Oops, I burned the chicken. Do you have any idea how hard it is to grill chicken when you're hammered?
What qualifies as an "oops"? Bumping into someone on the street while reading the paper? Dropping a pint glass full of good beer? Backing your car over your neighbor's garden gnome? I think we can all agree these are mistakes one can punctuate with "oops". Losing, dropping, or accidentally blowing up a nuclear weapon, however, should require some more colorful language (use your imagination...then take a hit of acid and try again).
One of my favorite atomic butter fingers is the one that almost plays out as a Zucker Bro’s gag: A bunch of US sailors at a Scottish base, rollicking it up, maybe wolf-whistling at some highland cutie, did a boo-boo and dropped (yes, I said dropped) a fully-armed Poseidon missile some twenty or so feet. It is pretty safe to say that the base laundry was very busy that night getting stains out of underwear.
In 1961 a B-52 decided to do a shake-and-shimmy over North Carolina, dropping two 24-megaton nuclear weapons. One of the little toys released its parachute and glided down to a less-than-gentle landing.
The other device though smacked down somewhere in waterlogged farmland. Not at sea, not in 20,000 feet of water, not "off the coast" of anywhere. Farmland, near North Carolina. Anyone live in North Carolina? Come on, a show of hands - gee, quite a few of you. Isn’t North Carolina a great place to live? You might, though, reconsider because even though this little boo-boo happened over twenty years ago the capable US military never recovered that little gizmo. It’s still out there. Tick, tick, tick, tick ....
I can hear some of you die-hard optimists mumbling something about "safety" and "redundant backups". Well, you just keep mumbling that comfortable little mantra to yourself while I casually bring up that other bomb, the one that parachuted down.
Well, while they found that little fissionable puppy, the guys that inspected it found something very interesting. You see, a device of that type has six safety devices...and five of them had failed.
The Thermonuclear "Oops" List. [Dark Roasted Blend]
