On Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:56:06 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Sunday, February 17, 2013 2:34:32 PM UTC-8, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
"Stuf4" wrote in message ... From Greg Moo "Stuf4" wrote in message ... From snidely (dps): Stuf4 submitted this idea : From David Spain: snip Whoa. Imagine if that happened a few decades ago during the height of Cold War tension. Could easily have been misinterpreted as the work of Ronnie Raygun. Wrong orbit for that, too. Minute Man III missiles aren't designed for a grazing trajectory. Yes, that is *exactly* the rational, measured response that we could have expected. "Wait comrade! According to my calculations this grazing trajectory could not have come from the Yankee Imperialists!" Yes, it probably is. The Soviets may have been paranoid, but they weren't stupid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov He judged correctly that a US attack wouldn't look like what the data was showing him. It's highly likely that had this happened during the Cold War a person in a similar position would have done the same thing: 1) Hmm.. wrong trajectory 2) Single contact 3) Moving way too fast This btw, also assumes that it was detectable. It's quite possible given the trajectory and speed it wouldn't have been. Petrov was dealing with indications from a warning system and absolutely nothing for physical evidence outside of that. Yes, and you're the one that claimed they'd basically ignore the wrong trajectory as a false signal. I pointed out in a similar case, they correctly interpreted bad data as exactly that. Friday morning was an *actual strike*, with significant damage and casualties. And yet, again, the first rational response would be: "Really, no mushroom cloud, ONE missile? Yeah, something's
up, but let's not go nuclear just yet. Let's wait until we have actual launch confirmation." There's this thing most people recognize called the "fog of war". So detected or not, there are hundreds of phone calls from citizens saying they're under attack. Damage is confirmed. Hospitals are reporting in. Really, you think 100s of citizens are going to be calling the Soviet military command? You all can talk as though you know how this would have played out. I maintain that it could easily have been misinterpreted. And I'll maintain you're wrong since we have evidence of the Soviets acting in a rational manner during the cold-war, even during one of the most tense periods of it.

Perhaps an even better example than 1983 is 1962. On October 24 1962, during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union launched what was intended to be a probe to Mars. The rocket's upper stage exploded and debris was detected by American and Canadian watchers along the DEW line. But it was fairly quickly determined to not be a missile attack.


Well, Richard Hoaxland, er, Hoagland has now declared it a Russian
shootdown of a giant extraterrestrial craft, so the joke's on all of
us, it seems.