Just as a critical mass of fuel is needed for a nuclear explosion, so a critical mass of media attention is required for people to grasp that the “failsafe” mechanisms on nuclear weapon systems can fail – and that it has almost happened many times.  Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control : Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusions of Safety (Penguin) has been widely reviewed and the author has been interviewed at length. Attention has focussed on the 1961 near-disaster in North Carolina, when a nuclear bomb, parachuted to the ground after the B-52 carrying it went out of control, only failed to explode because of a single  switch in the plane’s cockpit. Equally gripping is Schlosser’s account of the 1980  “Damascus accident”, in which the skin of a Titan missile was punctured when a technician dropped the socket of his wrench. One of the fuels in the missile ignited and the warhead was ejected. If it had exploded it would have incinerated most of Arkansas. As Schlosser says, every nuclear-tipped missile is “an accident waiting to happen”.

Schlosser’s careful research, making good use of  the US Freedom of Information Act, his vivid but un-sensational writing, and  his previous publishing record, have ensured that this book receives the attention it deserves. But it is no criticism to observe that we have known about the danger all along.  A Google search will disclose several previous books on the subject, and lists of accidents going back over 60 years. More to the point, it was always obvious to any rational person that these complex weapons and delivery systems could not be expected to function with 100 per cent reliability, and that failure could have catastrophic consequences for millions.

The North Carolina near-miss, which has attracted so much attention in Schlosser’s book, was already known about a year after it happened, I have a Peace News pamphlet dated November 1962 which refers to it. The Arkansas incident led to a Congressional enquiry, and was discussed at a Pugwash conference on Accidental Nuclear War in July 1989.

The argument that nuclear war may start by accident was often used by CND activists in those early years – we referred to it as the “flock of geese” argument, because of a story that the US early warning system had mistaken a flock of geese for a flight of Soviet planes. The story may be apocryphal, but the “Petrov incident” in September 1983, when a Soviet early warning system gave a false reading of a US missile launch,  is well documented. Fortunately the Russian monitor, Lt Col Petrov, took a chance with his career, and ignored the initial report instead of reporting it to higher command.

The danger of a nuclear disaster by accident or miscalculation was expressed in some powerful fictional works, such as Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957), Merdecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959),  and in the films Fail Safe and (most famously)  Dr Strangelove, both released in 1964.

But what was obvious to us was also – of necessity – officially denied. It was easier for governments to acknowledge that deterrence might break down, and a nuclear war might occur – hence the need for “civil defence” as set out by the Home Office in publications such as Protect and Survive (1980), and the US government’s advocacy of  nuclear shelter programmes. At least we would have four minutes warning, they argued, and perhaps much more as a build-up of international tension would precede the move to actual war. What could not be admitted was the possibility that bombs or missiles would explode with no warning at all.  Even in the anti-nuclear movement, the argument often seemed weaker than our critique of the cold war and how it might turn into hot war.

Are we any safer now, and are defence establishments any more candid than before?  Missiles are still on patrol and on alert, and the nuclear club has expanded since the 1960s. It is good to see The Economist, no less, review Schlosser’s book under the headline “Start Worrying”. Our job – and it should be the job of our media and elected MPs too —is to get the government to start worrying.

John Gittings