Five Russian nuclear engineers were killed in a rocket engine explosion on Thursday.
Many believe that the explosion was linked to the development of a nuclear powered cruise missile promised by Putin last year.
Radiation levels in nearby towns spiked to 20 times their regular levels.
Naturally, President Donald Trump was quick to tweet about it.
The President claimed the United States was "learning much" from the explosion before bragging that we have more advanced technology.
The problem?
The United States gave up efforts to build nuclear powered cruise missiles half a century ago. They're too dangerous to test and too impractical to execute.
So, Trump either just blabbed on Twitter that the United States does in fact have a covert nuclear powered cruise missile program, or he lied to engage Putin in a pissing contest of nuclear proportions.
Neither option is a comfort to experts in the field.
Even the former Ambassador to Russia was like "lol wut?".
Bulletin of the Atomic Senior Fellow Stephen Schwartz wanted to know if the President was "baselessly boasting or divulging secrets?"
And, honestly, so do we.
Giphy
Basically...
Good luck, girl!
The Oscar nominated documentary American Experience: Command & Control based on the book of the same name is available here.
"Filmmaker Robert Kenner examines how human error caused an explosion at a nuclear site toward the end of the Cold War and links mutually assured destruction to self-annihilation."
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