Interview with Eric Schlosser: Why we can't trust the government's figures about nuclear close calls.

Keywords: Broken Arrows; nuclear weapons; accidents; safety; command and control; close call EN Broken Arrows nuclear weapons accidents safety command and control close call 148 154 7 05/16/23 20230501 NES 230501 In the world of accidents, close calls, and near-misses, perhaps nothing is more chilling than incidents involving nuclear weapons. So, to answer your question, the US Defense Department uses "Broken Arrow" to mean a nuclear accident with a US weapon that caused the unauthorized launch or jettisoning of a nuclear weapon, a fire, an explosion, a radioactive release, or a full-scale detonation. More important, the large number of close calls and near-misses shows that no system for safeguarding nuclear weapons can ever be 100-percent effective - meaning that the United States (and other nuclear weapons nations, which have Broken Arrows of their own) can never completely eliminate the potential for catastrophic nuclear error. B Schlosser: b Right, we're not talking about close calls or near-misses with Russian weapons, British weapons, French weapons, or what might have happened with weapons in India, Pakistan, North Korea, China... Worldwide, we have no idea how many nuclear-weapon accidents have occurred. [Extracted from the article]