When World Was On The Brink Of Nuclear War

"Three!"  "Two!" "One!"  "T- Zero!"

In 1945 the first atom bomb went off in the Nevada desert and from that time onward the world of geopolitics has never been the same. It was one of the driving force of the cold war, but interestingly it went off during war only two times. Countries with atom bombs know that if they dare to use them, there will be retaliation with the same weapon. This is called the M.A.D. ( Mutually Assured Destruction)  doctrine. But there were times the world was inch from nuclear conflict. I will talk about three times paranoia, an error in the system and a joke nearly started a world war.

It is 1961 and Cuban Missile Crisis is at its the climax. Soviet nuclear submarine not too far from Cuba was too deep to communicate by radio. Nobody on board knew if war had started already or not. The captain had decided that war has broke out and that he has to fire a nuclear torpedo. The captain authorized the launch, the political officer had authorized the launch, but the last person needed for authorisation of the launch declined, Vasili Arkhipov had saved the entire world from destruction.

Twenty-two years later an early warning system tells lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov that five ballistic missiles were heading from the US. He had a choice. Either picking up the telephone and ordering retaliation or he will not do that. He had a quick think and went for the conclusion that five missiles is too little when America had thousands. He dismissed it as an error in the system and did nothing. 

The last incident I want to talk about happened in 1984 when Ronald Reagan was recording a scheduled radio speech. While doing a mic check he said a joke, " My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I have signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Suffice to say Russia was not very pleased.