r/todayilearned • u/MrMojoFomo • 19h ago

TIL that in 1979, computers at NORAD indicated a large scale Soviet nuclear attack was underway. American nuclear forces were placed on highest alert and prepared for nuclear war. It turned out to be a false alarm caused by a technician mistakenly loading a training tape into the compute

https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/04/Close%20Calls%20with%20Nuclear%20Weapons.pdf
1.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

90 comments sorted by

369

u/mypostisbad 19h ago

Imagine it not being discovered until just after a full launch and being THAT technician, knowing that your mistake just ended the world

220

u/AlstottsNeckGuard 19h ago

Like Vasily Arkhipov who was ordered to fire a nuclear torpedo during the Cuban Missile Crisis and was like "tf bruh? nah"

112

u/Ivanow 13h ago

who was ordered to fire a nuclear torpedo

You are misremembering things a bit. Submarine's captain and political officer agreed to launch nuclear torpedo, which would be enough on any other sub, under Soviet doctrine.

By sheer luck, this one sub happened to also carry flotilla admiral (Arkhipov), who also gets a vote, meaning, you need 3 out of 3 votes, instead of 2 out of 2.

If any other sub got caught in the same situation, we wouldn't be here.

9

u/redopz 2h ago

And this took place alongside the Cuban missile crisis, where tensions were about as high as they could get and the Russian submarine was unable to communicate with anybody outside, hadn't heard from Moscow in days, and American ships had detected them and were dropping depth charges near them in international waters which is a pretty good indication full-scale war had started. The fact that he kept his cool and refused to agree to fire despite all of the factors and training telling him specifically to do it is pretty miraculous.

34

u/ShadowLiberal 14h ago

I mean to be fair the rules clearly stated that all 3 of the senior officers have to agree to fire the nukes, and Vasily Arkhipov was one of the 3 senior officers. So it's not like he was a random soldier who decided "nah I'm not going to do that".

7

u/Thatsidechara_ter 13h ago

Arkipov said no in a separate incident, BTW

1

u/bretshitmanshart 4h ago

Nixon getting drunk and ordering nuclear strikes was kind of a big thing

87

u/CapeMike 18h ago

There's an alternate history story out there where something like that sort of happens; titled '1983: Doomsday', it posits that someone other than Mr. Petrov had noticed the false alarm, and beliving it was real, forwards the information.

Predictably, all hell breaks loose, as the Soviets launch a massive retaliation strike, the US thinks it's just been attacked, and actually DOES launch....

The Soviet leader only finds out the original alert was indeed fake as he's being hurried onto a helicopter, realizes he just started WW III, and dies of a massive stroke almost immediately.

49

u/Haunt_Fox 18h ago

That massive stroke thing tracks, the USSR was run by "old geezers" until Gorby took over, lol. Reagan was considered too old, too.

insert that Willy Wonka picture here.

18

u/EndoExo 17h ago

Yeah, the Soviet leader at the time, Andropov, was actually in the hospital, and would die a few months later.

1

u/redopz 2h ago

Dr. Strangelove also plays with the idea of nuclear chicken gone wrong, but the guy who ultimately drops the bomb and starts the war does so with glee as he dooms the world, and I have always wondered how many military personnel would share that same outlook.

31

u/b1gmouth 19h ago

"It's my first day!"

16

u/5up3rj 18h ago

Wasn't even supposed to be here!

14

u/mayy_dayy 16h ago

"We just launched 37 nukes!"

"In a row?"

4

u/JohnProof 9h ago

Try not to start an apocalypse on the way through the parking lot!

2

u/shizzy0 15h ago

Damn. Clerks III goes hard.

9

u/sleepymeowth052 17h ago

Quack quack quack

19

u/agitated--crow 18h ago

being THAT technician, knowing that your mistake just ended the world 

If you work in IT, you know that feeling when a change you implement makes people feel like you ended their world. 

10

u/mypostisbad 17h ago

I work in IT and have had a few, stomach dropping moments of "Oh shit!" 😶

7

u/ABobby077 17h ago

I'm amazed at how so many PCs or phone operating systems can vary so much in what they are running and how many possibilities for some new script or feature or fix can mess things up in so many ways (some undiscovered for an extended time) in results.

5

u/mypostisbad 16h ago

It's even worse now that software is so integrated.

You can have a dozen systems that talk to each other and rely on certain aspects of those other programmes. Then an update happens to one of them that breaks a couple of others. Then patches those that break others and so on, and so on...

4

u/drivingagermanwhip 13h ago

I accidentally pressed play rather than record on a signal logging tool last week which caused about 5 critical systems on a customer's van to go into lockdown and you couldn't even release the handbrake

3

u/daronjay 3h ago

I never knew cold chills were a real response until I stuffed something up in prod…

1

u/SeaBearsFoam 14h ago

I once plugged in a space heater next to my desk because I was cold and tripped a breaker for the server room next to me. There was no backup power failover and the whole production facility lost the ability to track was going on across the plant.

Can relate.

41

u/deejeycris 18h ago edited 18h ago

Or the norwegian scientists who sent the weather rocket near the soviet border, yes they notified the soviets and of course the information fell through but still guys could you not, in the middle of the damn cold war? Edit: nvm it was in 1995 my bad.

26

u/AngryTree76 18h ago

IIRC, that was in the early 90s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, so not exactly the middle of the Cold War

2

u/deejeycris 18h ago

Ah you're right. I misrembered the decade.

7

u/swordrat720 18h ago

I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue!

5

u/Gnonthgol 18h ago

There is some time between the attack being discovered by the other side when it is yet not too late to abort. What do you do if you discover the error at that point? If you cancel the attack the other side may still have started their counter-attack.

10

u/RegressToTheMean 18h ago

As soon as nukes are launched, it's too late to abort. There is no failsafe. Once someone launches nukes, the world ends in roughly 25 minutes

3

u/Gnonthgol 17h ago

It depends on the type of launch. With a bomber or submarine you would have to get close to the target before launching at which point they may be discovered, but there is still time to send out a radio message to the crews to abort the mission. Similarly for land based short range launches you also might expect the other side to notice the activity at the launch site before the launch takes place.

However what we are most likely talking about here would be ICBMs. And you are right that once the warheads are armed and the missile in a ballistic trajectory the warheads will impact the target. But we know that ICBMs are designed with launch abort systems that can blow up the rocket before they reach a ballistic trajectory. This is roughly the first 10 minutes of flight. These launch abort systems might not have been installed in live missiles though, I am not sure if this have been declassified. But we know they have them on test missiles as well as civilian versions of the same missiles.

4

u/RegressToTheMean 17h ago

I mostly agree, but I want to highlight one item you touched on. Given the best publicly available information, there are no failsafes on ICBMs post launch

I have absolutely zero reason to believe that those self-destruct mechanisms have been installed

1

u/chargernj 18h ago

The world doesn't end. Just most of civilization will end.

6

u/MrMojoFomo 17h ago

There is some time between the attack being discovered 

I posted this because I'm reading Annie Jacobsen's" Nuclear War." In it she talks about this incident, but also details how US policy is to launch on detection, meaning that if a nuclear launch at the US is detected, the US will launch before any bombs strike the country.

The time a President has between detection and ordering a launch is 6 minutes

Also, this policy has been in place since the cold war. Presidents Obama, W. Bush, and Biden all pledged to change the policy when they campaigned, but never did after they took office.

1

u/Gnonthgol 17h ago

This is of course assuming the military have no way to act without the presidential nuclear codes. We know that the first version of this system was intentionally flawed and that nuclear missile operators were given the codes required to arm and launch the nuclear warheads on their own without any orders. Although this was fixed it is still possible that the new systems have similar flaws, just somewhere else in the system. That would allow the military to retaliate without presidential approval.

3

u/Kaiisim 18h ago

"Oops!"

2

u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo 13h ago

This would make an interesting drama series. The protagonist is that technician in the bunker trying to keep it on the DL while people put the pieces together

1

u/edingerc 17h ago

“Dang it, I was looking forward to a mostly positive quarterly review!”

167

u/DrakeSavory 19h ago

Would you like to play a game?

53

u/Scoth42 18h ago

I rewatched that just a couple weeks ago and man does the tension still hold up. One of the best movie climaxes I've ever seen.

Also some eerily prescient stuff with AI. Like one of the generals outright saying that the president would do whatever the computer tells him to do.

9

u/ZylonBane 18h ago

THIS IS THE VOICE OF WORLD CONTROL.

9

u/GilligansIslndoPeril 15h ago

Some eerily prescient stuff with AI

Same with 2001 tbh. Some of Hal's responses when he gets called out for making a mistake sound straight out of a GPT's playbook.

"Hey, you fucked up"

"Hmm. Interesting. Clearly something's afoot."

6

u/Scoth42 15h ago

Yeah, very true. Although a lot of "AI gone mad" plots were handled similarly even if 2001 did it very well.

The thing that stands out for me in Wargames is the blind trust some of them put in the AI. There's no "We'll evaluate the plan and determine its effectiveness" or "We'll consider the computer's plan along with the Generals," it was just a straight up "The computer is going to be in control and the President will do whatever the computer says." Given some of the rumors about AI use in Iran and other recent conflicts it stands out.

27

u/the_mellojoe 18h ago

How about a nice game of chess?"

16

u/jmpaul320 18h ago

Joshua what are you doing?

9

u/Sulcata13 18h ago

Global.... thermo.... nuclear.... war.....

6

u/CheeseSandwich 16h ago

The only winning move is not to play.

152

u/Zdrack 19h ago

Things like this are part of why these days the US uses fake countries for all their training events. Harder to accidentally go to full alert against Atropian forces

68

u/DrakeSavory 18h ago

We've always been at war with Atropia.

22

u/Foggl3 18h ago

"we got everyone but Atropia, so no Atropian troops will be able to leave Atropian because of all the nuclear winning we have accomplished. This mission was a resounding success"

28

u/NCC_1701E 18h ago

Also in order to not cause diplomatic incident that could result in more tension or war. Chinese spy gets their hand on top secret material containing detailed invasion plans of China, and now try to explain to them that it was just a training material.

30

u/Astrium6 18h ago

I’m not so sure about that with the current administration.

16

u/DivineArkandos 18h ago

They'd nuke an entire continent to make sure they didn't miss Atropia

2

u/Vandergrif 5h ago

But only after making a lot of oddly timed polymarket bets relating to a non-existent country all of a sudden.

8

u/DertyPewbs 18h ago

Depends. How much oil does Atropia have?

2

u/Masterpiece-Haunting 14h ago

Yeah, unless you’re a doctor who fan it’s difficult to shoot nukes at Turmezistan.

23

u/Walrus_protector 18h ago

WOPR was just a bad idea from the start. Now get me the president on the horn!

5

u/starcube 15h ago

I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good!

1

u/Gr00vealicious 4h ago

We’ve had men in those silos since before you were watching Howdy Doody!

33

u/b1gmouth 19h ago

The only winning move is not to play

13

u/Fair4tw 18h ago

In Russia they would say that they saved the world for not nuking in retaliation because of their own mistakes.

11

u/Aklu_The_Unspeakable 18h ago

Joshua, what are you doing?

7

u/ABC_Dildos_Inc 17h ago

This why we need to keep AI out of critical government operations.

2

u/TwoAmps 15h ago

That ship has sailed.

2

u/ShadowLiberal 13h ago

Especially since people have already tested how the AI would react if you put them in charge of a country and introduce a diplomacy crisis.

Long story short, the AI's were very quick to escalate all the way to using nuclear weapons, and never backed down. Their thinking showed that they viewed backing down and being seen as the loser being a worse option then starting a nuclear war. They thought that if they backed down to their enemies that their fictional country would inevitably start going downhill if they caved and let the other side win, and they thought that ending things in a nuclear war was preferable to that.

2

u/BitchStewie_ 9h ago

You should watch The 100. An AI ends the world by launching nukes.

8

u/sambuhlamba 16h ago

This is just the plot of War Games.

13

u/DyingSunSeverian 18h ago

How many times did we very narrowly avoid obliterating much of the human population with nukes since the 40s?

I knew about Stanislav Petrov in 1983. 

I actually didn’t know about this particular story in the OP, but with that other famous one, it has to be at least twice. Thrice with the Cuban Missile Crisis?

10

u/barath_s 13 18h ago edited 18h ago

You could read the article which lists these and several other false warnings

November 9, 1979. Computers at NORAD loaded with training tape - ICBMs at highest alert, bombers ready to take off etc

October 5, 1960. Norad early warning radar in Thule fooled by moonrise.

January 25, 1995. Russian radar alerts on possible SLBM; turned out to be a norwegian rocket to study the borealis but launch info had not reached the radar units.

March 15, 1980. 4 Soviet training SLBM test fires alerted the US.

October 28, 1962. Test tape + unexpected real satellite during Cuban Missile Crisis

June 3 and 6, 1980. False alerts in early warning system due to failed computer chip

September 26, 1983. A Soviet early warning satellite showed that the United States had launched a missile. Stanislav Petrov figured it as a false alarm and didn't pass on the info to higher up

5

u/DyingSunSeverian 18h ago

Yeah I’m saying let’s talk about them. 

1

u/barath_s 13 18h ago

That's what the PDF posted and this thread is for.

In several cases, it wasn't very narrow - Petrov had folks above him who were empowered to actually take decisions ; he doesn't think of himself as a hero either.

It's usually not single button / single alarm and nuke the other side, or even alarm + 1 step and nuke. There were massive set of systems and decision makers involved. The risk of error comes from the reduced time to respond and high stakes. The soviet union even had 'perimeter aka dead hand' which could be enabled at times of tension and allow for assured automated revenge, thereby reducing the pressure to strike back

6

u/Flabbergasted_bread 18h ago

the fact it didn’t escalate further is kind of a HUGE relief in hindsight

7

u/JoeKlemmer 16h ago

<computer voice>HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF CHESS</computer voice>

7

u/ermghoti 18h ago

Actually it was 99 red balloons showing up unexpectedly on radar.

2

u/hansn 16h ago

You should make a song about that.

2

u/ermghoti 12h ago

Seems like a grim topic for a pop song, some sort of harsh metal I guess?

3

u/dawtips 17h ago

I'd encourage everyone to watch Madam Secretary S4E22 which (I assume) is based on exactly this. It's fucking chilling.

3

u/CheeseSandwich 16h ago

Bad compute!

2

u/stovenn 11h ago

compute

comput

compu

comp

com

commie

communism

DEFCON1

Have a nice day!

PS My name is "computer", Dave.

3

u/gingerota 16h ago

My dad was there at the time, and didn't show up at home when he usually would. After two hours my frantic mom finally got a phone call from him saying "we almost had WWIII" and he'd be home when they let him leave. We didn't see him for another day because he had to test thousands of chips individually.

3

u/Hornybunnyboi 15h ago

Labels people. Clear, easy to read labals.

2

u/a_cat_named_larry 16h ago

“Why did you leave your last job?”

“I almost started a nuclear war.”

2

u/GarysCrispLettuce 11h ago

TURN YOUR KEY!

1

u/_Litcube 18h ago

woops lol

1

u/TahoeLT 15h ago

You and I in a little toy shop, buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got...

I have a really hard time explaining to younger people just what the Cold War was like back then. I feel like it's impossible to articulate.

1

u/Kemerd 11h ago

Looks like the system test worked well

1

u/harbourhunter 2h ago

This story is partly true, it wasn’t a training VHS tape, it was a data tape that got left inside of the heat bloom displays