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A nine-pound socket slipped during routine maintenance inside a Titan II missile silo near Damascus, Arkansas. That’s not a metaphor. That’s the start of a real chain of events that turned a live Cold War ICBM into a disaster under rural farmland.

In this episode, I walk Andrea through it the way I learned it. No assuming you’re a history nerd. No pretending everybody remembers the Cold War. We break down the basics in human language: why these weapons existed, why they were placed where they were placed, and how people can live near something terrifying and still worry more about dinner and the weather.

Then we get into the night itself. The leak. The vapor. The pressure. The decisions made while everybody is trying to figure out what kind of nightmare they are standing next to. The silo ultimately explodes in a massive conventional blast. The nuclear warhead does not detonate, and the reentry vehicle is thrown clear and recovered afterward. That is the “good news.” The other part is realizing how thin the margin was, and how many outcomes still count as catastrophic even when the big one does not happen.

And here’s the line that should bother everybody: luck is not a safety protocol.

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