Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for October 01, 2017

Wylie bomb?

…Who the heck goes treasure hunting on abandoned missile ranges?

1 Kabooma-Booma coming up.

Well, that wouldn’t make it blow, but one day I was visiting a friend on his Air Force base when a B-52 came in to land and sirens were going off. They’d had a “failure”, and a nuke was hanging out through the bay doors! Fortunately, it cleared when they landed!!

“Rocket Man”?

@Bilan: Somewhere safe? You mean like North Carolina? or Spain?

The number of accidents that have happened to nuclear weapons is quite amazing.

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/11/339131421/nuclear-command-and-control-a-history-of-false-alarms-and-near-catastrophes

And the non-weapon accidents are covered pretty well in

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-60598-492-6

The sort of thing trout saw happened way too often. Generally, the weapons are “safed” but stuff happens. But we have been very very lucky.

Oh, and while the US has not misplaced any missiles, there is still an H-Bomb in North Carolina, which has not been located… Fortunately it is pretty deep.

Good thing they are transported without the detonators hooked in or it would have been much worse.

And the Wiley bears aren’t behind this?

In Wylie’s cartoons, bears are practical, people are stupid….no bears required here.

Doesn’t work that way.

Anybody see the parallels between today’s strip and recent news?

Three dyslexic commenters today. Wiley, not Wylie.

Reminds me of a couple of really old Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons.

What a perfect metaphor for trump and North Korea. “What’s the worst that can happen”? And Wiley lets us know in no uncertain terms what the worst is.

Can a metal detector detect (nonmagnetic) gold?

OK, not gonna happen. The structures they are housed in no nose would be poking out of and have security systems that give Security plenty of time to get there before anyone could get in. Except the skunks… A farmer got curious once at the bunker on his property (which they are paid pretty well for) and tried to pry one open with his tractor. Couldn’t get the door to budge at all. I don’t think he got much more than a slap on a wrist, even though he had to cut down a good deal of fence to get in to the area. Guess it’s a privilege living in the great white north of North Dakota. Anyway, believe it or not, nuclear missiles and bombs are much more accident proof than conventional ones. The only thing risky about nuclear weapons right now is anyone in the chain of command believing anyone could win a nuclear war.

That said, as for the cartoon, there are people in Europe that may find something like this more likely. Though thankfully not a Minuteman missile. They have been digging up and finding UXOs (unexploded ordinance) all over Europe since the end of WWII, which is plenty dangerous enough. As they continue to degrade, unexpected explosions from those underground not yet found are becoming an increasing worry.

Pretty sure some random guy wouldn’t get anywhere near one of those, and even if he did, the hatch to the silo would be closed.

The stories are interesting. Yet let’s not get stuck in details. This is a comic about greedy being stupid.

A more realistic “joke” would to have it as a land mine rather than a missile, but that wouldn’t actually be funny.

Well, the multi-ton blast doors that slide back, would make entry “difficult”.

The Worse? answer: trump. . .

Nowhere near as many comments for this as for yesterday’s thrilling installment of our gripping drama……though I suppose that it’s early yet.

He would feel a thing. I will refrain from mentioning anything about Trump desenters. You don’t have to stand for Trump. But you should stand for your flag and your country…

Oh wait… maybe they think they’re kneeling before the king!! Which would still be wrong.

@Oakstone: WW2 bombs do not pop up everywhere, at least in the US.

In Europe: Yes, there have been a couple of major evacuations this year. Some farmers get killed every year when they strike WW1 and WW2 explosives.

I’m sure Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia find a lot.

In the US, the most likely find would be artillery rounds. When Fort Ord closed, they had to do a lot of work looking for duds. There are some bombing ranges in the US, mostly in the Southwest. And on Kahoʻolawe island off of Maui. (The Navy even test fired torpedoes at the cliffs, as well as naval guns and bombs.)

Much more scary would be something like this:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170926-the-deadly-germ-warfare-island-abandoned-by-the-soviets

Not 18k. Pure gold is 24k.

Reminds me of the story RADM Dan Gallery told: seems they were developing an atomic hand grenade. Blew a hole in the ground a hundred yards across. But they were having trouble testing it; it was so heavy you could only throw it about forty feet…