A Brief History
On November 9, 1979, the computers that served the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the American and Canadian anti-nuclear defense agency, wrongly reported that a massive Soviet nuclear strike was on the way, triggering an alert that nearly caused the U.S. to launch its own massive retaliatory nuclear strike.
Digging Deeper
Luckily for the citizens of the Northern Hemisphere, and perhaps the entire earth, a frantic manual check of satellite data and early warning radars showed the alarm to be false, and NORAD cancelled the alert, narrowly averting the accidental start of a massive nuclear war.
At that point in time, such a war might have entailed the U.S. and the USSR exchanging a few thousand nukes apiece, with other strategic targets hit worldwide. Other nuclear-armed countries may well have joined in, such as China, the UK and France. The resulting devastation might have killed hundreds of millions of people outright and perhaps have ended life as we know it with the introduction of a “nuclear winter,” massive radiation and crop damage, etc. All because of a computer error. Hmm…
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Are nuclear weapons too dangerous for any military to possess today?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Kaplan, Fred. The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. Simon & Schuster, 2020.
