enthalpy

Friday, May 21, 2004


Good to see the Russians finally getting around to honoring some guys that prevented the end of humanity.
MOSCOW -- A retired Soviet military officer was honored Friday for averting a potential nuclear war in 1983 by ignoring an alarm that said the United States had launched a ballistic missile, a U.S.-based peace association said on its Web site.

Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was in charge of the Soviet Union's early warning system when the system wrongly signaled the launch of a U.S. Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile in September 1983.

Petrov had to decide within 20 minutes whether the report was accurate and whether he should launch missiles in retaliation, the Vlast magazine reported in 1998.

Petrov decided the alarm was false and did not launch a retaliatory strike.
Wait a second. . . . this story sound familiar. 1983, huh? Isn't that the same year that War Games came out? It is! It's the same story? Now I know where the movie came from: Our own imminent mutually assured destruction! Cool!

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