"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.


Hahah.

~ CT

As to the notion that Petrov "saved the world", that seems like some thick
hyperbole. His decision was regarding whether or not to report this
detection up the chain. There were levels above him who had the job to
correlate information and could easily have figured out it was a false
alarm.

If one person is going to be credited with saving the world, I'd be
inclined to go with someone like Vasili Arkhipov. But that's a completely
different situation.

~ CT



--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net