Editor and co-author of Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of US Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 • Independent expert on nuclear weapons and nuclear policy
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Under very dangerous conditions, the crew managed to shut down the submarine’s reactors and stabilize it. Captain Igor Britanov was ordered to have the K-219 towed by freighter 4,300 miles to its homeport of Gadzhiyevo (near Murmansk), but it flooded and sank three days later. 
While the explosion was chemical in nature (much of the liquid waste evaporated over time, leaving behind a volatile dry mixture of sodium nitrate and sodium acetate), a brief nuclear criticality may have initiated it. The explosion’s size has been estimated at 5-100 tons of TNT.
The explosion—which occurred more than 8 hours after a worker accidentally dropped a large socket, puncturing a fuel tank—killed Sr. Airman David Livingston, 22, destroyed the missile and silo, and hurled its 9-Mt W53 warhead through the 740-ton silo doors and ~100 feet away. 
The NB-36H flew directly over Lake Worth, the principal water source for Fort Worth. A B-50 carrying specially-trained paratroopers escorted each test flight. Had the NB-36H crashed, they would jump into the impact zone to prevent any unauthorized entry.
Multiple technicians recorded the remark, yet networks didn't broadcast it because, in the words of a CBS executive, “… what the president says prior to his statements on the air is off the record.” 
Although the United States considered Hiroshima a militarily significant target, 90 percent of the people killed there were civilians. Of the 24,000 soldiers stationed in the city, only about 7,000 died in the bombing. (Below, a clay roof tile fragment burned by Little Boy.) 
~20 min. after the crash, the Mark-4’s 5,000 lbs. of high explosives detonated, killing 7, injuring 173, destroying all the base’s fire trucks, and severely damaging a trailer park. USAF claimed the explosion—which was heard 30 miles away—was caused by conventional 500-lb. bombs. 
In fact, some 40,000 people lived in the vicinity. Manhattan Project scientists methodically tracked the radioactive cloud from that first test (left). The Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment Project created a more recent graphic (right) using the same data. 
The coolant disruption and partial meltdown triggered a power excursion that could have caused the reactor to explode (as happened at Chernobyl). Although automatic safety systems failed to shut down the reactor, the operators successfully initiated a manual scram.
For some perspective, $5.5 trillion was 29% of all military spending—incl. WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Gulf War I—and nearly 11% of all gov’t spending. Nuclear weapons have consumed more taxpayer dollars than everything except all non-nuclear military spending and Social Security. 
The unprecedented raid halted production of new plutonium pits, ultimately ending the manufacture of new US nuclear warheads. In 1992, contractor Rockwell International pled guilty and paid a $18.5 million fine, the largest levied for an an environmental crime to that date. 
Launch officers for 1,000 Minuteman ICBMs were also alerted to be ready to receive an Emergency Action Message (a coded launch order). Three minutes later, duty officers at NORAD determined this was a false alarm because early-warning satellites and radars indicated no attack. 
For more on the negotiating history of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, including its unprecedented on-site verification system, see this remarkable collection of declassified documents from the @NSArchive: nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/… 
Taylor (1925-2004) subsequently recalled that he “carefully extinguished the cigarette and saved it for a while in my desk drawer at Los Alamos. Sometime, probably in a state of excitement about some new kind of bomb, I must have smoked it by mistake.” 
The photo at right was taken through the periscope of the USS Carbonero (SS-337), which was submerged 25 miles from the aim point. The warhead detonated at an altitude of 11,000 feet. The range clock at the upper right indicates 14:33, the local time at the launch point.
In 2010, NPR interviewed US Air Force veteran Bruce Charles, who was on alert that day at Kunsan AB in South Korea and told to prepare to strike his target, a North Korean airstrip. His F-4 Phantom II fighter carried a single 300-kiloton B61 gravity bomb. npr.org/2010/07/06/128…