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from the would-you-like-to-play-a-game? dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
The war game that could have ended the world
On 7 November 1983, around 100 senior military officers gathered at Nato headquarters in Brussels to ‘fight’ World War Three. The annual simulation, known as Able Archer, came at the end of a large-scale conventional exercise – Autumn Forge – involving tens of thousands of Nato troops across western Europe.
[...] The imagined ‘war’ started when Soviet tanks rolled across the border into Yugoslavia. Scandinavia was invaded next, and soon troops were pouring into Western Europe. Overwhelmed, Nato forces were forced into retreat. A few months after the pretend conflict began, Western governments authorised the use of nuclear weapons.
Role-playing Nato forces launched a single medium range nuclear missile, wiping Ukrainian capital Kiev from the map. It was deployed as a signal, a warning that Nato was prepared to escalate the war. The theory was that this ‘nuclear signalling’ would help cooler heads to prevail. It didn’t work.
By 11 November 1983, global nuclear arsenals had been unleashed. Most of the world was destroyed. Billions were dead. Civilisation ended.
Later that day, the Nato commanders left their building and went home, congratulating themselves on another successful – albeit sobering – exercise. What Western governments only discovered later is that Able Archer 83 came perilously close to instigating a real nuclear war.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by krishnoid on Thursday November 29 2018, @11:04AM (10 children)
I don't launch nukes on a regular basis, but when I raze a country's capital, I'm not sending a 'signal' or 'warning' that I'm 'prepared' to 'escalate' a war, indicating that I'm a 'cooler head' in the engagement. How is this anything other than you starting a war? I'd think you'd nuke a desert or something uninhabited if you wanted to send a signal.
(Score: 4, Informative) by PiMuNu on Thursday November 29 2018, @11:45AM (9 children)
Note Ukraine was part of USSR in those days - so it's like nuking San Francisco, not Washington...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday November 29 2018, @12:13PM
Yep it is a peculiar choice. Especially because the area of Kiev features the reactors of chernobyl and the russian woodpecker, a pretty giant antenna which has also been linked by conspiracy theorists to the chernobyl accident (if e.g. taking a car and driving it full speed into a wall can be called 'accident', that is) which would happen 3 years later.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Touché) by zocalo on Thursday November 29 2018, @01:22PM (7 children)
I wouldn't even chance a desert for that matter (the Kazazh steppe or Siberia, maybe?) - if you wanted to send a message, I'm pretty sure a launch of a non-nuclear equipped ICBM in the general direction, immediately getting on the red line and, once you're sure you've got their attention, aborting the ICBM and asking if they'd like to talk would do that just fine.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 29 2018, @03:59PM (5 children)
So if given the choice between "let a few thousand people die" and "basically end the human race", you'd go with the latter. I really hope our actual leaders don't share that sentiment.
I know patriotic red-blooded Americans don't like to hear it, but honestly perhaps the best reaction for the human race is to just let them nuke the whole country and do nothing. Does nuclear winter still set in if one side doesn't launch their nukes?
There are no winners in all-out nuclear war.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @05:43PM
Uh, that's dangerous bs there. You have to have a credible MAD for the (nuclear powers') world to be safe.
And that's exactly what is so GOOD about it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @05:53PM
You do realize we currently have a "stable genius" in the white house, yes?
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Thursday November 29 2018, @10:39PM
As for the one-sided nuclear war scenario, I doubt it would help for all but a very limited exchange with low-yield payloads. Think about how far the pollution from Chernobyl got across Europe, or Fukashima across the Pacific, and how long it took to arrive and settle down - and neither of those were really the kind of blasts that ICBMs produce that are almost designed to throw as much irradiated particulate matter up into the atmosphere as possible. Even in a very limited "decapitation" strike that's going to mean a number of major cities across NATO/Warsaw Pact land getting hit, which probably means the best part of a half hemisphere getting a bunch of direct fallout, and after that it's going to be all down to the prevailing winds. At that point, it's into the global water supply, the global food chain, and same kind of atmospheric issues that large volcanic eruptions do, only on a much larger scale. Worse case it might just prolong the agony for those unfortunate enough to survive the initial exchange.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday November 30 2018, @04:50AM
Depends on how you play. If everyone has fun, everyone can win [flyingbuffalo.com]! Or you can just watch [introversion.co.uk] if that's more your style.
(Score: 1) by Goghit on Friday November 30 2018, @07:00PM
I'm reading through "Atlas Shrugged" atm. It's basically snuff porn for the 1%. I wouldn't assume that either the evangelical death cult or the rich, powerful Ayn Rand devotees in Washington would have a problem with billions of people dying. They would consider them unworthy and that they deserve to die screaming. The righteous (i.e., rich psychopaths) will be saved. Jesus/Ayn has foretold it.
I'm going to have to take some time to unfuck my head after I finish this book.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:16PM
People don't know this, there's no Cancel on ICBM. No Abort. Ronnie thought, "oh, I can send my missiles. And if I change my mind, I'll cancel the order. And bring them back." WRONG! Airplane, we can call and cancel. Submarine, we can cancel. Sometimes. ICBM, no cancel!!!