6 Tiny Mistakes That Almost Ended the World

6 A 50-Cent Computer Chip Mistakenly Announces Nuclear War

At 2 a.m. on June 3, 1980, some poor Air Force staffer deep within the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was working the late night shift when he noticed that the screen readout that usually read "0 Incoming Missiles" suddenly read "2 Incoming Missiles." This was bad enough, but then, perhaps with an innocuous beep, it announced "220 Incoming Missiles."

Alarms sounded everywhere as the Air Force collectively freaked out all across America. Bombers carrying nuclear bombs began taking off throughout the country. Someone woke up National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and told him that the shit was hitting the fan.

Luckily, before anyone could actually fire a missile, someone realized that the hundreds of warheads weren't showing up on the radar screens. The alerts were canceled, bombers landed and everyone took a deep breath and poured a strong Scotch.

It took three days to figure out what happened. It turned out that a simple computer chip was malfunctioning inside the NORAD computers, causing the display to sometimes show 2s when it should have shown 0s. Allegedly, the chip that caused the crisis cost only 46 cents.

And that wasn't the only time a tiny glitch almost drove us back to the Stone Age ...

5 A Blown Fuse Nearly Triggers Armageddon

In the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force built a network of early warning radar so they could detect a Soviet attack at some point before North America turned into a field of mushroom clouds. These radar stations were linked by communications lines to the Strategic Air Command headquarters in Nebraska, the Air Force bomber and missile bases and the underground Batcave-style NORAD command center in Wyoming.

So, understandably, quite a few pairs of underpants were soiled on November 24, 1961, when communications between SAC headquarters and the radar sites suddenly went dead. You know, as if they had been suddenly wiped off the map by a surprise attack. SAC tried calling the backup lines. When that didn't work, they tried calling NORAD on the regular civilian telephone, but they couldn't even bring up a dial tone.

At this point, the only conclusion was that the Soviet Union had just nuked all the radar sites, as well as NORAD, as the first wave of a massive, world-ending attack. All over the United States, nuclear-armed B-52s lined up on runways and started their engines. For the next 12 minutes, the United States Air Force nervously awaited the order to commence global annihilation.

Luckily for future generations, a B-52 that was already in the air happened to fly past one of the radar sites, noticed a distinct lack of smoking ruins and reported it in time to convince everyone to calm their shit down.

What actually happened? For some stupid reason, every single telephone line connecting NORAD, SAC headquarters and all the early warning radars, including the backup and civilian lines, ran through one single telephone relay station in Colorado. That night, a motor in the relay station had overheated, shutting down every possible line of communication between the nuclear bombers and the people who had to constantly tell them not to kill everyone.

But hey, these were technical errors, right? The machines were overruled by wise human operators. Level-headed, well-trained humans couldn't make a mistake that stupid, could they?

4 NORAD Mistakenly Informs America That the World Is Ending

The Emergency Broadcast System, that voice on the radio that warns you about incoming tornadoes and stuff, was first created during the Cold War to warn American citizens of a Soviet nuclear strike so that they could take cover in their bomb shelters or dive under their school desks. Every Saturday, NORAD would test the system by sending a teletype message to every radio station in the United States to make sure it was working. Tests were routine, and no one paid much attention to them.

Until 9:33 a.m. Eastern on February 20, 1971, when lowly civilian teletype operator Wayland S. Eberhard grabbed the wrong tape and stuffed it into the alert system machine.

Instead of the message saying "This is only a test," NORAD sent out a chilling message to every radio station in America that said an emergency alert direct from the president was forthcoming.

To your average Cold War era American, there was only one reason why the president would interrupt the Partridge Family's latest hit with a nationwide emergency announcement, and it wasn't anything fun. According to DJ Bob Sievers of Fort Wayne, Indiana, "This meant one thing to me: The atomic bombs, the missiles, have left Russia, and they're on their way here."

Radio announcers around the country were compelled to broadcast confused and jittery announcements about a mystery emergency while deciding whether they should call home to say farewell to their loved ones. Another DJ at Fort Hood, Texas, who was also a soldier, said that he was stuck trying to decide whether to go back to base or "desert the military and spend the remaining few moments of the end of the world with my wife and 1-month-old daughter."

The folks at NORAD realized their mistake almost immediately, but through their frantic scrambling to cancel the alert, they couldn't locate the correct code they needed to authenticate the message. So for about 45 minutes, the nation listened breathlessly for confirmation that the end was upon them.

Eventually, they sent out the correct cancel message and the country breathed a sigh of relief, or, in the words of one Virginia broadcaster, "We're considering billing NORAD for three sets of underwear."

And you also have to realize that the United States and Soviet Union were always obsessively monitoring each other for any sign of a nuclear surprise attack. One sign they looked for was a sudden civilian evacuation. If one country suddenly started putting its people in bomb shelters with no incoming attack, the obvious conclusion would be that they were about to launch an attack themselves and were getting their people to safety before the retaliation strike came in. And of course, if one side thought they were about to get nuked, the logical response would be to launch a pre-emptive strike while they still had the chance. So, if the panic had played out much longer, it would have looked to the Soviets like the USA was bracing itself for World War III, and their only choice would have been to try to quickly strike first.

3 A Fictional War Scenario Is Confused With Horrible Reality

At 9 a.m. on November 9, 1979, a low-level Air Force officer sat down at a computer and booted up a training program that would simulate what would happen if the Soviets fired 1,000 nuclear missiles at America at the same time. You know, for kicks. Unfortunately, what he didn't know was that his computer was hooked up to the mainframe in the main NORAD control room. When he began the simulation, computers from NORAD to the Pentagon started reporting that every nuke in Russia was on a collision course with the USA. You may recognize this as the plot of WarGames.

According to Senator Charles Percy, who was touring the NORAD facility when it all went down, "All hell broke loose; they were absolutely convinced there were missiles coming at us."

Warnings went out to every missile silo in the United States informing the crews that the country was under nuclear attack and to prepare to launch. Fighter planes started taking off to shoot down the Soviet bombers that were probably headed their way. The president's airborne command center was readied for takeoff, but no one could find Jimmy Carter to put him on board. So his plane took off without him, presumably leaving the president to find a suitable hole in the ground to hide in.

Thankfully, the commander of NORAD decided it would be a good idea to double check that the crisis was real before they went ahead and destroyed the world. He called up radar stations to ask if they had seen anything. They reported back that there was nothing on radar and everything looked clear. Satellites that were designed to detect missile launches from anywhere in the world also reported that everything was clear. So, good thing the phones were working that day.

2 Russia Confuses a Science Experiment With World War III

On January 25, 1995, scientists in northern Norway launched a completely benign research rocket designed to study the aurora borealis. But even though the Cold War had been over for some years, Russians still collectively soiled themselves when their radar picked up something that looked almost identical to an American ballistic missile flying straight toward them.

According to Russian policy, if such an attack were to be detected, President Boris Yeltsin had 10 minutes to decide whether to nuke the shit out of the United States. Like the U.S. president, Yeltsin carried a briefcase with nuclear doomsday codes inside. This was the first time that it had been opened.

The Russian president, sweat reeking of vodka trailing down his forehead, sat with his hands poised over the Big Red Button as the minutes ticked by, his aides presumably screaming into telephones around him.

Allegedly, Yeltsin had only a minute left to decide a course of action when the radar announced that the rocket had fallen into the ocean without killing anybody. It would be hours before they could figure out that the object had been a scientific test and not just a really ineffective nuclear missile.

If you're wondering how the Americans would be so silly as to antagonize an already backed-into-the-corner nuclear power for the sake of studying some flashy sky colors, in actual fact the Americans were every bit as confused, considering that they had officially notified the Russians about the launch weeks earlier. Apparently, someone along the Russian chain of command forgot to tell the people who really, really needed to know about this stuff, such as the guys with their eyes glued to their radar and a briefcase full of launch codes.

1 America Messes Up Repeatedly During the Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis would already have the dubious honor of being the closest the world has ever been to nuclear annihilation even without all the screw-ups. It was basically the scene at the end of Face/Off where everyone is pointing guns at everyone else and screaming, except that the guns were doomsday devices. The U.S. military went to DEFCON 2 (the second highest nuclear threat level) for the first time in its history. Things couldn't get any worse, right?

Well, there was the event that occurred on October 25, 1962, when a guard at a U.S. air base spotted a shadowy figure attempting to scale the fences. Concerned that it might be a Soviet saboteur sent to mess up the American defenses, the guard activated the intruder alarms, which alerted nearby military bases to the potential threat. But at Volk Field in Wisconsin, the wrong alarm went off -- the one that signaled the beginning of World War III.

As nuclear bombers started to tear down the runway to deliver an apocalyptic payload onto Soviet soil, it came down to a single truck to flag down the planes by frantically flashing its lights. The "Soviet saboteur," by the way, turned out to be a curious bear.

The very next day, on October 26, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California launched a Titan II rocket out over the Pacific Ocean. You know, right toward Russia. Why? It was a scheduled test. Of course, when it was scheduled, the military had no idea that the Cuban Missile Crisis was going to break out. It occurred to nobody that this might not be a good idea under the circumstances.

But that was just one incredibly stupid oversight, right? Actually, later that afternoon, a second freaking missile test occurred at Cape Canaveral, right at ground zero of the Cuban crisis. This time, even the other U.S. bases didn't know about it, so both the American and Soviet government suffered a terrifying few moments wondering whether the other had just lobbed a nuclear warhead and instigated war.

Holy shit. How are we still here?

For more ways we were this close to being annihilated, check out 7 Nuclear Weapon Screw-Ups You Won't Believe We Survive. Or learn about the 5 Ways The World Could End (You'd Never See Coming).

And stop by LinkSTORM to see how John Cheese is trying to destroy the planet.

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