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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 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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