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Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

rt.com

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Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#31

Post by addHocker »

stordoff wrote: post #24
canoebuilder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish it were possible to make a service that lets you upload encrypted notes that will be made public after your death. But those two requirements conflict. That's a very interesting idea. What do you mean by the "requirements conflict"? Couldn't it be implemented with a dead man's switch where one would check in every year or so. Of course there would need to be some verification methods baked in to thwart prank…

> What do you mean by the "requirements conflict"? Possibly that such a dead man's switch would require the keys to be outside of your control to some extent - after all, if you die the day after resetting the switch, any infrastructure owned, maintained, or paid for by you might not exist for the switch to fire. If you give the keys to a third-party, you have to trust they aren't reading the contents and that their…

You could make a time triggered death man switch that needs to be reset every year. Else your secret is decrypted

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#32

Post by greglindahl »

tscs37 wrote: post #22

I first heard of his death in a very niche subreddit and only by chance. He died in May and only now we know it. I was wondering how long it'd take for mainstream media to pick up. He was truly a hero, without his reaction a good chunk of this planet would be nuclear wasteland.

Mainstream media? This is an rt.com article, a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#33

Post by [deleted] »

greglindahl wrote: post #32
tscs37 wrote: post #22

I first heard of his death in a very niche subreddit and only by chance. He died in May and only now we know it. I was wondering how long it'd take for mainstream media to pick up. He was truly a hero, without his reaction a good chunk of this planet would be nuclear wasteland.

Mainstream media? This is an rt.com article, a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.

[deleted]

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#34

Post by tscs37 »

greglindahl wrote: post #32
tscs37 wrote: post #22

I first heard of his death in a very niche subreddit and only by chance. He died in May and only now we know it. I was wondering how long it'd take for mainstream media to pick up. He was truly a hero, without his reaction a good chunk of this planet would be nuclear wasteland.

Mainstream media? This is an rt.com article, a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.

It's arguably more mainstream than a niche subreddit,no?

On the other hand, there are more trustworthy news outlets.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#35

Post by sien »

The USSR put the first objects and people into space. They also built armaments that could compete with NATO's best.

Meanwhile, today in North Korea it's pretty different.

Who knows what kind of systems they have in place to detect US attacks and how faulty and flawed they are likely to be and how unstable the people on top of them are and it's really something to fear.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#36

Post by whiteandnerdy »

addHocker wrote: post #31
stordoff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you mean by the "requirements conflict"? Possibly that such a dead man's switch would require the keys to be outside of your control to some extent - after all, if you die the day after resetting the switch, any infrastructure owned, maintained, or paid for by you might not exist for the switch to fire. If you give the keys to a third-party, you have to trust they aren't reading the contents and that their…

You could make a time triggered death man switch that needs to be reset every year. Else your secret is decrypted

But if the system can decrypt itself in your absence it must have access to the decryption keys. So you can't guarantee that the subsequent maintainer of the system won't release the keys after your death. I suppose you could hide the system somewhere (anonymous VPS) but then the encryption isn't actually buying you anything over what the anonymity is getting you.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#38

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

4WIW wrote: post #25

It may be that our biggest collective luck was that the alarm happened at the time subcolonel Petrov was on duty. He was an analyst, maybe even chief analyst of the unit, he authored the playbook for the officers on duty; being on duty wasn't his main job (source: https://cont.ws/@adviser095/717098 ), he would go on duty from time to time. Due to his knowledge of the early warning system he was more likely to cast do…

I wonder if there are other, still classified instances where the weapon has almost been launched. If lt. colonel Petrov was aware of the limitations of the early warning system then there must have been other faults as well - I bet there have been problems with the early warning system on both sides...

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#39

Post by sillysaurus3 »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #38
4WIW wrote: post #25

It may be that our biggest collective luck was that the alarm happened at the time subcolonel Petrov was on duty. He was an analyst, maybe even chief analyst of the unit, he authored the playbook for the officers on duty; being on duty wasn't his main job (source: https://cont.ws/@adviser095/717098 ), he would go on duty from time to time. Due to his knowledge of the early warning system he was more likely to cast do…

I wonder if there are other, still classified instances where the weapon has almost been launched. If lt. colonel Petrov was aware of the limitations of the early warning system then there must have been other faults as well - I bet there have been problems with the early warning system on both sides...

Ever hear of the bomb the US accidentally dropped on the mainland? When they recovered it, they discovered the bomb had armed itself and that all the safety mechanisms failed except one.

Re: Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died

#40

Post by executesorder66 »

tscs37 wrote: post #22

I first heard of his death in a very niche subreddit and only by chance. He died in May and only now we know it. I was wondering how long it'd take for mainstream media to pick up. He was truly a hero, without his reaction a good chunk of this planet would be nuclear wasteland.

Which subreddit was that, if you don't mind?
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