this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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Yoooo, there were two incidents in which a Soviet service member saved the world by refusing to fire nukes. One was during the Cuban missile crisis. The USA blockaded Cuba in response to the USSR placing nuclear missiles there. A Soviet nuclear-armed submarine went down under a US naval ship. The ship started throwing dummy charges over to scare the submarine to come out. The sub hadn't had any comm with the USSR in days and thought they were under attack. Two of the three officers needed to approve a nuclear torpedo strike argued for the strike. The other, Vasily Arkhipov, declined despite the other officers insisting. Arkhipov was able to convince the other two to not strike and bring the sub up to reconnect comm with Moscow. The immediate conflict eventually ended with no casualties or strikes. Had they fired a nuclear torpedo, it could have led to a nuclear war.
The other was pretty close too. Three weeks before the incident, a Korean airliner full of civilian passengers accidentally flew into prohibited Soviet airspace due to a navigation error. The Soviets thought it was a US spy plane and shot it down, killing everyone on board. Tensions were high af. Three weeks later, Soviet surveillance equipment showed that the USSR was being attacked with 5 nuclear missiles by the US. Stanislav Petrov saw the incoming missiles and decided to not report the info further up the command because he thought there was no way an American first strike would only be five missiles. He waited for confirmation of the missile strike from the ground, which never came. After a while, it was evident that the system had a malfunction. They eventually discovered that a rare coincidence between the Sun, some clouds, and the Soviet satellites resulted in the false alarm. Had Petrov reported the incoming strike, it is quite possible that higher command would have ordered a "counter" nuclear-strike because of their view of the US.
Both of these incidents were scary close to ending the world as we know it. It wouldn't have just destroyed the USA and USSR. Aside from the direct attacks and destruction of infrastructure and institutions in the stated countries, the strikes would have resulted in a nuclear winter and eventual worldwide famine for over a decade.
Damn. Did not expect to read two different stories about Soviet military officers averting nuclear catastrophe in a community where "Tankie" is a slur.
Not everyone from China / Russia / the USSR is bad people. A bad government doesn't mean bad people.
It's important to understand the nuance and not fall into xenophobia.
If tankie is a slur then so is Nazi.
To the troops! Both sides!
Goodness.
Have you seen this nuke simulator? See how various nukes would wreck your hometown.
This is the largest one ever designed on SF.
Let’s gooo im in the outer ring of the yellow zone, just gotta find some cover
Hope the air raid sirens are working then 😉
That yellow ring represents a 100% probability of 3rd degree burns. Aside from being in a nuclear bunker underground, I have no idea what kind of cover will protect someone from that kind of injury.
For third degree burns from thermal radiation you need line of sight to the explosion. Since basically all strategic nukes are airbursts, that means if you can see the sky, you're fucked. But a sufficiently thick wall or a basement would probably spare you the worst of it
Ah, so the 3rd degree burns will come from light, not air temperature?
Yes, mainly. That's also the reasons why you get silhouettes of people and objects cast on concrete
The radiation is so hot that it absolutely wrecks the surface, vaporizing or charring paint and skin near the epicenter, and causing burns and blindness further out, but so short that the heat doesn't even have time to heat up the air to any meaningful amount, outside of the blast radius itself.
That's really fascinating. Thanks for the explanation
It's insane that one bomb can basically wipe out an entire metropolitan area that spans several counties. I tried dropping the same one on my city to get a more intimate perspective, and holy crap. The people getting 3rd degree burns wouldn't even consider themselves to be in my metropolitan area. They'd be thinking they're entirely somewhere else.
Luckily, no one makes bombs with this high a yield. I think the highest yield of any deployed weapon is ~10% of that Tsar Bomba one. One would still destroy my city, but it wouldn't completely erase it.
Something tells me they won't be using pointlessly large bombs anytime soon.
The next few smaller don't have significantly smaller blast radii.
Not gonna lie trying to get the sub to sirface by basically depth charging it was not the smartest idea
Ftfy: likely everyone knew the system had false alarms and some kind of redundancy didn't confirm the 5 things