#1 ...It's starting to look like typical inshallah (or its Cyrillic equivalent) Soviet/Russian explosives safety procedures have struck again. There's some folks out there suggesting that there was an actual nuclear detonation, but that's something that not even the Russians could hide for long - this was a mass conventional detonation that had nuclear material/decommissioned warheads in close proximity.
Something I've been wondering about since yesterday is whether or not these might be Soviet era warheads that were NMC due to lack of maintenance in the 90s. It's actually easier to make a new warhead/bomb than to maintain one; they require throughout their operational life roughly the same level of care as a newborn baby. We properly dismantled warheads, removed the nuclear material and again, properly stored said material. It is unlikely in the extreme that the Soviets/Russians ever did anything even remotely close. They said, "Bad bombs? This is a weapons storage area, the hell with it, put 'em over there and forget about 'em."
Mike |