How Close We've Come

I stumbled (again) upon the story of Stanislov Petrov, the Russian officer who didn't press the Big Red Button back in 1983.

Full story here.

Little things like this usually make us wipe our forehead and shout "Whew! That was close!" The funny thing is, both the Russian and American arsenals are still on hair-trigger alert. My guess is (and I don't know about our Russian friends) that we're using Microsoft Windows to power our systems; I expect full nuclear catastrophe at any time. This winter might be colder than most, but nuclear winter is way, way cold.