1983 nuclear peril and no-one noticed

[Locutus]

The USA and USSR came terrifyingly close to nuclear war in late 1983 and the first Australia would have known of it was when mushroom clouds rose over US bases at Pine Gap, Nurrungar and North West Cape.

In a new study, Australian National University Professor Paul Dibb, a defence intelligence official in the 1970s and 1980s, said at this time the world stood on the edge of the nuclear abyss and the US didn't even realise it.

The crisis peaked in the period November 7-11 as the Soviets interpreted a routine NATO command post exercise called Able Archer as a cover for preparations for war.

Professor Dibb said it was conventional wisdom that there was only one occasion in the Cold War when there was serious risk of nuclear conflict, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

But then, unlike what occurred in 1983, both sides knew they were in a crisis and had broadly the same facts at their disposal.

"Able Archer could have triggered the ultimate unintended catastrophe and with prompt nuclear strike capabilities on both the US and Soviet sides orders of magnitude greater than in 1962," he said in the paper released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Had that occurred, the first Australia would have known was with nuclear strikes on US facilities at Pine Gap, outside Alice Springs, Nurrungar in South Australia and North West Cape in Western Australia.

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1983 nuclear peril and no-one noticed - Yahoo!7

 

[petros]

And today, we in a hot war with Russia. Just like old times.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

There's been a number of close calls.

8 Potentially World Ending Nuclear Scares - Listverse

This one came very close to starting a nuclear war in 1979.

At 8:50am, on the morning on November 9th, 1979, a warning appeared on the computers of four American command centers (including at the Pentagon and at the Strategic Air Command’s bunker deep beneath Cheyenne Mountain) that a massive Soviet ICBM strike was en route to the United States. Minuteman nuclear missiles were readied to launch a retaliatory attack, and the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (a 747 modified to resist the effects of EMPs and radiation) took off, although the president was not on board. Senior officers quickly convened a threat assessment conference. However, after six tense minutes, early warning satellites and radar showed that no Russian missiles had been launched. It was later discovered that a training tape depicting a massive Soviet attack had accidentally been loaded into the early warning computers, and had generated the false alarm. After an investigation of the incident, a new off-site facility was created on which to run training tapes.

 

[petros]

What about todays' crisis?