6. The Worst Time For a Nuclear Launch Alarm
In September of 1983, Cold War tensions were particularly high. Soviet leaders feared American president Ronald Reagan. They also suspected that a massive NATO training exercise is known as Able Archer, which was taking place at the time, might be a ruse, to conceal preparations for a surprise attack against the Warsaw Pact. In short, it was a bad time for nuclear attack warnings to go off in the USSR.
By nuclear warfare logic, the protocols of immediately launching your missiles upon receipt of a warning that the enemy had launched their nukes made sense on “use it or lose it” grounds. Given the short window – under half an hour – between missile launch detection and impact, the side that failed to immediately launch its own missiles risked having them destroyed in their silos. Stanislav Petrov’s job was to sound the alarm up the chain, which almost certainly would have led to a decision to launch Soviet missiles.
