered that what they had launched was a nuclear device.
A search operation was organized with warships, airships and divers, but the bomb had fallen into the swampy marsh and it was not known again.
The US government he says the hydrogen bomb was not equipped with his plutonium detonator, but Derek Duke is not so confident about that.
The retired officer refers to a letter dated April 1966 in which the then assistant Secretary of Defense, WJ Howard, describes the bomb as a "complete weapon".
Government officials have said since then that Howard was wrong, although Duke remains skeptical.
"The man who was there that night, an expert in nuclear technology, said he had never received or dispatched a bomb at that time that did not have plutonium," he reiterated.
In 2004, Duke was in charge of a mission to find the lost bomb but he could not find it either. The heavy and sophisticated instrument of war had simply disappeared.
In 2004, Duke and other scientists explored the coast off Georgia in search of the lost hydrogen bomb.
And he was not the only one to vanish.
Somewhere in front of the port of Tampa, Florida, there is another atomic bomb. The remains of another lie at the bottom of a swamp in North Carolina.
Then, in 1965, an airplane loaded with one of these bombs fell into the sea while attempting to land on an aircraft carrier anchored near the Philippines. One is also reported to have been lost in Greenland.
And those are only those of the United States. The then Soviet Union had its run of losses, many in sunken submarines although, typically, they did not announce it frequently.
But the two great nuclear powers were not the only ones that were building and testing atomic weapons in the 50s and 60s.
Blue Danube
The United Kingdom saw with concern the development of the nuclear race and decided to arm itself equally.
Reg Milne, a pilot during the Second World War who later worked for the Ministry of Defense, was commissioned to work on the construction of the first British nuclear bomb. Its name is classified: Blue Danube.
On a routine flight the weapon was on board a plane that took off from the Farnborough air center, near London.
After ten minutes in the air, the crew received an alert that the bomb had come loose and got stuck in the compartment. The plane could not land like that.
"They decided to fly over the mouth of the River Thames and open the floodgates, they did it and the bomb went down," Milne told the BBC.
It was the historic moment when the Blue Danube met the Thames.
It was not the same case with the real Blue Danube bomb that the United Kingdom detonated in Maralinga, a remote region of southern Australia, in 1956. Reg Milne was also there.
"It was about 12 km away, we had to stand with our backs to the explosion, but it felt like a melted steel furnace, and even with our eyes closed, everyone looked white," he recalled.
Well, you know that that did explode. But with so many bombs submerged in the sea, how feasible is it for a villain like the ones in the movies to take over one of them to execute their evil plans?
To find an atomic bomb you can use a radiation detector, although it is not that easy. The problem is that water is a very good isolator of radioactivity.
So the villain could find the bomb loaded with plutonium, detonating it is a very complicated process, says defense expert Eric Grove.
"The detonators have to act in a very coordinated way and, even when the explosives act, there may not be a nuclear reaction."
There is also the problem of directing the nuclear weapon to the desired objective. This is a different and very complex technology, as shown by the failed or limited launches of missiles from North Korea.
With that information this threat is dissipated, although we can not feel totally safe.
Pump case
The famous British writer of espionage novels, Frederick Forsyth, detailed in his book "The Fourth Protocol" a disturbing possibility.
The plot unfolds in the 1980s, and it finds Soviet spies designing a strategy to introduce a compact nuclear bomb into a briefcase at a US military base in the United Kingdom.
The plan was called "Project Aurora."
"In the 1980s, I wondered why we were spending millions developing intercontinental missiles capable of carrying a nuclear bomb and whether it would be cheaper to design a small bomb that could be carried in a suitcase and brought into Russia," the author told the BBC. .
"I found a nuclear engineer who confirmed that it was feasible and I mixed the political aspect with that."
Although it was a novel, the book caught the attention of some, in what could be a case of life imitating art.
"I was informed that the KGB had read the book and that the then Soviet leader Yuri Andropov commissioned 60 copies and that they were manufactured (the bombs) in Russia," Forsyth said.
The rumors are that Russia, then the Soviet Union, produced some 250 portable bombs and that 100 of them went astray.
The Russians say they were all destroyed but Forsyth cites sources who say they were hidden in Moldova and are now available to President Vladimir Putin.
However, in the 1990s, a military committee of the US Congress decided to investigate the subject. Among the witnesses who called for testimony was Alexei Yablokov, a former member of the National Security Council of Russia and an advisor to then President Boris Yeltsin.
Another witness was General Alexander Lebed, secretary of the Security Council itself. Both confirmed the existence of small portable nuclear devices and that the authorities did not account for all of them.
To add to the mystery, Lebed died in a helicopter accident in suspicious circumstances.
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Alexander Lebed testified before a commission of the US Congress. and then he died in a suspicious helicopter accident.
But Nikolai Sokov, a former official of the Russian Foreign Ministry who is now a professor at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, has another version.
"The nuclear bags are not a myth, they did exist," he confirmed to the BBC, "but they were heavy and they were in big backpacks."
The Soviet atomic bomb too big to be used again
He said, however, that there were many legends surrounding these. They were a little over 100 and none was loose around there.
"When I was in government I launched a verification process and all the nuclear bags were located," he said.
Sokov said that the news of the location of the suitcases was not widely reported and that is why the myth continues. He could not confirm that the artifacts had been destroyed, but he assured that the nuclear devices would need to be refurbished to be used and are not part of the active nuclear arsenal.
Given that Nikolai Sokov is considered an alarmist when it comes to nuclear issues and the Russian government, whoever has reaffirmed in conversation with the BBC his opinion that all nuclear bags have been dismantled or are destined to be broken.
Can you breathe easier?
It's not surprising that Broken Arrow incidents are common. What's surprising is not one of the "lost" nuclear missiles turned up in the weapons black market around the Middle East.
exactly. thank you for clarifying this point
No, thank you for a great article.