6 ms·

It may be that our biggest collective luck was that the alarm happened at the time subcolonel Petrov was on duty. He was an analyst, maybe even chief analyst of

by 4WIW 9y ago

It may be that our biggest collective luck was that the alarm happened at the time subcolonel Petrov was on duty. He was an analyst, maybe even chief analyst of the unit, he authored the playbook for the officers on duty; being on duty wasn't his main job (source: https://cont.ws/@adviser095/717098 https://cont.ws/@adviser095/717098 ), he would go on duty from time to time. Due to his knowledge of the early warning system he was more likely to cast doubt than a regular officer on duty. Several factors looked suspicious: 1) The reported starts (5 in total) happened from a single base in the US which didn't make sense from the military point of view: the US would have put themselves at a grave disadvantage by sending just a few missiles; 2) They had visible light and infra-red visuals on the US territory and none of them checked out and 3) It would have been highly unlikely for the war to start suddenly, without any prior escalation. Like other officers on duty, he had college education as an electronics engineer and additional 2 years of special training. All this probably helped him make the right decision. This is not to take away from the importance of Mr.Petrov's heroic personal contribution: he definitely deserves recognition (which he didn't get from the Soviet Army and his own country BTW). Still I would also like to hope that we are all collectively not as stupid as to go caboom just because of the single fluke in the satellite system.

MichaelMoser123 9y ago
I wonder if there are other, still classified instances where the weapon has almost been launched. If lt. colonel Petrov was aware of the limitations of the early warning system then there must have been other faults as well - I bet there have been problems with the early warning system on both sides...
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Ever hear of the bomb the US accidentally dropped on the mainland? When they recovered it, they discovered the bomb had armed itself and that all the safety mechanisms failed except one.
  - leeoniya 9y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash
  - SilverSlash 9y ago
    What the hell?! How many times are we going to be lucky before something goes very wrong. I hope they are a lot more careful now, and I mean all sides.
    - dbdr 9y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g
  - ams6110 9y ago
    That's why redundant systems are good. It worked as designed.
- teel 9y ago
  The Okinawa missiles of October was a story that looked like a close call (to me at least!). It was on HN couple of years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452983
- aswanson 9y ago
  There was an incident in 1979 where a US military center thought Russia was firing.
- Gargoyle 9y ago
  I recently read the non-fiction book Command And Control by Eric Schlosser. It's structured around an incident when a Titan II missile blew up in its silo in Arkansas, throwing the warhead out of the silo and into the air. Anyway, it uses that incident to go back in history and explain the development of nuclear weapons and how the command and control systems we have today came about. A lot of it was driven to prevent all sorts of near-miss accidents that have happened in the past. We've been really, really lucky. Highly recommend the book, especially for the HN crowd. It's good prose, but gets deep enough into the tech and system details that you come away with a solid understanding of how it all works.
  - billh 9y ago
    This was made into a documentary and is currently available on Netflix. If you can spare 90 minutes check it out, it's a hell of a good watch. https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656 https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656
mk89 9y ago
Yesterday I read an article about this man, and I would say that the year'83 was not actually without (possible) escalations. On the 1st of September, a Korean airplane with 200+ civilians was shot because an "ordinary" officer simply sent a report that a "jumbo jet" was flying over soviet area - and it was "probably a US spying airplane" (that was the idea). Now, if this guy had mentioned "it's a civil airplane, a boeing", I am quite sure things would have been different. The reason Petrov is to be considered a hero of old times is not just because he was able to spot a mistake, but to report something different from what he saw. He took the liberty to decide for an entire nation, and as he also admitted, the 12-13 minutes during which these potential nukes were supposed to reach their final destination were "really long". If he had been so certain, he'd have had no issues - he based his decision on his instinct. If he had simply followed the rules (pretty common in a military hierarchy), we'd probably not be here today. This is what makes this man exceptional - the fact that in the end he even got scolded for not obeying the rules, and that he died "almost" in misery.
majewsky 9y ago
> 1) The reported starts (5 in total) happened from a single base in the US which didn't make sense from the military point of view: the US would have put themselves at a grave disadvantage by sending just a few missiles There was an interview with Petrov (in the 90s or 00s) when he spoke about this point, and the interviewer said that in 1983, the US plans for a preemptive strike started with a "beheading strike", in which a few missiles would be sent to hit the Kremlin and a handful strategic military bases. Then the US would wait if the Soviets were still twitching, in which case the second, more massive round would've been fired. Petrov admitted that, if he had known that, he would've decided differently on that fateful day. (Don't have a direct source link to back this up, sorry. My source is one of the earlier episodes of https://alternativlos.org https://alternativlos.org where they talked about the Cold War.)
- rl3 9y ago
  One would think proper first strikes would be compromised of SLBMs. Then again, it's not a proper Cold War strategic game theory play unless you're banking on your enemy to hesitate due to the unusual nature of the attack. SLBMs scream first strike, while a few birds out of many launching from farm country in the central United States in sequential fashion, not so much. That said, I'm not sure what would have consituted "twitching" after Soviet C&C is wiped out, and if I was a planner at the time I don't think I'd want to find out. It would likely have been prudent to immediately follow up the decapitation strike with complete annihilation of Soviet nuclear retaliatory capability. Every deployed Soviet boomer accounted for and shadowded, with firing solutions computed. Every missile silo targeted. Presumably strategic air bases would be targeted in the first volley, though there would remain the possibility of strategic bomber patrols already airborne. First strikes are really messy and entail a ridiculous amount of risk. Considering the stakes, it's no wonder neither side ever tried.
  - sulam 9y ago
    s/compromised/comprised/
    - doublecorrect 9y ago
cm2187 9y ago
Ignoring the warning for 1) and 3) would have been a mistake in a Dr Strangelove scenario.

by 4WIW 9y ago

MichaelMoser123 9y ago

I wonder if there are other, still classified instances where the weapon has almost been launched. If lt. colonel Petrov was aware of the limitations of the early warning system then there must have been other faults as well - I bet there have been problems with the early warning system on both sides...

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Ever hear of the bomb the US accidentally dropped on the mainland? When they recovered it, they discovered the bomb had armed itself and that all the safety mechanisms failed except one.
- leeoniya 9y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash
- SilverSlash 9y ago
  What the hell?! How many times are we going to be lucky before something goes very wrong. I hope they are a lot more careful now, and I mean all sides.
  - dbdr 9y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g
- ams6110 9y ago
  That's why redundant systems are good. It worked as designed.
teel 9y ago
The Okinawa missiles of October was a story that looked like a close call (to me at least!). It was on HN couple of years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10452983
aswanson 9y ago
There was an incident in 1979 where a US military center thought Russia was firing.
Gargoyle 9y ago
I recently read the non-fiction book Command And Control by Eric Schlosser. It's structured around an incident when a Titan II missile blew up in its silo in Arkansas, throwing the warhead out of the silo and into the air. Anyway, it uses that incident to go back in history and explain the development of nuclear weapons and how the command and control systems we have today came about. A lot of it was driven to prevent all sorts of near-miss accidents that have happened in the past. We've been really, really lucky. Highly recommend the book, especially for the HN crowd. It's good prose, but gets deep enough into the tech and system details that you come away with a solid understanding of how it all works.
- billh 9y ago
  This was made into a documentary and is currently available on Netflix. If you can spare 90 minutes check it out, it's a hell of a good watch. https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656 https://www.netflix.com/title/80107656

mk89 9y ago

Yesterday I read an article about this man, and I would say that the year'83 was not actually without (possible) escalations. On the 1st of September, a Korean airplane with 200+ civilians was shot because an "ordinary" officer simply sent a report that a "jumbo jet" was flying over soviet area - and it was "probably a US spying airplane" (that was the idea). Now, if this guy had mentioned "it's a civil airplane, a boeing", I am quite sure things would have been different. The reason Petrov is to be considered a hero of old times is not just because he was able to spot a mistake, but to report something different from what he saw. He took the liberty to decide for an entire nation, and as he also admitted, the 12-13 minutes during which these potential nukes were supposed to reach their final destination were "really long". If he had been so certain, he'd have had no issues - he based his decision on his instinct. If he had simply followed the rules (pretty common in a military hierarchy), we'd probably not be here today. This is what makes this man exceptional - the fact that in the end he even got scolded for not obeying the rules, and that he died "almost" in misery.

majewsky 9y ago

> 1) The reported starts (5 in total) happened from a single base in the US which didn't make sense from the military point of view: the US would have put themselves at a grave disadvantage by sending just a few missiles There was an interview with Petrov (in the 90s or 00s) when he spoke about this point, and the interviewer said that in 1983, the US plans for a preemptive strike started with a "beheading strike", in which a few missiles would be sent to hit the Kremlin and a handful strategic military bases. Then the US would wait if the Soviets were still twitching, in which case the second, more massive round would've been fired. Petrov admitted that, if he had known that, he would've decided differently on that fateful day. (Don't have a direct source link to back this up, sorry. My source is one of the earlier episodes of https://alternativlos.org https://alternativlos.org where they talked about the Cold War.)

rl3 9y ago
One would think proper first strikes would be compromised of SLBMs. Then again, it's not a proper Cold War strategic game theory play unless you're banking on your enemy to hesitate due to the unusual nature of the attack. SLBMs scream first strike, while a few birds out of many launching from farm country in the central United States in sequential fashion, not so much. That said, I'm not sure what would have consituted "twitching" after Soviet C&C is wiped out, and if I was a planner at the time I don't think I'd want to find out. It would likely have been prudent to immediately follow up the decapitation strike with complete annihilation of Soviet nuclear retaliatory capability. Every deployed Soviet boomer accounted for and shadowded, with firing solutions computed. Every missile silo targeted. Presumably strategic air bases would be targeted in the first volley, though there would remain the possibility of strategic bomber patrols already airborne. First strikes are really messy and entail a ridiculous amount of risk. Considering the stakes, it's no wonder neither side ever tried.
- sulam 9y ago
  s/compromised/comprised/
  - doublecorrect 9y ago

cm2187 9y ago

Ignoring the warning for 1) and 3) would have been a mistake in a Dr Strangelove scenario.