arch teams could not locate the fourth bomb. It was lost and had presumably fallen to the bottom of the Mediterranean ocean. 1966 was a time of tremendous strain in the relations between the then Soviet Union and the United States of America. Tensions were running high partially because the on-going conflict in Vietnam and failed Bay-of-Pigs invasion of Cuba. The cold war was at its peak and competition for superior nuclear weapons design between the United States and the Soviet Union was fierce. When the United States government notified the government of Spain of the incident, its government, fearing a radiation leak, demanded a clean up and assurances from the United States that they would recover the bomb. The United States military knew the Soviets were aware of the accident and in an effort to retrieve the bomb and glean secrets from its design and construction, were looking for the bomb too. United States president Lyndon Johnson refused to believe his military's assertions that there was a good probability the bomb could not and would not ever be recovered, by ether side, because of its presumed depth and condition. The president demanded its recovery.A team of was assembled to try to pinpoint the location for a search and to attempt to retrieve the weapon once it was (if ever) located. The group was attempting to use Bayes' Theorem. A group of mathematicians were assembled to construct a map of the sea bottom outside Palomares, Spain. Once the map was completed, the U.S. Navy assembled a group of submarine and salvage experts to place probabilities that Sontag describes as"Las Vegas-style bets" [pg. 63] of each of the different scenarios (outcomes), that might describe how the bomb was lost and what happened to it once it departed the aircraft. Each scenario left the bomb in not just a different place, but in a wide variety of places. Then, each possible location (all inclusive), was considered using the formula th...
