World of the Bizarre

Police called out after inert nuclear missile found in man's garage

By T.K. Randall
February 3, 2024 ·  14 comments

The missile was a little worse for wear. Image Credit: Bellevue Police Department. It's not unusual to find old car parts, rusted bicycles, old boxes and other junk stuffed away at the back of someone's garage. To find a nuclear missile, on the other hand, is a different story altogether.

When a man in Bellevue, Washington recently offered to donate an inert nuclear missile to a military museum in Ohio, the first thing the museum did was call the police.

When officers arrived at the donor's home, they discovered that there really was an old rusted nuclear missile in the man's garage - though fortunately it was missing its nuclear warhead.

The bomb squad was even called to the property to ensure that there was no danger to the public.According to a blog post on the Bellevue Police Department's website, the donor of the missile had actually acquired it from his deceased neighbor who had bought it at an estate sale.

"Bomb squad members inspected the object and then learned that it was in fact a Douglas AIR-2 Genie (previous designation MB-1), an unguided air-to-air rocket that is designed to carry a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead," the department wrote. "There was no warhead attached."

The donor himself was reportedly "extremely irritated" by all the media coverage received.

"Because the item was inert and the military did not request it back, police left the item with the neighbour to be restored for display in a museum," the department wrote.

And we think it's gonna be a long, long time before we get another call like this again 🚀https://t.co/QePBTkDVFk pic.twitter.com/YXslykeOIT

- Bellevue, WA Police (@BvuePD) February 2, 2024

Source: BBC News | Comments (14)

Tags: Missile, Nuclear