Need help on a memory dredging operation...

[Jackpine Radical]

Anybody remember a show (probably PBS) about a Russian military officer who got an erroneous signal from their warning system saying that we had launched a missile attack but didn’t believe the signal & refused to launch a retaliatory attack, thereby averting a nuclear exchange? What info can you provide that would let me track down the show?

[justabob]

1. It was PBS but

I can't remeber either. The first thing that came to mind was Bill Moyers NOW, but it may have been Frontline.

[mzteris]

2. The Norway incident?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/russia/interviews/pikayev.html

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Really nice find, but my wife doesn't think this was it.

I'm asking this because of a discussion she got into with her son.

[BrotherBuzz]

4. Yes, googled "nuclear war near misses"....interesting and scary

<snip> During a recent CNN interview, former Senator Sam Nunn, a
staunch supporter of the policies that led to the present
situation, confirmed the danger of accidental nuclear war,
asserting that it is greater now than during the Cold War
(CNN, 8 Feb. 1999). The same CNN program revealed the
case of a near-miss that occurred in July 1997, when a
peaceful Norwegian space probe was launched, activating the
Russian response system as if it were a Trident strike. The
window for the decision to launch is only ten minutes. Russian
President Boris Yeltsin took eight minutes to decide it was not
a real attack. The world was left with two minutes to
doomsday in this case, in the form of a launch of Russian
nuclear weapons in response to a ghost radar signal.
more-
http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v15n3p18.htm

[justabob]

5. I think I found it... it was Nova

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/missileers/falsealarms.html

edit: The officers name: Stanislav Petrov will help in the search at any rate :)

2nd edt: transcript http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2814missileers.html

[mzteris]

6. Here's one the other way around

Q. "You write about the 1980 US incident where our National Security Advisor got a call that there was a launch from Russia. What happened there? Are the Russians the only one who have had problems with their early warning system?"

A. "President Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was awakened 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning with the word that 1,000 missiles were headed to the United States across the Pacific. And they thought this was a genuine nuclear attack on the United States. And they began to take bombers off. They began to put alert aircraft in the air, that is, the airborne command posts, and that kind of thing. And while this was going on, Brzezinski was deciding whether to call President Carter and ask him, "Do you want to give the order to counter-launch under this attack?" when he made one more check. And they called back and said of the several warning stations that should have seen this incoming attack, only one had seen it. And therefore they discounted it because there was an error in that system. A computer failure. A training program put in or something, instead of a genuine one. But that's terribly dangerous. I don't think President Carter would have launched. I really don't. But who knows?"

Admiral Stansfield Turner . http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/russia/interviews/turner.html

[mzteris]

7. Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov

Stanislav Petrov (Russian: Ñòàíèñëàâ Åâãðàôîâè÷ Ïåòðîâ) (born c. 1939) is a retired Russian Army colonel who, on September 26, 1983, averted a potential nuclear war by refusing to accept that the United States had launched missiles against the USSR, despite the indications given by his computerized early warning systems. The Soviet computer reports were later shown to have been in error, and Petrov is credited with preventing World War III and the devastation of much of the Earth by nuclear weapons. Because of military secrecy and international policy, Petrov's actions were kept secret until 1998.

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

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Thanks so much to everyone who responded.

Y'all did it. My wife was actually thinking of the Petrov incident, but the others are also of a lot of interest.

DU Rules!!!