NEWS YOU CAN USE? When to Shoot a Nuclear Bomb With Your Gun.

While at an air base almost certainly located in what was then West Germany, Agnew saw little evidence that nuclear weapons were under strict American control, as Congress expected.

At best there was what he later called a “token custodial arrangement” that he witnessed when he saw nuclear bombs hanging under West German aircraft with only the supervision of a young, lone American G.I. on the flight line.

“What are you going to do if these guys come running out and they’re going take off and no one has told you that it’s all right?” Agnew asked the soldier.

The soldier said he didn’t know what to do.

“What you ought to do is just shoot the bombs,” Agnew told him, counting on the high probability that bullets would disable the weapons. “Shoot those things and don’t worry about it.

A security plan that calls for shooting The Bomb—and crossing your fingers for luck might—sound like a scene straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

But Agnew’s recollections are just some of dozens about the often fragile nature of nuclear weapons safety and security in a documentary produced by the Sandia National Laboratories for internal use and recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act.

Much more at the link.