The shadow of nuclear war: The nuclear miscalculations that nearly sparked World War 3 – BBC News

The situation escalated rapidly in a very short period of time. At the nearby Volcker Air Force Base, an on-duty officer pressed a button by mistake in a panic. Instead of general safety alerts, pilots at the base heard an emergency safety alert ordering them to scramble into the air. Then the scene moved quickly, and the pilots each rushed to the fighter plane to prepare for take-off, and their fighter planes were all equipped with nuclear weapons.

It was the peak of the “Cuban Missile Crisis”, and everyone’s nerves were on the verge of collapse. Eleven days ago, a spy plane captured images of secret missile launchers, missiles and trucks in Cuba, movements that suggested the Soviet Union was mobilizing troops to strike targets in the United States. At that time, the whole world understood that as long as one side of the United States and the Soviet Union launched an attack, it could lead to an unmanageable situation.

However, it was not a disguised enemy who made such a big noise this time, at least not a human being. The guy stalking around the airbase fence was supposed to be a black bear, and all of the above was ultimately a false alarm.

But the Air Force squadron at Walker Base had no idea. The order they were given was that this was not a drill. As the pilots sat firmly in the cockpit, everyone was convinced that the Third World War had finally come.

In the end, it was the commander-in-chief of the base who discovered the problem. An officer with a very fast response quickly ran out, got into a truck and intercepted the fighter plane that had entered the runway.

Today’s people seem to have long forgotten the nuclear war scare that pervaded the world in the 1960s – only the eccentric survivalists and the super-rich still keep nuclear bomb shelters for themselves. People’s worries about the future have turned to issues such as climate change, forgetting that there are still about 14,000 nuclear weapons in the world, which together can directly destroy at least about 3 billion people, and even trigger a nuclear winter, which will wipe out species on Earth.

It is believed that in addition to the “black bear accident” at the US airport, which was initially described, mankind has brushed aside a nuclear war at least 22 times since the advent of nuclear weapons. Many unrelated events, such as a group of flying swans, the moon, a glitch in a computer, or abnormal weather in the universe, can trigger a nuclear war. For example, in 1958, a plane accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb into a family’s back garden. Fortunately, no casualties were caused, but all the chickens raised there were blown into steam. The most recent embarrassment was in 2010, when the Air Force suddenly and temporarily lost contact with 50 nuclear bombs, which meant that the US military could neither detect nor prevent the bombs if they were to fire automatically.

Although modern nuclear weapons are expensive and technologically sophisticated, the United States has set a $497 billion budget for its nuclear strike capability from 2019 to 2028. Stories from past history have told us all too clearly that the tight security measures designed by humans can be easily disrupted by just one misstep or the curious intrusion of wild animals.

On January 25, 1995, then Russian President Boris Yeltsin became the first national leader in human history to activate the “nuclear button suitcase”. Commonly known as the “nuclear button suitcase”, there are instructions and launching technology for launching the nuclear bomb inside the suitcase.

Radar monitors on Yeltsin’s side were apprehensive about seeing a rocket launch off the coast of Norway. What is the destination of this rocket? Will it be used to attack the enemy? Yeltsin, who was next to the “nuclear button suitcase”, hurriedly summoned his senior staff to discuss whether to launch a counterattack. With only a few minutes to negotiate, they understood that the rocket was heading for the sea, not an attack.

It was later confirmed that it was not a nuclear strike, but a scientific experiment. That rocket was used to study the phenomenon of auroras. Norwegian scientists were baffled by the upheaval, because plans for the launch had been publicly announced a month earlier.

The crux of the matter is that whether a nuclear strike is due to information asymmetry, or the real purpose is to attack, once the nuclear bomb is in the air, the process is irreversible. William Perry, who served as undersecretary of defense under President Jimmy Carter and secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton, said: “If the president had misjudged this false alarm, he would have inadvertently activated the a nuclear war.”

“Once the nuclear button is pressed, there is no turning back. The missiles that are launched can neither be recalled nor destroyed,” he said.

So thrilling, but why does it happen so often? How can humans avoid such things from happening in the future?

The reason for this is that the current early warning systems that may cause misjudgments were developed during the Cold War. Given that a real nuclear strike will inevitably hit the target, in order to avoid watching the enemy’s nuclear missiles hit the target, such early warning systems are used to detect and retaliate against the enemy before their own arsenals are attacked. sexual assault.

To do this, there must be data to back it up.

What the American people don’t know is that there are many satellites in the United States that are quietly monitoring around the clock, including four satellites orbiting 35,400 kilometers above the ground. They are all in geosynchronous orbit – a rotating orbit that is precisely in constant relative position to the Earth. This allows for consistent monitoring of the same location, and they can detect any potential nuclear threat missile launches, and are closely monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But after the missile is launched, satellites cannot track its trajectory. To this end, the United States has also set up hundreds of radar stations to monitor the position and speed of the missile, and calculate the trajectory of the missile.

If there is sufficient evidence that an attack has begun, the president will be informed immediately. “Usually five to 10 minutes after an enemy missile is fired, the president gets a briefing,” Perry said. The decision on whether to fight back is up to the president and his staff, though the privilege is nothing to envy.

“Although the system is complex, it works almost every time,” Perry said.

“But what we’re talking about is a very low probability, but the consequences would be very serious,” he said.

It only has to happen once and the world will change beyond recognition.

There are usually two main factors that cause false alarms: technical, or human. Or, if we’re too unfortunate, both of these factors can come together. A classic case of technical failure occurred in the 1980s, when Perry was under then-President Jimmy Carter.

“That was a real shock,” Perry said.

He received a call at 3 p.m. that day, and the US Air Defense Command Center told him that the monitoring computer had found 200 missiles launched directly from the Soviet Union heading for the United States. But fortunately, while on the phone with Perry, they had realized that this was not a real attack, but a computer glitch.

“They actually called the White House before they called me, and they called the president to debrief. It was the president’s national security adviser,” Perry said.

Luckily, they waited a few more minutes before waking the president, and within those minutes they got an update, which was a false alarm, Perry also said. But if they didn’t wait and woke up President Carter right away, the world might be turned upside down.

Perry said: “If the president himself received the call directly, he would only have five minutes to decide whether the United States also fired a nuclear bomb on the other side. It happened in the middle of the night, and it was impossible to get someone to discuss it.” After that, Perry no longer believed that the so-called misjudgement was just a theoretical inference,

“It’s going to happen, and it’s a worrying real possibility,” Perry said. “I think it’s just a matter of time.”

It was later learned that the false alarm was caused by a malfunction of a chip in the computer responsible for the nation’s early warning system. The chip was later replaced for less than a dollar. A year before the accident, Perry had a similar thrilling moment. At that time, a technician was careless and ran a training course on the computer, and inadvertently passed the detailed information of a faked enemy missile launch to the early warning command center.

It’s like asking an erect ape whose brain is mostly misinformation to make judgments about a weapon that can blow up a city. The careless techie aside, what really needs to be worrisome here is the people who have the power to launch a nuclear strike, the leaders of the country.

Perry said: “The President of the United States has the absolute power to launch nuclear weapons, and he is the only person to launch nuclear weapons, and only he can exercise this power.” This iron law has been in effect since Truman was president. During the Cold War, this decision was delegated to the commanders of the U.S. military. But Truman firmly believed that nuclear weapons were political tools, so they should be in the hands of politicians.

This habit continued during Trump’s presidency. Wherever he went, he was surrounded by an advisor who carried a “nuclear soccer ball,” which contained the launch code to activate the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Whether President Trump was on a mountain, in a helicopter in the air, or on the sea, he had the ability to initiate a nuclear strike. All he had to do was say a few words, the “Principle of Shared Destruction” – MAD. In a nuclear strike, both attackers and defenders perish together, and the result only takes a few minutes.

In fact, many international organizations and experts have pointed out that entrusting such a large power to one person is a major risk. “There have been a lot of cases in the past where the president was drunk or just took a judgment-suppressing drug,” Perry said. “He may also have a mental illness. These cases have happened in the past.”

The more you think along this line of thought, the more frightening possibilities you have. Had the incident happened late at night, would the president have fallen asleep? If it’s a decision that needs to be made within a few minutes, even a cup of coffee won’t bring back consciousness so quickly. In any case, in this case, the head of state’s brain decision-making is unlikely to reach a peak state.

In August 1974, just as then-President Nixon was mired in the Watergate scandal and was about to be forced to resign, his health was morbidly depressive and emotionally unstable. There were rumors at the time that he was physically and mentally exhausted, drank all day, and behaved so erratically that an agent even saw him eating dog food. At the time, Nixon was reported to be in a constant state of rage, drinking and taking strong prescription drugs. But more worryingly, he still holds the power to launch nuclear weapons.

In addition, the soldiers tasked with defending the U.S. nuclear arsenal also suffer from alcoholism. In 2016, several airmen serving at a U.S. missile base confessed to taking drugs including cocaine and LSD. Ultimately, four of them were found guilty.

Concerned about a nuclear catastrophe caused by a mistake, Perry recently co-published a book, “Button – The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump.” Another author of the book is Tom Colina, head of the Ploughshares Foundation, a nonproliferation charity. In the book, the duo lays out the flaws in current nuclear weapons regulation and suggests some solutions.

The first is that cancellation is a matter of only one person. Decisions to fire these types of weapons of mass destruction should be made democratically, so that the influence of a flawed mental state on the decision is filtered out. In the case of the United States, this requires a vote in the House of Representatives.

“This will undoubtedly lead to a slow decision to launch a nuclear weapon,” Perry said. It is generally believed that the response to a nuclear strike should be quicker and before the counter-attack capability is destroyed. But even if many U.S. cities and all land-launched missiles are razed by enemy nuclear bombs, wartime governments can still order nuclear submarines to launch nuclear weapons.

“The counterattack must be based on the fact that the opponent launched the attack,” Colina said. “Never take an early warning seriously, because it may be a false alarm.” And one way to be sure that the attack is real is to wait to be hit by an enemy nuke.

Making decisions at a steady pace will enable countries not only to maintain nuclear deterrence on the principle of “common destruction,” but also to effectively avoid a nuclear war caused by miscalculation. For example, a bear crawling over a fence.

Second, Perry and Kowlina used this to induce nuclear-armed states to guarantee that they would only use nuclear weapons if they were hit by a nuclear attack, and never be the first to use them. “China is an interesting example of a no-first-use policy,” Colina said.

“China has announced that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a crisis. Since China manages nuclear warheads and missiles for launching separately, this policy is effective,” he said. This means that when China launches a nuclear strike, it must combine nuclear warheads and missiles. All these are monitored by many satellites, and every move should be detected.

It should be noted that the United States and Russia do not have this policy. They launch nuclear weapons at their own discretion, even as a traditional means of warfare. U.S. President Barack Obama considered establishing a no-first-use principle during his administration, but the motion was later dropped.

Finally, the authors argue that countries would benefit from abandoning land-based ICBMs altogether. The reason for this is that land-based missiles are likely to be destroyed by an incoming nuclear bomb, and land-based missiles are most likely to be hastily deployed before a suspected attack is confirmed.

Another possibility is to give the bomb a self-destruct function after the attack was finally confirmed as a false alarm. “It’s interesting that this method is widely used in missile testing,” Colina said.

He said: “The test missile will self-destruct when yaw, but we have never used this technology for deployed missiles. In fact, we are afraid that the opponent can crack it and remotely control it, and eventually make the nuclear weapon ineffective.”

Another country may also “eat the bitter fruit” because of its own technology. As humans increasingly rely on sophisticated computing, industry insiders are increasingly concerned that hackers, viruses or artificial intelligence will one day launch a nuclear war.

“We believe there has been a significant increase in false alarms due to the increasing risk of cyberattacks,” Colina said. For example, a control system might pretend to analyze an incoming missile, but that would fool the head of state into pressing the nuclear button to launch a counterattack.

There is also a wider problem, each country wants its own nuclear weapons to be responsive and easy to use, as simple as a button to solve the problem. This line of thinking makes preventing nuclear war more difficult to manage.

Years after the end of the Cold War, Colina pointed out that the processes in use today still result in “thunder from the blue” unprovoked attacks in a world that is inherently changing. Ironically, many experts believe that the greatest threat to humanity is actually the nuclear bombs that were built to protect humanity.