There is some debate as to how many years any bomb parts, including the important bits, may have sat open and unguarded on Canadian soil. There is even the possibility that the core still lies somewhere nearby as we have no definitive answer as to its recovery.
[Cores at this time were transported separate from the bomb. Arming involved manually inserting the core while in flight. It could be anywhere, even thrown into the sea.]
I raise you the world almost ending several times.
First, actual launch orders for nuclear weapons that weren't carried out. [0][1]
Bassett immediately ordered the other launch officer, as Bordne remembers it, “to send two airmen over with weapons and shoot the [lieutenant] if he tries to launch without [either] verbal authorization from the ‘senior officer in the field’ or the upgrade to DEFCON 1 by Missile Operations Center.” [1]
Followed by a myriad of false alarms on both sides too numerous to exhaustively list. [2][3][4]
That "code" was widely known ... to the people controlling the missiles, the only people in the world who could actually use it. Imho that means there was no code.
"Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel."
"WASHINGTON — The Air Force said Wednesday it was only as "an added precaution" that an armored car was hurriedly parked atop a Minuteman 3 silo after the nuclear missile inside gave off false signals suggesting it was about to launch itself nearly four years ago." [They left the brakes off so that, should the cover slide open, the truck might fall into the silo and destroy the missile.]
Several nuclear weapons have been lost over the decades. There's one off the shore of Georgia that's never been found, one in Puget Sound, and a couple more. If you count submarines, there's also the wreckage of the Scorpion which contains two unrecovered nuclear warheads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_British_Columbia_B-36_cra...
There is some debate as to how many years any bomb parts, including the important bits, may have sat open and unguarded on Canadian soil. There is even the possibility that the core still lies somewhere nearby as we have no definitive answer as to its recovery.
[Cores at this time were transported separate from the bomb. Arming involved manually inserting the core while in flight. It could be anywhere, even thrown into the sea.]