quote: Stanislav Petrov was a Soviet army officer monitoring the satellite system for signs of a U.S. attack, the year was 1983, and his instructions, if he detected missiles targeting the Soviet Union, were to push the button and launch a counter-offensive.
He didn’t. Minutes later, no missiles came; months later, the frightening data across his monitor was determined to have been a system glitch
posted
Not to be overly skeptical, but I'm not entirely convinced this is right...
BMEWS is an American system and the acronym is based on English words... add that the Cyrillic alphabet is different, there is almost 100% certainty that acronym would never appear in a Russian news article. It would seem, then, that the article is targeted to an American audience, particularly one famiiar with BMEWS (which would make it relatively small). Why do that? I don't know...
Not saying that makes it false, but it just makes me go "hmmm..." Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
actually I think the best brink o' the apocalypse movie ever is "Crimson Tide" (plus, Viggo's in it, for you LotR wenches)
though Dr. Strangelove *is* pretty great
FG, I'm sure that's what they meant... I just wonder why they would phrase it like that. I mean, I happened to hear about BMEWS because I became part of the Air Force in 1986, but how many people have heard of that system? maybe a million? how many of those people are going to be reading this article? I bet less than a thousand...
I'm thinking they tried to come up with an American equivalent for their system and decided on BMEWS rather than the more well-known NORAD Command. So a good try that missed... likely.
but why target this at American audiences at all? and why is it not being carried by other media outlets? It would seem a story of this magnitutde would be gold for news outlets.
Again, it doesn't mean this is all a crock or any less sobering to think about, but something's a little off here and I haven't quite put my finger on it...
posted
I haven't bothered to dig up the actual total, but we have accidentally dropped several nuclear warheads on our own country by accident. Mostly, they accidentally fall from a B-52 or other warplane. Luckily, none of them detonated, which is how they were designed to operate.
posted
Scary. There's still a rumor that there's a nuclear device somewhere in Salton Sea, a naval base being closed down. The rumor goes that it's listed as "Unexploded Ordnance."
posted
FG, either they are trying to save face or someone is trying to make a certain point to very specific people with this article...
As for the accidentally dropped nukes, it takes a whole lot to set off a nuke, precisely in case of things like that.
My dad used to crew chief F-100s and one of the mission profiles was sitting alert to toss-bomb a nuke. In order to arm the bomb, the pilot had to fly a specific set of altitudes for specific times, this was programmed by the crew chief and then revealed to the pilot later in flight by coded radio message... this was in order to make sure the bomb did not go off if, say, the plane was shot down or the pilot lost control and crashed... also protection, though this was highly unlikely, in case the plane was commandeered.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote: In the case or Petrov, he was dismissed from the army on a pension that in succeeding years would prove nearly worthless. Petrov's superiors were reprimanded for the computer error and all in the group were subjected to the same treatment.
The Daily Mirror report round Petrov's health destroyed by the enormous stress of the incident. His wife died of cancer and he lives alone in a second-floor flat in a small town about thirty miles from Moscow. "Once I would have liked to have been given some credit for what I did," said Petrov. "But it is too long ago and today everything is emotionally burned out inside me. I still have a bitter feeling inside my soul as I remember the way I was treated."
Nothing personal! I'm sure you're very trustworthy, Alucard. I think it was just the mental imagery of nuclear warheads "falling off" a B-52 as if someone hadn't strapped them down tight enough that was a little unbelievable.
Posts: 107 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
A friend of mine who was in the military in the '60s did a lot of service guarding planes. He mentioned one time that a nuclear bomb fell off a plane during his shift... (the plane was at least on the ground)
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
eslaine (i just can't call you elaine!), I also thought of 'man who sold the world' but I hear the Nirvana version in my head, not the original.
Posts: 1892 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Yeah, I love that song. I haven't heard the original but the version on the Nirvana Live in NYC cd is great.
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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posted
I mentioned this story to my kids last night, and was very surprised that my oldest son(18) knew quite a bit about this -- and also about those reports of all our "missing" bombs (like the rest of you linked to). He said that when the military loses a bomb like that, unrecoverable or lost, it is called a "broken arrow" (I guess he means in radio transmissions that's what they say).
He reads WAY too much....... I haven't found much of anything he hasn't already heard about.
posted
There was a movie called "Broken Arrow" a while back. I guess that's why they had to kill one of the bad guys with a hammer. Or something like that.
quote: San Francisco-based Association of World Citizens
:starts humming the Star Trek theme song:
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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