![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Chains of coincidence...
Feb. 18th, 2013 08:57 pmBack in 2007, I noted the 25th anniversary of Stanislav Petrov's decision, back in 1983, that very likely averted a nuclear exchange between superpowers, after the equipment he was monitoring gave indications of a US ICBM attack on the USSR.
There are a number of versions of the story out there. Some say he reported the incident as a false alarm with no evidence to go on but his gut, others say he informed his superiors but convinced them not to launch a counterstrike.
Personally, if I had to choose between the two scenarios, I'd select the former, not only because it sounds a bit more "romantic," but more realistic, as well. After all, the opinions of light colonels don't carry much clout with chief-of-staff level officers in the best of times, and when one realizes that the mentality at that level of command had, three weeks earlier, ordered a misrouted civilian jetliner to be shot down when it strayed into Soviet airspace, I'd place my bets on Petrov reporting a false indication, saying nothing more until it was safe to do so.
In any event, Petrov was just awarded the latest in a string of honors related to his dereliction of duty, the Dresden Peace Prize.
I'm happy to be breathing, so I'll lift a glass, too!
* * * Apropos of nuclear strikes, it occurred to me, as I watched video of the meteor over Chelyabinsk that something like what happened could very easily be mistaken for the arrival of a nuclear-tipped warhead (especially if it had exploded close to the ground). After all, the explosion was—according to NASA's updated figures of this past Friday—about 500 kilotons, or about 30 times the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
In fact, in one of the better videos of the event, there comes a point where the intensity of the meteor's explosion just becomes an white spot in the middle of the screen, washing out everything else in the sky, and sort of like taking a picture of the sun,
and I kid you not, the first time I saw it, I expected to see a mushroom cloud rising in the distance as the initial violence of the explosion faded away.
(I'm just not sure a nuclear missile payload would have created such a fireball during the re-entry phase, before the explosion. As far as I can tell, nuclear warheads do have ablative heat shields, but the don't move as fast as a piece of space rock.)
Cheers...
There are a number of versions of the story out there. Some say he reported the incident as a false alarm with no evidence to go on but his gut, others say he informed his superiors but convinced them not to launch a counterstrike.
Personally, if I had to choose between the two scenarios, I'd select the former, not only because it sounds a bit more "romantic," but more realistic, as well. After all, the opinions of light colonels don't carry much clout with chief-of-staff level officers in the best of times, and when one realizes that the mentality at that level of command had, three weeks earlier, ordered a misrouted civilian jetliner to be shot down when it strayed into Soviet airspace, I'd place my bets on Petrov reporting a false indication, saying nothing more until it was safe to do so.
In any event, Petrov was just awarded the latest in a string of honors related to his dereliction of duty, the Dresden Peace Prize.
I'm happy to be breathing, so I'll lift a glass, too!
In fact, in one of the better videos of the event, there comes a point where the intensity of the meteor's explosion just becomes an white spot in the middle of the screen, washing out everything else in the sky, and sort of like taking a picture of the sun,
and I kid you not, the first time I saw it, I expected to see a mushroom cloud rising in the distance as the initial violence of the explosion faded away.
(I'm just not sure a nuclear missile payload would have created such a fireball during the re-entry phase, before the explosion. As far as I can tell, nuclear warheads do have ablative heat shields, but the don't move as fast as a piece of space rock.)
Cheers...
