The American election is in its final deciding hours, and for some voters, one result may seem like the end of the world as we know it. While that may be an exaggeration, what has never been, is the threat of catastrophic nuclear bombs (yeah we know, that escalated quickly). Putting it lightly, the weapons are incredibly brutal, and have the power to destroy anything in sight. This is exactly why anything in a similar vein, has remained unused since WWII. Still, the fear of these explosives carried into the Cold War, and their usage remains a hot-button issue to this day.
While global peace treaties and mutually assured destruction, is enough to stop people from using nuclear warheads, there is one missing "nuke" that has left people on edge for decades. Way back in 1950, a dummy bomb went missing from an American plane, during a simulation exercise off of Canada's western coast. The plane held a bomb that, while void of plutonium, carried a mixture of uranium, lead, and TNT. It was substantial combination, and when the plane crashed due to engine failure, the government sent out a search party to retrieve its dangerous package. The wreckage of the aircraft was finally discovered three years later, but the bomb has never been accounted for.
Sean Smyrichinsky, is a Canadian commercial diver, who was exploring the ocean waters of British Columbia. The diver told CBC that he was looking for sea cucumbers near Pitt Island, when he came across a strange structure in the depths of the sea. "It resembled, like, a bagel cut in half, and then around the bagel these bowls moulded into it," Smyrichinsky told reporters. He originally thought it was a UFO, and relayed the finding to the Canadian Armed Forces on Halloween. Experts now say that the object, may in fact, be the missing bomb from the same B-36 plane crash, way back in 1950.
Sean's story sparked an investigation with the Canadian government, who are in the process of checking out the site. While the diver isn't sure of the object's actual origin, he told CTV news that he puts the odds at 50/50 of being the "missing nuke". You can read more about the history behind the missing weapon here, via the Royal Aviation Museum.
