• LostXOR
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      6 months ago

      Then again, theres about 13 undiscovered, lost, still armed nuclear bombs that the Americans lost in test drops. Mostly dropped into oceans, they’ve been deteriorating away for 70ish years. Wherever they are an earthquake could set them off. Maybe an aggressive shark. The point is, there are 13 points which we KNOW at some point, will set off a WWII era atomic bomb. This will have an unknown outcome, 13 different times. Any one of which might end Earth. Or maybe it causes some tidal waves. No one knows.

      This is completely wrong. Lost nuclear bombs are not going to be functional in the slightest after decades, as they require very precisely timed detonation of explosive charges to actually trigger the main fission reaction. They’re not like chemical bombs, which will explode with enough heat or pressure. And after decades the circuitry to control the explosive charges will be long dead.

      • mememuseum
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        56 months ago

        Also, the fissile material has been radioactively decaying for decades and should no longer be refined enough to go critical.

        • LostXOR
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          36 months ago

          I’m not sure about that, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24k years and uranium-235’s is far longer.

      • @[email protected]
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        16 months ago

        You’re probably right, and in terms of the design yield absolutely right.

        But if just one explosive charge were to miss fire, you could theoretically still get a fizzle that measures in single digit or even tens of tonnes of TNT.
        That’s pretty trivial as bombs go, but it would be incredibly dirty.

    • SeaJ
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      246 months ago

      And it was worse too, because racism absolutely existed in the 80s, just as it always has. However people in the 80s knew racism was wrong, and bad. Even in the 80s, you knew you didn’t want to be known as a racist.

      Shit, interracial marriage was not acceptable to the majority of Americans until 1994. People deluded themselves into thinking that was not racist.

      • kase
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        86 months ago

        As a gay man- at least in my local community, the loophole does exist, and I’ve heard a good number of queer people use it (though only in conversations with people they know will be comfortable with it). 🤷

        I don’t necessarily take issue with it being used in a clinical tone like this. Context is context tho, and I don’t speak for everybody ofc. °⁠_⁠o