Timeline of nuclear risk

This is a timeline of FIXME.

Sample questions

The following are some interesting questions that can be answered by reading this timeline:

Big picture

Time period	Development summary	More details
2000s		"many countries began expressing a newfound interest in nuclear energy during the early 2000s."

Full timeline

Year	Month and date	Event type	Details
1956	November 5		False Alarms during the Suez Crisis.
1959			"The World Bank has long had a policy of not loaning funds for new nu�clear power plant construction. The last nuclear project it financed was a re�actor in Italy in 1959. The Bank adopted a more official policy proscription against loans for nuclear plants in 1996, though the it has supported mod�ernization of existing nuclear plants and supporting orders to advance the decommissioning of facilities and improve safety."
1960	October 5		A radar alert from Thule, Greenland is sent to NORAD, announcing the detection of dozens of Soviet missiles launched for the United States.
1961	January 24		H-bombs Dropped on North Carolina.
1961	November 24		"On this evening, communication links between Strategic Air Command headquarters (SAC HQ) and NORAD went dead. The result was that SAC HQ lost communication with three Ballistic Missile Early Warning Sites (BMEWS) around the world, all of which were supposed to run on independent telephone and telegraph lines."
1962	August 23		"US Bomber in Soviet No-Fly Zone"
1962	October 24		"Soviet Satellite Explodes During Cuban Missile Crisis"
1962	October 25		"Bear Triggers Nuclear Alarm"
1962	October 26		"US F102A Fighters vs Soviet MIG interceptors"
1962	October 26		"Unannounced ICBM Launch during Cuban Missile Crisis A Titan-II ICBM was launched from Florida into the South Pacific. But no one alerted the Moorestown Radar site."
1962	October 26		"Easy-access Codes. With nuclear foreces on high alert because the Cuban Missile Crisis was escalating, work was accelerated at the Malmstrom Air Force Base to prepare the Minuteman-1 missiles for full deployment. In the rush, proper handover procedures and safety checks were skipped. The result was that one of the silos and missiles were ready to go with no armed guards to cover their transport to separate storage. All of the launch equipment and codes were placed together in the silo, which would have allowed a single operator to launch a fully armed missile."
1962	October 27		"October 27, 1962 Soviet Sub Captain Decides to Fire Nuclear Torpedo During Cuban Missile Crisis. This may be the closest call of all. eleven US Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph had cornered the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba, in International waters outside the US “quarantine” area. What they didn’t know was that the temperature onboard had risen past 45ºC (113ºF) as the submarine’s batteries were running out and the air-conditioning had stopped. On the verge of carbon dioxide poisoning, many crew members fainted. The crew had had no contact with Moscow for days and didn’t know whether World War III had already begun. Then the Americans started dropping small depth charges at them which, unbeknownst to the crew, they’d informed Moscow were merely meant to force them to surface and leave."
1962	October 27		"U2 Spy Plane Shot Down Over Cuba"
1962	October 28		"The newly operational Laredo warning site notified NORAD that they had identified two missiles over Georgia."
1962	October 28		"At nearly 9:00 AM, NORAD received news from Moorestown, NJ that a nuclear strike was expected to hit Tampa, FL at 9:02."
1965	November 9		"Power Failure Mistaken for Nuclear Blasts"
1967	May 23		"Confusing Solar Flares and Nuclear Attacks"
1968	January 21		"Hydrogen Bomb Shatters in Greenland"
1973			"The results for sensitive assis�tance increasing exploration are due entirely to three cases: Iran, Iraq, and Taiwan, which received assistance in 1984, 1976, and 1975"
1973	October 24		"False Alarm During DEFCON 3. During the Arab-Israeli war, the U.S. went to high alert as a way of warning the U.S.S.R. not to intervene. "
1974			" Most sig�nificant, in 1974, India conducted a test of a nuclear explosive device using technology it imported from Canada for “peaceful” purposes." "Nuclear tech�nology, materials, and know-how are dual-use in nature, meaning that they can be used for the production of electricity or nuclear weapons. India, for example, used nuclear materials supplied by the United States and a reactor provided by Canada to produce plutonium for a nuclear explosive that was tested in 1974; this early civilian nuclear assistance was the foundation upon which New Delhi built its nuclear program in the 1990s." ||
1974	August 1		“In his last weeks in office during the Watergate crisis, President Richard M. Nixon was clinically depressed, emotionally unstable, and drinking heavily. U.S. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger instructed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to route “any emergency order coming from the president”—such as a nuclear launch order— through him first (Schlosser 2013, p. 360).”
1975			"The results for sensitive assis�tance increasing exploration are due entirely to three cases: Iran, Iraq, and Taiwan, which received assistance in 1984, 1976, and 1975"
1979			"In 1979, at the peak of the nuclear power sector’s growth, 233 power reactors were simultaneously under construction. By 1987, that number had fallen to 120."
1980	March 15		"“The Soviet Union launched four submarine-based missiles from near the Kuril Islands as part of a training exercise. Based on data from a U.S. early warning sensor, one of the launches appeared to have a trajectory aimed at the United States. This led the United States to convene officials for a threat assessment conference (Comptroller General of the United States 1981).”"
1980	June 3 — June 6		"Faulty Chip Signals Soviet Attack"
1980	September 18 — September 19		"Silo Explosion Kills Airman"
1983	September 26		"Soviet Union Detects Incoming Missiles. A Soviet early warning satellite showed that the United States had launched five land-based missiles at the Soviet Union."
1983	November 2 — November 11		"Soviets Misinterpret US Nuclear War Games NATO conduced a massive command post exercise simulating a period of conflict escalation November 2-11 1983. This culminated with a simulation of the highest military alert status, DEFCON 1, and a coordinated nuclear attack against the Soviet Union."
1984			"The results for sensitive assis�tance increasing exploration are due entirely to three cases: Iran, Iraq, and Taiwan, which received assistance in 1984, 1976, and 1975"
1986			"The nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 had a devastating effect on nu�clear industries around the world. To account for the decline in demand for nuclear power following this disaster, a dichotomous variable, Chernobyl, is included and coded 1 if the year is after 1986 and coded 0 otherwise."
1959			"The World Bank has long had a policy of not loaning funds for new nu�clear power plant construction. The last nuclear project it financed was a re�actor in Italy in 1959. The Bank adopted a more official policy proscription against loans for nuclear plants in 1996, though the it has supported mod�ernization of existing nuclear plants and supporting orders to advance the decommissioning of facilities and improve safety."
2007			"In 2007, members of the original group of nuclear winter scientists collectively performed a new comprehensive quantitative assessment utilizing the latest computer and climate models. They concluded that even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could kill as many people as died in all of World War II and seriously disrupt the global climate for a decade or more, harming nearly everyone on Earth."
2007 (July)			"In July 2007, just before Russian President Vladimir Putin vacationed with American President George W. Bush at the Bush home in Kennebunkport, Maine, Russia successfully tested a new submarine-based missile. The missile carries six nuclear warheads and can travel over 6000 miles, that is, it is designed to strike targets in the United States, including, almost certainly, targets in the very state of Maine Putin visited. For his part, President Bush’s administration adopted a nuclear posture that included plans to produce new types of weapons, begin development of a new generation of nuclear missiles, submarines and bombers, and to expand the US nuclear weapons complex so that it could produce thousands of new warheads on demand."
2007	August 29 — August 30		“Six nuclear-armed cruise missiles were mistakenly loaded onto a B-52 bomber at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Although there were multiple instances when the crew should have verified that the cruise missiles were not armed, no one followed required protocol to check for live weapons. The plane sat overnight on the tarmac at Minot, unguarded. It then flew 1,500 miles to a base in Louisiana where it sat unguarded for another nine hours until a maintenance crew there realized that the weapons were live. In total, there were 36 hours during which no one in the Air Force realized that six live nuclear weapons were missing (Schlosser 2013, p. 473). In response to the incident, retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, commander of U.S. Strategic Command from 1996 to 1998, said, “I have been in the nuclear business since 1966 and am not aware of any incident more disturbing” (Warrick and Pincus 2007).”
2016	March 18 – June 15		"19 airmen from the 90th Missile Wing at F. E. Warren Air Force Base are under investigation for illegal drug use. The base operates 150 nuclear missiles, and the airmen who are being charged were responsible for ensuring the security of the weapons."

Meta information on the timeline

How the timeline was built

Base literature

• The Nuclear Renaissance and International Security, by Adam N. Stulberg and Matthew Fuhrmann.

The initial version of the timeline was written by FIXME.

Funding information for this timeline is available.

Feedback and comments

Feedback for the timeline can be provided at the following places:

• FIXME

What the timeline is still missing

• Dead Hand
• Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
• Missile Technology Control Regime
• Multilateral export control regime
• Wassenaar Arrangement
• Nuclear Suppliers Group
• 13 steps
• Nuclear disarmament
• Anti-nuclear movement
• Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
• Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
• Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism
• New Agenda Coalition
• Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
• Zangger Committee
• Nuclear War Survival Skills
• Nuclear holocaust