Days when the Earth could stop: how the world found itself on the brink of nuclear war several times

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Political games, technical failures and the human factor could more than once cause the death of all living things.

The third world war may well be the last in the history of mankind, since there is a possibility that it will lead to serious climate change on the entire planet. From the huge amount of dust and ash raised by atomic explosions into the atmosphere, the flow of sunlight will be significantly reduced and a cooling will occur. Also, a change in the amount of precipitation, the formation of significant gaps in the ozone layer, incredible fires (fire tornado), contamination of water and air with radioactive elements - so called nuclear winter.

This development of events was considered most likely during the Cold War, when the United States and the USSR unleashed an insane arms race, seeking to secure superiority in destructive power. No other country will subsequently achieve such a scale of accumulation of deadly "toys".

In real combat, atomic bombs were used only at the end of World War II. On August 6 and 9, 1945, American aircraft dropped two nuclear charges on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Four years later, a similar weapon was first tested by IA Andryushin, AK Chernyshev, Yu. A. Yudin. Taming the nucleus. Pages of the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear infrastructure of the USSR. Sarov, Saransk. 2003 Soviet Union, which marked the beginning of a nuclear confrontation between the two powers.

When the world was on the brink

There were several misunderstandings. And each of them almost turned into irreparable consequences.

The incident with the Soviet nuclear submarine "B-59" in 1962

1962 was one of the hottest in the Cold War era. American and Soviet nuclear missiles were deployed in close proximity to the borders of two warring powers: Turkey and Cuba, respectively. This meant that it would be impossible to detect and intercept them in a timely manner. The events that followed will be called the Caribbean Crisis Lavrenov S. Ya., Popov I. M. Caribbean Crisis: the World is on the Brink of Catastrophe. The Soviet Union in local wars and conflicts. M. 2003.

American rocket "Jupiter". Similar ones were located in Turkey during the Cuban missile crisis. Photo: U. S. Army - Redstone Arsenal / Wikimedia Commons

Aerial photograph of a Soviet missile position in San Cristobal, Cuba, taken by an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. Photo: National Archives

Tension grew in relations between the two countries; it reached its peak at the end of October. The Island of Liberty was subjected to a naval blockade by the US Navy. On the morning of October 27, during a reconnaissance flight over Cuba, Soviet air defenses shot down an American U-2 aircraft. It was possible to prevent retaliatory bombing only thanks to the composure of the then US President John F. Kennedy.

On the same day, American ships discovered the Soviet nuclear-armed B-59 submarine, which was moving towards Cuba under the command of Second Rank Captain Valentin Savitsky.

During the sailing, Savitsky did not receive clear instructions from the command, why there were atomic charges on board, whether they should be used and if they should be used, then how. But the captain had the right to use them if the boat was attacked.

The Americans surrounded the Soviet ship and used special depth charges to force the Soviet submariners to surface. The crew lost contact with the command, many officers decided that the boat was about to be sunk, and Savitsky prepared to use an atomic torpedo - he considered that the war had already begun.

However, after consulting with his backup captain of the second rank Vasily Arkhipov, Savitsky abandoned this venture. The submarine managed to send radio signals to the American ships and the aircraft pursuing her, demanding that the provocations be stopped. The bombardment has stopped. Thanks to this, Arkhipov is often called the man who prevented a nuclear catastrophe.

Arkhipov in 1961 managed to serve on the long-suffering submarine "K-19". The ship with an atomic engine and weapons has repeatedly suffered accidents in which several dozen Soviet sailors died. The victims of the largest incident - the fire of 1972 - were 30 servicemen of the Soviet fleet.

The very next day the order to shoot down American planes over Cuba was Lavrenov S. Ya., Popov I. M. Caribbean crisis: the world is on the brink of disaster. The Soviet Union in local wars and conflicts. M. 2003 was paused. The parties entered into negotiations. In November, Soviet missiles were dismantled from Cuban territory, the US fleet ended the blockade of the island, and a few months later American weapons of mass destruction left Turkey.

Errors of the US air defense system of the 1970s-1980s

A number of potentially dangerous situations have been caused by false alarms of missile strike warning systems. At the turn of the 70s and 80s, automatic systems began to be introduced at American tracking stations, and since then up to 10 such incidents have been recorded per day.

They were caused by equipment malfunctions, program failures, light and thermal effects: solar or lunar activity, glare on the water.

All this happened against the backdrop of deteriorating Relations with the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan. Britannica relationship between the United States and the USSR, which began in 1979.

So, the US space intelligence on November 9, 1979 received information about the shelling of the US with nuclear warheads from the Soviet side. Satellite observation indicated the high accuracy of the information received.

About a thousand ballistic missile systems were put on alert, and interceptor aircraft took off. 6 minutes later, the attack signal was declared false. It turned out that a technician had accidentally run a training program on a computer to simulate a Soviet nuclear attack.

Similar episodes happened on June 3 and 6 of the following year. They were caused by a failure in the data processing system, on the fact of which the US Senate subsequently conducted a check.

Another notable incident occurred in March 1980. Then the Soviet submarine, during the exercise, launched four missiles in the Kuril Islands region. Early detection systems for US air defense reported that one of them was aimed at American territory. Despite the fact that the information was not confirmed, the following year, senior United States officials gathered for a conference to assess external threats.

False operation of the Soviet warning system in 1983

In March 1983, US President Ronald Reagan announced Relations with the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan. Britannica on the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The project, which received the unofficial name By analogy with the recently released parts of the Star Wars saga by George Lucas, involved the development of a large-scale air defense system - a laser-missile shield on the ground, in the air and even in space. Later, this not particularly realistic plan was supplemented: it included provisions on new offensive weapons.

Thus began a new, decisive stage in the arms race and cold war between the USSR and the United States. The process of "detente" that began in the 1970s - the signing of joint declarations on the limitation of nuclear weapons, "warming" of diplomatic relations - was finally curtailed.

A catastrophe in the air near the eastern borders of the USSR added fuel to the fire. On September 1, 1983, Soviet aircraft shot down a Korean Air Lines passenger Boeing-747 with 269 passengers on board, including the Americans, which had deviated from the course due to a navigational error. Air defense systems mistook it for an American reconnaissance aircraft. This tragic event was preceded by several provocations on the Pacific border of the USSR.

In this situation, on September 23, the command post of the space detection system in the closed military town of Serpukhov-15 received a signal to launch intercontinental missiles from an American base.

The operational duty lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov checked the incoming threat and confirmed the high probability of a real attack. Further, according to the protocol, it was necessary to raise the alarm, which would most likely lead to a retaliatory strike from the USSR.

However, the officer was alarmed by the small number of missiles launched, and he decided to turn to specialists in visual observation. They reported that there were no signs of a nuclear strike from the United States. After making sure that there was a false triggering of the system, Petrov reported this to his superiors.

For the first time, the general public recognized D. Likhmanov 40 minutes before the Third World War. Homeland only spoke about it eight years later, when the case was declassified.

In 2006, at the UN headquarters, Stanislav Petrov even received a commemorative statuette from the Association of World Citizens with the inscription: "To the man who prevented a nuclear war." Later he was awarded several more European awards.

Why the nuclear threat has not disappeared anywhere

In fact, the number of such incidents is measured in the thousands. Moreover, they occurred not only through the fault of the USSR and the United States: several times a nuclear war could be unleashed by China, India and Israel.

Such incidents have occurred since the end of the Cold War. So, the so-called Norwegian missile incident Pry P. V. is widely known. War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink. Greenwood Publishing Group. 1999 1995. Then Russian air defense systems mistook a Canadian research missile for an American ballistic missile, and a nuclear briefcase was even delivered to President Boris Yeltsin.

In October 2010, an even more dire incident occurred: the launch control center at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming lost contact with 50 high-alert missile systems for almost an hour.

The arms race has shown the futility and danger of a nuclear build-up. Today, atomic weapons are used not as a means of aggression, but as a method of maintaining the balance of power in the world. When supposed rivals can destroy each other and in general all life on Earth, wars become useless.

However, despite the fact that the number of nuclear weapons in the world has been declining since the end of the Cold War, the risk of their use remains.

In 1947, the creators of the first atomic bomb from the University of Chicago made a Doomsday clock. Their arrows show not the time, but the proximity of mankind to a nuclear disaster, which is metaphorically associated with midnight.

And it was in 2020 that the watch turned out to be the closest to her. In particular, one of the reasons is the deterioration of the situation in the field of nuclear weapons.

Technology has made a big step forward, and almost any state and even small organizations can create a primitive atomic bomb, if desired. This is the conclusion reached by the authors of a study commissioned by the US Congress back in 1977. According to some reports, such work is already underway in Iran and Myanmar.

At the same time, according to the watch creators, the current nuclear powers and the UN are not taking sufficient measures to prevent the further proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This increases the risks of local nuclear wars. They are also worried about the growing threat of cyber attacks and the spread of disinformation.

However, the weapons that have already been created are quite enough to destroy all life on Earth. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the total stock of nuclear charges in 2019 was 13,865 units. At the same time, the United States and Russia have 90% of these warheads.

To cause serious harm to the Earth, according to some calculations, only about 100 explosions with a yield of 13-18 kilotons each are enough.

Today, nine countries have their own nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, China, India, Israel, Pakistan and the DPRK. The last four were included in this list bypassing the 1968 UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Nevertheless, it played a positive role: without a treaty, there could be 15 to 25 countries possessing atomic weapons of mass destruction.

So far, only South Africa remains a country that independently developed nuclear weapons and then voluntarily renounced them.

It remains to be hoped that technical problems, human factors and evil or insane intentions will not prevail over prudence. Hardly anyone wants to die in a nuclear fire or live in the ashes of the old world.