WEBVTT - Three Nuclear Close Calls 0:00:01.200 --> 0:00:04.160 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:14.360 Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:18.560 I'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Not long ago, 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:22.560 I went to the Maritime Museum in San Diego, California, 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.160 which if you like boats and ships in maritime history, 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.280 it was worth a stop. It's also right down the 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.319 road from the USS Midway Museum, so if you would 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:35.040 like some military history and some maritime history altogether, like 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:37.880 you can just spend a whole day out there. Um, 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:39.960 don't do what I did and lose your camera. Though. 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:44.800 If anyone saw my camera in San Diego, let me know. Yeah, 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:46.600 I think I have the last known photo from that 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:49.199 camera because you texted it to me from the museum. Oh, 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.040 I took that from my iPhone. Fortunately I didn't lose 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:55.480 my phone. I only lost my point issue camera anyway. 0:00:56.360 --> 0:01:01.480 The actual point is Among the many faring vessels at 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:06.000 the Maritime Museum is the Soviet Foxtrot class submarine, which 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:09.640 is home to an exhibit about a really harrowing incident 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.560 I had never heard about before. It was one of 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:16.759 the surprisingly many moments in history when the world came 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:20.720 perilously close to a full scale nuclear war. Uh And 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:23.680 I did not actually know there were that many, that 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:27.000 surprisingly many incidents until I started looking into it for 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:29.039 this episode today. So today we're just going to look 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:32.520 at three of them, including the one I learned about 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:36.640 in San Diego which inspired today's show. The incident aboard 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:39.360 Soviet submarine B fifty nine is tangled up with the 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:42.399 Cuban missile crisis and the nuclear arms race between the 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.880 United States and the Soviet Union. With the help of 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:49.840 its allies, the United States developed the first nuclear weapons 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:53.960 through the Manhattan Project. Among the weapons the Manhattan Project 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:57.920 produced were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:02.360 In Not long after World War Two, the Soviet Union 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:06.279 successfully detonated its own nuclear bomb, and soon the United 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:08.760 States and the Soviet Union were locked in a cold 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:13.080 war and a nuclear arms race. Both nations were simultaneously 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:17.079 building more nuclear weapons and developing more powerful weapons that 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:21.400 were able to travel greater distances and deliver bigger payloads. 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:24.640 The Cuban Missile crisis grew out of this cold war 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:28.160 and arms race. In July of nineteen sixty two, the 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.680 Soviet Union reached an agreement with Cuba to install several 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:35.720 missiles there. The negotiation and the transportation of missiles to 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:39.000 Cuba were conducted in secret, but the US learned about 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:43.520 it through aerial surveillance photography on October fourteenth, nineteen sixty two. 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.120 Those photographs were delivered to the White House the next day. 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:51.960 At this point, the United States nuclear arsenal was far 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:55.440 far bigger and more powerful than the Soviet Unions, and 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:58.800 the United States also already had missiles stationed in Turkey 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.480 in easy reach of Soviet territory. But with the placement 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.639 of missiles in Cuba, for the first time, the Soviet 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:09.840 Union also had missiles an easy reach of American territory. 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.040 Even though the Soviets insisted that the missiles were only 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.080 in Cuba as a defensive measure, this was a move 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:20.640 that was both intended and interpreted as a threat. For 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.640 a few days, news of the missile installation was also 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.440 kept secret from the general public, but on October twenty two, 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:32.040 President John F. Kennedy gave a televised address giving Americans 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.720 a detailed description of the missile sites being built. He 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:39.440 called Soviets placement of missiles in Cuba a quote clandestine, 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:43.560 reckless and provocative threat, and he announced a naval quarantine 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:47.080 around Cuba to prohibit the delivery of any further materials 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:51.520 or weapons. This quarantine really goes in air quotes. It 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:54.880 was a blockade, but calling it a blockade would have 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.000 presumed a state of war, so they chose the word 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:02.520 quarantine to be nice about it. Kennedy also wrote to 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:06.160 Nikita Krushchev, the first Secretary of the Central Committee of 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.160 the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, basically the leader 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.040 of Soviet Union, to say that the United States would 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:16.120 not tolerate the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:20.160 also spelled out that any nuclear attack on any nation 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:23.520 launched from Cuba would be viewed as a Soviet attack 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:26.600 on the United States, and the United States would retaliate 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:30.279 in kind. Kristef, for his part, insisted that these missiles 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:33.400 were just being placed there to defend Cuba from attack. 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.159 For the whole of the thirteen days of the Cuban 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:40.840 Missile crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union were 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:44.680 in an incredibly tense stalemate, with the US demanding that 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:47.640 the Soviet Union removed the missiles and the Soviet Union 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:52.039 both refusing and continuing construction on the missile sites. And 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:56.960 on October things were particularly bad. The US had been 0:04:57.000 --> 0:04:59.320 at def Con too, with the armed forces ready to 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.080 launch an all out nuclear war for three days, and 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.480 then that day an American YouTube spy plane was shot 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.000 down by a Russian missile over Cuba and its pilot, 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:15.520 Major Rudolph Anderson, was killed. So the prevailing description of 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:18.520 the Cuban missile crisis is that for this entire time, 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.480 the world was on the brink of a nuclear war. 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:24.839 But there was also this other element of it going 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:27.200 on that wasn't known about until much later. There were 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:31.120 four Soviet submarines, each of them with a nuclear tipped 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:34.200 torpedo among their armaments, and they were on route to 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:36.880 Cuba as part of a submarine force that was going 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:40.400 to be stationed there. These were all Fox Trot class submarines, 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.120 and they were powered by a combination of diesel and 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:47.120 battery power. While they were submerged, they ran on their batteries, 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:49.800 and then they had to return to the surface periodically 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:54.680 to get recharged. Soviet navigators were exceptionally skilled at using 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.360 the varying temperatures of the ocean depths to avoid detection 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:03.200 on radar, but without periodically recharging the batteries on the surface, 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:05.960 where they were much more easy to spot, they could 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:10.480 not stay underwater. Their last instruction from Moscow had been 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:13.640 to hold position not far from Cuba, but they had 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:17.520 since lost contact and the vessels, themselves built for use 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:20.760 in colder waters, were not tolerating the warmer ocean near 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:24.800 Cuba very well. The air conditioning failed and the temperatures 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.880 in the subs started to rise well above a hundred degrees. 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:30.760 To make matters worse, they were running out of food 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:34.159 and water, and since they lost contact with Moscow, their 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.000 only way of finding out what was happening and whether 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:39.320 the United States and the Soviet Union had gone to 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:43.640 war was to listen to a civilian radio broadcast from Miami. 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.840 On the October, a spotter plane caught a glimpse of 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:51.279 one of the submarines near the surface of the ocean, 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:55.520 and late that afternoon American reconnaissance had detected the presence 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.520 of at least three Soviet submarines near Cuba. Ships that 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.040 were in the area as part of the quarantine started 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:04.440 to try to get the submarines to the surface by 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.880 dropping signaling charges into the ocean. There's a little bit 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:12.320 of discrepancy in accounts among the people who were actually there. 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.520 Some of them say that dropping four or five loud 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:20.520 but non damaging charges was an official signal to surface, 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.400 but others say that they were intentionally dropping these charges 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.240 to harass the submerged submarines and the hope of basically 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:32.640 forcing them up to the surface. Aboard the B fifty nine, 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:35.680 though the Soviets had no idea what was going on. 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:38.800 They had not gotten new orders from Moscow in more 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.680 than a week, and they were overheated, dehydrated, and exhausted 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:46.960 as battery power failed, life support systems did as well, 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.520 and the air aboard had less and less oxygen. They 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.120 didn't know if the explosions that they were hearing around 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:56.440 them could damage or destroy their craft, and their only 0:07:56.480 --> 0:08:00.200 source of information was these American news report on the 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.960 civilian radio which were reporting the extreme tensions and fears 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:09.040 about the Cuban missile crisis. The commanders of these four 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:13.600 submarines had been authorized to use their nuclear tips torpedoes 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.280 if they were attacked, and aboard the B fifty nine, 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:20.880 Captain Valentine Stevitsky concluded that they were, and he gave 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:25.320 orders to prepare their nuclear torpedo, saying quote, we will die, 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:28.120 but we will sink them all. We will not disgrace 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:34.160 our navy. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Savitsky had the agreement 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:37.720 of his other officers in launching the torpedo, but since 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.360 the B fifty nine was the flagship of the flotilla 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:45.160 bound for Cuba, it also carried the flotilla commander Vesiley Archipov. 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:49.320 Since Arkipov was aboard, they needed his approval as well, 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:54.040 and Arkipov refused, and he instead convinced Sevitsky to surface. 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:58.520 They got fresh air, they recharged their batteries, and at 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:02.360 the first opportunity some urged and slipped away, again, evading 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:08.720 American detection, before apparently returning to Soviet waters. Today, Arkibov 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:12.480 is generally regarded as a hero, as somebody who's clear 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:15.880 thinking prevented what surely would have been a full on 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.200 nuclear war, But on his return to the Soviet Union, 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:23.440 his decisions were heavily criticized. The general feeling was that 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:25.480 he and the rest of them should have gone down 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:29.920 with a ship. Arkipov later died of cancer, probably a 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:33.520 result of a previous incident aboard a submarine, which was 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:36.439 a near meltdown on the K nine team during its 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:40.040 maiden voyage that killed seven people who were aboard almost 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:43.280 immediately and then caused delayed effects for many of the 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:46.040 others who were been there. Basically, they averted a total 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:50.000 meltdown situation, but it was at a high cost. The 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:53.600 US was completely unaware that they had been dropping signaling 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:58.000 charges on a nuclear armed submarine until much later, and 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.200 the whole incident was little known until documents related to 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:05.800 it were declassified in n If you would like to 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.440 know more, there is a PBS Secrets of the Dead 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:11.200 episode about this whole incident that's called The Man Who 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:15.080 Saved the World. And to wrap up the Cuban missile crisis, 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:18.840 eventually the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles from 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:21.800 Cuba in exchange for a pledge that the United States 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:25.120 wouldn't invade the nation, something that the US had already 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.600 tried and failed to do during the Bay of Pigs 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:31.760 invasion in nineteen sixty one. And in another move that 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:36.000 wasn't publicly known until decades later, the US also removed 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:41.040 its nuclear missiles from Turkey. I kind of imagine this 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.559 as as being like if you were if you were 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:47.360 throwing rocks at a tree and not hitting it, and 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:49.400 then you realized later that the tree had a big 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:53.880 old hornets nest inside. Like, that's sort of what was 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:57.800 going on with dropping signaling charges onto this nuclear armed 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.800 submarine full of people who were over exhausted, dehydrated and 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:05.080 not having enough oxygen. Yeah, but a hornet's nest that 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:08.160 could kill a lot of people. Yeah, a hornet's nest 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:11.000 that would destroy the entire world. So with that, Sterry thought, 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:14.000 we're gonna take a quick break, take a word from 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:22.880 a sponsor before we move on to our next story. Now, 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:25.640 we are going to move beyond the Cold War into 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.480 a story that's right on the cusp of our typical 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.079 window of history on the show. It took place in 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:36.360 three and as was the case with the Soviet submarine 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:39.560 B fifty nine, this also happened during a period of 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:42.839 heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:46.320 Throughout the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:49.240 Union were actively making plans for what they would do 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.480 if the others struck first in a nuclear attack, and 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:54.840 for a couple of years in the early nineteen eighties, 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:58.680 Yuri Andropov, general Secretary of the Communist Party of the 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.760 Soviet Union, was particularly convinced that the US was making 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:06.520 definite plans for a nuclear attack that would devastate Soviet 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:10.240 leadership under his command. The Soviet Union was preparing for 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:14.400 a certainty not in eventuality. Both the US and the 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:16.920 Soviet Union had also made it clear that a nuclear 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:20.560 strike by one would prompt an immediate and devastating response 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:25.640 from the other. In nine a series of incidents had 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:30.360 ratcheted up the general sense of nuclear paranoia. On March eighth, 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:34.200 President Ronald Reagan had delivered a speech arguing against a 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.640 proposed nuclear freeze, in which he called the Soviet Union 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:41.520 an evil empire. Later that month, he announced the missile 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:43.959 defense system that came to be known as star Wars. 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:48.640 Both nations undertook maneuvers and drills purportedly for the sake 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:52.199 of preparedness, but often they were interpreted by the other 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:55.439 as being anything from a threatening show of force to 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:59.320 a real effort to secretly lay the groundwork for an 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:03.800 upcoming World War three. And when our next incident took place, 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:07.280 the latest and probably most alarming of these was the 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:11.440 downing of Korean Air Flight zero zero seven. The commercial 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:13.760 flight was en route from New York to Seoul, with 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:17.600 a stop and anchorage to refuel. After leaving anchorage for 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.160 reasons that aren't entirely clear, the flight diverged from its 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:26.160 planned course and wound up in Soviet airspace. The Soviet Union, 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:29.800 apparently believing it was a US spy plane, scrambled two 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:33.160 fighter jets, which attacked the plane with air to air missiles. 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:36.600 The flight crashed into the sea, killing all two hundred 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.480 and sixty nine people of board, one of whom was 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:45.520 US Representative Larry McDonald of Georgia. The incident sparked international 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.280 outrage and a slew of conspiracy theories, some of which 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:53.360 still persists today. The Soviet Union did not help the 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.880 matter by being incredibly secretive about the incident at first, 0:13:56.960 --> 0:14:00.360 not even admitting that it had happened, and not feeling 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:03.239 whether it had found the wreckage or flight BATA recorders. 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:06.720 A lot of the details remained completely unknown to the 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.160 rest of the world until after the collapse of the 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:12.880 Soviet Union, and some of the details are still a mystery. 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.480 Three weeks after the incident, with Flight zero zero seven. 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:21.320 On September, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:25.280 Defense Forces was stationed in a bunker known as Serpikov fifteen, 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.520 which was part of the Soviet Union's newly enabled early 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:33.880 warning satellite defense network. At Serpakov fifteen, satellite intelligence was 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:36.880 received and analyzed, and in the case of an attack, 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.800 there was a telephone with a direct line to commanding officers. 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:44.480 Petrov's job there was so secret that not even his 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:48.320 wife knew where he worked or what he did. At 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:51.480 this point, both the United States and the Soviet Union 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:54.440 each had satellite systems that were meant to help keep 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.480 watch for the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles. From the other, 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:03.160 United State satellites basically looked down on the Earth from above, 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:06.040 but on the Soviet side, the satellites looked at the 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:08.880 planet on edge. They were looking for missiles after they 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:11.560 had already been launched. It would sort of be silhouetted 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:15.400 against the black the background of space. In theory, this 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.720 minimized the number of natural phenomena and other non threatening 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:24.240 human activities that could cause a false alarm. But on September, 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:29.200 just after midnight local time, a false alarm did indeed happen, 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.720 most likely thanks to some light reflecting off of high 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:37.240 altitude clouds. The system detected the presence of at first 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:40.840 one missile, but in moments that number grew to five, 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.880 all launched from the United States. The warning of the 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:48.560 detected incoming missile strike played out within the Serpico fifteen 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:51.480 bunker like something out of a movie. They were blaring 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:54.960 alarms and warnings in huge red letters on the screens. 0:15:55.920 --> 0:16:01.360 If you've ever seen a nuclear disas st movie in 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:04.600 which the launch happens and it's met with like giant 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:08.880 whaling Claxon's and the words launched in big red, flashing 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:11.920 letters on the screen, and you've thought, man, that looks ridiculous. 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:17.000 Apparently that's really what happened. It looked exactly like that. 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:22.600 Protocol was for Petrov to immediately contact his superior officers 0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:25.800 to report that the launch had been detected, but he 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.760 had some doubts that the report was accurate. This system 0:16:29.840 --> 0:16:32.200 was brand new, and in his opinion, it had been 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:34.640 rushed into use when it was still in his words, 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:39.920 raw five also seemed like an unusually low number of 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.800 missiles for a preemptive nuclear strike. He would later say, quote, 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:46.440 when people start a war, they don't start. They don't 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:49.360 start it with only five missiles. You can do little 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:53.840 damage with just five missiles. So instead of contacting his 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:57.120 superior officers to say that a nuclear strike was incoming, 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.400 he called to report a false alarm. Even as he did, 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:04.840 though he wasn't completely sure that he was right. It 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:08.040 wasn't until the missiles in question failed to reach the 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:10.600 Soviet Union that he knew for sure that his hunch 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:13.760 had been correct. Yeah, he was, like, I thought it 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:17.800 was maybe fifty fifty. And he also later theorized that 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:20.080 if someone else had been on duty, it would not 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:22.960 have been the same call. By his own account, though, 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:25.760 after this was all over, he went home, he drank 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:27.919 a whole lot of vodka, and he slept for more 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:32.040 than twenty four consecutive hours. As with the submarine B 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:35.479 fifty nine, the details of this incident only became public 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:39.800 much later. At the time, Petrov himself got no recognition 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:42.080 within the Soviet Union for what he had done, and 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:46.560 the crisis averted under his watch. However, after an investigation, 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:49.480 he did get a reprimand for not keeping a detailed 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:53.359 enough log about what had happened. His explanation was that 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:55.560 he had a phone in one hand and the facilities 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:58.119 intercom in the other, and he couldn't juggle both at 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:02.159 once and also take notes. In the aftermath of all this, 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:05.520 the computer program that was designed to filter out natural 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:09.879 phenomena another noise from the early warning systems results was 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:13.000 rewritten to account for this combination of sun and high 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:17.560 altitude clouds. The world learned of Petrov's actions about fifteen 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.320 years later when his commanding officer wrote about it in 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:23.720 his memoir. His wife learned of it when a reporter 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:26.560 came to their home. Following the publication of that memoir, 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:30.640 a documentary about this whole incident came out in which 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:33.919 was called The Man Who Saved the World. That is 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:39.199 not an error. It is the same name as the 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:42.760 one about the submarine. And we're gonna take another quick 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:51.359 break before we talked through one more of these. The 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:53.240 last of these incidents that we are going to talk 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.680 about today is way more recent than we generally get 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.159 into this on show. And we have kind of a 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.760 rule of thumb window, you know, it's this is definitely 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:05.800 newer than that. But as I was going through the 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:09.520 surprisingly many events of this type. It stood out for 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:13.480 reasons that are going to become clear. By this point, 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:17.440 the Soviet Union had dissolved, so the nuclear superpowers at 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:20.080 play where the United States and Russia. And we have 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:22.560 a little less detail on this one than we did 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.040 on the other two Empire because any United States documents 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:33.840 pertaining to it are probably still classified. On January, Russian 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:37.520 radar operators near the coast spotted a fast moving object 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:40.399 that appeared to be a missile. It was over the 0:19:40.400 --> 0:19:44.400 Barents Sea, roughly between Russia's northern coast and the Arctic Ocean, 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:49.520 and then as it moved, the objects separated into multiple pieces. 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:53.360 It was behaving like a trident missile, and judging from 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.000 where it originated, it could have been launched from a 0:19:56.119 --> 0:20:00.639 U S submarine. The radar technicians fear that this was 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:04.359 an American nuclear warheads set to detonate high in the 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.680 atmosphere and to put all of Russians of Russia's early 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:11.359 warning satellite system, which was still being maintained in spite 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:13.440 of the end of the Cold War, out of commission. 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:17.679 That system, though had not detected any launches, but it 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:21.120 was also primarily focused on missile sites in North America, 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:25.359 there was apparently also some cloud cover. The satellite operators 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:29.359 notified their commanding officers that a suspected lodge was in 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:33.480 the works. In the United States, Russia and other nations 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:37.359 that have nuclear weapons, especially outfitted satchel, known as the 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:41.840 nuclear briefcase, accompanies the head of state. The briefcase is 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:45.720 actual contents are secret, and the US version weighs about 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:49.080 forty five pounds. Its purpose is to make sure the 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.159 head of state has all the necessary documentation on hand, 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:56.280 while also allowing them to receive information, make decisions, and 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:00.760 if necessary, order a nuclear strike. The US has also 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:03.800 noted that part of the briefcase's purpose is being able 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:07.120 to identify that it really is the president making the call. 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:12.480 Russia had a clear protocol in the event of a 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:16.800 missile launch, first signal the president's nuclear briefcase at this point, 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:21.920 accompanying President Boris Yeltson, then assess the situation, and within 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:26.400 ten minutes make a decision on whether to retaliate. According 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:30.160 to Russian defense protocols, incoming missiles didn't have to actually 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:35.719 strike anything before the retaliatory strike was ordered. In spite 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:38.720 of the discrepancy between what the radar operators in the 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:42.879 early warning satellites were reporting. About five minutes into that 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:46.520 ten minute window, word went out to submarine commanders in 0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:49.680 the area to maintain a state of readiness and prepare 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:54.479 for further instruction. Eight minutes into the ten minute window, 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:57.600 the mystery objects on the radar fell into the sea 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:02.120 and everyone thankfully stood down. And the culprit in this 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:05.600 case was the Black Brand twelve. A sounding rocket, which 0:22:05.640 --> 0:22:09.720 is a scientific rocket used to take measurements and conduct tests. 0:22:10.320 --> 0:22:13.280 A sounding rocket typically has a rocket and a payload 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:17.040 designed to separate from it at a certain altitude. Often, 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.480 once it's taken its measurements or conducted its experiment, the 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:24.040 payload portion comes back to Earth with its descent slowed 0:22:24.080 --> 0:22:27.560 down by a parachute. That separation of the instruments and 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:30.320 the payload from the rocket is what the radar detectors 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:34.800 had interpreted as the separation of a trident missile. It 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:37.439 was really a Norwegian rocket that was being used to 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:42.520 study the northern lights. Uh. And where it gets Yeah, 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:45.800 where it gets a little un nerving is that um. 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:48.639 The Norwegian and American team that was responsible for this 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:52.400 thing had notified multiple other countries, including Russia, of what 0:22:52.440 --> 0:22:54.880 was about to happen. But nobody had told these satellite 0:22:54.920 --> 0:23:00.000 operators who raised the alarm about it. And apparently nobody 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:04.440 made the connection between this report of a launch from 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:10.040 the coast and the launch of a scientific rocket that 0:23:10.359 --> 0:23:14.560 was already known to everyone, like nobody connected those two 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:17.920 things together. However, the thing that made this so notable 0:23:18.000 --> 0:23:20.400 and made me want to include it in today's episode 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:22.960 in spite of its recency, is it's the only known 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:25.760 time in world history that Ahead of State has actually 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:29.520 activated their nuclear briefcase. I can't help but think how 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:32.040 frustrating it would be for the science team to be like, 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:36.520 we did everything right and yet and yet literally told 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:41.600 you inadvertently, we could have set off like a horrible 0:23:42.440 --> 0:23:46.880 global incident, despite having gone through the checklist and done 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:50.240 everything we were supposed to uh To our knowledge, there 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:53.240 is no movie or TV show about this particular incident yet, 0:23:53.440 --> 0:23:55.720 But since this incident was about ten minutes of a 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:59.600 long and sometimes controversial political career for Boris Yelton, they 0:23:59.640 --> 0:24:03.000 will probably title it something besides the Man who Saved 0:24:03.040 --> 0:24:09.400 the World, although you never know. Maybe so maybe that's 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:15.320 just the title of all nearly near all incidents of 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:20.439 of of just barely averting nuclear's catastrophe, they will all 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:23.000 be called the man who saved the world. That does 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:25.920 seem to definitely be the pattern. Do you have a 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:30.880 listener mail for us? Sure do. It's from Julie uh 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:33.440 and Julie has written to us. This is from a 0:24:33.480 --> 0:24:35.640 little bit ago. I was out of the office for 0:24:35.720 --> 0:24:38.800 a while on the vacation that prompted this episode, so 0:24:38.840 --> 0:24:41.120 I have some things in the inbox that are from 0:24:41.160 --> 0:24:43.679