“Nuclear weapons are dangerous, mmmkay?” According to a recent CRS Report “U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues” (RL33640) — Thanks Steven Aftergood for posting this and many other reports from the Congressional Research Service! — the United States has about 2000 deployed nuclear warheads (I forgive John Oliver for his incited number of 4800). Over the years, there have been several potentially catastrophic accidents with nuclear warheads. The Associated Press has recently documented a huge list of massive dereliction of duty in the US nuclear missile corps. John Oliver goes over the terrifying issues surrounding the US nuclear forces — in an admittedly hilarious way:
To recap:
- Nuclear weapons are the most dangerous things on earth
- The United States has a lot of them
- Some are controlled by floppy disks … literal, actual floppy disks
- You probably wouldn’t trust the people in charge of them to watch your dog for a weekend
- We’ve kind of, sort of, accidentally, nearly dropped them on ourselves a few times
- No one seems to care about any of those facts
- And, once again, they are the most dangerous things on earth
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