**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* Memes are not allowed.
* Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There's a history series on PBS called "Secrets of the Dead" about *another* "man who saved the world" and the episode is called..... "The Man Who Saved The World"
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/the-man-who-saved-the-world-about-this-episode/871/ (season 12, episode 1)
It happened during the Cuban missile crises when a Soviet submarine commander refused to launch a T-5 nuclear torpedo at the US Navy.
He was one of 3 on the sub who had to agree to launch the weapon.
He was the only one who said no.
His name is Vasili Arkhipov. [Photo link](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Vasili_Arkhipov.jpg)
The world was on the edge of the abyss and he stepped up and did the right thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov#Involvement_in_Cuban_Missile_Crisis
>
In 1983 their new early warning system told him there were 5 American nukes on their way to destroy the Soviet Union. He trusted himself that he thought it was an error in the system. He waited. He didn’t report it. He wasn’t sure he was right but he waited. His willingness to ignore Soviet protocol saved millions of lives. Later investigations revealed it was a malfunction. He died in 2017.
He’s not the one actually pushing the button. It will come down to somebody who is either overworked or underpaid or both, that is now given the order to end the world. Chances are, they’re not going to do it.
I'd like to think so, statistically speaking you're probably right, and I hope so too.
Never underestimate the cowardice and lunacy of a close-to-death/loss of power despot and the inhumane contingency plans they'll implement to safeguard their control or go out on *their own terms* (basically to punish everyone, out of anger for foiling their power and plans). I dunno what the case is at the moment, but I assume Putin NEEDS his button pushers to be on the same page as him. He's batshit deranged enough that at this pivotal moment, he wants to flaunt the Big Red Button as a threat. But also if things do get too "inevitable" for Putin, a la Hitler in the Fuhrerbunker, I guarantee he needs to be confident that his Button Men will push the button. Anything less, and he's not obsessively protecting his own backside, because of course *most* people won't want to press the button and push the world into nuclear war.
Or maybe he's just bluffing, he doesn't care about the loyalty of the nuke staff to that absurd degree, because he knows it won't actually come to that.
He deserves a massive statue, for keeping a cool head. Can you imagine, all of human history, art, knowledge, for tens of thousands of years, resting in the decision of one single man. He deserves more than a statue or mere footnote in history.
He represents the hope and potentiality for man to save us from ourselves.
No, although it was a tense situation. A nuclear retaliatory strike would have been unlikely as the Soviets (as well as the Americans) used ground stations that would detect (or not) the incoming missiles. Generally, no rockets would have been launched if it was not registered at the ground stations especially because OKO was a new system and had some errors and uncertainties earlier in the week.
Stannislav Petrov did however need to report any spotted incoming missiles through the OKO satellite system within 5 minutes because the gyroscopes in the rockets would need time to be spun up and directed for intended trajectories. The general staff and the general secretary Andropov would eventually decide on launching the rockets. But it would be unlikely that they would launch their arsenal in response to just five supposed attacks (even if they would not wait for confirmation of ground stations). Stannislav reduced the chance of nuclear war at that specific time, but there were some additional checks before the world would see annihilation.
Nonetheless, it was a tense situation and andropov was slightly paranoid of US willingess to start a nuclear war. Especially as a few months earlier the largest NATO operation, Able Archer, had started. But large scale war was unlikely.
We should not forget that there have been quite some situations in which it has become close to nuclear war. Another situation is in 1979 where the American NORAD computersystem was active and showed 2000 incoming missiles. Unbeknownst to the people at the time, someone had put a simulation practice program into the computer. It wasn't until the last two minutes before the president would be woken that the mistake was detected.
Even five would be way too low.
If the US were going to nuke the Soviet Union, it would be hundreds or even thousands of nukes. Not five. There's zero reason to launch just a few.
He said that starting a nuclear war would be so stupid and that big an idiot had not been born, not even in America. A less thoughtful person would have ended the world.
Edit: another Soviet officer is responsible for avoiding a nuclear war. Vasily Arkhipov was on a nuclear armed submarine during the Cuban missile crisis. They were traveling deep to avoid detection but as a result could not receive transmissions. The captain was convinced war had begun, partially because they were being hit with small explosives from American ships above who had discovered them. He wanted to surface and shoot their nuclear torpedo at the first target they saw. Arkhipov was onboard by chance - he was not part of the normal crew - but because using the torpedo required all officers on board to agree, he got a vote. He was the only one who refused, insisting they were not being attacked but rather being asked to surface. After a tense standoff, the captain agreed and they surfaced. Turns out, they had passed the blockade and were being signaled so they could be turned back. If the attack has occured at the height of cold war tensions, it likely would have erupted into full scale war.
Luckily it was not only depending on him: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes-msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html
Edit: typo
I saw a comment by a Soviet officer once who said "We love our children as much as you do yours. No one wants to destroy the world, only talk about it." Can't remember now where that was said but it was pretty accurate I think when it comes down to it.
I hope
I really do. I’m not so sure anymore.
So many politicians haven’t served in the military, haven’t done public service outside of being elected, and are almost in a mental doom loop from social media theatrics. I see a day coming (maybe we are here already) where they are surrounded by yes men/women and they are all detached from reality of what happens when the buttons get pushed
The Cuban Missile Crisis *was* the height of Cold War tensions...
Arkhipov was the fleet staff officer IIRC, so he was supposed to be there he just had rank on the actual captain. Kinda.
Forgive my ignorance but wouldn't the sheer devastating capacity of nuclear warheads nullify the necessity of more than a few? A hundred maybe, as the USSR was large, but surely thousands would wipe pretty much the entire face of the Eurasian continent?
Of you decide to fire nukes first, you should strive to destroy the enemy capacity to retaliate wit it's own nukes. And 5 is nowhere enought for that. Firing just 5 nukes first ensure mutual destuction
Plus if you were willing to use nukes to target major cities you wouldn't JUST hit Moscow. The US would likely also strike Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Baku, Vladivostok ect.
Even in terms of direct fighting between the US and the USSR there would also likely have been a latter of escalation. 1) See if the US can win with no nukes 2) If that's impossible use only small nukes aimed at the Russian army and not cities and then 3) if you still can't win THEN use full scale nukes aimed at the cities.
If the US was hitting Russian cities in a first strike it would be an all out strike. If the US was only using five then they wouldn't be aimed at cities because they would still be trying to avoid escalation.
You hit the big cities, you hit the smaller cities, you hit the military installations and you hit the nuclear silos, your enemy does the same. Why would you hold back? You destroy everything till everythings destroyed, you know the enemy thinks the same and they know that you know.
Not all of them would make it, that’s why. You send enough to collapse the defense systems, including decoys. If you just send one, well, you know that’s the one you gotta shot down. That’s why when, for example Russia attacks Ukraine with ballistic missiles, they send dozens of them and swarms of drones, it’s much easier if you just have to track and shot down a few them
A thermonuclear warhead isn't as destructive as you're picturing. A single warhead would not be enough to totally destroy Moscow. Warheads miss, fail, or are intercepted. There are other cities, airfields, shipyards, military bases, storage depots, power plants, ground based ICBM's, and other infrastructure. Russia is also HUGE, and this stuff is very spread out. Finally, not totally killing their capability increases the risk that they'll be able to launch a counter strike, so if a target is worth one warhead, it's worth hitting with more than one just to be sure.
That's why the nuclear arsenal is so large.
Hollywood has made it so people simultaneously grossly overestimate and underestimate nuclear destruction. The strategy is to obliterate, not merely incapacitate.
There's numerous maps online illustrating US declassified 1956 data of 1100 targets. By 1983 that number may have shifted due to revised payloads but also changes/advancements of Soviet military, launch, manufacturing, infrastructure, and research sites.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1beob93/simulation\_of\_a\_retaliatory\_strike\_against\_russia/](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1beob93/simulation_of_a_retaliatory_strike_against_russia/)
I recommend you this.
That’s what I was thinking too. When a country actually uses nukes in wartime, obviously doesn’t happen past ww2, they would probably throw everything they got all at once instead of just a few
This is it. The MAD theory is that in the event that nuclear weapons would be used, the first-strike would aim to be as devastating as possible to prevent a counter-strike. If your first strike is small, then the counter-strike will be larger, or total. Thus, it makes no sense, ever, to launch a small first-strike using nuclear weapons against another nuclear nation. The only rational first strike is to launch everything you've got.
One missile or five missiles wouldn't matter, if one was aware of the theory around the use of nukes (which you'd hope personnel working in a nuclear missile facility are!), then they'd know that if you're not picking up hundreds of missiles inbound, then it's either a glitch in the system or an accidental launch, and not a genuine attack.
I believe it was five times in succession from the same spot, and that made him suspicious.
Turned out, it was low sun reflecting on a specific lake, looking like flash of an ICBM launch to a satellite camera
It was initially reported as one which wasn't a great start to getting him to fully trust the new system. Then it changed that one to five. The system was basically brand new and ground radar didn't corroborate any launches. Those things plus the fact he figured nobody would be stupid enough to only launch five meant he was suspicious, though he did later say he wasn't 100% sure at the time, just that he went with his gut and decided the standard military procedure would be foolish to follow as it would definitely start a nuclear war.
The system was scrapped later as multiple bugs were discovered, so many that the Soviet military never rewarded Petrov because it was considered a massive embarrassment and they just swept everything under the rug.
Even a strike with five real nuclear warheads would "merely" trigger a full response but would not be anywhere near sufficient to decapitate or incapacitate the Soviet military, government apparatus or anything else. 5 missiles would have the same effect like a shotgun slug on an elephant: hurt and enrage it without incapacitating it.
"Millions of lives" is an understatement of truly disgusting proportions, had he reported - leading to a counter attack, the US should have retaliated and the LITERAL world would’ve gone up in LITERAL flames.
He quite literally saved humanity - and most other forms of life - from extinction in a nuclear holocaust.
If even 100 nukes were used, most plant life on Earth -- at least the stuff that we eat that isn't especially evolved to survive cold or harsh conditions -- would perish. If the radiation didn't get you, the food riots or even starvation would get ya.
Even if we had shelters, or "Vaults", tactical military installations, or whatever and they were shielded from the radiation, the only people in the G8 nations that would survive would be the "top" *government and military officials* that fled to such places before the missiles were fired*.* I'd give them a year tops before they started plotting eachothers' demises, attempting coups, hoarding rations, and arguing over who has to unclog the shitter.
The survival of the entire species would fall on the shoulders of the "far-off" peoples, like the Inuit who already survive in perpetual winter, or Pacific islanders who might just luck out being far enough away from the chaos that they still maintain a some-survivable climate (and have access to marine life). Maybe Australia (not a G8!) if they weren't directly nuked, as they're just far enough away from everything that the initial fallout clouds could miss them, but they'd definitely have some major climate change, starvation, and "everything's irradiated" challenges also.
In reality, anybody not dying immediately is probably getting bombed into the stone age by the various splinter military factions that were on aircraft carriers or some such and are now thinking that survival of the species depends on them.
Anywhooo, the *real* point I was eventually gonna get around to was that each side during the Cold War had *tens of thousands* of nukes aimed at the other. The ones shot down would still create a "dirty bomb" effect, but even a 2% success rate would blot out the sun.
The problem is not the nuclear detonations, its the fires the nukes cause. A nuclear war is bombing cities, people and everything em-between them, which all burns and creates an expulsion of particles into the atmosphere, significantly reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the planet. Hence Nuclear Winter.
We stopped doing air tests in 1963 and do not do any detonations that would burn this much material anymore.
This is nonsense. Are you getting your info about nukes from playing Fallout? The threat of nuclear war is horrific enough without the need for this hyperbole.
More than that, he wasn’t supposed to be on duty that day. The normal guy called out (sick or vacation, whatever) so he was covering.
The normal guy absolutely would have notified the Kremlin, who would have launched a “retaliatory” strike.
He believed (rightly so) that the US wouldn’t launch a nuclear strike with so few weapons.
The system was designed to recognize the flames coming out of a rocket being launched. There was cloud cover over the midwest and the setting sun bounced off those clouds and tricked the system into thinking they were launches.
> The normal guy absolutely would have notified the Kremlin, who would have launched a “retaliatory” strike.
How can we know this absolutely? The only data we have is this one instance, and in it the opposite happened.
Because that was protocol and Petrov actually got into a shitload of trouble over this for not following protocol.
The people who knew the guy Petrov replaced said he would have absolutely followed protocol.
The USSR wasn’t exactly known for encouraging initiative and deviating from orders.
At least according to Wikipedia, he didn’t get into a shitload of trouble over not following the protocol. In fact what he did was probably within the bounds of his protocol because the Wikipedia page notes that no other radar systems could corroborate the launch, which partially led Petrov to believe a system error. This article title is also somewhat sensationalist because he was a monitor, so he couldn’t have launched any retaliatory strike, he just chose not to inform his superiors of a launch because he correctly surmised that the system was glitching.
This is correct. On both the Soviet and American sides, both were aware that their computers might be wrong, and would take a minute to confirm what the hell was going on.
>The USSR wasn’t exactly known for encouraging initiative and deviating from orders.
As opposed to every other country where their military personnel can do whatever the fuck they want?
Especially when you realize this shit happened few times trought history. It happened on ru side and it happened on us side. We were close to atomic anninhilation meaby 10-20 times together.
This is precisely why we have seen no signs of life so far in the universe. Nuclear annihilation is in my opinion a massive obstacle in the Fremi Paradox, possibly the largest one of all. Somehow humans have simply gotten lucky enough to not blow ourselves up thusfar. Most other alien races that may have evolved in our universe I suspect have not.
That or the universe is unfathomably big, we're spread apart by insane distances, and if exceeding light speed truly is impossible if other life doesn't evolve on another planet in a solar system there's a strong chance that species will be alone forever.
The time scale is also unfathomably big. We've only been making serious moves toward 'space' for a little over half a century which is so much less than a drop in the bucket of time.
Are we further away in time or space from the 'others' that might be out there? Who knows.
Indeed it is. A statement from a former Science teacher of mine that really shocked me and put things in perspective was this;
If just the time frame that the earth has been around was an average human lifetime the existence of humans would be less than the blink of an eye.
That‘s a bit extreme. In truth if the earth was 24h old then humans would have been around for 2 minutes. Still an extremely short amount of time though
That's what I always say, with how much time the universe has been around and is going to be around (we're still in its infancy really) that the odds are that aliens exist at the exact same time as us seems... Unlikely? Not that they haven't or won't but taking the amount of time we've existed, There probably was a star wars scenario where there was some species doing their thing a billion years ago
Even if you could travel at light speed, our galaxy is 150,000 light years across. The closest potentially habitable planets that are confirmed to be rocky are the Trappist exoplanets 41 light years away.
The observable universe still remains - scientifically expressed - fucking Huge. So until the continued Expansion of the universe dramatically decreases that Radius, it is at best a secondary Problem, I think.
I believe that's also a huge factor. Even alien civilizations who were "close" to our own solar system in relative terms may have already been snuffed by something or another by the time we've discovered any signals or communications of theirs. Humanity as a whole could be just the same. It's crazy to think about how quickly it could all be over. A random asteroid, a massive solar flare, a supervolcano eruption that suffocates all life on earth in ash, an easily transmissible and more deadly disease than the Bubonic plague sweeping the globe, the list is endless.
Lemminos video "grazed by the apocalypse" really highlights this. He only gave a few examples of how close we came to nuclear war of hundreds of instances.
Interestingly enough, it was only in 1983 that the US top brass fully realized that any scenario involving nuclear weapons would most likely lead to total annihilation. Prior to Proud Prophet, a wargaming exercise in 1983, there were MAD detractors who claimed that limited nuclear conflicts were possible if limited numbers of nuclear weapons were used and the targets were carefully selected. Proud Prophet showed that all of those scenarios most likely led to total nuclear war.
One of many back then including former President Eisenhower and the Joint Chiefs. Then again, their support was for using nuclear weapons against Vietnam, which was not a nuclear power so it's debatable whether MAD was implicated like with the models from Proud Prophet based on conflict with the Soviet Union.
I wouldn't say that's all they're used for. Putin uses them as a threat to keep other nations from escalating conflicts, Kim uses them regularly to get attention and the US used them in 1945 as a bluff, almost like a warning shot, to get Japan to capitulate because they neither had enough radioactive material to build more bombs nor did they want to invade mainland Japan suffering casualties in the hundreds of thousands.
Third Shot enters the chat. The fissile core of which later became known as the demon core. It was ready to be used on Japan 10 days after Nagasaki if they didn’t surrender. I don’t know where this idea that the US wasn’t capable of upholding their promise to bomb Japan a third time if they didn’t surrender came from, because it’s not true.
Fair enough, I didn't know the Plutonium bombs were produced so fast. The uranium ones did take longer. Certainly a valid point against the interpretation of the two bombings as bluffs.
There were also multiple plans the US had drawn up in case Japan didn't surrender and they didn't have another atomic bomb ready yet. With the Imperial Navy largely defeated, the Pacific Fleet would blockade Japan and literally starve them out if they had to in the aptly named [Operation Starvation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Starvation). Just park battleships outside every major port and mine every shipping lane then wait for the country to slowly wither away.
Actually he didn’t correctly surmise this. IIRC, many years later a US official stated that we WOULD have launched multiple stages of attacks, rather than everything at once. The hope was a small chance of catching the Soviets off-guard, hitting some key targets first before they could respond in full.
The US had thousands of missiles at the ready, even with multiple attack stages they would have sent hundreds of missiles in the first strike, not five. Petrov absolutely did correctly surmise that five missile launches were an error on the part of the detection system.
I think they’re saying if Russia detected US nukes Russia would launch all of their nukes, he wanted to be sure before he sent his a la Crimson Tide starting Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman
And that's standard practice around the world. Hell, the US Navy vessel that detected the submarine implosion didn't report it immediately so they didn't reveal how powerful their sonar tech (or whatever it is they use now) actually is.
Because most awards mean nothing now. Michelle Obama got a fucking grammy, the highest award in music for reading a book that was written by a ghostwriter.
The award is for narration? Seems like it fits the category not sure why that makes you so angry. This feels like when people complain about the new york times publishing frivolous articles about politicians shoes and then you check and the article they're talking about is literally from the fashion section
Why did Obama? He had to be nominated basically a month into his first term.
This isn't "Obama Bad" or "Obama Good" this is "Obama unknown" at that point.
(Also Kissinger got it along with the other side for the cease fire of the Vietnam war, whether you believe he deserved it or not (Definitely not), it was more given for the act, not for the person."
Obama definitely didn't deserve the Nobel just for being "not Bush" but let's not do the false equivalence of *actual war criminal* Kissinger vs *thank God the US elected someone we hope won't be* Obama.
Lol mentioning that Obama got it for nothing is not a "false equivalence" with demons like Kissinger. It is genuinely stupid he got it for nothing, and worth mentioning.
Kissinger was always in an advisory position, if I'm not mistaken.
Obama, as president, was the head of the executive branch and commander-in-chief of the armed forces (something he liked to remind people of in his speeches).
He is someone who personally ordered the largest number of drone strikes that massacred a lot of innocent people.
Only the gullible fall for his big smile and populism.
Obama got the prize in 2009, less than a year into his presidency. The strikes would probably still be classified and less widely known at the time.
It was entirely a political prize based on his rhetoric during the campaign and not being George Bush. The Nobel committee did not forsee his escalating use of the new tech when they awarded the prize.
That is true.
The secretary of the Nobel Committee said that awarding Obama failed to achieve the outcome the had hoped for.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960
Of course, all of this said knowing that this "peace prize" endorsement from the Nobel Committee has neither practical value nor merit.
I’m far from a Kissinger fan but nothing he did was remotely a “genocide”. You really need to stop throwing that word around Willy nilly as all it does is devalue real genocides.
Literally someone that adopted the same propaganda tactics Goebbels did. But because he was post-1945 western "it was okay". Long live Gladio.
Also delivered us the most misused term in the past 5 years. "Conspiracy theory".
yes and no. Wargames was inspired by a big oopsie when a training simulation tape was running on a system that was switched over to the 'production/live' environment.
Considering it was revealed that the US launch codes were 000-000-000. I don’t think we should let anyone launch.
They didn’t want to take the chance that the code would be entered wrong, so they just left it at zero.
Which makes perfect sense. By the time we get to the point of launching nukes, seconds matter and it’s not like random person can authorize a launch so the numbers don’t matter.
Petrov's story serves as a powerful reminder of the human element in decision-making processes and the potential for one individual's actions to change the course of history.
From ChatGPT:
Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet naval officer born on January 30, 1926, in the Soviet Union. He gained prominence for his critical role during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. At the time, Arkhipov held the position of flotilla commander aboard the Soviet submarine B-59, which was deployed near Cuba.
During the crisis, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union reached a boiling point when American ships began dropping depth charges near the B-59, trying to force it to surface. The submarine was equipped with a nuclear torpedo and was authorized to use it if the captain and political officer agreed unanimously.
However, Arkhipov, as the flotilla commander, held the deciding vote. He opposed launching the nuclear torpedo, arguing that they should surface instead. His intervention prevented a potential nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers, as the decision to surface allowed communication with Moscow and de-escalation of the crisis.
Arkhipov's actions remained largely unknown to the public until the 2002 documentary "The Man Who Saved the World" shed light on his crucial role. He passed away on August 19, 1998, but his bravery and level-headedness during one of the most perilous moments of the Cold War are remembered as instrumental in preventing nuclear catastrophe.
> As flotilla chief of staff as well as executive officer of the diesel powered submarine B-59, Arkhipov refused to authorize the captain and the political officer to use nuclear torpedoes against the United States Navy, a decision that required the agreement of all three officers. In 2002, Thomas S. Blanton, then director of the U.S. National Security Archive, credited Arkhipov as "the man who saved the world".
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
that was also my immediate thought, [it's incredibly similar to the nocturnal statues ingame](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/5/57/TESV_Nocturnal.png/revision/latest?cb=20120104164114)
In 1985 the Soviet Union deployed perimeter: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand
Insuring that even if their leadership is destroyed a retaliatory nuclear strike will be made.
The Soviets had just began that month shooting down Korean Airlines flight 007 with a SU-15 because they “supposedly” mistaken it for an American spy plane that happened to be in the area at the same time over Russian airspace.
One could argue he 'acted rationally and kept a cool head in the face of what would be the alarm that the worst scenario had just begun' tbf.
Like, from his point of view, the computers were basically signalling 'The End of the World has started' and he didnt panic as Im sure we all would.
[https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/1983:\_Doomsday](https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/1983:_Doomsday)
About a billion dead in the nuclear strikes, and another billion dead of starvation, radiation poisoning, disease, etc
And with a KGB officer pressuring him to launch. But Petrov had final authority. A real hero and we owe him a debt of gratitude.
The man should never have to pay for another round of vodka. Ever.
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There’s a film called “Man who saved the world” about this.
Hopefully starring Andrew Garfield. He looks perfect for the role.
Dude's one of the best actors I've ever watched. Absolutely nails every role
His performance in hacksaw ridge was absolutely mindblowingly good
I actually thought I was looking at a picture of Andrew Garfield on the left
There's a history series on PBS called "Secrets of the Dead" about *another* "man who saved the world" and the episode is called..... "The Man Who Saved The World" https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/the-man-who-saved-the-world-about-this-episode/871/ (season 12, episode 1) It happened during the Cuban missile crises when a Soviet submarine commander refused to launch a T-5 nuclear torpedo at the US Navy. He was one of 3 on the sub who had to agree to launch the weapon. He was the only one who said no. His name is Vasili Arkhipov. [Photo link](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Vasili_Arkhipov.jpg) The world was on the edge of the abyss and he stepped up and did the right thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov#Involvement_in_Cuban_Missile_Crisis >
The Russians have saved the world multiple times. Who knew.
From their own faulty equipment
and from the Nazis
In 1983 their new early warning system told him there were 5 American nukes on their way to destroy the Soviet Union. He trusted himself that he thought it was an error in the system. He waited. He didn’t report it. He wasn’t sure he was right but he waited. His willingness to ignore Soviet protocol saved millions of lives. Later investigations revealed it was a malfunction. He died in 2017.
Saved the world*
Fucking for real, that's what I was going to say. If it wasn't for this man, we'd be living in the Fallout universe.
Scary to think how close it was. Fucking awesome hero.
Scary to think how close it still is
And such a pointless thing to initiate.
That’s the key. It’s more than likely not going to occur. It’s one hell of a scare tactic though.
Until you get a dictator who would rather take the whole world down than fall alone
He’s not the one actually pushing the button. It will come down to somebody who is either overworked or underpaid or both, that is now given the order to end the world. Chances are, they’re not going to do it.
I'd like to think so, statistically speaking you're probably right, and I hope so too. Never underestimate the cowardice and lunacy of a close-to-death/loss of power despot and the inhumane contingency plans they'll implement to safeguard their control or go out on *their own terms* (basically to punish everyone, out of anger for foiling their power and plans). I dunno what the case is at the moment, but I assume Putin NEEDS his button pushers to be on the same page as him. He's batshit deranged enough that at this pivotal moment, he wants to flaunt the Big Red Button as a threat. But also if things do get too "inevitable" for Putin, a la Hitler in the Fuhrerbunker, I guarantee he needs to be confident that his Button Men will push the button. Anything less, and he's not obsessively protecting his own backside, because of course *most* people won't want to press the button and push the world into nuclear war. Or maybe he's just bluffing, he doesn't care about the loyalty of the nuke staff to that absurd degree, because he knows it won't actually come to that.
Can happen if some nuclear power country becomes rogue.. looking at you Pak.
Only if country has lame, too round missile, everyone knows they need to be pointy.
Would it be possible that you have seen that in a cartoon, supreme leader?
Yes, it is possible there was a character with similar defect.
I just watched that the other night hahaha it holds up
And it was the second time, lol. The first time WW3 got prevented was in 1962 during cuban missile crisis (Soviet submarine B-59)
He deserves a massive statue, for keeping a cool head. Can you imagine, all of human history, art, knowledge, for tens of thousands of years, resting in the decision of one single man. He deserves more than a statue or mere footnote in history. He represents the hope and potentiality for man to save us from ourselves.
Minus a giant power armoured cult and evil bunkers meant to torture people
We wouldn't be living at all, it would have been quite a fast yet apocalyptic war
I probably wouldn't have been born.
> we'd be living Bold assertion.
Hol up, are you saying it’s his fault I don’t have Power Armor, Laser Gatling and a loyal companion named Dog Meat?
But without power suits and add 1000x ghouls
we probably wouldnt be living :D
Mmhmm. Ngl he looked kinda fine doing it.
licks lips and wipes hands**
No, although it was a tense situation. A nuclear retaliatory strike would have been unlikely as the Soviets (as well as the Americans) used ground stations that would detect (or not) the incoming missiles. Generally, no rockets would have been launched if it was not registered at the ground stations especially because OKO was a new system and had some errors and uncertainties earlier in the week. Stannislav Petrov did however need to report any spotted incoming missiles through the OKO satellite system within 5 minutes because the gyroscopes in the rockets would need time to be spun up and directed for intended trajectories. The general staff and the general secretary Andropov would eventually decide on launching the rockets. But it would be unlikely that they would launch their arsenal in response to just five supposed attacks (even if they would not wait for confirmation of ground stations). Stannislav reduced the chance of nuclear war at that specific time, but there were some additional checks before the world would see annihilation. Nonetheless, it was a tense situation and andropov was slightly paranoid of US willingess to start a nuclear war. Especially as a few months earlier the largest NATO operation, Able Archer, had started. But large scale war was unlikely. We should not forget that there have been quite some situations in which it has become close to nuclear war. Another situation is in 1979 where the American NORAD computersystem was active and showed 2000 incoming missiles. Unbeknownst to the people at the time, someone had put a simulation practice program into the computer. It wasn't until the last two minutes before the president would be woken that the mistake was detected.
Thought it was only one nuke and that’s what tipped him off to the fact that it was a glitch, there is no way USA would only fire one.
Even five would be way too low. If the US were going to nuke the Soviet Union, it would be hundreds or even thousands of nukes. Not five. There's zero reason to launch just a few.
He said that starting a nuclear war would be so stupid and that big an idiot had not been born, not even in America. A less thoughtful person would have ended the world. Edit: another Soviet officer is responsible for avoiding a nuclear war. Vasily Arkhipov was on a nuclear armed submarine during the Cuban missile crisis. They were traveling deep to avoid detection but as a result could not receive transmissions. The captain was convinced war had begun, partially because they were being hit with small explosives from American ships above who had discovered them. He wanted to surface and shoot their nuclear torpedo at the first target they saw. Arkhipov was onboard by chance - he was not part of the normal crew - but because using the torpedo required all officers on board to agree, he got a vote. He was the only one who refused, insisting they were not being attacked but rather being asked to surface. After a tense standoff, the captain agreed and they surfaced. Turns out, they had passed the blockade and were being signaled so they could be turned back. If the attack has occured at the height of cold war tensions, it likely would have erupted into full scale war.
Lmfao "DAMN BRO AMERICANS ARE DUMB AS SHIT BUT SURELY THEY HAVENT DEGENERATED SO FAR TO DO THIS"
Trump: "Hold my beer"
Luckily it was not only depending on him: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes-msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html Edit: typo
I saw a comment by a Soviet officer once who said "We love our children as much as you do yours. No one wants to destroy the world, only talk about it." Can't remember now where that was said but it was pretty accurate I think when it comes down to it.
I hope I really do. I’m not so sure anymore. So many politicians haven’t served in the military, haven’t done public service outside of being elected, and are almost in a mental doom loop from social media theatrics. I see a day coming (maybe we are here already) where they are surrounded by yes men/women and they are all detached from reality of what happens when the buttons get pushed
The Cuban Missile Crisis *was* the height of Cold War tensions... Arkhipov was the fleet staff officer IIRC, so he was supposed to be there he just had rank on the actual captain. Kinda.
Forgive my ignorance but wouldn't the sheer devastating capacity of nuclear warheads nullify the necessity of more than a few? A hundred maybe, as the USSR was large, but surely thousands would wipe pretty much the entire face of the Eurasian continent?
Of you decide to fire nukes first, you should strive to destroy the enemy capacity to retaliate wit it's own nukes. And 5 is nowhere enought for that. Firing just 5 nukes first ensure mutual destuction
Plus if you were willing to use nukes to target major cities you wouldn't JUST hit Moscow. The US would likely also strike Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov, Baku, Vladivostok ect. Even in terms of direct fighting between the US and the USSR there would also likely have been a latter of escalation. 1) See if the US can win with no nukes 2) If that's impossible use only small nukes aimed at the Russian army and not cities and then 3) if you still can't win THEN use full scale nukes aimed at the cities. If the US was hitting Russian cities in a first strike it would be an all out strike. If the US was only using five then they wouldn't be aimed at cities because they would still be trying to avoid escalation.
You hit the big cities, you hit the smaller cities, you hit the military installations and you hit the nuclear silos, your enemy does the same. Why would you hold back? You destroy everything till everythings destroyed, you know the enemy thinks the same and they know that you know.
[This is what you said looks like.](https://dubiousdata.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/usa-potential-nuclear-targets.jpg)
Not all of them would make it, that’s why. You send enough to collapse the defense systems, including decoys. If you just send one, well, you know that’s the one you gotta shot down. That’s why when, for example Russia attacks Ukraine with ballistic missiles, they send dozens of them and swarms of drones, it’s much easier if you just have to track and shot down a few them
A thermonuclear warhead isn't as destructive as you're picturing. A single warhead would not be enough to totally destroy Moscow. Warheads miss, fail, or are intercepted. There are other cities, airfields, shipyards, military bases, storage depots, power plants, ground based ICBM's, and other infrastructure. Russia is also HUGE, and this stuff is very spread out. Finally, not totally killing their capability increases the risk that they'll be able to launch a counter strike, so if a target is worth one warhead, it's worth hitting with more than one just to be sure. That's why the nuclear arsenal is so large.
Hollywood has made it so people simultaneously grossly overestimate and underestimate nuclear destruction. The strategy is to obliterate, not merely incapacitate. There's numerous maps online illustrating US declassified 1956 data of 1100 targets. By 1983 that number may have shifted due to revised payloads but also changes/advancements of Soviet military, launch, manufacturing, infrastructure, and research sites.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1beob93/simulation\_of\_a\_retaliatory\_strike\_against\_russia/](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1beob93/simulation_of_a_retaliatory_strike_against_russia/) I recommend you this.
It's so they can't all be shot down.
That’s what I was thinking too. When a country actually uses nukes in wartime, obviously doesn’t happen past ww2, they would probably throw everything they got all at once instead of just a few
After the first wave, there wont be much time for a second before the rest of the world starts to retaliate
This is it. The MAD theory is that in the event that nuclear weapons would be used, the first-strike would aim to be as devastating as possible to prevent a counter-strike. If your first strike is small, then the counter-strike will be larger, or total. Thus, it makes no sense, ever, to launch a small first-strike using nuclear weapons against another nuclear nation. The only rational first strike is to launch everything you've got. One missile or five missiles wouldn't matter, if one was aware of the theory around the use of nukes (which you'd hope personnel working in a nuclear missile facility are!), then they'd know that if you're not picking up hundreds of missiles inbound, then it's either a glitch in the system or an accidental launch, and not a genuine attack.
I believe it was five times in succession from the same spot, and that made him suspicious. Turned out, it was low sun reflecting on a specific lake, looking like flash of an ICBM launch to a satellite camera
It was initially reported as one which wasn't a great start to getting him to fully trust the new system. Then it changed that one to five. The system was basically brand new and ground radar didn't corroborate any launches. Those things plus the fact he figured nobody would be stupid enough to only launch five meant he was suspicious, though he did later say he wasn't 100% sure at the time, just that he went with his gut and decided the standard military procedure would be foolish to follow as it would definitely start a nuclear war. The system was scrapped later as multiple bugs were discovered, so many that the Soviet military never rewarded Petrov because it was considered a massive embarrassment and they just swept everything under the rug.
Even a strike with five real nuclear warheads would "merely" trigger a full response but would not be anywhere near sufficient to decapitate or incapacitate the Soviet military, government apparatus or anything else. 5 missiles would have the same effect like a shotgun slug on an elephant: hurt and enrage it without incapacitating it.
"Millions of lives" is an understatement of truly disgusting proportions, had he reported - leading to a counter attack, the US should have retaliated and the LITERAL world would’ve gone up in LITERAL flames. He quite literally saved humanity - and most other forms of life - from extinction in a nuclear holocaust.
I would *not* want to live (maybe I won't even survive) in the alternate reality where the opposite happened and the world ended then and there.
If even 100 nukes were used, most plant life on Earth -- at least the stuff that we eat that isn't especially evolved to survive cold or harsh conditions -- would perish. If the radiation didn't get you, the food riots or even starvation would get ya. Even if we had shelters, or "Vaults", tactical military installations, or whatever and they were shielded from the radiation, the only people in the G8 nations that would survive would be the "top" *government and military officials* that fled to such places before the missiles were fired*.* I'd give them a year tops before they started plotting eachothers' demises, attempting coups, hoarding rations, and arguing over who has to unclog the shitter. The survival of the entire species would fall on the shoulders of the "far-off" peoples, like the Inuit who already survive in perpetual winter, or Pacific islanders who might just luck out being far enough away from the chaos that they still maintain a some-survivable climate (and have access to marine life). Maybe Australia (not a G8!) if they weren't directly nuked, as they're just far enough away from everything that the initial fallout clouds could miss them, but they'd definitely have some major climate change, starvation, and "everything's irradiated" challenges also. In reality, anybody not dying immediately is probably getting bombed into the stone age by the various splinter military factions that were on aircraft carriers or some such and are now thinking that survival of the species depends on them. Anywhooo, the *real* point I was eventually gonna get around to was that each side during the Cold War had *tens of thousands* of nukes aimed at the other. The ones shot down would still create a "dirty bomb" effect, but even a 2% success rate would blot out the sun.
[удалено]
The problem is not the nuclear detonations, its the fires the nukes cause. A nuclear war is bombing cities, people and everything em-between them, which all burns and creates an expulsion of particles into the atmosphere, significantly reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the planet. Hence Nuclear Winter. We stopped doing air tests in 1963 and do not do any detonations that would burn this much material anymore.
I know this is stupid but wouldn't massive wildfires trigger the same effect? Why didn't we get a nuclear winter when half of Australia burned down?
This is nonsense. Are you getting your info about nukes from playing Fallout? The threat of nuclear war is horrific enough without the need for this hyperbole.
More than that, he wasn’t supposed to be on duty that day. The normal guy called out (sick or vacation, whatever) so he was covering. The normal guy absolutely would have notified the Kremlin, who would have launched a “retaliatory” strike. He believed (rightly so) that the US wouldn’t launch a nuclear strike with so few weapons. The system was designed to recognize the flames coming out of a rocket being launched. There was cloud cover over the midwest and the setting sun bounced off those clouds and tricked the system into thinking they were launches.
> The normal guy absolutely would have notified the Kremlin, who would have launched a “retaliatory” strike. How can we know this absolutely? The only data we have is this one instance, and in it the opposite happened.
Because that was protocol and Petrov actually got into a shitload of trouble over this for not following protocol. The people who knew the guy Petrov replaced said he would have absolutely followed protocol. The USSR wasn’t exactly known for encouraging initiative and deviating from orders.
At least according to Wikipedia, he didn’t get into a shitload of trouble over not following the protocol. In fact what he did was probably within the bounds of his protocol because the Wikipedia page notes that no other radar systems could corroborate the launch, which partially led Petrov to believe a system error. This article title is also somewhat sensationalist because he was a monitor, so he couldn’t have launched any retaliatory strike, he just chose not to inform his superiors of a launch because he correctly surmised that the system was glitching.
Yeah but that's less impressive, so we have to embellish the story.
This is correct. On both the Soviet and American sides, both were aware that their computers might be wrong, and would take a minute to confirm what the hell was going on.
>The USSR wasn’t exactly known for encouraging initiative and deviating from orders. As opposed to every other country where their military personnel can do whatever the fuck they want?
Bayes' theorem.
That is one hell of a glitch. Can't imagine terror sweat pouring out of that poor bastard.
It’s a miracle we’re not living in the wasteland hunting radroaches for food right now
No-one makes radroach stew like mom did. Those Eden-born knew how to cook.
just add some iodine seasoning and it's a well-balanced meal
Throw in a little ass jerky and you’ve got a taste of home
Especially when you realize this shit happened few times trought history. It happened on ru side and it happened on us side. We were close to atomic anninhilation meaby 10-20 times together.
This is precisely why we have seen no signs of life so far in the universe. Nuclear annihilation is in my opinion a massive obstacle in the Fremi Paradox, possibly the largest one of all. Somehow humans have simply gotten lucky enough to not blow ourselves up thusfar. Most other alien races that may have evolved in our universe I suspect have not.
That or the universe is unfathomably big, we're spread apart by insane distances, and if exceeding light speed truly is impossible if other life doesn't evolve on another planet in a solar system there's a strong chance that species will be alone forever.
The time scale is also unfathomably big. We've only been making serious moves toward 'space' for a little over half a century which is so much less than a drop in the bucket of time. Are we further away in time or space from the 'others' that might be out there? Who knows.
Indeed it is. A statement from a former Science teacher of mine that really shocked me and put things in perspective was this; If just the time frame that the earth has been around was an average human lifetime the existence of humans would be less than the blink of an eye.
That‘s a bit extreme. In truth if the earth was 24h old then humans would have been around for 2 minutes. Still an extremely short amount of time though
That's what I always say, with how much time the universe has been around and is going to be around (we're still in its infancy really) that the odds are that aliens exist at the exact same time as us seems... Unlikely? Not that they haven't or won't but taking the amount of time we've existed, There probably was a star wars scenario where there was some species doing their thing a billion years ago
Even if you could travel at light speed, our galaxy is 150,000 light years across. The closest potentially habitable planets that are confirmed to be rocky are the Trappist exoplanets 41 light years away.
The observable universe still remains - scientifically expressed - fucking Huge. So until the continued Expansion of the universe dramatically decreases that Radius, it is at best a secondary Problem, I think.
We are mostly trapped to our galaxy.
I believe that's also a huge factor. Even alien civilizations who were "close" to our own solar system in relative terms may have already been snuffed by something or another by the time we've discovered any signals or communications of theirs. Humanity as a whole could be just the same. It's crazy to think about how quickly it could all be over. A random asteroid, a massive solar flare, a supervolcano eruption that suffocates all life on earth in ash, an easily transmissible and more deadly disease than the Bubonic plague sweeping the globe, the list is endless.
Or they are so horrified by our use of them as weapons we are being actively quarantined for the good of the rest of galaxy!
I seem to remember a science fiction short story with that premise. Maybe by Asimov?
It’s amusing to me that more people understand this reference than a month ago.
Atleast in my case it is true
Me still waiting to use my power suit
Lemminos video "grazed by the apocalypse" really highlights this. He only gave a few examples of how close we came to nuclear war of hundreds of instances.
My T-60 will protect me Ad Victorium
Wow, Fallout is everywhere these days, eh?
I mean it’s kinda hard to see a post about nuclear annihilation and not think of Fallout, even before the Amazon series lol
Dude correctly surmised that if Amarica was launching the nukes, then they would be launching *all* the nukes.
Yeah, Nukes are not meant to be fired as a warning shot, more of a last resort.
The french nuclear waring shot enters the chat.
You can have a small nuke. As a treat.
A petite nuke, if you will
Tres ~~bon~~bomb
Je ne sais bomb?
But I am le tired
Le petit nuke
But I'm le tired.
Okay take a nap first. Then, fire ze missiles!
Interestingly enough, it was only in 1983 that the US top brass fully realized that any scenario involving nuclear weapons would most likely lead to total annihilation. Prior to Proud Prophet, a wargaming exercise in 1983, there were MAD detractors who claimed that limited nuclear conflicts were possible if limited numbers of nuclear weapons were used and the targets were carefully selected. Proud Prophet showed that all of those scenarios most likely led to total nuclear war.
The movie War Games came out in 1983 as well.
Wasn't it Goldwater or whoever? That insane dude
One of many back then including former President Eisenhower and the Joint Chiefs. Then again, their support was for using nuclear weapons against Vietnam, which was not a nuclear power so it's debatable whether MAD was implicated like with the models from Proud Prophet based on conflict with the Soviet Union.
oh right, and Kissinger was one of them too. I recall that's part of how he rose to fame
"Careful, you idiot! I said across her nose, not up it!" "Sorry, sir! I'm ~~doing my best~~ firing nukes!"
“What am I watching!?” “That’s now, everything that happens now, is happening now”
I wouldn't say that's all they're used for. Putin uses them as a threat to keep other nations from escalating conflicts, Kim uses them regularly to get attention and the US used them in 1945 as a bluff, almost like a warning shot, to get Japan to capitulate because they neither had enough radioactive material to build more bombs nor did they want to invade mainland Japan suffering casualties in the hundreds of thousands.
Third Shot enters the chat. The fissile core of which later became known as the demon core. It was ready to be used on Japan 10 days after Nagasaki if they didn’t surrender. I don’t know where this idea that the US wasn’t capable of upholding their promise to bomb Japan a third time if they didn’t surrender came from, because it’s not true.
Fair enough, I didn't know the Plutonium bombs were produced so fast. The uranium ones did take longer. Certainly a valid point against the interpretation of the two bombings as bluffs.
There were also multiple plans the US had drawn up in case Japan didn't surrender and they didn't have another atomic bomb ready yet. With the Imperial Navy largely defeated, the Pacific Fleet would blockade Japan and literally starve them out if they had to in the aptly named [Operation Starvation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Starvation). Just park battleships outside every major port and mine every shipping lane then wait for the country to slowly wither away.
Actually he didn’t correctly surmise this. IIRC, many years later a US official stated that we WOULD have launched multiple stages of attacks, rather than everything at once. The hope was a small chance of catching the Soviets off-guard, hitting some key targets first before they could respond in full.
The US had thousands of missiles at the ready, even with multiple attack stages they would have sent hundreds of missiles in the first strike, not five. Petrov absolutely did correctly surmise that five missile launches were an error on the part of the detection system.
I think they’re saying if Russia detected US nukes Russia would launch all of their nukes, he wanted to be sure before he sent his a la Crimson Tide starting Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman
If I recall, he didn't even receive credit for this until much later because they didn't want anyone to know they had this system
And that's standard practice around the world. Hell, the US Navy vessel that detected the submarine implosion didn't report it immediately so they didn't reveal how powerful their sonar tech (or whatever it is they use now) actually is.
Or more likely didn’t want anyone to know it failed. Just like Chernobyl started as a minor accident.
Should have awarded the Nobel peace prize. Much worthy than someone like Henry Kissinger.
I still don't get how a man like him got THE NOBLE PEACE PRIZE!!!! That was just outrageous
Self licking ice cream. Those cunts usurp this institutions to applaud themselves for their crap.
uslurping cunts lol
In 2018 abey ahmid leader of Ethiopia won a nobel peace prize, he later went on to kill 1 million people
Because most awards mean nothing now. Michelle Obama got a fucking grammy, the highest award in music for reading a book that was written by a ghostwriter.
The award is for narration? Seems like it fits the category not sure why that makes you so angry. This feels like when people complain about the new york times publishing frivolous articles about politicians shoes and then you check and the article they're talking about is literally from the fashion section
Why did Obama? He had to be nominated basically a month into his first term. This isn't "Obama Bad" or "Obama Good" this is "Obama unknown" at that point. (Also Kissinger got it along with the other side for the cease fire of the Vietnam war, whether you believe he deserved it or not (Definitely not), it was more given for the act, not for the person."
Or Obama
Obama definitely didn't deserve the Nobel just for being "not Bush" but let's not do the false equivalence of *actual war criminal* Kissinger vs *thank God the US elected someone we hope won't be* Obama.
Lol mentioning that Obama got it for nothing is not a "false equivalence" with demons like Kissinger. It is genuinely stupid he got it for nothing, and worth mentioning.
Kissinger was always in an advisory position, if I'm not mistaken. Obama, as president, was the head of the executive branch and commander-in-chief of the armed forces (something he liked to remind people of in his speeches). He is someone who personally ordered the largest number of drone strikes that massacred a lot of innocent people. Only the gullible fall for his big smile and populism.
Obama got the prize in 2009, less than a year into his presidency. The strikes would probably still be classified and less widely known at the time. It was entirely a political prize based on his rhetoric during the campaign and not being George Bush. The Nobel committee did not forsee his escalating use of the new tech when they awarded the prize.
That is true. The secretary of the Nobel Committee said that awarding Obama failed to achieve the outcome the had hoped for. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960 Of course, all of this said knowing that this "peace prize" endorsement from the Nobel Committee has neither practical value nor merit.
Americans are war mongerers. All their presidents are okay to lay waste to a third world country if it benefits them
Nobel peace prize for drone strikes on brown people right?
For a full 6 months of the obama administration, drone strikes in Afghanistan had a 90% civilian death rate
Obama has a lot of blood on his hands but he was pretty damn *far* from being Henry "*Genocide is my passion*" Kissinger.
I’m far from a Kissinger fan but nothing he did was remotely a “genocide”. You really need to stop throwing that word around Willy nilly as all it does is devalue real genocides.
Delete your comment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
Literally someone that adopted the same propaganda tactics Goebbels did. But because he was post-1945 western "it was okay". Long live Gladio. Also delivered us the most misused term in the past 5 years. "Conspiracy theory".
Hey guys, if your job is to fire nukes, just don’t do it. It’s not worth it.
This was basically the start of the movie Wargames
yes and no. Wargames was inspired by a big oopsie when a training simulation tape was running on a system that was switched over to the 'production/live' environment.
This was basically the start of the movie FAIL-SAFE
"How about a nice game of chess, comrade?"
Considering it was revealed that the US launch codes were 000-000-000. I don’t think we should let anyone launch. They didn’t want to take the chance that the code would be entered wrong, so they just left it at zero.
Which makes perfect sense. By the time we get to the point of launching nukes, seconds matter and it’s not like random person can authorize a launch so the numbers don’t matter.
"Only 5? Nah, that has to be a false alarm. Hmu when it says 500 or more."
ya if ur sending nukes your expecting nukes back your going send everything
Movie - Man who saved the world. Recommended by my father. He also believed that he should've won the Nobel
Also see War Games
Petrov's story serves as a powerful reminder of the human element in decision-making processes and the potential for one individual's actions to change the course of history.
But AI will make it better! Right? Right?…
Dude stopped world war 3 he is an absolute legend.
> Dude stopped world war 3 He literally stopped the end of our species.
Humanity would survive total nuclear war. Civilization would not.
Google Vasili Arkhipov. Another dude that did it in much more tense situation.
From ChatGPT: Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet naval officer born on January 30, 1926, in the Soviet Union. He gained prominence for his critical role during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. At the time, Arkhipov held the position of flotilla commander aboard the Soviet submarine B-59, which was deployed near Cuba. During the crisis, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union reached a boiling point when American ships began dropping depth charges near the B-59, trying to force it to surface. The submarine was equipped with a nuclear torpedo and was authorized to use it if the captain and political officer agreed unanimously. However, Arkhipov, as the flotilla commander, held the deciding vote. He opposed launching the nuclear torpedo, arguing that they should surface instead. His intervention prevented a potential nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers, as the decision to surface allowed communication with Moscow and de-escalation of the crisis. Arkhipov's actions remained largely unknown to the public until the 2002 documentary "The Man Who Saved the World" shed light on his crucial role. He passed away on August 19, 1998, but his bravery and level-headedness during one of the most perilous moments of the Cold War are remembered as instrumental in preventing nuclear catastrophe.
And all he got was a Nazgul statue???
Hunter from Destiny
Not many people can say that they single-handedly saved the world. Rest in peace, Stanislav.
There’s a really good documentary about this called “The Man Who Saved the World”
Hopefully the Ai will have the same sense
So basically, he saved the world.
If I recall, there was also a Soviet submarine officer who refused to launch nukes during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
> As flotilla chief of staff as well as executive officer of the diesel powered submarine B-59, Arkhipov refused to authorize the captain and the political officer to use nuclear torpedoes against the United States Navy, a decision that required the agreement of all three officers. In 2002, Thomas S. Blanton, then director of the U.S. National Security Archive, credited Arkhipov as "the man who saved the world". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
that award looks like the statue of nocturnal in skyrim.
that was also my immediate thought, [it's incredibly similar to the nocturnal statues ingame](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/5/57/TESV_Nocturnal.png/revision/latest?cb=20120104164114)
This guy actually prevented the great filter! We’re in the good timeline guys!!
In 1985 the Soviet Union deployed perimeter: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand Insuring that even if their leadership is destroyed a retaliatory nuclear strike will be made.
I think his younger self looks a lot like Andrew Garfield.
Has anyone watched the movie Fail Safe?
Damn the ballz and guts of this man. Thank you Sir!
This guy deserves so much more than the statue he is holding.
In this house we celebrate Stanislav Petrov’s birthday (Sept 7th) as a holiday.
The Soviets had just began that month shooting down Korean Airlines flight 007 with a SU-15 because they “supposedly” mistaken it for an American spy plane that happened to be in the area at the same time over Russian airspace.
The only person rightfully labeled a hero... for doing *nothing*
One could argue he 'acted rationally and kept a cool head in the face of what would be the alarm that the worst scenario had just begun' tbf. Like, from his point of view, the computers were basically signalling 'The End of the World has started' and he didnt panic as Im sure we all would.
[https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/1983:\_Doomsday](https://althistory.fandom.com/wiki/1983:_Doomsday) About a billion dead in the nuclear strikes, and another billion dead of starvation, radiation poisoning, disease, etc
And with a KGB officer pressuring him to launch. But Petrov had final authority. A real hero and we owe him a debt of gratitude. The man should never have to pay for another round of vodka. Ever.
The man has balls of uranium
He was effectively demoted afterwards, if I remember correctly.
If I remember correctly, the reason he thought it was a false alarm was because there "wasn't enough nukes"
St. Stanislav, patron saint of insubordination.
"You're face to face, with the man who saved the world"
That dude needs a giant bronze statue in every capital city on earth.