In July of 1897, Edward Stribbling (Trout) Shue was convicted of first-degree murder for strangling his wife and breaking her neck. Trout Shue’s trial, held in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, rested entirely upon circumstantial evidence that strangely proved Shue’s guilt—beyond a reasonable doubt—to jurors who were presented with evidence from beyond the grave; indisputable key-fact evidence known only to the killer and the killed. This true ghost story is preserved in publicly accessible records held in the West Virginia archives. Information in this piece is drawn from original court documents.

The facts, accepted as sworn trial evidence, included postmortem statements from Shue’s dead wife, Zona Heaster Shue, who was said to appear before her mother four weeks after death and reported what truly occurred in her murder. It was the first time—and the only time—testimony from a ghost was admitted as legal evidence in a United States Superior Court trial, and the ghost’s evidence convicted a murderer.

At 10:00 a.m. on January 23, 1897, twenty-three-year-old Zona Shue’s body was found by an errand boy. She was lying on the floor in their house, face down at the foot of the stairs, stretched with one arm tucked underneath her chest and the other extended. Her head was cocked to one side.

Zona and Trout Shue

Trout Shue arrived home before the coroner, Dr. George Knapp, attended. Shue had already moved his wife’s body to their bed where he’d dressed her in a high-necked gown. As Dr. Knapp began examining Zona, Trout Shue exhibited overpowering emotions and cradled Zona’s head and her shoulders, sobbing and weeping. Dr. Knapp stopped his exam out of respect for the grieving spouse and signed-off the death to “everlasting faint”.

A traditional wake was held before Zona’s next-day burial and attendants noticed peculiar behavior from Trout Shue. When the casket was opened for viewing, he immediately placed a scarf over Zona’s neck as well as propping her head with a pillow and blanket. Shue then put on another spectacular show of grief and made it impossible for mourners to get a close look at her face.

Zona Shue was buried in the Soule Chapel Methodist Cemetery in Greenbrier County. Initially, everyone who knew the Shules accepted Zona’s death as not suspicious—except for her mother, Mary Jane Heaster.

Heaster disliked Shue from the moment they met and suspected foul play at hand. “The work of the devil!” Heaster exclaimed. She prayed every night, for four weeks on end, that the Lord would reveal the truth.

Then, in the darkness of night, when Mary Jane Heaster was wide awake, Zona’s spirit allegedly appeared.

It was not in a dream, Heaster reported. It was in person. First the apparition manifested as light, then transformed to a human figure which brought a chill upon the room. For four consecutive nights, Heaster claimed her daughter’s ghost came to the foot of her bed and reported facts of the crime that extinguished her life.

Zona’s ghost was said to reveal a history of physical abuse from her husband. Her death resulted in a violent fight over a meal the night before she was found. Trout Shue was said to have strangled Zona, crushing her windpipe and snapping her neck “at the first joint”. To prove dislocation, Zona’s figure turned its head one hundred and eighty degrees to the rear.

Mary Jane Heaster steadfastly maintained her daughter’s ghost was real and Zona’s reports of the cause of her death were accurate. Heaster was so compelling in her paranormal description that she convinced local prosecutor, John Preston, to re-open the case.

Preston’s investigation found Trout Shue had a history of violence. In another State, he’d served prison time for assaults and thefts. He’d been married twice before—one other wife dying under mysterious circumstances. By now the Greenbrier community was reporting more peculiar behavior from Shue. He’d been making comments to the effect that “no one would ever prove I killed Zona”.

Combined with Coroner Knapp’s admission that he failed to conduct a thorough exam, Preston established sufficient grounds to exhume Zona’s body and conduct a proper postmortem examination.

Zona was autopsied by three medical doctors on February 22, 1897, with the official cause of death being anoxia from manual strangulation compounded by a broken neck. Bruising consistent with fingermarks was noted on Zona’s neck, her esophagus was contused, and her first and second cervical vertebrae were fractured. Anatomically, they’re known as the C1 Atlas and the C2 Axis which combines to make the first joint at the base of the skull.

An inquest was held, and Trout Shue was summoned to testify. Although he denied being present at the time of Zona’s death and bearing culpability, he was unable to establish an alibi and considered an unreliable, self-serving witness. It was ruled a homicide, and Trout Shue was charged with her murder.

Trout Shue’s first-degree murder trial began in Greenbrier Circuit Court on June 22, 1897. A panel of twelve jurors was convened who heard evidence from a number of witnesses, including Shue himself.

John Preston was reluctant to subpoena Mary Jane Heaster as a witness, fearing her ghost story would damage credibility. However, Shue’s defense lawyer opened that can of worms and called Zona’s mother to the stand. Evidently, it backfired.

This verbatim excerpt is from the transcript of Mary Jane Heaster’s testimony. It’s still on record in the West Virginia State Archives:

—   —   —

Defense Counsel Question – I have heard that you had some dream or vision which led to this postmortem examination?

Witness Heaster Answer – It was no dream – she came back and told me that he was mad that she didn’t have no meat cooked for supper. But she said she had plenty and said that she had butter and apple-butter, apples and named over two or three kinds of jellies, pears and cherries and raspberry jelly, and she says I had plenty; and she says don’t you think that he was mad and just took down all my nice things and packed them away and just ruined them. And she told me where I could look down back of Aunt Martha Jones’, in the meadow, in a rocky place; that I could look in a cellar behind some loose plank and see. It was a square log house, and it was hewed up to the square, and she said for me to look right at the right-hand side of the door as you go in and at the right-hand corner as you go in. Well, I saw the place just exactly as she told me, and I saw blood right there where she told me; and she told me something about that meat every night she came, just as she did the first night. She cames [sic] four times, and four nights; but the second night she told me that her neck was squeezed off at the first joint and it was just as she told me.

Q – Now, Mrs. Heaster, this sad affair was very particularly impressed upon your mind, and there was not a moment during your waking hours that you did not dwell upon it?

A – No, sir; and there is not yet, either.

Q – And was this not a dream founded upon your distressed condition of mind?

A – No, sir. It was no dream, for I was as wide awake as I ever was.

Q – Then if not a dream or dreams, what do you call it?

A – I prayed to the Lord that she might come back and tell me what had happened; and I prayed that she might come herself and tell on him.

Q – Do you think that you actually saw her in flesh and blood?

A – Yes, sir, I do. I told them the very dress that she was killed in, and when she went to leave me, she turned her head completely around and looked at me like she wanted me to know all about it. And the very next time she came back to me she told me all about it. The first time she came, she seemed that she did not want to tell me as much about it as she did afterwards. The last night she was there she told me that she did everything she could do, and I am satisfied that she did do all that, too.

Q – Now, Mrs. Heaster, don’t you know that these visions, as you term them or describe them, were nothing more or less than four dreams founded upon your distress?

A – No, I don’t know it. The Lord sent her to me to tell it. I was the only friend that she knew she could tell and put any confidence it; I was the nearest one to her. He gave me a ring that he pretended she wanted me to have; but I don’t know what dead woman he might have taken it off of. I wanted her own ring, and he would not let me have it.

Q – Mrs. Heaster, are you positively sure that these are not four dreams?

A – Yes, sir. It was not a dream. I don’t dream when I am wide awake, to be sure; and I know I saw her right there with me.

Q – Are you not considerably superstitious?

A – No, sir, I’m not. I was never that way before and am not now.

Q – Do you believe the scriptures?

A – Yes, sir. I have no reason not to believe it.

Q – And do you believe the scriptures contain the words of God and his Son?

A – Yes, sir, I do. Don’t you believe it?

Q – Now, I would like if I could, to get you to say that these were four dreams and not four visions or appearances of your daughter in flesh and blood?

A – I am not going to say that; for I am not going to lie.

Q – Then you insist that she actually appeared in flesh and blood to you upon four different occasions?

A – Yes, sir.

Q – Did she not have any other conversation with you other than upon the matter of her death?

A – Yes, sir, some other little things. Some things I have forgotten – just a few words. I just wanted the particulars about her death, and I got them.

Q – When she came did you touch her?

A – Yes, sir. I got up on my elbows and reached out a little further, as I wanted to see if people came in their coffins, and I sat up and leaned on my elbow and there was light in the house. It was not a lamp light. I wanted to see if there was a coffin, but there was not. She was just like she was when she left this world. It was just after I went to bed, and I wanted her to come and talk to me, and she did. This was before the inquest, and I told my neighbors. They said she was exactly as I told them she was.

—   —   —

Now, whether jury members accepted Mary Jane Heaster’s ghost story as being credible, or if it made any difference to their interpretation of the facts, will never be known. And it’s on record the trial judge cautioned jurors about the reliability of circumstantial evidence:

“There was no living witness to the crime charged against Defendant Shue and the State rests its case for conviction wholly upon circumstances connecting the accused with the murder charged. So the connection of the accused with the crime depends entirely upon the strength of the circumstantial evidence introduced by the State. There is no middle ground for you, the jury, to take. The verdict inevitably and logically must be for murder in the first degree or for an acquittal.”

The jury was out for an hour and ten minutes before returning to find Trout Shue guilty of murdering his wife, Zona, in the first degree. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and died of an epidemic disease three years later.

I’d love to go back in time and be a fly on the wall during that deliberation. What they discussed in that sequestered room has long gone to the grave, but I find Mary Jane Heaster’s testimony about Zona’s fractured vertebrae to be downright spooky.

Greenbrier County Courtroom circa 1890

Just when you think you’ve heard the lowest-of-the-low, along come these two judiciary scumbags who shipped helpless American children to jail in return for money kickbacks. This is no joke. Pennsylvania judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan received 28 years and 17 ½ years, respectively, in prison for what’s known as the Kids For Cash scandal. These two legal low-lives sentenced hundreds of defenseless children—some as young as eight—to jail time in a for-profit U.S. prison. The kids’ “crimes” included petty theft, smoking on school grounds, jaywalking, truancy, and other indiscretions.

You’d think this could only happen in some despotic hell-hole, but it took place in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania beginning in the early 2000s. Judges Conahan and Ciavarella made a pact to close their publicly funded, juvenile detention center and contract incarceration services with an allied, for-profit, private facility. What was in it for these two despicable bench-bastards was $2.8 million in under-the-table rewards.

Besides being jailed themselves, the dishonored your-honors were sued by their victims and assessed at over $200 million in settlements. How could this travesty happen in a hell-hole, let alone in America? Let’s look at how the Kids For Cash scandal occurred.

Michael Conahan was born in 1952. He earned his law degree at Temple University in Philadelphia and went on to serve as a Judge on the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County. During the last four years of his tenure, Conahan was the county’s President Judge. He controlled the lock-up budgets with that position.

Mark Ciavarella was born in 1950. His law degree came from Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh and he also served as a Judge on the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County. As well, Ciavarella was a President Judge prior to Conahan.

Michael Conahan (left foreground) Mark Ciavarella (right foreground)

It was during Ciavarella’s presidency that the Kids For Cash scheme hatched. For years, Ciavarella observed a major flaw in the county’s public detention and corrections system. It was terribly inefficient with spending and rehabilitation—a bad bang-for-the buck and a revolving door, especially in the juvenile department.

Ciavarella explored the private corrections model which was cropping up across America. Privately-run jails have always been controversial with the biggest concern being poor treatment of inmates at the expense of excessive profits. This was exactly the profit center that interested Ciavarella, and he took Conahan into his vision of turning the publicly run juvenile detention facility (which he held financial supervision of through his role as president) into a newly constructed, privately funded and for-profit business.

By 2002, Ciavarella and Conahan had their framework in place. They conspired with two other cockroaches—Robert Mericle, a Pennsylvania building contractor, and Robert Powell, a co-owner of the for-profit business—to construct and operate two new jails. The deal was simple. Powell and Mericle would form the company, build the facilities, and operate them. Ciavarella and Conahan would funnel public county money to fund the projects and then stock it with sentenced kids.

In return for cash kick-backs.

Between 2003 and 2008, Ciavarella and Conahan funnelled hundreds of children to the PA Child Care and the Western PA Child Care for-profit juvenile detention centers. In exchange, the two court crooks received and split $2.8 million in kickbacks. What they did with the money is a sick and shameful story of the seven sins.

It was well known that Ciavarella and Conahan ran kangaroo courts where due process was a façade. Youths and their families were lured into waiving their right to counsel with 54.8% of the children not beingrepresented. This was compared to 7.4% in all other parts of Pennsylvania. Further, juvenile offenders were 10 times more likely to be incarcerated in Luzerne County, again compared to all other PA counties.

Judge Ciavarella was particularly brash and abusive towards children in hearings that routinely lasted under five minutes before Ciavarella sent them off to the lockup. Despite dozens and dozens of adult witnesses to Ciavarella’s bad behavior—including court staff, prosecutors, defense counsel, bailiffs, probation officers, police officers, and other judges—no one took Ciavarella to task until word leaked that he was receiving kickbacks from the detention facility operators.

That word came in April 2008 from a confidential source which triggered a multi-disciplinary investigation. The source originally implicated Conahan alone who was the initial focus of a complaint laid by the Philadelphia-based advocacy group called the Juvenile Law Centre. They petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to investigate Conahan which started the ball rolling.

Soon the disciplinary probe discovered there had been four previous complaints laid against Conahan to Pennsylvania’s Judicial Conduct Board. These were between 2004 and 2008 in which none were investigated nor documented. The probe also found the FBI was tipped off about Conahan’s as well as Ciavarella’s kickbacks and the federal law enforcement force also failed to act.

Conahan’s and Ciavarella’s Achilles Heel came in the form of another sleazy judge who turned them in to save her own skin. Ann H. Lokuta was removed from the bench in Luzerne County by the Judicial Conduct Board in November 2008 and was facing indictment for using court workers to do her personal bidding. She “squealed” on Ciavarella and Conahan which kicked the dominoes and flushed a trail of evidence so thick that the two bottom-feeders eventually negotiated guilty pleas to multiple corruption charges. These included racketeering, fraud, money laundering, extortion, bribery, and federal tax violations.

On August 11, 2011, Mark Ciavarella received a 28-year sentence. He’s serving it at a Kentucky federal prison and is set for release in 2035. Ciavarella will be 85 when he’s unlocked.

Michael Conahan faired better. He got a 17 ½ year prison term. It was also in a federal penitentiary until Covid came along and he was released in June 2020 to serve his remaining time under house arrest.

The criminal charges weren’t the end of legal troubles for these two despicable pieces of judicial shit. They were pursued in a class action lawsuit laid by nearly 300 plaintiffs. In August 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Conner ordered Ciaverella and Conahan to pay the victims $106 million in compensatory damages plus $100 million in punitive damages. Conner’s compensation package was based on $1,000 per wrongfully incarcerated day per plaintiff.

To quote Judge Conner: “The plaintiffs are the tragic human consequences of a scandal of epic proportions. The children endured unspeakable physical and emotional trial all for the greed of two despicable men.”

“Despicable.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a strong enough word, so I looked it up. The dictionary defines despicable as “Deserving hatred and contempt.” It also has synonyms of loathsome, reprehensible, detestable, and abhorrent.

Yes, despicable is the right word to describe Michael Conahan and Mark Ciaverella.

But, there are other despicable people in this horrible event. Those are the systematic professionals who stood by and allowed this kangaroo court and for-profit prisons to operate, wilfully oblivious to the greater graft.

Those people should also be held accountable in the despicable kids for cash scandal.

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive devices ever devised by human beings. By conservative estimates from ArmsControl.org and the Federation of American Scientists, there are 12,685 known nuclear warheads in the world’s arms inventory—probably far more. Although there’ve only been two actual combat nuclear deployments in history, hundreds of test activations took place. No one truly knows how many near-miss incidents happened, but we do know of thirteen terribly close calls with nuclear weapon accidents.

By definition, a near-miss is a “narrowly avoided collision, discharge or other accident”. In nuclear weapon terms, that’d be closely avoiding unintentionally setting off an explosion—an explosion with unfathomable consequences. So how is it that people get so careless when handling an instrument of Armageddon? The answer seems to lie in human nature.

The world has eight countries with known nuclear arsenals. By alphabetical order, that’s China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Three more states have active nuclear weapon acquisition and development programs—Iran, North Korea, and Syria. There’s a lot of effort by “responsible” nuclear weapon powers to curtail the rogue countries before they become more of a menace.

Two international agreements regulate the world’s nuclear-equipped countries. One is the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. The other is the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996. They divide the countries into three categories: Nuclear-Weapon States, Non-NPT Nuclear Weapons Possessors, and States of Immediate Proliferation Concern. According to ArmsControl.org, here’s where they fit and what they apparently have.

Nuclear Weapon States

• China — 350 warheads
• France — 290 warheads
• Russia — 5977 warheads
• United Kingdom — 225 warheads
• United States — 5428 warheads

Non-NPT Nuclear Weapons Possessors

• India — 160 warheads
• Israel — 90 warheads
• Pakistan — 165 warheads

States of Immediate Proliferation Concern

• Iran — No confirmed warheads but in active development
• North Korea — Known to possess but unknown quantity estimated at 20-30 warheads
• Syria — No confirmed warheads but in active development

Incidentally, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine inherited nuclear bombs upon the Soviet Union break-up. They returned their stockpiles to Russia, but it’s feared some nuclear devices are unaccounted for and open to terrorist possession. South Africa had a nuclear weapon program with active warheads, but they disbanded it. Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan also stopped their nuclear development programs.

Different Nuclear Weapon Types

Before getting into the thirteen terribly close calls with nuclear weapon accidents, it’s worth a review of what these weapons of mass destruction really are. Most people are aware that nuclear weapons arrived at the end of World War II when America dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. These were first-generation devices. Little Boy was a uranium fission atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and Fat Man was a plutonium fission A-bomb that caused Nagasaki’s destruction.

Fat Man and Little Boy were basic A-bomb nuclear weapons that drew energy by splitting plutonium and uranium atoms through a fission process. They weren’t the tremendously-powerful thermonuclear hydrogen bombs that use a primary fission activation to cause nuclear fusion from hydrogen atoms. A fusion-activated H-Bomb uses a fission reaction to release massive energy contained in hydrogen gas.

The two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were puny compared to today’s extremely energetic thermonuclear weapons. The Japanese destructors held a power equivalent to approximately 20,000 tons of TNT each. Thermonuclear bombs start at about 1/10 million tons of TNT and go up. This energy gets measured in the terms of kilotons (KT) which is 1,000 tons of TNT and megatons (MT) or 1 million TNT tons.

Today, a small-yield nuclear bomb such as a W76 battlefield tactical nuclear weapon would have a 100 KT explosive power. A larger-capacity B83 nuclear bomb would release 1.2 MT in power. Big or small, both designs are enormously destructive and would be devastating if discharged. It’s certainly nothing to risk having an accident with.

Nuclear Weapon Accidents — Broken Arrow

But, accidents do happen with nuclear weapons. They have, and likely will continue, as long as there’s a human element handling them. The United States military has a public record of accidents they’ve experienced with nuclear weapons.

It’s called Broken Arrow. Officially, Broken Arrow lists 32 specific incidents where American nuclear bomb handling went beyond safe handling parameters. Some speculate there are way more—possibly hundreds that haven’t been reported or, worse, covered up. Here are the “official” parameters a nuclear weapon incident/accident must have to make the Broken Arrow list.

• Accidental or Unexplained Nuclear Detonation
• Non-Nuclear Detonation or Burning a Nuclear Weapon
• Radioactive Contamination
• Nuclear Asset Lost or Misplaced in Transit
• Jettison of Nuclear Weapon or Component
• Public Hazard, Actual or Implied

The military loves its code words and phrases. They use Empty Quiver for having a nuclear bomb stolen from them. Dull Sword refers to minor nuclear arms incidents like a malfunctioning vehicle hauling a nuclear bomb. Faded Giant is a failing nuclear reactor. And NucFlash is an intentional or unintentional discharge that starts a nuclear war.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is a watchdog keeping track of close calls with nuclear weapons. They say since the nuclear age started, political and military leaders faced a daunting challenge with their nuclear bomb program. They wanted it free of accidents but still wanted bombs immediately available when and if needed.

So how secure are nuclear weapons against accidental firings, incidental loss, and damage from careless root causes? Well, the good news, they say, is that there hasn’t been a single reported incident where a nuclear or thermonuclear bomb actually went off by accident. The bad news, they report, is there’ve been many, many close calls where accidents and errors nearly nuked us. Here are thirteen terribly close calls with nuclear weapon accidents.

Thirteen Terribly Close Calls With Nuclear Weapon Accidents

13. February 14, 1950 — A U.S. Air Force B-36 bomber en route from Alaska to Texas experienced catastrophic mechanical failure. Most of the crew parachuted out and survived, although the plane crashed and burned in the British Columbia coastal mountains. The one 1-MT Mark 4 nuclear bomb on board was jettisoned into the Pacific Ocean for safety sake. Despite a massive search, the operational nuclear warhead has never been recovered. It’s still out there, armed and waiting to go off.

12. March 11, 1958 — A U.S. Air Force B-47 Stratojet left Savanah, Georgia during a storm. It carried a 1-MT Mark 6 nuclear bomb, and the violent turbulence caused a crew member in the bomb bay to grab on for stability. He accidentally pulled the nuke’s emergency release pin which sent the bomb earthward. It landed at Mars Bluff in a children’s playhouse near three little kids. The bomb failed to detonate but caused a fire that burned down the family home. Fortunately, no one was injured although the children were stunned by the impact concussion.

11. May 22, 1957 — A U.S. Airforce B-36 bomber ran into bad weather over Albuquerque, New Mexico. It had a 10-MT Mark 17 hydrogen bomb in its bay that was accidentally released by a crew member who grabbed the bomb jettison lever to steady himself. The bomb hit the ground with enough force to leave a 12-foot deep by 25-foot wider crater in the desert sand. It didn’t blow up because the fissionable plutonium activator failed to activate. The official report noted that the Mark 17 was the largest nuclear bomb in the American arsenal.

10. March 10, 1956 — A U.S. Air Force B-47 left Florida for Morocco. Somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea, the plane simply vanished. It disappeared. There was no distress call, and no wreckage was ever found. In its bay was one 3.4 MT Mark 15 nuclear bomb as well as an undisclosed number of dismantled nuclear bomb parts. No sign of the plane, its nuclear bomb, or the spare parts ever surfaced.

9. September 19, 1980 — Near Damascus, Arkansas a military personnel working in a Titan Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silo dropped a wrench down the tube and damaged the fuel tank on a Titan II rocket. The leak caused an uncontrollable fire which destroyed the silo and its contents. On top of the Titan missile was a 9 MT W-53 nuclear warhead. It failed to go off but was burned beyond salvage. Should it have exploded, the blast may have set off a chain reaction blowing up 17 other nuclear bombs in the silo complex.

8. January 24, 1961 — A U.S. Strategic Command B-52 bomber experienced a mid-air collision while attempting to refuel with a KC-135 Flying Tanker near Goldsboro, North Carolina. Both jets broke apart and crashed. The B-52 held two 3.4 MT hydrogen bombs that jettisoned under parachute control. One chute failed and the bomb hit the ground at 700 mph. The other’s chute worked and let the bomb down slowly where it got hung up in a tree. Neither thermonuclear device exploded, but the investigation revealed the arming sequence actually activated on the second bomb that was stopped by the tree. It was only a simple switch with two little wires that prevented a major nuclear disaster.

7. July 27, 1956 — At Lakenhearth AFB in the United Kingdom, an American B-47 bomber on a touch-and-go training mission lost control. It plowed into a UK missile silo containing three 3 MT Mark 6 nuclear warheads. The silo, or “igloo” as it’s called, caught fire and burned. Once out, the investigation team found that the warheads were still operational and one bomb’s detonator had been sheared off in the impact. No one could clearly explain why it failed to go off as it should have.

6. January 17, 1966 — The Palomares Incident occurred when an American B-52 bomber had a mid-air collision with its fuel supplier over Palomares, Spain. Both crashed and burned, but the bomber made a controlled jettison of its four 1.5 MT hydrogen bombs. Two parachuted safely to the ground. One’s chute failed and its fission nuclear ignition device exploded. However, the actual fusion nuclear reaction didn’t happen. The preliminary fission nuclear blast caused massive radioactive pollution. The attempted cleanup effort was enormous, and the site still radiates today. Searchers eventually recovered the fourth nuclear bomb from the sea after a long and expensive venture.

5. January 21, 1968  — Four 1.1 MT B23 thermonuclear hydrogen bombs were on board a U.S. B-52 when it caught fire near Thule AFB in Greenland. The situation was hopeless, so the crew set the plane on an autopilot descent towards the open ocean and then bailed out. Every crew member survived, but the bomber did something unexpected. With a mind of its own, it crash-landed itself on the Greenland ice causing the primary fission nuclear ignition material to explode. The main warheads didn’t follow suit. However, the radioactive contamination from the small nuke blasts caused an environmental nightmare for the Greenland area. One investigator said, “It was like four dirty bombs went off.”

4. August 29, 2007 — Although no damage was done, this is likely the most embarrassing nuclear accident the United States Air Force ever experienced. They lost six live AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles equipped with W80-1 variable-yield nuclear warheads for a 36-hour period. Yes, they lost them. The bombs got mistakenly loaded at Minot AFB in North Dakota for transport to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.

These six thermonuclear hydrogen bombs were wrongly taken from a stockpile that were live rather than the decommissioned ones that were supposed to be the day’s cargo. The unguarded nukes sat on a runway all night and then arrived in Louisiana where the ground crew treated them like duds. This SNAFU caused heads to roll right up to the Secretary of Defense because of lax nuclear bomb safety policies.

3. October 03, 1986 — The Russians aren’t without their nuclear bomb accidents. However, they’re usually very tight-lipped so who knows how many they’ve had. This one was impossible to conceal as they rescued their sailors from the Russian K-219 nuclear-powered attack submarine. The sub was near Bermuda when a hatch cover failed. Water leaked in and mixed with nuclear-grade fuel which is not a good thing. Despite all efforts to save the ship, most of the crew was saved.

The submarine fared otherwise. It was put under tow by a Russian freight and taken towards the motherland. Once over very deep water in the mid-Atlantic, the sub broke free and went 18,000 feet to the bottom. With it were two nuclear reactors and 34 operational nuclear-tipped missiles. None of them have been recovered.

2. March 01, 1954 — Not all nuclear accidents come from near misses. This one came from a live and planned thermonuclear hydrogen bomb test the Americans pulled off at remote Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. This was in nuclear bomb research infancy, and the United States military was going for the biggest and best bomb they could build. This day, they tested a project called Castle Bravo which engineers designed for a five MT yield. Somehow, they miscalculated.

The controlled blast was at least three times the expected force—somewhere between 15 and 20 MT. Observers placed outside the expected danger zone were radiated like they’d entered a blast furnace. Twenty-three pour souls on a Japanese fishing boat perished immediately with hundreds of native dwellers on nearby atolls consequently dying of radiation poisoning. Some were children who played in white fallout ash which they thought was this thing called snow.

The radioactive area was enormous. One analyst stated, “If ground zero had of been Washington, DC every resident in the greater Washington-Baltimore would have been instantly dead. Even in Philadelphia, 150 miles away, the majority of inhabitants would have died within an hour from radiation poisoning. In New York City, half the population would be dead by nightfall. And, all the way to the Canadian border inhabitants would be exposed to lethal radiation.”

1. October 30, 1961— Leave it to the Russians to do something really big and radically brazen. They built a gigantic thermonuclear hydrogen bomb—a magnificently monstrous bomb. They called it Tsar Bomba but used the creative code-name Ivan. This was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever made. However, it doesn’t appear they intended Ivan to be this large.

Soviet RDS-202 Tsar Bomba was 26 feet long and 7 feet wide. Ivan’s static weight was 27 tons, and it needed a specially-modified Tu-95 bomber to carry it. The Russian crew detonated Ivan on a deserted island far in the barren north. The area was mostly uninhabited by Siberian terms which seemed like a good place for destructive nuclear testing.

The Russian military, being the secretive bunch they are, never declassified the intended design yield they built into Tsar Bomba. It certainly wasn’t the 57 MT thermonuclear explosion that ensued. This bang was so big that the flash was seen for 630 miles distant. The mushroom cloud extended 40 miles up and spread out hundreds of miles with radiation spreading over multi-thousands of square miles. Windows 560 miles away blew out from the concussion.

Western observers monitored the Tsar Bomba blast and confirmed the energy. They equated Tsar Bomba as using more energy than all the munitions expended by all sides during World War II. That included the nukes on Japan. There are no verified records of how much environmental damage Tsar Bomba accomplished or how many people perished in its aftermath.

The Future of Nuclear Weapon Accidents

It’s naïve to think the world will rid itself of nuclear weapons any time in the foreseeable future. The NPT countries continue to cooperate in reducing their nuclear inventories—within their parameters of trust. Many monitoring protocols keep participating countries “honest”, but it’s the non-NPT nuclear weapons possessors and the immediate proliferation countries that present a high risk for accidents—never mind using a nuke with intention.

Allowing irresponsible, belligerent countries like North Korea, Syria, and Iran to possess nuclear weapons is a serious mistake. It’s an unacceptable threat. It’s not just their instability in aggressively firing the first nuclear shot. It’s the chance they’ll make a terrible error and inadvertently activate a bomb.

The “responsible” nuclear community avoided intentional thermonuclear bomb-throwing since the lesson learned at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Plus the close call in Cuba. But they, too, still haven’t got the safety memo. As long as there’s human involvement with nuclear weapons, there’ll always be a potential accident.

It’s human nature to be careless with things like instruments of Armageddon. But, close calls with nuclear weapon accidents have terrible consequences. Just think of the innocent atoll kids who played in the snow.