Inert Nuclear Missile Found in US Man's Garage - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

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  • 2 hidden comments
  • Well, they might not have been sure if it had fuel in it. It was a solid fuel rocket, so although it was probably not a spontaneous explosion hazard, it could have still created a significant fire.

    • Re:

      What makes you so sure the pipes in Home Depot aren't full of fertilizer?

      • Re:

        No it's the tubes that are full of fertilizer, specifically any series of them.

  • Re:

    Thanks to the power of automatic translation and Spanish, you can find an actual bomb in the pump section of your local aquarium store.

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      Here in Spain the fire brigade are called "bombers".

      • Re:

        Only in the Catalan/Valencian-speaking regions. In Castilian Spanish they're bomberos.

  • Re:

    Elon Musk owns several ICBMs. In fact, he owns an ICBM factory and a launch site.

• our bomb squad member asked me why we were releasing a news release on a rusted piece of metal," he said...

  Yes, why is Slashdot carrying over a headline that is essentially incorrect. The device was not carrying any nuclear material and was called just "a gas tank for rocket fuel" by the police spokesman as well.

  • Re:

    Slashdot should hire the bomb squad member as an editor. He clearly has a better sense of what news actually is.

  • Re:

    You know what's even scarier? In a couple of days when the dupe is posted, we'll have TWO nuclear bombs on the loose!

    • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday February 03, 2024 @04:39PM (#64211366)

      You know what's even scarier? In a couple of days when the dupe is posted, we'll have TWO nuclear bombs on the loose!

      There are already six missing nuclear weapons [nationalinterest.org]. What's two more?

  • Re:

    Part of the reporting on this story, was a bomb squad member wondering why this is even a story. That's how pathetic "reporting" is these days.

    According to clickbait experts, my car is a potential Molotov cocktail on 4 wheels, and the anti-terrorist experts are ready to start banning estate-sale loopholes.

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      Yup. Read through the inane story yesterday. Guy called his local war museum and asked if they wanted it. The museum, following protocol, got the police to double check it was safe to receive—then the media got wind of a NuClEaR mIsSiLe and a guy's attempted philanthropy became world news.

    • Re:

      Not only is it a molotov cocktail on 4 wheels but it's an incubator for COVID-19 unless you got it professionally cleaned:

      Interior COVID-19 Steam Sanitizing Package – $99
      https://autodetailingpro.ca/co... [autodetailingpro.ca]

      • Re:

        Coronaviruses, outside of laboratory prepared special conditions, inert themselves in a few days (at the absolute most) and more like hours or even minutes in many cases (especially if sunlight exposure is present). There are reasons that you'd want to steam sanitize the inside of a car - God knows there've been some rolling biohazards on JustRolledIn - but Covid is most definitely not one of them.

    • Re: Why indeed...

      The only interesting part is how it was lost by the government some 50 years ago.

    • Re:

      There are lots of nuclear bombers on the market, super cheap. Here's a bunch:

      https://www.trade-a-plane.com/... [trade-a-plane.com]

      Depending on the warhead you'd like to use, you might have to take out a seat or two.

    • Re:

      You drive a Ford Pinto?
• Quick. Everyone get their mask on an panic.

• This must be a very reliable design when at the time they were happy with a single (test) fire!

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    One fire with a live warhead. I suspect there were lots of tests and practice runs with dummy munitions. Nuclear explosions are best avoided even in practice.

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    I'm still trying to get my mind around the fact that somebody thought an air-to-air nuclear missile was a good idea.

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      It's the mid 1950s. It is feared that if the cold war turns hot (and mind you, at this time, the Second Red Panic and McCarthyism are at their zenith) then clouds upon clouds of Soviet bombers will boil up out from behind the Iron Curtain towards Western Europe and over the pole for America.
      
      There are no electronic tracking systems worth speaking of, beyond "oh shit something is coming." There are no computers worth speaking of, let alone embedded devices. There are no missile guidance packages that actua

      • Re:

        Well,there was a precedent for this. Clouds of bomber appearing out of nowhere on a quiet Sunday morning causing thousands of casualties and serious dama to US forces. Total psychological trauma.

        It was called Pearl Harbor. It did happen and it was a major cause of all the 50s fear and paranoia.

• It's from the 1950s cold War Era... By today's standards it's indeed just a gas tank for fuel...

• • Re:

    This was early in the cold war. It was designed to stop a fleet of Soviet bombers coming across the north pole. You don't need to actually hit the target with a nuclear warhead.

    Of course there probably would have been some collateral damage (a few polar bears on the ground in addition to the Tu 95 Bears in the air, and maybe the fighter that fired the missile)

    • Re:

      Think “Pearl Harbor with nukes” and you might understand the fear. Remember This was only 6 year after the end of WWII

  • EMP, anyone?

    The Russians were very aware of/scared of EMP. The MIG-25's little vacuum tubes were in part a response to the EMP threat from a weapon like this one.

  • Why on earth would any moron design and build "an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead"
    The military clearly has too much money and too much time on its hands.

    The idea was to strap an AIR-2 Genie nuclear tipped rocket to an F-89 Scorpion, launch it into one of the massive Soviet bomber formations the Pentagon expected would come over from the USSR and take out that entire Soviet bomber formation in one shot. Then Eisenhower launched the CORONA project which revealed that the fleet of 8000 plus bombers the USSR was supposed to have according to the Washington think tanks actually counted fewer than a hundred aircraft. Even so they kept flying F-101B Voodoo, and F-106 Delta Dagger fighter armed with these things until 1984 regardless of the threat level posed by the Soviet bomber force, because defence contracts and political careers were at stake and one could not admit that the Pentagon, and the Washington think tanks might have been wrong about something.

    • 1 hidden comment

    • Small correction...

      Small correction. The F-102 was the "Delta Dagger". The F-106 was the "Delta Dart", but always known as just "The Six". In certain variants, both were equipped to carry the Genie. My uncle flew The Six from Bunker Hill (later Grissom) AFB in Indiana during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. This was also one of the bases to host the B-58 Hustler.

  • Re:

    There were lots of whacky nuclear weapons in the 50s and 60s.

    Here's just one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    At least the range was longer than the blast radius....

    • Re:

      H*ll, there was a Nuclear Powered Ramjet Missile which would have actually worked, at the expense of laying to waste everything it flew over on its way to the target. Link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . One of the more interesting facts about of the development of it was that the Fuel Elements were manufactured by the Coors Porcelain Company. Coors originally was a Porcelain company that branched out to beer making using internally developed Porcelain vats.

      • Re:

        That's a good one.

        I was looking for the nuclear mortar which had a larger blast radius than range but didn't find it immediately.

        • Of course you didn't find it

          That is, after they tested it.

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            Yeah, the recommended proper use was to fire and then duck behind a hill or jump in a fox hole.

            Those were some crazy wild times.

            The funny thing is, some of those same Russian tanks these kind of weapons were designed to destroy are now serving in Ukraine, manned by that generations great grandchildren. Eating Javelins.

      • Didn't the Russians try this?

        Yeah, yeah and yeah, Project Pluto, and its exhaust was supposed to be more dangerous than the bomb it was carrying, so the US military gave up on it.

        Supposedly, allegedly, the post-Soviet-era Russians were still pursuing this "wacky idea" as evidenced by a couple of their engineers perishing in an attempt to recover their version of this thing that crashed in the ocean.

        So what was my reaction when I heard that the current-day Russians were pursuing a nuclear-powered cruise missile, a concept so insane

      • Re:

        The Russians have not given up on that idea

        https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]

• "Capable of carrying a nuclear warhead" is not a 'nuclear missile'. My car is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, and nobody's calling it a nuclear vehicle.

  In fact, given the state of it, it wasn't even the rocket it was originally meant to be... it was in fact a rusty metal tube (with an interesting origin), as the police bomb tech correctly identified it.

  • Nuclear capable

    Your car is not "nuclear capable", that is, without the commo gear to receive and positively identify commands issued from the holder of "The Football."

    • Re:

      North Koreans don't play Football, or at least not that kind of football. I'm sure their warheads will slot right into the hatchspace of a Kia.

• Pretty cool restoration project get it all shined up and have a pretty cool lawn ornament

• Slashdot is a master at click bate, they had to be good at something, it certainly is not tech Journalism
  • 1 hidden comment
• Quite nice response from the museum to call the police instead of talk to the donor.