News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Happy Petrov day by vassilevsky on Thursday September 26, 2013 @06:03AM (#6449789)
Software bugs are a threat to humanity.
Re:Happy Petrov day by AmVess on Thursday September 26, 2013 @06:24AM (#6449857)
The See Also section at the bottom of that wiki article is enough to induce serious pucker in even someone with tungsten-level constitution.
Re:Happy Petrov day by rainforest on Thursday September 26, 2013 @08:10AM (#6450155)
Command and Control[1] offers a comprehensive compendium of nuclear incidents if you're interested in more. It's quite remarkable that the US never faced an accidental nuclear detonation, despite the SAC, Air Force and Navy's bickering between themselves over control of them, and their refusal to fit safety devices until late in the war.

My favourite anecdote is the code on all warheads on the US' Minuteman fleet being set to 00000000 as an exercise in simultaneously conforming to and circumventing requirements for PALs (locks to forbid misuse).

[1] : http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/eric-schlosser-c...

Re:Happy Petrov day by arethuza on Thursday September 26, 2013 @08:19AM (#6450196)
The book "One Minute to Midnight" about the Cuban Missile Crisis has a rather long list of places during that confrontation that almost led to nuclear war.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev...

One fascinating one was a U2 getting lost on the way to the North Pole due to the Northern Lights and flying back into the Soviet Union just at the wrong time - alarming the Soviets and resulting in fighters being sent up by the US to protect the ailing U2. Unfortunately, due to the US being at Defcon 2 the fighters were only armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles.... The relief (for a number of reasons) the U2 pilot felt when he eventually landed was, understandably, rather intense!

Amazing book about a ghastly time.