During the Cold War, the United States relied on the Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile to deter a Soviet strike. Each missile stood 100 feet tall, armed with a 9-megaton nuclear warhead-the most powerful weapon ever deployed by the US. In September 1980, the safety of this apocalyptic arsenal was completely undone by a single, nine-pound socket wrench. This book chronicles the terrifying physics of the Damascus disaster. During routine maintenance in an underground silo in Arkansas, a technician accidentally dropped a heavy socket. It fell 80 feet, bounced, and pierced the paper-thin skin of the missile's pressurized fuel tank. As highly toxic, explosive Aerozine 50 rocket fuel poured into the silo, the Air Force faced an agonizing mathematical crisis: how to vent the explosive gas before it detonated and launched a live nuclear warhead into the American sky. We explore the desperate, heroic actions of the emergency teams in hazmat suits, the eventual colossal explosion that blew the 740-ton silo doors into the atmosphere, and the miraculous failsafes that prevented the nuclear core from detonating upon impact. Examine the ultimate butterfly effect. Learn how a simple slipped tool in a rural silo brought the United States within minutes of accidental atomic self-destruction.

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