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posted by takyon on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the only-winning-move dept.

'I Was Just Doing My Job': Soviet Officer Who Averted Nuclear War Dies at Age 77

A Soviet officer who prevented a nuclear crisis between the US and the USSR and possible World War III in the 1980s has quietly passed away. He was 77. In 2010 RT spoke to Stanislav Petrov, who never considered himself a hero. We look at the life of the man who saved the world.

A decision that Soviet lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov once took went down in history as one that stopped the Cold War from turning into nuclear Armageddon, largely thanks to Karl Schumacher, a political activist from Germany who helped the news of his heroism first reach a western audience nearly two decades ago.

On September 7, Schumacher, who kept in touch with Petrov in the intervening years, phoned him to wish him a happy birthday, but instead learned from Petrov's son, Dmitry, that the retired officer had died on May 19 in his home in a small town near Moscow.

On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was on duty in charge of an early warning radar system in a bunker near Moscow, when just past midnight he saw the radar screen showing a single missile inbound from the United States and headed toward the Soviet Union.

"When I first saw the alert message, I got up from my chair. All my subordinates were confused, so I started shouting orders at them to avoid panic. I knew my decision would have a lot of consequences," Petrov recalled of that fateful night in an interview with RT in 2010.
...
It was later revealed that what the Soviet satellites took for missiles launch was sunlight reflected from clouds.

Many of us feel that one person can't make a real difference in the world. Stanislov Petrov did.

R.I.P. Stanislav Petrov, the man who saved the world

The Guardian and other news sources report, that Soviet Colonel Stanislav Petrov has died, age 77.

Petrov has become (not very) famous, because in 1983 his quick decision making averted a possible nuclear war.

I think that we, humans, are bad at recognizing significant events that led to everything continuing as normal..


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  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:23PM (#570898)

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    Sure don't fuck no old pussy.

    Sure do fuck a hole lotta younɢ pussy.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:35PM (12 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:35PM (#570904) Journal

    why did Colonel Petrov decide it wasn't a missile?

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:41PM (#570907)

      "I just couldn't believe that just like that, all of a sudden, someone would hurl five missiles at us. Five missiles wouldn't wipe us out. The U.S. had not five, but a thousand missiles in battle readiness."

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:43PM (#570908)

      I read that he thought that it made no sense for US to fire just one, and that his systems were sometimes unreliable.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @01:21AM (6 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday September 21 2017, @01:21AM (#570941)

      As others said, he didn't think the US would do a first strike with a mere 5 missiles; normal doctrine is that the first strike will be overwhelming, to try to knock out the other side's ability to retaliate.

      The other factor is that he knew that these detection systems weren't all that reliable anyway. And he was right: they were being fooled by some atmospheric effect I think.

      • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:28AM (5 children)

        by JNCF (4317) on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:28AM (#570952) Journal

        So now we know that the proper play is to hit your opponent's five most valuable targets first and then go all out, right? They'll just assume your first volley is made out of sunbeams and rainbows.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:28AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:28AM (#571000)

          No, that still is not a winning move, Dave.
          Five targets is definitely not enough, and it will trigger an all-out retaliation. The only possible course in a nuclear war to sort-of win, is to disable most of the nuclear capacity of the enemy in one, immediate, simultaneous strike -- and that's just plain impossible. Otherwise it's just Mutually Assured Destruction. Even if disabling most of nuclear capacity was possible, it still might be MAD -- nuclear winter, radiation and all that. And let's not forget agents and spies, and those fucking commie pinko peaceniks, which will definitely want to get back at you for destroying a country.

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:29AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:29AM (#571003)
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:48AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:48AM (#571007)

          Petrov is off duty forever, so don't count on getting the same result.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Thursday September 21 2017, @09:26AM

          by TheRaven (270) on Thursday September 21 2017, @09:26AM (#571075) Journal
          The reason that conventional doctrine is an overwhelming first strike is that you need to either do that or suffer from their second-strike capability. If you can knock out their second-strike capability in a small first strike with only five missiles then they're probably not much of a threat. There's a reason that most nuclear powers have invested a lot in submarine launch vehicles: they're really hard to take out with a first strike and so you can guarantee your ability to retaliate.
          --
          sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:21AM (2 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:21AM (#570950) Journal

      Because MAD. The Cold War was "mutually assured destruction". Neither side could make a move without both sides dying. All the apocalyptic stories about the US "recovering" after a nuclear exchange? Utter bullshit. After a nuclear war, the people in the best position to take over the world would have been places like Argentina. Then again, I suggest reading 'On the Beach' by Nevil Shute. Mr. Shute suggests that NO ONE was going to be in a position to take over.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:36PM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:36PM (#570906)

    During the Cuban missile crisis, Soviet submariner Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov [wikipedia.org] cast the sole vote against launching a nuclear torpedo. The captain and the political officer wanted to launch.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:49AM (12 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:49AM (#570929)

      There's been roughly 20 or so close calls. I suspect we are here from a kind of Anthropic Principle perspective rather than "luck": dead civilizations aren't around to ponder what went wrong any more than people write books about why they lost Russian Roulette. The total number of close-call-ponderers will be far greater where war was coincidentally averted. We are not "lucky" in the usual sense, rather we (our planet) are just the survivors of the dice rolls.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @01:18AM (6 children)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday September 21 2017, @01:18AM (#570940)

        Similar: we're in one of countless parallel universes; in ours, things went along so that we'd survive this long, whereas in other universes, different things happened or decisions were made, and nuclear war was the result. It's quite possible that we'll still encounter nuclear war, while another parallel universe which is identical to ours currently makes a different decision at that point, and that one survives while we destroy ourselves.

        • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:34AM

          by JNCF (4317) on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:34AM (#570955) Journal

          I read GP as implicitly invoking Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics, but you're correct that the same principle can apply to other parallel universe schemes.

        • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:36AM

          by JNCF (4317) on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:36AM (#570956) Journal

          Actually, I think your reading was correct. If it weren't for the "(our planet)" part, I wouldn't.

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:48PM (3 children)

          by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:48PM (#571168)

          That was basically what they did in the Stargate series--every time the (TV) viewer sees an alternate reality, it's always worse off than the primary one. Which I thought was a nice lampshade hanging on the whole bit where you're 6 seasons in and only one of the main characters has died (he gets better).

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:13PM (2 children)

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:13PM (#571179)

            Yep, and this reminds me of my theory about Star Trek: the reason the Star Trek shows we have seem so unrealistic is because they're not set in our universe. They're set in a parallel universe where humans are generally benevolent and competent. We're actually living in the "mirror universe", or one like it, where humans are generally evil, and only got as far as they did because of accidents of history.

            • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:59PM (1 child)

              by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:59PM (#571200)

              Depressing but pretty plausible :-/

              --
              "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
              • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @06:53PM

                by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday September 21 2017, @06:53PM (#571317)

                Yep. I highly recommend watching the Enterprise season 4 two-parter, "In a Mirror, Darkly". The first episode shows how First Contact with the Vulcans goes in our universe: the Vulcans land, show their hand-sign for peace, and Zephram Cochrane pulls out a shotgun and shoots them, then the humans kill the rest and raid the ship. That's us.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:05AM (4 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:05AM (#570972) Journal

        20 lucky dice rolls doesn't happen often.

        More likely is that time and time again, calmer heads prevailed due to an understanding of the implications and systems were put into place to make it somewhat difficult to trigger mutually assured destruction.

        Now the Cold War is over and it doesn't seem likely that any of the big nuke powers will initiate a first strike. If North Korea launched a nuclear strike, which goes against its national self interests and ideology, it could be leveled with conventional explosives without any wider nuclear conflict. For all we know, the U.S. and China could have a secret agreement to not go to war over U.S. retaliation against North Korea.

        Even if megaton nukes were launched all over the place, that is not necessarily a civilization or species ender. Many countries could come out relatively unscathed. People in bunkers could live on.

        Finally, the damage caused by nuclear weapons may be highly overrated [nextbigfuture.com]:

        Simply adding megatonnage without correcting for wasted vertical blast energy means that equivalent nuclear arsenals are not the equivalent of thousands of World War 2s, but only a few times the damage inflicted on Germany, Japan, Britain and France (Possibly even less than the damage inflicted on Russia though Nigel does not state this. If there is warning and sheltering and civil defense casualties might be 3% of those imagined)
        http://glasstone.blogspot.co.il/2014/05/debunking-hardened-dogma-of-exaggerated.html [blogspot.co.il]
        Blast damage area equivalent megatons for destruction area and casualty comparisons (“equivalent megatonnage,” EMT) are proportional the product the the number of bombs and the 2/3 power of the yield of each bomb. In WWII, 2.2 megatons distributed in 22 million conventional 10^-7 megaton bombs were therefore equivalent to 22,000,000(10^-7)^2/3 = 474 one megaton blast bombs, or 948 nuclear bombs each with a blast yield of 1 megaton (blast being 50% of the total energy of a nuclear explosion). In other words, even a thousand megatons in a nuclear war would not be on a different scale to the 2.2 megatons of highly effective, dispersed small bombs in WWII.

        [...] Naturally, without civil defence, as in early air bombing surprise attacks or the first use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, casualty rates can be over 100 times higher than this. (For example, Glasstone and Dolan, in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1977 point out that in Hiroshima the 50% lethal radius was only 0.12 mile for people under cover in concrete buildings, compared to 1.3 miles for those caught totally unprotected outdoors. The difference in areas is over a factor of 100, indicating that the casualties in Hiroshima could have been reduced enormously if the people had taken cover in concrete buildings, or simple earth covered WWII shelters which offered similar protection to concrete buildings.)

        [...] There is an immense blast collateral damage inefficiency of the nuclear bomb as compared to conventional weapons, due to the fact that blast damage areas due to peak overpressure are proportional to the two-thirds power of yield. E.g., a 1 kg TNT bomb is a thousand million times smaller in blast energy than a 1 megaton blast, but it produces equal peak overpressures over an area equal to (10-9)2/3 = 10-6 of that of a 1 megaton blast. Therefore, one million separate 1 kg TNT bombs, or 1 kiloton of TNT, is exactly equivalent to a single explosion of 1 megaton of TNT. This explains why the blast effects from a megaton bomb are approximately equal to a 1 kiloton World War II conventional bomber attack, with a hundred or more aircraft each scattering a few tons of TNT in small bombs over a large area target (so that there is little probability of severe blast area overlap, i.e. the wasteful “overkill” effect). But all nuclear weapons media propaganda ignores such facts, presenting a megaton explosion over a city as an unparalleled disaster, a thousand times worse than a large World War II .

        "Grey goo" [wikipedia.org] may be a more effective alien civilization killer than nuclear weapons. Our civilization has the capability to put a small colony on Mars within just a couple of decades, with the possibility of fuel manufacturing there and an eventual return to repopulate Earth if necessary. I'm not going to accept "they killed each other" explanations for the Fermi paradox until we start finding alien ruins, spying nuclear fallout in exoplanet atmospheres, or something else along those lines.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 2, Redundant) by bob_super on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:06AM (2 children)

          by bob_super (1357) on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:06AM (#570990)

          Considering the current inhabitant of the White House, anything that minimizes the post-nuclear-war doom forecast is quite irresponsible.

          • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:31AM

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:31AM (#571004) Journal

            From what I hear, "they" are keeping a high-level defense official near Pres. Trump at all times to keep him from doing anything rash. And from what we know of Trump, he is easily influenced by people who are nice to him (insert your own terminology here) or that he has some respect for (especially military generals).

            Trump is hardest to control when he gets free reign of a mic. And the damage he can do with words is somewhat limited. He also does not like to deal with absolutes, which could be either a good or bad thing when he is talking about North Korea, NATO, etc.

            Leadership can't change the facts. The threat of nuclear war is devastating, but highly overrated [oism.org] due to decades of fearmongering, propaganda, bad science, and pop culture. If we are talking about the Fermi paradox, we need all the facts about Earth's doom forecast that we have available to fill in for our massive gaps in observing the sky (alien broadcasts could be plain missed or too weak to pick up) and exoplanets (we know of just a few thousand of the trillions of likely planet-like objects in our galaxy, and don't yet have the capability to detect evidence of exoplanet biospheres).

            4-8 years is a small amount of time and might be a good practice run for the dangerous weirdness of the near future. We have to last at least a few more decades in order to develop into a rudimentary multi-planet species. Get used to the Trump situation because there could be far more existential dangers down the line.

            --
            [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:58AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:58AM (#571010)

            I've been hearing reports on the radio through the day on his UN speech.
            He overtly threatened to murder 25 million people.

            There was complete silence in the room.
            (I'm shocked that no one booed. I know I would have.)

            I have previously mentioned that Trump reminds me of the psychopath politician in "The Dead Zone".
            I'm not the only one to make the connection. [google.com]
            After this, I'm expecting more folks to connect those dots.

            ...and as FatPhil notes below, "saved" may be too optimistic a word for the next 3 years and 4 months.

            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:27PM

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:27PM (#571185)

          I'm not going to accept "they killed each other" explanations for the Fermi paradox until we start finding alien ruins, spying nuclear fallout in exoplanet atmospheres, or something else along those lines.

          IANAAP (astrophysicist), but I think you're expecting too much here. Surely a civilization could destroy themselves in nuclear warfare without us seeing the nuclear fallout: the fallout is of course extremely hard to detect from this distance (we can barely even detect Earth-size planets still), there doesn't really need to be *that* much of it to reduce their civilization back to pre-industrial levels (i.e., they don't have to completely destroy themselves, they just have to screw up their civilization enough so that they can't achieve significant spaceflight), and even if they completely destroy themselves, the nuclear event will last a relatively short amount of time, so the likelihood that we'll see the fallout is very low, and instead we're more likely to see worlds that had a war eons in the past, and now they're either lifeless or they have some life but not any intelligent life. Finding alien ruins is the only really reliable way IMO to figure out the Fermi Paradox, but we're not going to find any ruins until we actually start exploring exoplanets, and we're nowhere near achieving that; we have 2 probes launched 40 years ago that have just barely gotten out of the Solar System, and it'll take 40,000 years for them to get to another star system. If we want to explore other systems, we need a level of propulsion and communications and automation technology beyond what we have now, but there are some interesting [wikipedia.org] ideas [wikipedia.org] that have been proposed that might be doable in the next few decades if we really wanted to.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:03AM (4 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:03AM (#570915) Homepage
    "Put off its potential destruction by over 3 decades" is more accurate.

    Let's just hope that there are still people who aren't just yes-men in such positions.

    I invite you to join me creating a list of leaders of nuclear-armed countries which don't surround themselves with yes-men:
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:40AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:40AM (#570926)

      I'm not even entirely certain about who has command of the various nuclear forces. Some possibilities:

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @01:51AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @01:51AM (#570942)

        I can't talk about most of your list, but I know for a fact that the Russian Federation's Strategic Rocket Forces are, and always have been, in a launch-on-warning posture that includes informing the political leadership but does not require any "football codes" for a retaliatory strike to be initiated when the Air Defence command concludes an attack is in progress. That is why Colonel Petrov's actions were so important.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:49AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:49AM (#570963)

      How about "credited with averting nuclear war"?

      • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:06PM

        by fritsd (4586) on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:06PM (#571204) Journal

        Yes, "saved the world" is hyperbole, if you take it literally. The Earth's mantle and core would be completely safe ;-)

        As Electric Six sings: "the robots and the cockroaches are gonna be / the only survivors". And I'm sure that's hyperbole, as well.

        I meant it more in a figurative sense, like "saved our current world civilization of humans who can read and write, and sometimes travel or converse with people in other parts of the world"

        This is because I last week re-read Walter M. Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz" [wikipedia.org].

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:41AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @12:41AM (#570927)

    I hope there is a USA version of Stanislav Petrov disconnecting Trump's button.

    • (Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:25AM (5 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:25AM (#570951) Journal

      There are protocols. You who live in fear of Trump are simply unaware that the protocols exist. Thus, you have no idea how they might work. No, we can't elect a madman who arbitrarily decides to start the final war. The madman would require an entire cadre supporting his decision.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:46AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:46AM (#570962)

        "On behalf of the entire senior staff around you, Mr. President, we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you've give us to serve your agenda and the American people. And we're continuing to work very hard every day to accomplish those goals."--Reince Priebus

        "It’s an honor to be able to serve you."--Jeff Sessions

        "I am privileged to be here. Deeply honored.”--Alexander Acosta

        "What an incredible honor it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this pivotal time under your leadership. I can’t thank you enough for the privileges you’ve given me and the leadership that you’ve shown."--Tom Price

        "A lot of us just got back from Mississippi. They love you there."--Sonny Perdue

        "President Trump has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people. . . . He is brilliant with a great sense of humor."--Hope Hicks

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:04AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:04AM (#570971)

        There are protocols. You who live in fear of Trump are simply unaware that the protocols exist. Thus, you have no idea how they might work. No, we can't elect a madman who arbitrarily decides to start the final war. The madman would require an entire cadre supporting his decision.

        Citation to those protocols? You're probably the one who doesn't know what they are or how they work. All those involved are only supposed to confirm that the launch order came from the President not whether it was correct or a good idea:
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/01/no-one-can-stop-president-trump-from-using-nuclear-weapons-thats-by-design/ [washingtonpost.com]
        http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_spectator/2011/02/an_unsung_hero_of_the_nuclear_age.html [slate.com]
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/08/09/what-if-the-president-ordering-a-nuclear-attack-isnt-sane-a-major-lost-his-job-for-asking/ [washingtonpost.com]

        The only official option is:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_4:_Vice_Presidential.E2.80.93Cabinet_declaration [wikipedia.org]
        (which is slow)

        The non-protocol option is for those around to incapacitate Trump if he tries to launch nukes and it appears to be a crazy decision.

        After he starts the process, all the soldiers down the line probably have been conditioned to follow those orders. The Military takes great measures to weed out the Major Herings.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:55AM

          by bob_super (1357) on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:55AM (#571009)

          Indeed, Trump is very busy demonstrating that many of the safeguards that people thought existed to control Presidential powers are just unwritten, and relying on a gentleman's conduct to uphold.
          He CAN have conflicts of interests, pardon just about anyone, hire his family or anyone who gives him cash, and also nuke anyone in the world without having to justify it. (list non exhaustive)

        • (Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 21 2017, @06:03PM (1 child)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 21 2017, @06:03PM (#571293) Journal

          Not a "real" citation, but this guy is fairly knowledgable: https://www.quora.com/Step-by-step-what-is-the-process-required-for-the-United-States-to-launch-a-nuclear-weapon [quora.com] Scroll down to Wilton's answer.

          TBH, I'm not finding much that looks "official" in regards to launch protocols. But, you need to remember that the military has control of these weapons. No politicos actually have possession of missiles, bombs, rockets, torpedos, or even direct access to satellites that might be home to nukes. Depending on the launch called for, multiple flag officers will have to sign off on the launch. The president doesn't pick up the phone, and mutter a few code words to a Spec 4 who pushes the button.

          Or, to state that in other words, the politicians will have to convince a cadre of professionals that it is necessary to launch a nuclear strike.

          The military does have established doctrine, in regards to all weapons, not just nuclear weapons. Precious few, if any, military personnel are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to launch a nuclear strike. Those few are probably broom pushers wearing E-1 to E-4 insignia.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @09:28PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @09:28PM (#571419)

            "It's up to the president," Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, tells [a Vox reporter]. "The advisers that make up the national command authority are obliged to obey and execute the order."

            (source [vox.com])

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:17AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:17AM (#570949) Journal

    "n 2012, Petrov was honored with the German Media Prize, also awarded to Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama and Kofi Annan."

    When the public gets wind of your name, that public draws some peculiar connections.

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