How Britain and the US nearly came to war over a single pig

[Martin Hash]

Too lazy to look it up now, but supposedly an officer in the Soviet military refused the launch order during a faulty nuc alarm. Baynes & that guy deserve medals.

[Smitty-48]

Stanislav Petrov. He didn't refuse a launch order, he was in command at the time, the Soviet Oko early warning sattelite indicated an American ICBM launch, he thought it was a false warning, what he decided not to do, was report the warning up the chain of command to the Kremlin, because he was afraid that they would issue a launch on warning order, without waiting to confirm the inbounds by other means.

He couldn't refuse a launch order, he would just be arrested on the spot and replaced by his subordinate, his subordinate was already lobbying him to report the inbound and recommend launch on warning, so all he could do, was make sure that the warning did not go up the chain of command, so that the launch order would not come back down the chain of command.

They didn't give him a medal, they fired him unceremoniously, because failing to report the warning up the chain of command, made them think he was unreliable.

Technically, he was, because a military officer deliberately failing to report a launch warning up the chain of command to the Politburo in time of war, is a de facto coup de tat against the lawful civilian authority, he's damn lucky they didn't throw his ass in the gulag for that, hell, many people, in the Soviet Union, were shot, for doing far less than that.

[Penner]

Too lazy to look it up now, but supposedly an officer in the Soviet military refused the launch order during a faulty nuc alarm. Baynes & that guy deserve medals.

I heard that story but the guy in question (the one that refused to listen to launch nukes) was a civilian, that was working with the military, and not a member of the military.

[ssu]

I am kind of surprised that those guys haven't nuked each other by now.

Actually they came a bit close in the Kargill War in 1999 when the border war escalated to the use of combat aircraft.
And then it was not so long way from using nukes.

So Pakistan thought, oh well, let's have the US be here an intermediary.

Well, Clinton really really, really, didn't like that. It's an interesting video.

[Penner]

I am kind of surprised that those guys haven't nuked each other by now.

Actually they came a bit close in the Kargill War in 1999 when the border war escalated to the use of combat aircraft.
And then it was not so long way from using nukes.

So Pakistan thought, oh well, let's have the US be here an intermediary.

Well, Clinton really really, really, didn't like that. It's an interesting video.

The 1990s were a great time for America, and I didn't know those guys came close to nuking each other.

[Speaker to Animals]