September the 26th 1983 was an interesting day. Evidently the first world was within six minutes of being incinerated in a global thermonuclear war. The event in a Soviet military facility that day is recounted in a book named 'The Dead Hand' by David Hoffman. Yes it does read as well as a basic action adventure novel.
Evidently the Soviets like their U.S. counterparts had less than 12 minutes from warning of opposition force attack to make a decision to launch a retaliatory strike. Since the U.S.A. had 1000 ballistic missiles in Minuteman silos pointed at the Soviet Union and they only need 35 minutes to reach their targets the balance of the nuclear scythe of the respective nations was precarious.
Soviet satellites watched the U.S.A. and the computers processing the data made a mistake signaling a U.S. launch. Some Soviet officer named Petrov had to make the decision to advise Chairman Andropov if the attack was real or not. Andropov had little time to decide to wipe out Washington D.C., Boston and N.P.R. forever before Pravada, Tass and Izvestia were also incinerated. Petrov trusting his gut that the super-computers processing the data were wrong said the attack signal was wrong. His choice stopped the unprovoked Soviet missile retaliatory strike. There are many other interesting stories in 'The Dead Hand'.
With computer viruses existing on the Internet one might wonder if someone might launch the missiles by remote control one day. Well, it's an interesting world with innumerable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of people that don't even know what sex they are supposed to function with much less balance a budget and have full employment and a recovering ecosphere.
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