Have we ever been this close to WW3 ? / Nuclear war ?

[hippo]

 

I am not old enough to remember the cuban missile crisis.

I remember leaflets through my letterbox in the 1980's  telling us what to do in the event of a Nuclear attack. I thought it was Maggie trying to get a few votes.

9/11 - Was scary for a few days after -  as was the initial days of the first gulf war for me personally as Id had not experienced anything like that before.

All of a sudden it seems we are very on edge with people daring to do things that have thus far been unthinkable.

or is it just 24 rolling new anxiety !

[sne]

This one was rather close

Quote

On 26 September 1983, the nuclear early-warning radar of the Soviet Union reported the launch of one intercontinental ballistic missile with four more missiles behind it, from bases in the United States. These missile attack warnings were suspected to be false alarms by Stanislav Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air Defence Forces on duty at the command center of the early-warning system. He decided to wait for corroborating evidence—of which none arrived—rather than immediately relaying the warning up the chain-of-command. This decision is seen as having prevented a retaliatory nuclear attack against the United States and its NATO allies, which would likely have resulted in an escalation to a full-scale nuclear war. Investigation of the satellite warning system later determined that the system had indeed malfunctioned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident

[hippo]

1 minute ago, sne said:

This one was rather close

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident

wow !  Slightly different as that would have been an accidental nuclear war. What we are faced with know is someone knowigly pressing the button.

[ml1dch]

The second best Stan Petrov.

[Chindie]

Cuban Missile Crisis.

[chrisp65]

Yeah been much closer than this many times.

If something so out of your control causes too much stress, it’s ok to turn off the news and listen to some dub.

[Seat68]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

Yeah been much closer than this many times.

If something so out of your control causes too much stress, it’s ok to turn off the news and listen to some dub.

You almost, almost got a like. Almost. 

[hogso]

Didn't James Blunt prevent WWIII?

[rjw63]

Every time we lose in the match day thread

[villa4europe]

The Cuban missile crisis makes for some good reading, I did my a level history coursework on whether Kennedy was a good president or just immensely popular, turns out that was far to open ended and I went about 5k words over the limit and had to trim it back 

I think if you was a conspiracy theorist him not taking the US in to WW3 and therefore the perception that he was weak on the commies is a motive for him being bumped off, I think a lot of Americans wanted a war in response 

You can't imagine trumps response being the red telephone (which I know is neither red or a telephone) 

[regular_john]

4 hours ago, hippo said:

 

I am not old enough to remember the cuban missile crisis.

I remember leaflets through my letterbox in the 1980's  telling us what to do in the event of a Nuclear attack. I thought it was Maggie trying to get a few votes.

9/11 - Was scary for a few days after -  as was the initial days of the first gulf war for me personally as Id had not experienced anything like that before.

All of a sudden it seems we are very on edge with people daring to do things that have thus far been unthinkable.

or is it just 24 rolling new anxiety !

As above, we have been close several times before. Unfortunately, I can only see this crisis ending in one of two ways - a coup that overthrows Putin or escalation into a wider conflict, which would probably be WW3.

 

There's no other possible outcome as far as I can work out.

 

Ukraine definitely can't win a military conflict even with lots of munitions and support from the West. Diplomacy is a non-starter as neither side will compromise. Russia will not stop until Ukraine is conquered. 

 

Let's pretend that Putin will be satisfied with taking Ukraine only. When Russia do conquer Ukraine, they're going to face a massive challenge to maintain control. Their only option is to terrorise the population into compliance, probably with mass executions, concentration camps/gulags for opponents etc. The situation would quickly become such a humanitarian nightmare that other nations would have to intervene. Eventually, this drags us into WW3.

 

Far more likely, Putin will want to advance into other surrounding nations after conquering Ukraine. He'll end up invading either a NATO country or a NATO ally, which will drag us into WW3.

 

Maybe I'm wrong, and I hope to Jehovah I am, but I don't think there are any other realistic outcomes. 

[Genie]

 

[HanoiVillan]

5 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Yeah been much closer than this many times.

If something so out of your control causes too much stress, it’s ok to turn off the news and listen to some dub.

100% agree we've been closer than this, and in some ways it's a miracle it hasn't happened since WW2, but I think we're also much closer than people may want to admit. Fighting a proxy war with weapons we are openly supplying in continental Europe is a delicate and risky proposition.

[JoshVilla]

2 hours ago, Genie said:

 

I know that's it's Piers Morgan trying to be funny/clever, but that joke doesn't even make any sense.

[Rds1983]

I think the closest we've ever been was in 1983 when WORP successfully brute forced Norad, managed to get the complete nuclear launch codes and initialised launch.

Luckily, launch was called off just in time as the only winning move is not to play and WORP decided a nice game of chess would be better.