Over the past half century, the inhabitants of the planet have been on the verge of death several times, however, few people know about this. At that moment, only a miracle saved us all.
This case became known only in 2015, when the US authorities officially allowed the veteran Bortn to tell a story that happened in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis. On October 28, a signal came to the American military base that it was necessary to immediately inflict an atomic strike on the USSR, China and Korea. This base had more than 30 missiles with powerful nuclear warheads. Captain William Bassett could not believe his eyes and knew that the order was a possible mistake, but there was no time to think. It was also alarming that the threat level had a value of "2", although nuclear warheads can be fired at the "1" status.
William Bassett.
The man called senior management and said he had received a vague order. A second signal was sent, identical to the first. The captain could not believe in the reality of what was happening, so he told his subordinates not to rush to carry out the order. Not everyone agreed with him - one of the military began to prepare the weapon for launch. Bassett said that he would be shot if he continued his actions, he himself again turned to the leadership, setting a condition - either raise the level of danger to the necessary, or cancel the order. The check began and it turned out that the signal of the attack was false. In the course of the proceedings, it turned out that the culprit of the nearly inflicted End of the World was a major who sent the wrong number of signals. Bassett died in 2011 without receiving gratitude for saving the planet, because the world learned about his act only 4 years after his death.
In Russia, too, there was a similar case in the fall of 1983 at the height of the Cold War. The command post of the missile attack warning system near Moscow, where Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was, received a terrible message. The system signaled a US attack - five nuclear missiles were sent towards the USSR. The lieutenant colonel had to inform Andropov about this in order to obtain permission for retaliatory actions. The count went on for minutes, there was no time to think. However, common sense dictated that something was wrong.
Stanislav Petrov.
Why only five missiles? If America wanted to destroy our country, there must be more of them - this is the only way to wipe out strategically important objects from the face of the earth. Among other things, no more rockets followed. And the man made a fateful decision - to ignore the information about the launch of US missiles. He violated every possible instruction by doing so. The investigation proved the man was right - it was a failure of the warning system, the reason for which was the flashing of the sensor by the sun's rays. The systems were reconstructed to eliminate such situations in the future.
These incidents have been classified for many years and have been disclosed relatively recently. Just imagine what it feels like to break an order, knowing that the fate of all life on the planet is in your hands.
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