Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: The summer of eighty three, across America, teenagers crammed into
Speaker 2: theaters to see a new heart throb named Tom Cruise
Speaker 2: make some larger than life bad decisions in risky business.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you gotta say, what the fuck make you move?
Speaker 2: It was such a smash hit, in fact, that all
Speaker 2: over the country, and I'm speaking from personal experience here,
Speaker 2: emergency rooms were flooded with teenagers with broken bones from
Speaker 2: trying to replicate the infamous hardwood floor sock slide.
Speaker 4: Fuck.
Speaker 2: It was a simpler time, wasn't it. It was the
Speaker 2: summer that gave us flashdance, those tasty mouth incinerating hot pockets,
Speaker 2: and somewhere down under, a baby Chris Hemsworth entered the world.
Speaker 2: But you know what they say, good things never last.
Speaker 2: Soon a humid house in summer would turn to fall
Speaker 2: and things would get a little bit colder.
Speaker 5: I'd heard that of a seven forty seven missing, and
Speaker 5: seven forty sevens just aren't missing.
Speaker 6: One story dominates the free world news media tonights, the
Speaker 6: killing of two hundred and sixty nine innocent people. I
Speaker 6: bought a Korean jumbo jip that drifted into Soviet territory.
Speaker 7: The United States reacts with revulsion to this attack. Loss
Speaker 7: of life appears to be heavy. We can see no
Speaker 7: excuse whatsoever for this appalling act.
Speaker 1: The United States is demanding that the Soviet Union explained
Speaker 1: why it's shot down a Korean airline's plane that had
Speaker 1: strayed into Soviet airspace.
Speaker 2: I met Helms and This is Snafu, a podcast about
Speaker 2: history's greatest screw ups. On season one, we're telling you
Speaker 2: the story of a snaffoo that is gigantic, terrifying, and observed.
Speaker 2: It's called Able Archer eighty three, the nineteen eighty three
Speaker 2: NATO military exercise that may have almost triggered a real
Speaker 2: nuclear war. By this point in the season, we've learned
Speaker 2: that the Spring of nineteen eighty three firmly ended anything
Speaker 2: resembling a good relationship between the United States and the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union. In geopolitical technical terms, we'd been downgraded from
Speaker 2: frenemies to enemies. Ronald Reagan was casually slinging around evil
Speaker 2: Empire insults. NATO announced that it would be deploying medium
Speaker 2: range Persion two missiles in Europe, and Reagan got his
Speaker 2: pet project going SDI aka star Wars. The Soviet Union
Speaker 2: whipped themselves into a nuclear frenzy, sending their spies all
Speaker 2: around town to confirm what they already believed to be true,
Speaker 2: that America was preparing a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: But somehow things were about to get even harrier in
Speaker 2: this episode, nineteen eighty three spirals out of control. In
Speaker 2: the months leading up to Able Archer, the Soviets and
Speaker 2: Americans weren't joyfully sliding around in socks so much as
Speaker 2: they were dancing on a razor's edge. Now that's what
Speaker 2: I call some real risky business. It's June third, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three. The front page of the New York Times
Speaker 2: reads and drop Off meets with Harriman, asks for better ties.
Speaker 2: The Harriman referenced here is Avril Harriman, a ninety one
Speaker 2: year old who used to be the US ambassador to
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union back when Stalin was in power and
Speaker 2: the Soviets were American allies. The article said Harriman was
Speaker 2: travel to Moscow as a private citizen. He wasn't on
Speaker 2: official US business, But it also said that before he
Speaker 2: left for Moscow, he met with the Secretary of State
Speaker 2: George Schultz, and that he took a State Department translator
Speaker 2: with him to the meeting.
Speaker 8: He essentially went as an official, unofficial envoy.
Speaker 2: This is Nate Jones, our able archer sleuth. Nate wanted
Speaker 2: to know what was really said in that meeting. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not normal for an elderly retired diplomat to be
Speaker 2: summoned out of his lazy boy recliner to speak with
Speaker 2: the Soviet head of state. Maybe there was a detailed
Speaker 2: record of Harriman's conversation within drop off. Maybe there was
Speaker 2: some hint about what was to come. So how could
Speaker 2: Nate find such a thing? With a little help from
Speaker 2: a friend called FOYA the Freedom of Information Act. It
Speaker 2: gives us citizens the right to request government documents. Believe
Speaker 2: me when I say that Nate ownes, lives, and breathes
Speaker 2: foyas he's currently the FOYA director at the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: Foya Nate is his Twitter handle, for God's sake. So
Speaker 2: the FOYA process looks like this.
Speaker 8: The first most important step is to figure out what
Speaker 8: records exists that you want to request.
Speaker 2: In this case, he figured an important meeting between a
Speaker 2: retired diplomat and the head of the Soviet Union. There's
Speaker 2: got to be a report on that meeting, right or
Speaker 2: like at least some notes. The next step is you
Speaker 2: have to figure out which agency holds the document you want.
Speaker 8: And there are, depending on how you count, some two
Speaker 8: hundred and fifty agencies and components in the federal government.
Speaker 8: So part of the problem is finding the right one
Speaker 8: to file to, and it's tricky. I think once you
Speaker 8: do this long enough, you get kind of an intuition.
Speaker 2: Nate figured if there was any record of this meeting
Speaker 2: between and Drop Bob and Harriman, it would be in
Speaker 2: the State Department. So next file a FOYA.
Speaker 8: A simple form letter that says, under the FOYA, I
Speaker 8: request this document held by your agency, and then you wait.
Speaker 8: The law says that they're supposed to release the records
Speaker 8: within twenty working days.
Speaker 2: Twenty working days, okay, we're talking about the government here.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, it just it never takes twenty days. I mean, hell,
Speaker 2: it rarely takes twenty months.
Speaker 8: Is not for the faint of heart. You have to
Speaker 8: be in it for a long battle.
Speaker 2: Being a FOYA warrior entails a lot of polite reminders. Hey, Sandra,
Speaker 2: me again. Yeah, I'm still interested in that top secret
Speaker 2: document that you're five years late in releasing any update
Speaker 2: on that. You know, just let me know whenever you
Speaker 2: get a chance. The State Department eventually answered Nates Foya
Speaker 2: they had detailed notes from the Harman meeting, which they
Speaker 2: released a Nate totally unredacted. He was thrilled until he
Speaker 2: read it, and then he was freaked out because the
Speaker 2: contents of the conversation were very alarming.
Speaker 8: Aevrel Harriman said that and drop Off three times warned
Speaker 8: of the risk of nuclear war through miscalculation, and told
Speaker 8: him explicitly and genuinely that he feared that their Reagan
Speaker 8: administration may be moving towards the dangerous red line of
Speaker 8: nuclear war.
Speaker 2: Three times and drop Off warned of potential miscalculation. Maybe
Speaker 2: the guy had a nuclear crystal ball after all. Basically,
Speaker 2: and drop Off asked Harreman to tell Reagan to please
Speaker 2: tone things down, make sure all this tension doesn't keep
Speaker 2: ratcheting up or worse become normalized. He asked for dialogue
Speaker 2: before they found themselves on an irreversible path to the
Speaker 2: worst possible outcome.
Speaker 8: Please go back and make sure that despite our differences,
Speaker 8: we don't have the catastrophe of nuclear war and.
Speaker 2: Drop off said he'd wait for Reagan's call. Harriman may
Speaker 2: as well have stayed home in the US that week hell,
Speaker 2: instead of spending twenty hours on an airplane, he could
Speaker 2: have gone to that new blockbuster of war games, which
Speaker 2: coincidentally came out that weekend, because Reagan never picked up
Speaker 2: that phone.
Speaker 9: Do you think that one of the reasons why this
Speaker 9: whole period was so dangerous was because there were no
Speaker 9: channels of communication between the two sides, that the complete
Speaker 9: different perceptions going on.
Speaker 2: This is from an interview that was conducted for the
Speaker 2: documentary nineteen eighty three, The Brink of Apocalypse.
Speaker 10: In this particular period o Rhon as we were in
Speaker 10: know they see to have broken down and there was
Speaker 10: no understanding anymore. And that I think is what made
Speaker 10: that particular period in the Code War was so dangerous.
Speaker 2: And that's Ryner Rupp, agent Dopez, you remember him from
Speaker 2: last episode Stazi man infiltrating NATO spying for the East
Speaker 2: alongside his wife. Rupper calls the moment when he could
Speaker 2: sense the Stazi were getting a bit more nervous. It
Speaker 2: became clear to him that the Soviets were preoccupied with Ryan.
Speaker 2: They truly believed a surprise nuclear attack was imminent.
Speaker 10: I was asked to keep my eyes open. I also
Speaker 10: had systems to relay back of information very fast.
Speaker 2: Which was actually very unusual. It's just not easy for
Speaker 2: a spy to get messages across the Iron Curtain quickly.
Speaker 2: You can't call up your handler and say, hey, Boris,
Speaker 2: guess what secret documents I perused in my NATO job today.
Speaker 2: That would be a surefi way to get caught. I mean,
Speaker 2: come on, no spies usually handed off messages physically, so
Speaker 2: getting a message to the other side of the Iron
Speaker 2: Curtain took time days at best. But if NATO was
Speaker 2: preparing a nuclear attack, the East wouldn't have days. So
Speaker 2: one day in early nineteen eighty three, Rupp met with
Speaker 2: his handlers. They presented him with a brand new spy
Speaker 2: tool that would significantly speed things up.
Speaker 10: It looked like an electronic calculator.
Speaker 2: A classic espionage gadget, an ordinary item rewired to do
Speaker 2: something extraordinary.
Speaker 10: I would write my message down, I would code it
Speaker 10: into numbers.
Speaker 2: Type the numbers into this sneaky spy calculator.
Speaker 10: This little machine would then condense all this into a
Speaker 10: very short sound like a World Beat.
Speaker 2: He'd take this magic calculator to a payphone the normal telephone.
Speaker 2: Payphones were normal in nineteen eighty three. Kids just roll
Speaker 2: with it. And then he'd dial a number for an
Speaker 2: elderly woman in East Germany. He'd say, Grandma, I'd like
Speaker 2: to come visit you, which was a code phrase that
Speaker 2: would signal this Grandma to start recording the call. Rub
Speaker 2: would hold up the calculator to the.
Speaker 10: Phone, put that thing on the receiver.
Speaker 2: And transmit the coded message. Now, for anyone surveilling the call.
Speaker 10: It would just sound like a crackling in the line.
Speaker 2: They hang up. Grandma then calls the SAZI. They rush over,
Speaker 2: retrieve the recording, and then.
Speaker 10: De sigh for it and see the message.
Speaker 2: The intel is transmitted in minutes instead of days.
Speaker 10: So that was in case of emergencies.
Speaker 2: Emergencies Well, turns out there would only be one emergency
Speaker 2: that was so urgent Ryan or Rupp had to use
Speaker 2: this system. It was a day in November nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: during Exercise Able Archer. But before we get to that
Speaker 2: faithful day, the US and the Soviet Union were about
Speaker 2: to be further downgraded from enemies to I don't know
Speaker 2: what's worse than enemies arch enemies. I'm going to workshop that.
Speaker 2: I'll get back to you, because in the middle of
Speaker 2: the most tense time in the Cold War, Reagan would
Speaker 2: make a batshit crazy decision. He was already poking the
Speaker 2: bear publicly humiliating the Soviet Union and backing them into
Speaker 2: a nuclear corner. But now it's almost like he wanted
Speaker 2: to start stabbing the bear. And you don't stab bears. Okay,
Speaker 2: just kidding any get cat.
Speaker 4: You know, this is the kind of thing you could
Speaker 4: put in a kid's book about, like standing up to
Speaker 4: a bully.
Speaker 2: This is everyone's favorite nuclear historian Jeffrey Lewis talking about
Speaker 2: Reagan and his administration.
Speaker 4: To them, the Soviet Union was big and powerful in
Speaker 4: a bully and they were going to stand up. And
Speaker 4: you know, at the end of the kid's book, the
Speaker 4: bully backs down. And so he's looking at the global
Speaker 4: military posture and he's trying to imagine ways to restore
Speaker 4: the strength and the impressiveness of the United States.
Speaker 2: In order to do this, Reagan needed to know what
Speaker 2: the Soviets were capable of. And as we've established, he's
Speaker 2: not going to call and drop off. Of course, not
Speaker 2: that would be too easy, so instead he decided to
Speaker 2: test their abilities and their resolve. So he gave the
Speaker 2: order for the military to execute psychological operations, or syops.
Speaker 2: Here's how these syops went down. A big navy fleet
Speaker 2: would cross the Pacific and approach the Soviet Union from
Speaker 2: the east, and then day after day, US fighter jets
Speaker 2: would fly right up to Russian airspace and then at
Speaker 2: the last minute turn around and come back home. And
Speaker 2: then they'd do it again and again and again, but
Speaker 2: sometimes they would actually cross the line. One ship shut
Speaker 2: off its electronics and approached Soviet waters. Then six Navy
Speaker 2: planes took off. They actually flew over Russian islands, zipping
Speaker 2: through Soviet air. As one writer put it, they flew
Speaker 2: up Ivan's nose.
Speaker 4: Putting the fear of God like literally into the Soviets.
Speaker 2: The goal of the exercise was twofold. Number one observed
Speaker 2: their defenses. Number two just fuck with their heads a
Speaker 2: little or maybe a lot.
Speaker 4: If you're the Soviets and you are seeing aircraft and
Speaker 4: ships doing unexpected things and probing your defenses, possibly that's
Speaker 4: an exercise. Possibly that's a signal to show you that
Speaker 4: they that the US means business. But it also looks
Speaker 4: a lot like reconnaissance for an attack. It looks a
Speaker 4: lot like a dry run of something you might do later.
Speaker 4: It looks like probing to find weakness. And so again,
Speaker 4: any deviation from a typical exercise pattern is going to
Speaker 4: naturally raise alarm bells because the other side is like,
Speaker 4: why are you doing this? So they're feeling anxious and
Speaker 4: constantly worried about it. People are kind of putting it
Speaker 4: together like you, well, this is like unwise. It was
Speaker 4: creating a total panic inside the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: That panic started from the top, but it went all
Speaker 2: the way down the chain of command because the Soviet
Speaker 2: leaders put out the word the first radar operator who
Speaker 2: spotted any planes off the coast was going to get
Speaker 2: a nice, fat bonus.
Speaker 4: One of the sad legacies of those psyops is that
Speaker 4: the Soviet leadership offers financial rewards to air crews if
Speaker 4: they shoot down aircraft that are entering Soviet airspace.
Speaker 2: In other words, payday for taking down suspicious planes. It
Speaker 2: was risky business for both sides, and it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: long before it caused a disaster. On September, first flight
Speaker 2: KAL zero zero seven departed from New York City, flying
Speaker 2: west towards Seoul, South Korea. The same night, the Soviets
Speaker 2: conducted a missile test. Soviet radars were active and the
Speaker 2: officers at the controls weren't surprised to see that the
Speaker 2: US Air Force had sent a spy plane to keep
Speaker 2: tabs on them. Classic syops. The Soviet radar operators caught
Speaker 2: it on their scopes, but the plane was keeping its distance,
Speaker 2: following the normal flight paths. Nothing to worry about. The
Speaker 2: Soviet radar operators did what they always do. They assigned
Speaker 2: the American spy plane a little tracking number to keep
Speaker 2: tabs on it through the night. But the spy plane
Speaker 2: wasn't alone, and the hours before dawn, another object appeared
Speaker 2: on the radar, flying fast from the Pacific Ocean. The
Speaker 2: Russians watched as it approached the spy plane, and then
Speaker 2: the two crossed paths. For just a moment, it was
Speaker 2: impossible to tell the two aircraft apart on the radar,
Speaker 2: but as they went their separate ways, the Russian radar
Speaker 2: operators had to make a choice which tracking label should
Speaker 2: go with which plane. They hoped, maybe prayed, that they
Speaker 2: didn't mix them up. Mixed them up, and when they did,
Speaker 2: the radar showed that the air force plane was headed
Speaker 2: straight for Russia. But it wasn't the air force plane.
Speaker 2: It was actually KL zero zero seven, a commercial flight
Speaker 2: with two hundred and sixty nine civilians on board. Soviet
Speaker 2: pilots scrambled in minutes, Russian fighter jets were up in
Speaker 2: the air, catching up to the plane. For a moment,
Speaker 2: the Russian pilots were confused. The plane they were looking
Speaker 2: at wasn't exactly acting like a military flight, lights flashing
Speaker 2: on its outstretched wings. It was practically a homing beacon.
Speaker 2: A military plane wouldn't have any lights on at all.
Speaker 2: This is Soviet pilot Major Osipovic. He says, I see it.
Speaker 2: I'm locked onto the target. He takes note that the
Speaker 2: plane resembles a passenger aircraft. He doesn't believe that it's
Speaker 2: a spy plane. So then he tries to call the
Speaker 2: plane on the radio, demands that it changed course. He says,
Speaker 2: the target isn't responding to the call. Osipovich is commanded
Speaker 2: to fire a warning shot. He does so, still no response.
Speaker 2: Ka L zero zero seven just kept barreling on in
Speaker 2: total radio silence. Then the Soviet generals on the ground
Speaker 2: made the call destroy the target. Osipovich has his orders.
Speaker 2: He fires. I have executed the launch, he says. Missiles
Speaker 2: shred the wing and tail of KL zero zero seven.
Speaker 2: It spirals into the ocean, a trail of fire, signaling
Speaker 2: its fatal dive. Ossipovitch confirms the hit. The target is destroyed,
Speaker 2: and just like that, two hundred and sixty nine innocent
Speaker 2: people are dead.
Speaker 6: One story, it's the Free World news media tonight, the
Speaker 6: killing of two hundred and sixty nine innocent people. I
Speaker 6: bought a Korean jumper jet that drifted into Soviet territory at.
Speaker 11: The university, who were just shocked. That was very profound
Speaker 11: that I remember talking to my friends about, like who
Speaker 11: did that? Who would shoot down an airliner full of civilians.
Speaker 2: This is Vetlana Savranskaya recalling the confusion of Soviet citizens.
Speaker 2: When news broke about the downing of flight KL zero
Speaker 2: zero seven.
Speaker 11: The Soviets issued the denial that they did not shoot
Speaker 11: the airliner and that this is all American provocation. Nobody
Speaker 11: shot at the liner. We don't know where it is.
Speaker 11: It went somewhere, maybe it crashed, but we had nothing to.
Speaker 4: Do with it.
Speaker 2: Maybe the plane just crashed. Not exactly believable, but they
Speaker 2: were desperate to cover their asses.
Speaker 1: The United States is demanding that the Soviet Union explained
Speaker 1: why it shot down a Korean Airlines plane that had
Speaker 1: straight into Soviet airspace.
Speaker 11: A week later, the Soviets submitted that they actually shot
Speaker 11: down the airliner.
Speaker 2: It wasn't long before the Soviets realized that they were
Speaker 2: not going to get away with this lie, so the
Speaker 2: story changed. Yes, they shot down the plane, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't actually their fault.
Speaker 7: As outrage mounts over the down to Korean airliner in
Speaker 7: Moscow claims it was a spy plane.
Speaker 2: Later, the pilot Osipovitch revealed that Soviet officials forced him
Speaker 2: to record a fake radio exchange from a script. The
Speaker 2: idea was to replace the original transmission, rewriting the facts
Speaker 2: of that night's events, scrubbing the fact that Osipovich did
Speaker 2: actually warn his commanders that the plane in question looked
Speaker 2: like a passenger aircraft before those commanders ordered him to
Speaker 2: shoot it down. They even had him hold an electric
Speaker 2: razor up to the mic to try to mimic the
Speaker 2: sound of a cockpit yep. Definitely, what I'm seeing here
Speaker 2: is an American warplane, just absolutely covered with weapon. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: it's got American flags paid it all over it. There's
Speaker 2: an Uncle Sam riding on top. I mean, this is unmistakable.
Speaker 2: Oh well, nice, try, guys. Unlucky for them that Japanese
Speaker 2: had intercepted the original transmission that night, and they had
Speaker 2: already shared the recording with Ronald Reagan. He knew the truth,
Speaker 2: and he was going to make sure everyone knew what
Speaker 2: the Soviets had done. Days after the attack, Reagan addressed
Speaker 2: the nation from behind the desk in the Oval Office.
Speaker 12: They deny the deed, but in their conflicting and misleading protestations,
Speaker 12: the Soviets reveal that, yes, shooting down a plane, even
Speaker 12: one with hundreds of innocent men, women, children, and babies,
Speaker 12: is a part of their normal procedure if that plane
Speaker 12: is in what they claim as their airspace.
Speaker 2: He said, no way, this could be a mistake. The
Speaker 2: Russians knew these were civilians. They didn't care. That's the
Speaker 2: Communist way. He played recordings of the Soviet radio chatter
Speaker 2: to a horrified audience.
Speaker 12: There is no way a pilot could mistake this for
Speaker 12: anything other than a civilian airliner. It was an act
Speaker 12: of barbarigim.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing, It was a mistake.
Speaker 11: The shooting was a tragic mistake. The United States knew
Speaker 11: practically immediately because they were able to get the intercepts
Speaker 11: of the Russian military communications, that the shooting was actually
Speaker 11: a tragic mistake, that it was not deliberate, that they
Speaker 11: actually thought they were shooting at an American spyplane.
Speaker 2: So if Reagan knew it was an accident or at worst,
Speaker 2: a miscalculation, why was he going on television to say
Speaker 2: the Soviets killed innocent civilians on purpose.
Speaker 11: To the Soviet elite, it felt like they were doing
Speaker 11: it intentionally to prepare their own population and the European
Speaker 11: populations to a new round of tension, or maybe a
Speaker 11: preparation for war.
Speaker 2: Reparation for war. Reagan must be spinning the Korean air
Speaker 2: tragedy as propaganda priming the world for a war against
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, right, it was the only explanation that
Speaker 2: made any sense to the Soviet leaders. They were terrified
Speaker 2: that a surprise nuclear attack was imminent. And what do
Speaker 2: the Russians do when they're scared? They build a computer.
Speaker 13: In the military space. The key issue is reaction time,
Speaker 13: decision making speed, and also eliminating the human element from
Speaker 13: carrying out those decisions.
Speaker 2: This is Simon Miles, assistant professor at Duke. He says,
Speaker 2: the Soviet leaders were increasingly concerned that the US was
Speaker 2: going to attack in what's called a decapitating strike, which
Speaker 2: is exactly what it sounds like, chopping off the head
Speaker 2: of the Soviet Union, killing the leaders in one fell swoop.
Speaker 2: Nobody to retaliate. The solution hit back, even if the
Speaker 2: leaders were dead, with an automatic computerized nuke launching system,
Speaker 2: utterly terrifying.
Speaker 13: Basically a strange lovey and doomsday device.
Speaker 2: About time somebody brought up that old Stanley Kubrick chestnut.
Speaker 12: The doomsday machine.
Speaker 11: The doomsday machine?
Speaker 10: What is that?
Speaker 6: A device which will destroy old human and animal life
Speaker 6: on earth?
Speaker 2: Doctor Strangelove is fiction, But yeah, the Soviets did build
Speaker 2: a system that would do basically the exact same thing.
Speaker 2: They called it perimeter. When we found out about it
Speaker 2: in the US, we called it dead hand.
Speaker 13: Nuclear weapons are stationed under these massive walls of concrete
Speaker 13: and rebar in sort of the far flung portions of
Speaker 13: the Soviet Union.
Speaker 9: But this is fantastic strange love.
Speaker 6: How can it be triggered automatically?
Speaker 3: It's so markab be simple to do with that.
Speaker 13: First new system uses a wide range of temperature sensors,
Speaker 13: pressure sensors, seismographs and things like that, which are calibrated
Speaker 13: basically to read the symptoms of a nuclear strike. So
Speaker 13: the way that you get the signal to them is
Speaker 13: by launching smaller rockets at them.
Speaker 2: Are you following all this? It's insane. If US nukes
Speaker 2: hit the Krimlin in response, Soviets fire a bunch of
Speaker 2: little missiles at their own big missiles, which then triggers
Speaker 2: a big underground computer to launch a bunch of nuclear
Speaker 2: missiles at the US and doomsday.
Speaker 6: No sa it is another thing a saying man with
Speaker 6: the doomsday machine is designed.
Speaker 13: We all know what happens next, which is that either
Speaker 13: all human life is wiped out on the planet or
Speaker 13: and what is probably a worse outcome, we all become
Speaker 13: mole people, or rather a very small subset of us
Speaker 13: who survive become mole people.
Speaker 3: And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision making
Speaker 3: process which rules out human mettling, so toombsday machine is
Speaker 3: terrifying gee.
Speaker 12: I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.
Speaker 5: States.
Speaker 2: The way Perimeter aka dead Hand really works is a
Speaker 2: deeply buried secret, but Simon Miles believes that it still
Speaker 2: had some small human element to it, that it required
Speaker 2: the Soviet leaders to turn it on. So a computer
Speaker 2: wouldn't be launching nukes entirely on its own, not unless
Speaker 2: the leadership was incapacitated and gave it permission to. Plus,
Speaker 2: it's not clear whether or not dead Hand was fully
Speaker 2: operational in nineteen eighty three, but what we do know
Speaker 2: is that the Soviet Union fully believed in fighting the
Speaker 2: Cold War with technology, even when that technology was not
Speaker 2: yet perfected.
Speaker 5: The system was rushed in. The Soviets brought it in
Speaker 5: very quickly. They saw it as an issue of major
Speaker 5: national emergency to install a system.
Speaker 2: This is Taylor Downing again. He's talking about OCO, which
Speaker 2: is another semi functional Soviet system, a network of satellites
Speaker 2: hovering above America's missile silos watching for a nuclear launch.
Speaker 2: The OCO technology wasn't yet perfected, still a little glitchy,
Speaker 2: and in the days immediately after the Korean air tragedy,
Speaker 2: while the Soviets were still reeling and only months before
Speaker 2: able Archer, a glitch in the ecosystem would nudge the
Speaker 2: Soviets a little closer to the brink. It's September twenty sixth,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov reported to work
Speaker 2: at the OCO Control Center.
Speaker 5: The control center where all of this information came in
Speaker 5: and was interpreted was a place called Sepikov fifteen, which
Speaker 5: was a top secret military site about eighty miles south
Speaker 5: of Moscow.
Speaker 2: Petrov was an engineer. He knew computers, he knew satellites,
Speaker 2: he knew communications.
Speaker 5: In fact, he was the deputy chief of the Department
Speaker 5: of Military Algorithms.
Speaker 2: Col job title alert. Anyway, Petrov was at his post
Speaker 2: with a dozen men under his command. His job was
Speaker 2: to monitor the seven Russian satellites as they orbited over
Speaker 2: American missile silos, scanning for a launch. If he saw one,
Speaker 2: Petrov would immediately alert Soviet leadership at the highest levels.
Speaker 2: They would have mere minutes to decide whether to launch
Speaker 2: a retaliatory strike.
Speaker 5: He is sitting in a gallery like looking down on
Speaker 5: the main control room, and in front of him and
Speaker 5: in front of everybody, is a giant screen with a
Speaker 5: map on it. The North Pole is in the center
Speaker 5: of the map. The United States sort of spreads out
Speaker 5: to the top of the map, and the Soviet Union
Speaker 5: spreads out across the bottom.
Speaker 2: Kind of an unusual perspective. But this map was all
Speaker 2: about tracing intercontinental ballistic missiles and probably Santa too, but
Speaker 2: that's top secret.
Speaker 5: Paul is perfectly normal. Quiet.
Speaker 2: Petrov even remembers that he made himself a cup of tea.
Speaker 2: His men were at their stations, and time ticked.
Speaker 5: By until about quarter past twelve in the morning. Just
Speaker 5: after midnight, a clason suddenly starts blaring and a signal,
Speaker 5: A giant signaling red letters comes up on the screen
Speaker 5: in front, which is the Russian word for launch, comes
Speaker 5: up flashing launch Launch, Launch on screen.
Speaker 2: It said High Reliability Satellite number five had detected the
Speaker 2: rocket flare of an American cruise missile. Petrov hesitated. All
Speaker 2: the heads in the room turned to face him. The
Speaker 2: men under his command were waiting to see how he
Speaker 2: would respond. Petrov knew how the system was supposed to work.
Speaker 2: If a nuclear missile had been fired from the United
Speaker 2: States in thirty short minutes, a nuclear blast would decimate Moscow.
Speaker 2: Every single moment he hesitated was one moment less that
Speaker 2: Soviet leaders could sound the alarms, one moment less for
Speaker 2: his own family to run to their bunkers.
Speaker 5: He'd been part of the setting up of this system,
Speaker 5: and we now know that he didn't have that much
Speaker 5: confidence in it. He knew it had been rushed, its
Speaker 5: installation had been rushed. He knew that lots of corners
Speaker 5: had been cut, that the glitches would be worked out
Speaker 5: once it was operational.
Speaker 2: Petrov orders his men to reset the system.
Speaker 5: He gets on the phone to his command center and says,
Speaker 5: I believe I have a false alarm.
Speaker 2: But then satellite five pinged again. He shut it off,
Speaker 2: and then another he shut it off. He waited, and
Speaker 2: then it happened again. The screen warned him launched detected.
Speaker 5: Says that he felt his legs that sort of collapsed
Speaker 5: underneath him. He said it was like sitting in a
Speaker 5: in a frying pan.
Speaker 2: Stanislov had to decide was his instinct right or was
Speaker 2: the system right. In interviews, Stanislov would later say that
Speaker 2: he didn't know exactly why he made the call he did.
Speaker 2: He just went with his gut and maintained it was
Speaker 2: a false alarm.
Speaker 5: A few minutes passes. He holds his position, and by
Speaker 5: this point, had there been a launch attack other systems,
Speaker 5: the Soviets had radar stations on the North Pole, other
Speaker 5: systems would have picked up incoming missiles, and there's nothing there.
Speaker 2: Halujah, Hand to God. Even forty years after this all happened,
Speaker 2: I still almost wet myself just thinking about it. Eventually
Speaker 2: the lights blinked out. Satellite number five had malfunctioned. It
Speaker 2: detected flashes of light. Yeah, but they weren't the trails
Speaker 2: of launch nuclear missiles. They were flashes of light that
Speaker 2: came from the sun reflecting off a pillar of clouds.
Speaker 2: That's right. The Soviets built a system that almost blew
Speaker 2: all of us to Kingdom come because the dawn's early
Speaker 2: light got cozy with some cumulus clouds. Now. Had Petrov
Speaker 2: done what he was supposed to do, he would have
Speaker 2: called up to a Soviet leader who very well could
Speaker 2: have given a launch order that was protocol. But instead
Speaker 2: he was cool headed, rational. He saved the world by
Speaker 2: doing nothing at all.
Speaker 5: We're very lucky that Petrov held his line.
Speaker 2: The Soviets didn't see it that way. He was reprimanded
Speaker 2: for failing to log the alarm and discharged from his position.
Speaker 2: He spent the rest of his life in squalor and
Speaker 2: poverty some reward. The truth is the Soviets weren't the
Speaker 2: only ones who had these kinds of false alarms. Americans
Speaker 2: did too. Both sides relied on faulty technology to navigate
Speaker 2: the nuclear conundrum that is, mutually assured destruction. All I
Speaker 2: know is that we're damn lucky the sun hit those
Speaker 2: clouds in September and not two months later, because two
Speaker 2: months later the Soviets would hit their breaking point. NATO
Speaker 2: was staging a massive military exercise, concluding with a rehearsal
Speaker 2: for nuclear war called Able Archer eighty three. Next time
Speaker 2: on STAFU, the Soviets watch as NATO practices a nuclear war.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a question of would it happen, It was
Speaker 2: a question of when was it going to happen. We
Speaker 2: were preparing to fight armageddon. We were training to fight
Speaker 2: the end of the world. The Soviets put their spies
Speaker 2: on alert.
Speaker 9: Saying Americans, so now in the middle of their exercise,
Speaker 9: so be ready for ever received.
Speaker 2: And the fate of the world hangs in the balance
Speaker 2: and he had to report to him.
Speaker 13: Hey, sir, there's some anomalies the Soviet forces seemed if
Speaker 13: the air forces have gone on a heightened alert.
Speaker 2: I knew it was a dermatic moment. Snafu is a
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture
Speaker 2: Company in association with Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are
Speaker 2: Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis.
Speaker 2: Associate producer Tory Smith. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms,
Speaker 2: Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. This
Speaker 2: episode was written by Carl Nellis and Sarah Joyner, with
Speaker 2: additional writing from Elliott Kalen and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior
Speaker 2: editor is Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 4: This is like a Wise.
Speaker 2: Olivia Kenny is our production assistant. Our creative executive is
Speaker 2: Brett Harris. Additional research and fact checking by Charles Richter,
Speaker 2: Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and
Speaker 2: sound design by Dan rose Otto. Additional editing from Ben Chugg.
Speaker 2: Some archival audio from this episode originally appeared in Taylor
Speaker 2: Downing's Fantastic film nineteen eighty three, The Brink of Apocalypse.
Speaker 2: Thank you, mister Downing for permission to use it. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstadt.