The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966

Re:The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in... by yardie on Thursday October 02, 2014 @05:19AM (#8399962)

Plenty of people on both sides really wanted to use them. Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kissinger, being one of them. Fortunately, cooler heads held the launch codes and we all prevailed.

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Re:The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in... by gdy on Thursday October 02, 2014 @06:26AM (#8400125)

Is this what you are referring to? http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff...

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Re:The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in... by yardie on Thursday October 02, 2014 @09:21AM (#8400579)

This and a few others. Going through the wired archives you'll find many examples of nuclear false alarms and brinkmanship where the only thing stopping annihilation is an officer ignoring or delaying the order to launch [1][2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

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Re:The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in... by arethuza on Thursday October 02, 2014 @07:30AM (#8400277)

I think a lot of people on both sides were prepared to use them. Fortunately only a very small number of people wanted to use them and were in any position to actually do so.

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Re:The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in... by yardie on Thursday October 02, 2014 @09:22AM (#8400586)

Pres. Nixon wanted to use them. And you can't get much more capable than the CIC. Luckily, his advisers talked him out of it.

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Re:The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in... by arethuza on Thursday October 02, 2014 @01:02PM (#8401698)

I thought Nixon just wanted to appear mad enough to use nuclear weapons rather than actually being that daft...

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

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