flashcard learning apps are popular digital learning tools that show questions on one side and answers on the other.
By simply searching online for terms publicly known to be associated with nuclear weapons, Bellingcat, an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists, was able to discover cards used by military personnel serving at all six European military bases reported to store nuclear devices.
However, the flashcards studied by soldiers tasked with guarding these devices reveal not just the bases, but even identify the exact shelters with « hot » vaults that likely contain nuclear weapons.
They also detail intricate security details and protocols such as the positions of cameras, the frequency of patrols around the vaults, secret duress words that signal when a guard is being threatened and the unique identifiers that a restricted area badge needs to have.
These findings represented serious breaches of security protocols and raised renewed questions about U.S nuclear weapons deployment in Europe.
