Closest Nuclear War encounters (50% of them were computer or human error):
Historical close-encounters
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, an apocalyptic war between the United States and USSR was considered likely. The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 is generally thought to be the historical point at which the risk of World War III was closest. Other potential starts have included the following (see External links below for further examples):
* July 26th, 1956 ? March, 1957 - Suez Crisis the conflict pitted Egypt against an alliance between the French Fourth Republic, the United Kingdom and Israel. The U.S.S.R. threatened to intervene on behalf of Egypt, the U.S. became afraid of a larger war, and forced the British and French to withdraw.
* October 24, 1973 - As the Yom Kippur War was winding down, a Soviet threat to intervene on Egypt's behalf caused the United States to go to DEFCON 3. If the Soviets intervened, the Americans would as well. The Soviets then backed down from their threat and Egypt withdrew its request for assistance.
* November 9, 1979, when the U.S. made emergency retaliation preparations after NORAD saw on-screen indications that a full-scale Soviet attack had been launched. No attempt was made to use the "red telephone" hotline to clarify the situation with the USSR and it was not until early-warning radar systems confirmed no such launch had taken place that NORAD realised that a computer system test had caused the display errors. A Senator at NORAD at the time described an atmosphere of absolute panic. A GAO investigation led to the construction of an off-site test facility, to prevent similar mistakes subsequently. A fictionalized version of this incident was filmed as the movie WarGames, in which the test system is inadvertantly triggered by a teenage hacker believing himself to be playing a video game.
* September 26, 1983, when Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov refused to launch ICBMs, despite computer indications that the U.S. had already launched
* January 25, 1995, when Russia almost launched a nuclear attack after a Norwegian missile launch for scientific research was detected from Spitzbergen and thought to be an attack on Russia, launched five minutes from Moscow. Norway had notified the world that it would be making the launch, but the Russian Defense Ministry had neglected to notify those monitoring Russia's nuclear defense systems.
