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Perhaps counterintuitively, but I actually find this somewhat reassuring - another example of regular soldiers declining to initiate a nuclear war. Yeah, the ma
by Tossrock 11y ago
Perhaps counterintuitively, but I actually find this somewhat reassuring - another example of regular soldiers declining to initiate a nuclear war. Yeah, the magnitude of the mistake is awful, but the final failsafe (ie, human conscience) seems to work. See also Vasili Arkhipov, Stanislav Petrov, etc.
- eggoa 11y agoThey were also at the wrong DEFCON level for that kind of order, so protocol acted a partial failsafe too.
- Pinckney 11y agoBut consider survivorship bias.
- JackFr 11y agoIt seems more like the anthropic principal than survivorship bias -- since we're here talking about it, we must live in a universe where the fail-safes work.
- emiliobumachar 11y agoI don't think that even total nuclear war would actually wipe out human life on Earth. Keep in mind, 0.1% of a billion people is a whole million people.
- Pinatubo 11y agoYou mean we never think about all of those guys that actually did start a nuclear war?