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Nuclear Launch Floppy Disks

Discussion in 'Entertainment and Technology' started by Pret Allez, Sep 27, 2014.

  1. Pret Allez

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    I know this is old news, but I still can't get over it. Apparently, many of (if not all of) the United States' nuclear missiles will be launched by floppy disks. And not the "good" 1.44 MB ones either.

    [​IMG]

    These ones.

    So what happens if the Russian Federation decides to nuke us, and we're all like

    Code:
    General failure reading drive A
    Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? _
    
     
  2. BlueAndWhite

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    Well then. That's good... I would have thought with all of the money being spent on the military, they would have updated to at least flash drives or a portable hard-drive
     
  3. Michael

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    :grin:
    This thread rocks...... Can't believe it, Pret Allez. Got a link?
     
  4. Pret Allez

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    Yes. Apparently the Air Force believes that these enhance security.
     
  5. Candace

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    Wow...that's so....1997. We spend so much on the military. You'd think that they'd at least upgrade a bit :lol:
     
  6. Fugs

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    "(CNN) -- On a January night in 1961, a U.S. Air Force bomber broke in half while flying over eastern North Carolina. From the belly of the B-52 fell two bombs -- two nuclear bombs that hit the ground near the city of Goldsboro.
    A disaster worse than the devastation wrought in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have befallen the United States that night. But it didn't, thanks to a series of fortunate missteps.
    Declassified documents that the National Security Archive released this week offered new details about the incident. The blaring headline read: "Multi-Megaton Bomb Was Virtually 'Armed' When It Crashed to Earth."
    Or, as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it back then, "By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted.""

    Report: Two nuclear bombs nearly detonated in North Carolina - CNN.com
     
  7. Ashley2103

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    There's probably more to it than we understand. I don't know.
    ---->
    ......but if it is pointless, they really should upgrade it. Well, maybe not, I don't know.
    ---->
    Maybe it has something to do with combating cyber terrorists?
    ---->
    I'm not gonna judge the Nuclear Launch Floppy Disk :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: I just know too little about the subject to say it is good or bad.
     
  8. Ryujin

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    :icon_bigg
     
  9. Browncoat

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    Well that's disturbing...
     
  10. Chip

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    Actually, if the discs in the picture are the discs being used, those are the REALLY old 8 inch floppy discs, circa 1978. My understanding is that the space shuttle and space station and such are also using 1970s technology because the cost to update, and the complexity of ensuring compatibility, is so enormous that it's less expensive to maintain the obsolete technologies.

    The 8 inch floppies were actually pretty reliable in their day. If they are doing proper maintenance, and re-writing data onto new discs every so often, in spite of the anachronistic nature of the technology, it probably works just fine.

    ... Spoken by someone who has a working 486 33 MHz computer, with an 80mb hard drive (that's *megabyte*, as in, enough space on the whole drive to hold about 15 iTunes songs) that he still uses on a semi-regular basis.
     
  11. monotone

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    What do you use it for?
     
  12. Hexagon

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    *rolls around on the floor laughing*
     
  13. Celatus

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    Actually I think that's something of an advantage. It doesn't mean that the floppy discs are any less reliable. In fact Id say they are far more recognizable and harder for other people to read or copy due to their obsolete nature than other storage media.