Jan 25, 1995: The day the world ended

[pendell]

Well, not quite (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/coldwar/shatter031598a.htm) , but it came pretty close.

Essentially the Norwegians and the Americans were launching a weather rocket, but the routine notification was eaten by bureaucracy. The result is that the Russian early warning system saw what looked very much like an SLBM fired at the Kola Peninsula, one of Russia's primary military areas.

FORTUNATELY, common sense prevailed and rather than robotically following the 'launch on warning' doctrine, political and military heads watched the scopes until the rocket fell harmlessly into the water.



Pry said that there have been other false alarms in the nuclear age, but none went as far as Jan. 25, 1995, which he described as "the single most dangerous moment of the nuclear missile age."


Well, I for one am rather glad I didn't wake up as nuclear ash on that day. Aren't you?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Mutant Sheep]

It is also one month after Christmas. :smallwink: (And that's not rocket science! ZING ROCKET PUN!)

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I can remember at least 2 other incidents off the top of my head. One was a Russian nuclear sub trapped underwater by American surface boats, in the Caribbean, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the officers had a vote whether to fire their nuclear missiles. For the vote to pass, the vote had to be unanimous. The third or fourth-in-command dissented, and was the ONLY one not to vote to fire, and refused to be cajoled by the others to change his mind.

Another incident involves some Russian sensor at some point bugging out and falsely showing a whole bunch of missiles, and the one guy who was monitoring them deviated from regulations, and decided to double-check if they really were missiles, rather than immediately ordering mutual destruction like he was supposed to.

[Kindablue]

That Sting guy was really onto something.

[Riverdance]

The US version of the nuclear command suitcase (see the above link) is called the "football" and has some interesting stories around it.

"cracked.com" article (http://www.cracked.com/article_18383_8-hilarious-brain-farts-that-endangered-national-security_p2.html)

BBC Article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/328442.stm)

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

This Cracked article has some great "oopsies", nuclear-weapon wise. (http://www.cracked.com/article_19546_7-nuclear-weapon-screw-ups-you-wont-believe-we-survived.html)

[H Birchgrove]

I read somewhere that USSR actually did have a "doomsday machine" similar in purpose to the one in Dr Strangelove...

[razark]

I read somewhere that USSR actually did have a "doomsday machine" similar in purpose to the one in Dr Strangelove...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_%28nuclear_war%29

[H Birchgrove]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_%28nuclear_war%29

Yes, that is the one. Thanks!

[noparlpf]

Honestly, I'd have preferred to wake up dead then than now because I hadn't even lived a year yet then. It feels more wasteful to spend all this time working at living and then to die in an explosion.