Thank you Stan

ubersonic

ubersonic

ubersonic

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I did look but couldn't see one of these threads already, anyway just wanted to say a big thank you to Stanislav Petrov for saving the world 29 years ago today, I wouldn't be here otherwise, ty dude.

NB: For those who don't know what this is about Google "the man who saved the world"
 
estebanrey said:
He didn't save "The World" but he did possibly prevent the loss of a lot of life.
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He wouldn't have had the story if he had said, "My superiors might have launched an assault against the United States".

So i'm not raisng my hat to the comrade. :p
 
Curio said:
SUPER PEDANT

:p
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Not at all, I just find it arrogant to call US and Russia and it's citizens "The world" because they're the only two countries that would have been affected by it.

This nuclear apocalypse stuff from the cold war was nothing short of paranoia, there's no way the entire world (including every country and human being) was ever going to be wiped out like the headline writers like to pretend.

Had one of the countries launched an attack, you'd had an Hiroshima type event in one American city and one in one Russian city and that would have been it, it wouldn't last much longer after that. But this idea of the whole world being blown up by nuclear weapons is going too far.
 
estebanrey said:
Not at all, I just find it arrogant to call US and Russia and it's citizens "The world" because they're the only two countries that would have been affected by it.

This nuclear apocalypse stuff from the cold war was nothing short of paranoia, there's no way the entire world (including every country and human being) was ever going to be wiped out like the headline writers like to pretend.

Had one of the countries launched an attack, you'd had an Hiroshima type event in one American city and one in one Russian city and that would have been it, it wouldn't last much longer after that. But this idea of the whole world being blown up by nuclear weapons is going too far.
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If the US and Russia threw their entire nuclear arsenals at each other (which is what the article seems to suggest would have happened had that red button been pushed), I would be surprised if there would be any of the world that wasn't affected by the fallout.
 
Rhodri2311 said:
If the US and Russia threw their entire nuclear arsenals at each other (which is what the article seems to suggest would have happened had that red button been pushed), I would be surprised if there would be any of the world that wasn't affected by the fallout.
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But that ultimate apocalypse scenario is flawed itself because every single nuke launched would physically and mentally make it harder for the other side to launch one back meaning you could never get to a point (or IMO even scratch the surface) where each country had fired all it's weapons at one another.

It's like having two men pointing machine guns at each other with 100 bullets each. You could never get to a situation where all 200 bullets had been fired because both men would die very quickly after they started shooting at each other.
 
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Rhodri2311 said:
If the US and Russia threw their entire nuclear arsenals at each other (which is what the article seems to suggest would have happened had that red button been pushed), I would be surprised if there would be any of the world that wasn't affected by the fallout.
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I read somewhere that if the US and Russia had a nuclear war, the average temperature on Earth would drop by a few degrees for at least a year. No idea if it's true though!
 
Russia would have took out the USA, the USA would have took out Russia.

Then we'd all be speaking chinese/korean right now :p:p
 
estebanrey said:
But that ultimate apocalypse scenario is flawed itself because every single nuke launched would physically and mentally make it harder for the other side to launch one back meaning you could never get to a point (or IMO even scratch the surface) where each country had fired all it's weapons at one another.

It's like having two men pointing machine guns at each other with 100 bullets each. You could never get to a situation where all 200 bullets had been fired because both men would die very quickly after they started shooting at each other.
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The bunkers that launch these weapons are very well protected and designed to survive nuclear war. It's actually why Stan didn't react - if America had attacked they'd have thrown everything at the Russians, in an effort to knock out their ability to retaliate. It's why it's called mutually assured destruction, they wouldn't have launched one missile at a time - it'd be all or nothing.
 
estebanrey said:
Not at all, I just find it arrogant to call US and Russia and it's citizens "The world" because they're the only two countries that would have been affected by it.
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If the USSR had gone full committal, which given who was in charge at the time would have been a foregone conclusion had Petrov passed the information through. It wouldn't have simply been a case of "the USSR nukes USA, USA nukes USSR, fin". It would have been a case of the USSR sending lots of nuclear missiles and bombers plus escorts to the USA, sending a smaller amount of nuclear missiles and bombers to take out the USA's NATO allies in Europe (bombers that the RAF didn't have a hope in hell of intercepting at the time) and instructing all the troops/hardware in East Germany and along the "iron curtain" to head west.

Granted South African and South America would have been fine, but on the whole the entire world would have been screwed big time, had it happened neither you or I would be here today, hence why im grateful to the man that averted it :)
 
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