Things I Want To Know
Things I Want To Know
Paul G Newton
Damascus, Arkansas: The Titan II Explosion
55 minutes Posted Feb 1, 2026 at 10:00 pm.
AI Theme Song Experiments
Choosing Today’s Topic
Cold War Missiles In America
Why Over The North Pole Matters
Near Misses And Nuclear Anxiety
The Titan II In Arkansas
Fuel, Oxidizers, And Risk
Human Error And The Dropped Wrench
The Explosion And Immediate Aftermath
How Close We Came To A Fizzle
Mapping Fallout And What Ifs
Decommissioning Titans And Modern Safeguards
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Send us Fan Mail 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 ...