Most of us don't have the security clearance to know just how close the world can get to
all-out-war.
While we chill at home and watch Netflix, some people hold the fate of the world in
their hands, making split-second decisions that could cause -- or avoid -- World War
III.
Adults of a certain age might remember watching the movie "WarGames" as a kid.
The film assumed that a computer program would be able to start a nuclear conflict.
"Let's play Global Thermonuclear War."
In 1983, this was a scary idea, but little did anyone watching it know they had come
close to being vaporized a whole four years before because of a very similar circumstance.
On the morning of November 9, 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser
to President Jimmy Carter, was woken up with the information that everyone he ever knew
and loved was very soon about to be dead.
Brzezinski maybe took a minute to reflect on that, but then he had to decide what to
do.
While even one nuke headed for the U.S. would be bad, he was told there were 250 on their
way.
He got another call shortly after that, saying there were now 2,200 missiles.
This might have been his first inkling that something was off, since even for the USSR
at the time, that seemed like literal overkill.
He didn't even bother waking up his wife because if you're about to be incinerated, you might
as well have it happen while you're still happily dreaming.
He had to decide whether to respond with force and wake up the president.
Fortunately, a third call told him it was just a false alarm.
Carter never even had his sleep disturbed, but a computer glitch had almost ended the
world.
“A spokesman for the Pentagon places the blame on a computer malfunction."
Few things have brought us closer to another world war than the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was two huge nuclear states standing toe to toe, daring each other to blink.
And it wasn't until 50 years after the 1962 drama that documents were finally declassified
showing just how close things came.
The crisis started when the U.S. learned the USSR was putting nukes on Cuba.
JFK could have ordered an airstrike, but instead he used the navy to blockade the island.
"But now, further action is required — and it is underway.
And these actions may only be the beginning."
If the Soviets had decided to breach that line of ships, World War III would have started.
Fortunately, they decided to turn around, but it was a very close thing.
Some historians called it the most dangerous moment in history.
The president's brother, Robert Kennedy, and the Soviet ambassador were locked in taut
negotiations to defuse the situation.
In Cuba, the USSR was rushing to complete the installation of the nukes in case they
needed to use them.
RFK said,
"I felt on the edge of a precipice and it was as if there was no way off."
He also believed that while the president was surrounded by intelligent, level-headed
people, if any of them had been in charge instead of his brother, we would have been
at nuclear war with Russia sooner rather than later.
In his view, it was only because JFK was calling the shots that everything turned out okay
in what could have been an “end of the world” scenario.
September 26, 1983, is the day huge numbers of people would have died from nuclear bombs.
The fact that you or your parents lived through this crisis is down to one person, a Russian
named Stanislav Petrov.
Petrov was working in a secret command center near Moscow called Serpukhov-15.
He held an important position.
If he said nukes were incoming, his supervisors would have reported it straight to the general
staff of the USSR's military, and the order to retaliate would have been almost a given.
So Petrov had to be really sure before he moved things up the ladder.
And fortunately for everyone in the world, on that day in September, he wasn't sure.
"I knew my decision would have a lot of consequences."
The BBC says he received printouts that indicated the U.S. had fired five missiles at Russia.
He thought it was weird that they had fired so few — five missiles?
That's no way to end the world.
Despite all his training telling him he should notify his superiors immediately, he decided
to wait.
When he did contact someone, it was to report a malfunction with the system, not the fact
that they were all about to die.
It was still a tense time for him, and it lasted 23 minutes before he was sure he had
been right about the false alarm.
It had actually just been the Sun reflecting off some clouds and confusing the satellites.
North and South Korea almost came to an all-out war as recently as 2010.
South Korea had been conducting military drills near a disputed border.
While the South did fire shells, they claimed they were pointing west, away from their neighbors.
North Korea disagreed and accused the South of starting the whole thing.
Whatever happened, soon the North was bombarding the South with missiles.
Fortunately, most of them hit a military base rather than the heart of a major city.
Unfortunately, people still got killed.
Two soldiers died, and 20 people were wounded, three of them civilians.
The crazy thing is, this all might have been to show off to the North Korean people.
At the time Kim Jong-il was in charge of the country, but he was nearing the end of his
life, and perhaps knew that the country could soon appear vulnerable during a transfer of
power to his son Kim Jong-un.
The bombardment could have been a way of demonstrating that North Korea was not to be underestimated.
Whatever the reasoning, the bombing brought South Korea to "crisis status," prompting
considerations of retaliation.
But cooler heads prevailed, and a tense peace was maintained.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, everyone was on high alert.
Disaster could strike at any time.
That's why when an alarm sounded at a military base in Volk Field, in Wisconsin in 1962,
people thought the worst had happened.
Bombers were lined up on the tarmac ready to take off when they were told it was a false
alarm.
But if they hadn't been told in time, things could have gone way wrong.
All because of a bear.
Reportedly, pilots who were there thought an actual nuclear war had started.
They were all ready to take off and drop their warheads, which for the first time were armed
with nukes.
They'd been alerted because of a security breach at another base, where those on duty
had been told to watch for sabotage.
A shadowy figure had approached the fence at a Duluth air base, and a soldier had shot
at it and set off the sabotage alarm.
For some reason, this set off a much more serious klaxon at Volk Field, and the pilots
were quickly in their planes, ready to respond to enemy fighters.
But the "saboteur" would just turn out to be a very confused bear, one that (probably)
wasn't looking to do any damage to the U.S. military.
Accidents happen.
But when accidents happen to planes carrying nuclear weapons, they're a bit more serious
than others.
And during the Cold War there were a lot of nukes in the air, meaning something was bound
to go wrong at some point.
It was called "Operation Chrome Dome," and the goal was to be prepared for a Soviet missile
strike at any time.
This meant 12 planes loaded with nukes were constantly in the air, so if the USSR tried
anything, the U.S. was ready to strike back.
But sometimes, planes crash.
And in 1968, seven years after the start of the operation, the worst happened.
These weren't tiny nukes, either.
Each one held bombs estimated to be 293 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Japan
during World War II.
So an explosion of that size, even an accidental one, could easily cause World War III.
On one routine flight, a B-52 was carrying its deadly cargo when a fire broke out.
The crew radioed for permission to land in Greenland but never made it.
They ejected, the plane crashed into the frozen wasteland, and the bombs were never found.
A lot of people who lived through any part of the Cold War probably think tensions eased
enough after the fall of the Soviet Union.
But really, the fall of the USSR just left the former Soviet Union even more suspicious
of what the U.S. was up to.
These suspicions came to a head in 1995.
It started out simply enough.
Norwegian scientists were planning on sending a missile out to study the Northern Lights.
Just so there was no problem, they informed Russia about what they were doing.
But there was a problem.
For some reason, the important people who needed to know this was just an innocent rocket
were never informed.
And to their radar, this science missile looked just like a hostile Trident missile launched
from a United States submarine.
In other words, it looked like the start of the end of the world.
There was a five-minute window in which Russian officials had to decide what to do.
Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president, was informed of the problem and even went so far
as to open the nuclear briefcase, ready to attack.
Nuclear submarine commanders were on high alert.
But the five minutes passed, and the rocket landed innocently out at sea.
Yet another brush with nuclear war was averted.
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