Comments on: 7 Close Calls in the Nuclear Age

By: Byron

Byron — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:38:00 +0000

Don’t forget the Able-Archer exercise in 1983. It was a full scale war game that for various reasons the Soviets concluded was almost certainly preparations for a nuclear strike. The Soviets concluded that they probably had little choice but to strike first. Luckily for us all, they kept their powder dry and the exercise concluded without incident. Many think that, rather than any of the weird sensor goofs, this was the closest we got to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. BTW, in ‘63, there were some warheads in place, and the Soviet field commanders had authority to launch on their own judgment if we attacked. When McNamara was told this by his Soviet counterpart a few years ago, they said his face turned white as a ghost…

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:16:00 +0000

There was another episode in the 90’s where the U.S. had launched some weather rockets near the arctic. We notified the Russians, but the message never went up the chain of command. Yeltsin was actually ready to give the command, but a late night phone call to Bush Sr. confirmed it was just a science expirement in the arctic.

By: wheel

wheel — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:06:00 +0000

And these are only the cases that we know about. How many episodes like this did the Soviet Union have that we don’t know anything about. I remember watching “The Day After Tomorrow” as a little kid and being scared S***less for weeks afterward…walking to school looking up at the sky constantly.

Unfortunately there are much scarier things and people out there now.

By: PartiallyDeflected

PartiallyDeflected — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:17:00 +0000

I actually had a situation happen vaguely similar to “War Games” when I was in the Air Force. I was doing a test of software I had added to our system to streamline sending a message that our satellites had detected a “nuclear event.” An officer at the message switch SAC was supposed to make sure the test message only went to NORAD – he messed up and it went to the whole network. That was bad enough, but then it was followed by several messages indicating missile launches. I was scared out of my mind until we determined that the message I sent DID say simulated, and the (Russian) missile launches were already scheduled. Thinking you’re close to death: scary. Thinking you just started a nuclear war: be glad you will never know.

By: adrienne

adrienne — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:14:00 +0000

Don’t you mean ‘nucular’?

By: John Joachim

John Joachim — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:17:00 +0000

Now, granted, no close calls have happened for a number of years, and nearly all of these occurred either during or preceding what has come to be known as the Cuban Missle CRISIS. Either we’ve come a ways in sustaining our livlihood and loving each other (note the allusion to Dr. Strangelove’s alternate title), or else we’ve become more efficient in hiding what really happens inside NORAD, SAC, The Situation Room (not Wolf Blitzer’s). It’s difficult at first for me to believe we’re smarter now than forty years ago in doing anything; but I suppose I can believe that when what’s up for grabs is political hegemony.

Peace,
jj

By: Carter

Carter — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:14:00 +0000

Nuclear weapons aren’t going to go anywhere. They can’t be un-invented, barring some other kind of crisis that will set us back to the stone age.

History being history, the most frighteningly powerful weapons ever invented are sooner or later going to be used in combat. Perhaps the current world political order makes it unlikely, but that’s a temporary thing.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:52:00 +0000

Martin Hellman (who, along with Whitfield Diffie, invented public-key cryptography) has a website that describes his risk analysis, based on close calls like those – how often they happen, and how close they have come.

“As explained in the paper, there is preliminary evidence that deterrence can be expected to work for about 100 years, which is far too high a risk. Aside from concern for future generations, that time horizon implies roughly a 1% chance of failure in any given year and a 10% chance of failure in any decade.”

The site is nuclearrisk dot org. (Can’t post a direct link due to comment filtering.)

By: Kelly

Kelly — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:29:00 +0000

it’s so scary to think that we’ve been so close to a nuclear war for such dumb reasons… especially that it’s happened several times!

By: PuzzleScott

PuzzleScott — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:12:00 +0000

If you want to talk about close calls in 1983, how about Stanislav Petrov’s wise decision on September 26, 1983? He deviated from standard Soviet doctrine by positively identifying a missile attack warning as a false alarm.

If he hadn’t done this, the Soviets would’ve launched real missles in retaliation, requiring the United States to do likewise, and we probably wouldn’t be talking about this right now.