Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

Unlike the bomb squads run by law enforcement agencies, the Air Force EOD teams usually didn’t care about preserving evidence. They were trained to get rid of the hazard, as quickly as possible, and then get out of the way. Arnold learned how to render safe all the conventional warheads, rockets, artillery shells, and bombs in the American arsenal. He also learned how to defuse the sort of handmade, improvised explosive devices used by terrorists groups like the Red Brigades and the Palestine Liberation Front. The handmade stuff could be tricky and unpredictable; the military ordnance, simpler but more powerful. An EOD technician had to approach both kinds with the same mental attitude — disciplined, thoughtful, patient, and calm.

Arnold performed well enough to enter Division Six, the program at Indian Head that taught students how to dismantle a nuclear weapon. The course began with a lesson on the dangers of radioactivity. Every class was shown the film of Louis Slotin dying from radiation sickness in 1946, after his criticality accident at Los Alamos. It was hard to watch. Slotin had been fully conscious and in enormous pain, as his skin swelled, changed color, blistered, and peeled away.

After learning how to use radiation detectors and calculate safe exposure times, the trainees became familiar with various nuclear weapon designs. At the time, the United States had about twenty-five different types — missiles, rockets, warheads, and bombs; artillery shells, depth charges, torpedoes, and mines; large weapons and small ones, atomic and thermonuclear. The most powerful were the Mark 53 bomb, delivered by aircraft, and the W-53 warhead carried by the Titan II. The least powerful was the Mark 54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM), with a yield of less than 1 kiloton. The SADM weighed only sixty pounds. It was known as a “suitcase bomb” or a “backpack bomb” because of the preferred methods of delivery. One person would carry the SADM and place it in the right spot. Another would set the timer, and then they’d both leave in a hurry.

The instructors at Division Six offered some basic tips on how to deal with a nuclear weapon that’s been in an accident. The first thing you want to do, they said, is find out whether the case of the weapon has been compromised and whether any components have shifted inside it. If your gamma ray detector is showing high levels of radiation, you’ve got a serious problem. Gamma rays will pass right through your protective gear. If you can detect gamma rays from a distance, back away immediately. The weapon may have partially detonated — or it may be about to detonate. But if lives are at stake, calculate how long you can work at the accident site without getting too much gamma radiation.

Always wear a bunny suit, they said, when you walk up to the weapon for the first time. It’s the yellow jumpsuit with the hood. And keep an eye on your alpha and beta meters. If they detect anything, that probably means the weapon’s case has been compromised. The alphas are emitted by the nuclear core, the betas by the tritium gas used to boost it. Your bunny suit will block them, and the respirator will prevent you from inhaling them. And remember: never take off your mask, even if there’s no sign of radiation, until you’re sure that the “skull” of the weapon is intact. The skull is the beryllium reflector around the core. Inhaling beryllium dust can be worse than inhaling plutonium. Both of them can be lethal.

In addition to an alpha meter, a beta meter, a gamma meter, and a tritium meter, an EOD team relied on more prosaic tools to handle a nuclear weapon accident — screwdrivers, ratchets, wrenches, and pliers. The tools were made with metal alloys unlikely to create a spark. If the weapon looked capable of detonating, an EOD technician would open its case with a screwdriver. The most important goal, by far, was to isolate the power sources and ensure that electricity could not reach the detonators. The best way to do that was simply to disconnect the batteries and yank them out. Capacitors that had already charged could be short-circuited with the touch of a screwdriver. But if the X-unit had already charged, an EOD technician had to be very careful. A wrong move could trigger it and detonate the weapon.

Arnold practiced the render safe procedures on dummy weapons that were identical to the real thing — except for the high explosives and fissile material, which were fake. The job was a meticulous process of disassembly. You took the weapon apart, wrapped the parts in plastic, boxed them up, and got them ready for return shipment to the manufacturer. After months of training, Arnold passed all the tests at Indian Head and joined an EOD unit at Barksdale Air Force Base, outside Shreveport, Louisiana. He had learned how to defuse car bombs and biological weapons, to handle Broken Arrows and dismantle nuclear warheads. He was twenty years old.

WHEN SID KING GOT TO CLINTON, he hurried into the radio station and turned on the transmitter. KGFL was licensed to broadcast only during the daylight hours, but the Federal Communications Commission allowed a sunset station to go on the air during an emergency. King thought the explosion of an intercontinental ballistic missile qualified as one. Moments later, his wife arrived at the station, happy to see that he hadn’t been killed. King described the blast to his listeners, and callers to the station shared what they’d seen. Soon the little studio at KGFL was crammed with people, as friends and neighbors gathered there, eager to find out what was going on.

The Air Force was refusing to disclose any information about the explosion. It would not explain what had just happened. It would not discuss the potential danger from toxic fumes. It would neither confirm nor deny that the Titan II was carrying a nuclear warhead. Journalists who called Little Rock Air Force Base were told to phone the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command in Omaha — and nobody at SAC headquarters would answer their questions. SAC headquarters wouldn’t even tell Frank Wilson, the director of environmental services at the Arkansas Department of Health, if the accident had spread radioactive contamination. SAC wouldn’t tell him anything. And so Wilson called a Department of Energy office in Albuquerque. An official there asked him to describe the explosion. Wilson mentioned the fireball and the sparkly thing that seemed to emerge from it. The DOE representative said that the missile probably did carry a nuclear warhead — and it sounded like the high explosives of the weapon had detonated, spreading fissile material. Unable to get any confirmation from SAC, the state of Arkansas sent employees to Van Buren County with radiation detectors.

The Air Force’s silence helped to sow panic and confusion. More than a thousand people left their homes, got into their cars, and fled the area around Damascus. One caller to KGFL said that he was leaving town to stay with family in Fairfield, Illinois, about four hundred miles away. Other callers told of windows being blown out, doors knocked off hinges, an ominous dark cloud that passed over their homes. The cloud smelled like rotten eggs, burned their eyes, and made them cough. The refusal to acknowledge that the missile carried a nuclear weapon made the Air Force seem foolish. One of KGFL’s listeners phoned the station and said that he’d found the radio frequency that SAC was using at the missile site. The conversations with the Little Rock command post weren’t being scrambled. And the whereabouts of “the warhead” were being discussed.

AFTER TELLING THE TRUCKERS in Bee Branch to hit the road, Sheriff Anglin got back into his squad car and drove south on Highway 65 toward Damascus. He wanted to make sure that everybody within five miles of the silo had been evacuated. He stopped at a roadblock north of Launch Complex 374-7. The security police manning it were wearing gas masks.