If that B52 had exploded, the death toll would probably have been smaller than that of the Hiroshima bomb. (It landed in a random bit of countryside, not a city). Unless you think that accident would have triggered all out nuclear war? Sure, it would have a large impact on American politics. Quite possibly lead to total nuclear disarmament, at least of America. But any anthropic or fine tuning argument doesn’t apply.
Suppose we were seeing lots of “near misses”. These were near misses of events that, had they happened, would have destroyed a random american town. Clearly this isn’t anthropic effects or similar. I would guess something about nuclear safety engineers being more/less competent in various ways. Or nuclear disarmament supporters in high places that want lots of near miss scares. Or the bombs are mostly duds, but the government doesn’t want to admit this.
To clarify I’m of the view that during this time period the unplanned detonation of a nuclear weapon on American soil would have prompted a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union. I think this is a relatively safe assumption due to how high the tensions were and how gunho the US was with nuclear weapons. I think the coincidences surrounding nuclear weapons also support this interpretation.
The alternative explanations you suggest are ad-hawk and don’t hold up to scrutiny. Disarmament supporters wouldn’t favor a system with more close calls so that fear over those close calls might lead to disarmament. This only make sense if they support disarmament for reasons other then being worried about nuclear risk.
The bombs being duds also doesn’t make sense, none of the bombs in these cases turn out to be duds, if this is the case then this would be a massive conspiracy and such a conspiracy would be hard to keep under raps.(it also conflicts with the US’s general nuclear strategy)
If that B52 had exploded, the death toll would probably have been smaller than that of the Hiroshima bomb. (It landed in a random bit of countryside, not a city). Unless you think that accident would have triggered all out nuclear war? Sure, it would have a large impact on American politics. Quite possibly lead to total nuclear disarmament, at least of America. But any anthropic or fine tuning argument doesn’t apply.
Suppose we were seeing lots of “near misses”. These were near misses of events that, had they happened, would have destroyed a random american town. Clearly this isn’t anthropic effects or similar. I would guess something about nuclear safety engineers being more/less competent in various ways. Or nuclear disarmament supporters in high places that want lots of near miss scares. Or the bombs are mostly duds, but the government doesn’t want to admit this.
To clarify I’m of the view that during this time period the unplanned detonation of a nuclear weapon on American soil would have prompted a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union. I think this is a relatively safe assumption due to how high the tensions were and how gunho the US was with nuclear weapons. I think the coincidences surrounding nuclear weapons also support this interpretation.
The alternative explanations you suggest are ad-hawk and don’t hold up to scrutiny. Disarmament supporters wouldn’t favor a system with more close calls so that fear over those close calls might lead to disarmament. This only make sense if they support disarmament for reasons other then being worried about nuclear risk. The bombs being duds also doesn’t make sense, none of the bombs in these cases turn out to be duds, if this is the case then this would be a massive conspiracy and such a conspiracy would be hard to keep under raps.(it also conflicts with the US’s general nuclear strategy)