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A comment on New Sanctions Imposed on North Korea as it Warns of Pre-emptive Nuclear Attack. Parent comment

Re:New Sanctions Imposed on North Korea as it Warns of Pre-e... by arethuza on Thursday March 07, 2013 @09:02AM (#5337575)
The Soviets actually considered a first strike in November 1983 during the epic mix up that was the NATO Able Archer 83 exercise.

The Soviets had always believed that the Americans wanted to attack them, perhaps understandably given that in the 1950s and early 1960s there were senior US military leaders who actually wanted to initiate a full nuclear war with the Soviets while the latter were still strategically weak.

The Soviets thought that the Americans were preparing a first strike during Able Archer and were preparing to preempt it - thankfully the exercise ended and everyone on the Soviet side calmed down and took their fingers off the button.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83

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Re:New Sanctions Imposed on North Korea as it Warns of Pre-e... by iSnow on Thursday March 07, 2013 @10:02AM (#5337922)
Not quite. Due to the tensions and an error in a Soviet early-warning system, it looked like the US had indeed launched a couple of rockets in a first strike. If not for Petrov's level-headed reaction, nuclear war might have started by error.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm...

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Re:New Sanctions Imposed on North Korea as it Warns of Pre-e... by arethuza on Thursday March 07, 2013 @10:05AM (#5337943)
That was a separate incident - just happened to be right before Able Archer.
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Re:New Sanctions Imposed on North Korea as it Warns of Pre-e... by iSnow on Thursday March 07, 2013 @10:22AM (#5338074)
I see, my bad.

Nice to know that we came that close to annihilation twice in 1983.

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Re:New Sanctions Imposed on North Korea as it Warns of Pre-e... by arethuza on Thursday March 07, 2013 @10:36AM (#5338174)
I can recommend watching Threads to get some idea of just how grim things would probably have been in the UK had there been a war at that time.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/

NB Threads, although it depicts an absolutely devastating attack on the UK (~90% dead within a few years), actually uses a rather optimistic attack plan - a real attack would actually have been far worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Leg

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