All In One Boat

The strange case of Iraninan Uranium, with dire implications for the world, is taking more twists and turns.

While Iran has notified the AEIE it intends to mount 3,000 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium others claim it is not nearly capable of doing any such thing: “Nuclear plans in chaos as Iran leader flounders.” Inside Iran significant voices (i.e. clerical) have been raised against the President’s drive to rub his future nukes in the world’s face, worried that his following Sadam Hussein’s lead in boasting of what he has not in order to cow the neighbors may wind up with similar results: bombing and invasion.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, south of Russia, it is revealed a year after the fact that a Russian had been arrested in February, 2006 for having 100 grams of enriched uranium in his britches. While this is certainly possible, and scary as hell, none of the stories I have read specified how he was carrying the deadly stuff, and how it was discovered. One story even carried a picture of a plastic baggie –as though it were marijuana. I don’t think so: enriched uranium — and 100 grams is enough for 4 nuclear devices — would fry his testicles in a matter of minutes. Funny thing is that Russian authorities are calling the arrest a provocation and a big setup rather then being curious about the facts of the case — which, if true, should worry them as much as us. Much more likely than a nuclear bomb is the use of thimble fulls of the stuff in ordinary, say car, bombs to be disbursed whither the force of the blast takes it.

And what is the only significant nuclear power in the world, the US, doing to lessen the threat of a nuclear arms race? Why developing smaller, more powerful weapons itself, while planning to carry out open air tests, called Divine Strake of all things, to monitor fall out and blast patterns. Fortunately the good citizens of Utah are up in arms.

Idly following links from one article to another I came across this 2002 article about the 1962 October Cuban Missle crisis. Much has been written about it, and how close the world came to a terrifying nuclear exchange. How close and how dependent on the actions of two men only became known during a symposium in Havana in 2002.

The Joint Chiefs had recommended air strike and invasion of Cuba, as of 4 p.m. The Cubans were firing on all the low-level US recon flights. At the conference, we found out that exactly at that moment, US destroyers were dropping signaling depth charges on a Soviet submarine near the quarantine line that was carrying a nuclear-tipped torpedo — totally unbeknownst to the US Navy. The Soviet captain lost his temper, there could be a world war up there, let’s take some of them down with us, etc. Cooler heads prevailed, specifically the sub brigade deputy commander named Vasily Arkhipov, who was onboard and calmed the captain down. The sub came to the surface about 15 minutes after Soviet ambassador Dobrynin left Bobby Kennedy’s office carrying RFK’s urgent message to Khrushchev, time is running out, invasion in 48 hours, if you take the missiles out, we will pledge not to invade Cuba…

Cuban Missile Crisis

The nuclear torpedoes were the equivalent in destructive power of the US bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Aimed at surface ships, at sea, the human and visibile destruction would have been far less than Hiroshima. Ships further than 1 mile from the blast likely would have survived, structurally. Fallout would have followed the prevailing winds and more likely contaminated Cuba than Florida. The extreme damage would have been the follow up. The US would not have held its nuclear trigger finger knowing the USSR had already begun. The missles in place in Cuba would likely have been fired in response to, or in anticipation of, the US firing. The USSR itself would not have been far behind and the US to the USSR. Bye Bye.

It’s interesting that what stopped the initial launch were words, arguments, not guns, not even threats of court martial or torture…

As one commenter asks: Where is the Nobel Peace Prize for Vasily Arkhipov?

You can see more of Blanton’s comments at the National Security Archives. (Do a search for “Vasili” to find a similar claim.