Strange Glow

by Timothy J Jorgensen

  Sometimes risk management reduces to simply heeding the lessons of your own history. No complex engineering nor elaborate statistics are required, just some simple timeless wisdom.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE THINGS THEY CARRIED: GEOPOLITICAL RADIATION THREATS

  A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

  —Mark Twain

  “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” said Alice. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the cat. “We’re all mad here.”

  —Lewis Carroll, The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland

  STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

  Far from the ocean, in the remote hills of western Maryland, 115 miles (185 kilometers) from Washington, DC, rests a stone monument, alone by itself in the woods. The monument is topped by a simple Christian cross and is inscribed in plain English with the name of Major Robert E. Townley. It shows his birth date as May 3, 1921, and his death date as January 13, 1964. Although it resembles a grave marker, Townley’s body is not buried under the monument. His body is buried in his home state of Alabama. Rather, the monument marks the impact site of Buzz One Four, a massive B-52 bomber that carried Townley to this spot and crashed. He died alone in a fiery blaze, the only crew member that was not able to eject from the plane before impact. That January night, coming a mere seven weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was one of the darkest and coldest nights of the Cold War. The air temperature in the mountains was 10°F (-12°C), and there were three feet (1 meter) of snow on the ground when the plane hit. By sunrise there would be another eight inches (0.2 meters).

  The plane had been en route from Westover Air Force Base (AFB) in Massachusetts to its home at Turner AFB in Georgia when it hit severe turbulence. Changing altitude did not improve things and soon a part of the tail section—a known structural weak spot of B-52 aircraft that had already contributed to three previous fatal crashes—was torn off the plane. The pilot then lost control and instructed the crew to eject. But Townley, the bombardier, who had survived his military service in both World War II and the Korean War, had trouble with his seat restraints and couldn’t free himself in time. He went down with the aircraft and its cargo, which included two hydrogen bombs.

  Buzz One Four was assigned to the 484th Bombardment Wing. The two weapons it carried were Mark 53 hydrogen bombs. The Mark 53 (later known as the B53) was one of the most enduring nuclear weapons deployed by the United States. It remained a key component of US nuclear deterrence until 1997.1 It could be carried by B-47, B-52 and B-58 aircraft, and its warhead was later adapted for the Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

  The Mark 53 warhead (9,000 KT or 9 MT) is 600 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb (15 KT). Since a stick of dynamite (TNT) weighs five pounds, the explosive power of a Mark 53 warhead is equivalent to more than 10 sticks of dynamite for every man, woman, and child in the United States (i.e., 50 pounds of TNT per person). Given this level of explosive power, letting a Mark 53 hydrogen bomb drop in free fall from your plane, and living to tell about it, as Tibbets’s crew had done with their “mini” atomic bomb, is impossible. No upwind approach and precise angle of departure will solve the problem of escaping alive when it comes to dropping hydrogen bombs. But you don’t need to drop a hydrogen (fusion) bomb with the same precision as an atomic (fission) bomb. No need to aim at a specific ground structure, like the T-shaped bridge in Hiroshima, in order to maximize enemy casualties. The destructive power of a hydrogen bomb is so massive that dropping one anywhere within a city will completely destroy the whole city regardless of what specific ground target you happen to hit. So this feature of hydrogen bombs allowed the engineers to come up with a simple solution to protect the bomber. The Mark 53 was equipped with five parachutes: one 5-foot pilot chute, one 16-foot chute, and three 48-foot chutes. These parachutes let the bomb drift down into the approximate target area, while also greatly slowing its descent to the ground, so the bomber that releases it has ample time to depart the scene to safety before the bomb blows.

  While the Air Force scrambled to get men and equipment to the scene of the crash and recover the bombs, the townspeople of nearby Grantsville (population 503) came out in force to find the missing crew members who had parachuted down miles from one another into dense forest. The town opened its doors gladly for the airmen and civilians alike who were assisting in the rescue effort. The women of St. John’s Lutheran Church served 1,500 dinners to the rescue workers. The American Legion Hall, the fire house, and the elementary school together set up enough bunk beds to sleep nearly 500 people. Over a colossal five-day search through the snowy woods, two crew members were recovered alive and two were found dead from exposure to the cold.

  While the search for crew members was going on, bomb experts were focusing on to how to get the hydrogen bombs out of the woods. They were three quarters of a mile from the nearest road, so a bulldozer was appropriated to cut a path through the forest, while the bomb disposal crew dismantled enough of the bombs to ensure they wouldn’t explode during transport out.

  FIGURE 17.1. CRASH OF BUZZ ONE FOUR. Armed military guards stand watch over the wreckage of a downed B-52 bomber plane that crashed in the woods of western Maryland on January 13, 1964, carrying two hydrogen bombs. Salvage workers soon cut a road to the crash scene and carried off the two bombs, along with all of the plane debris. More crashes of American Air Force B-52s carrying hydrogen bombs would soon follow. (Source: AP Photo/William A. Smith; image used with licensed permission from AP Images)

  Lifting them was another problem; they each weighed over four tons (3,600 kilograms). Local resident Ray Giconi who owned a quarry nearby, offered the use of his huge forklift and two dump trucks. So the rescue workers picked up the bombs with the forklift and lowered each one separately into its own truck. Meanwhile, the radiation protection personnel surveyed the crash site for any radioactivity that may have leaked out of the bombs. There was none. The warheads had remained intact.

  After thanking the Grantsville residents for their patriotic services, the military drove off with the bombs to parts unknown. The residents then returned to their homes with an unforgettable story that they would pass on to their grandchildren.2

  Some would argue that this western Maryland incident underscores how vulnerable we are to our own nuclear bombs, and that we could have nearly blown ourselves to bits, all due to a little bad weather. Yet, others would point out that all planes have an inherent risk of crashing that we can reduce but not eliminate. They would contend that the crash rate for B-52s was much lower than for most other types of aircraft. Crashes, they would argue, are a known part of the risk equation. That’s why bombs have multiple safety mechanism to prevent detonation in the event of a crash. They would say the western Maryland incident is testimony to the fact that flying with hydrogen bombs is safe because the risk of their detonation, even in a crash situation, is negligible. In western Maryland, no one was even exposed to radiation, let alone a nuclear detonation, and not a single civilian had died. The system had worked, thus proving the safety of the system. Right?

  Not really. The bombs had actually been in tactical ferry configuration (electrically and mechanically deactivated).3 They were not on a military mission at the time of the crash, but were rather just being ferried back to their home base at Turner, Georgia, because their previous two missions had both been scrubbed due to problems. On the first mission (January 7–8, 1964), engine trouble had required a layover for repairs at an AFB in Spain. On the second (January 11–12, 1964), bad weather over the Atlantic had forced a flight plan diversion and an unscheduled layover at Westover AFB in Massachusetts. In Westover, the bombs were disarmed so that they could be safely ferried back to their home base in Georgia. Therefore, the crash really did not amount to an unplanned test of the bombs’ safety systems, since they were partially dismantled, and there was no chance that they would have detonated their nuclear warheads du
ring the crash. The only real radiation threat was that the accidental detonation of their conventional explosives might have compromised the integrity of the warhead and spread radioactive material across the countryside. This potential spread of radioactivity has some parallels with dirty bombs in terms of the possible consequences to the surrounding population.

  A dirty bomb is a weapon that couples radioactive material with a conventional explosive for the main purpose of spreading radioactivity and thereby simulating nuclear fallout. They have no value to the military, only to terrorists. Dirty bombs are really designed to exploit people’s heightened fear of even small amounts of radioactivity, and thus induce terror. As with nuclear bombs, their percussive effects pose the biggest health threat, since it is difficult to pack enough radioactivity into a dirty bomb to cause radiation sickness. The larger the explosive component, the further the radioactivity is spread. When the radioactivity is spread over a greater area, however, its concentration is greatly diluted and its potential health impact is, therefore, greatly lessened as well. Nevertheless, terrorists may see widespread dispersal as an advantage, because it also means that the area requiring radioactivity cleanup is increased and fear is, likewise, spread to more people.

  CASH ON DELIVERY

  Let’s fast-forward four decades to another nuclear transport. This time it is a ship carrying the nuclear material, specifically a cargo freighter that’s carrying depleted uranium in its hold. The freighter encounters no weather issues and arrives safely at its destination port, New York City.

  The day was September 11, 2002, and ABC News decided to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City by concocting a stunt to demonstrate America’s ongoing vulnerability to terrorists. So they packaged a cylinder containing 15 pounds (6.8 kg) of depleted uranium (about the size of a beer can) and loaded it onto a cargo freighter heading out of Istanbul and destined for New York. In New York, the uranium passed through US Customs without being detected, at which point ABC News revealed to their television viewers what they had done, thereby infuriating government officials and scaring everyone half to death. The news anchors asked their viewers: “If we could do it, why not the terrorists?” Good question.

  The antiterrorism experts were not as concerned about ABC’s stunt as the public was. Some experts pointed out that customs security is just one layer of a multilayered systems approach to protecting us from nuclear terrorists.4 They also correctly noted that you need a lot more than 15 pounds of uranium to make an atomic bomb, particularly if it’s depleted uranium you’re talking about. To make an atomic bomb you need enriched uranium, not depleted uranium. Enriched uranium has a higher concentration of the uranium-235 radioisotope, which is what’s required to achieve supercriticality. (Depleted uranium is the waste that’s produced during the uranium-235 enrichment processes.) There are a whole series of highly technical steps that must take place before a functional atomic bomb could be made from scratch, the first being the need to obtain a large quantity of highly enriched uranium (HEU). Even if this particular security layer had failed, surely all layers would not have. So here again, we should breathe easier. Right?

  Again, not really. Since we have not yet experienced any nuclear bomb attacks by terrorists, we have no information with which to calculate the attack rate for terrorist nuclear bomb incidents, and thus no means to estimate risk that is based on real data. We must, therefore, resort to theoretical models to predict the risk of being attacked by nuclear terrorists wielding a homemade bomb. Fault tree logic is sometimes employed to assess such theoretical risks, as was done for nuclear power plant accidents prior to the Three Mile Island incident. The thought is that there must be sequential failures of all the multiple layers of deterrents, rather than just a single layer, in order for terrorists to ultimately achieve success and make a functional bomb. This is why the uranium sting that ABC News perpetrated wasn’t as crippling an indictment of the overall effectiveness of the United States’ antiterrorism system as might first appear. For example, if you wanted to make your friend a cake for her birthday and someone was keeping you from buying eggs, stopping you from bringing flour into your kitchen, sabotaging your electric mixer, and cutting the power to your oven, it would be extremely difficult to get the job done. Even if one layer of deterrence (e.g., the broken electric mixer) was imperfect (e.g., you alternatively mixed the batter with a spoon), it could still contribute to the overall deterrence strategy in a significant way. This is because the individual deterrence success rates, even if low, are multiplicative with one another and quickly compound to a substantial deterrence level, just as compound bank interest can change pennies saved into a major nest egg. The compounding of many points of deterrence makes the overall probability of terrorists foiling all the security barriers and producing their own bomb extremely small. At least that’s the theory.

  The problem is that we can’t really measure the failure rate at each node in the fault tree of a nuclear deterrence network, at least not in the same way that Rasmussen did for mechanical failures at nuclear power plants. In his case, the failure rates for certain components of the reactor core had been tested and real data were available to calculate the risk. As for predicting the failure rates for individual deterrent measures, however, the only way to do it is to make mock challenges, as ABC News did, and then assess the percentage of time that deterrence point fails. This is very difficult to do for every individual deterrence step, so many of our deterrence procedures live on, untested as to their effectiveness.

  Exactly one year later, on September 11, 2003, the second anniversary of the 9/11 attack, ABC News repeated their stunt at another port. This time they used a ship headed to Long Beach, California, from Jakarta, Indonesia. Again, the ship contained the same cylinder of depleted uranium and, again, the uranium made it through US Customs unchallenged. Allowing that the sample size for this challenge of port security is only two (i.e., n = 2), one might say that ABC News’s data suggests that the failure rate for this layer of the nuclear terrorist deterrence system is 100%. Not good.

  PLAN B

  If the overall effectiveness of multiple layers of deterrence is reassuring to us, it can also be very discouraging to terrorists who want to beat the system. Discouragement itself might have its own deterrent effect and thus channel terrorists into lower-tech options for demonstrating their hatred. It could make them settle for just getting some radioactive material and making a dirty bomb by mixing it with conventional explosives; this would not be anywhere close to the same lethality as detonating a nuclear bomb, but would still be pretty frightening given the public’s hysterical fear of anything radioactive. Or it may cause terrorists to seek nuclear bomb alternatives that fall short of actually making their own bomb.

  One option terrorists have is to wait until some unscrupulous sovereign state, such as North Korea, Pakistan, or some nuclear wannabe nation, makes nuclear weapons for its own use, and then simply negotiate a clandestine deal to buy one from them.5 This alternative seems quicker and more likely to succeed than trying to make their own bomb. Not only that, sovereign states have more financial resources, manpower, and technical expertise, and could probably, therefore, make more efficient, smaller, and devastating bombs than terrorists could make themselves. Thus, buying one would potentially have a greater return on investment for terrorists than making a homemade nuclear bomb.

  Still, there are some significant obstacles that could frustrate this approach for obtaining nuclear weapons. Since bomb materials are so hard to come by, shady governments with nuclear munitions may not be willing to share their nuclear weapons even if they and the terrorists have a common enemy. Those governments may even worry that their terrorist “friends” would turn against them once they have secured a weapon. They might further worry that once the terrorists use the weapon against their common enemy, that enemy might find it easier to retaliate against the seller of the bomb (i.e., the sovereign state) than th
e buyer (i.e., the terrorist organization). All these issues could be a major disincentive to sovereign states entertaining any thoughts about selling their bombs to terrorists, no matter how much they sympathize with their goals. For these reasons, the terrorists may need to infiltrate the sovereign state that has the desired weapons, and bribe or steal their way to a nuclear bomb. As opposed to garnering the technical expertise required to construct their own nuclear bomb, bribing and stealing are skill sets that terrorists abound in. Such a plan would, therefore, play to their strengths.

  At this point, you may be appalled that this book seems to be revealing viable nuclear bomb acquisition strategies to terrorists. Don’t be. These avenues for obtaining nuclear weapons are only news to you. The terrorists are well aware of them. In fact, various documents seized from Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the wake of the New York 9/11 attack suggested that the organization was actively exploring all of these options.6

  FEAR OF FLYING

  It would have been easier to accept the Buzz One Four accident as a demonstration of the safety of air transport of hydrogen bombs had it been the only example of a B-52 bomber accident involving hydrogen bombs on United States soil, but it was not. In fact, there had been two previous accidents with B-52 bombers carrying hydrogen bombs that had brought the United States a little closer to nuclear catastrophe.