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Why do we know of several Soviet citizens who saved us by not following orders to launch nukes, but no Americans?
by m_eiman 10y ago
Why do we know of several Soviet citizens who saved us by not following orders to launch nukes, but no Americans?
- tomek_zemla 10y agoActions of these people are somewhat similar to actions of whistle blowers and apparently those are either jailed or chased into exile...
- pvg 10y agoThe Soviet officers we know about did not refuse to follow orders to launch nukes. Arkhipov was following a protocol that was in place precisely to prevent a single person from authorizing the use of nuclear weapons. We do know about several incidents in the US in which responders had to deal with a false alarm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defense_Command#False_alarms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defen...
- mladenkovacevic 10y agoThere was one story that came out recently about an incident at US's nuclear base in Okinawa but that account is now being challenged by several former officers: http://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/features/cold-war-missileers-refute-okinawa-near-launch-1.385439 http://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/features/cold-wa...