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

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

#51
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

/r/slatestarcodex if I didn't typo on my phone. It's an interesting sub, sometimes a thought provoking article bubbles up to my front-page which is always a bit of a joy, Tho sometimes a bit of garbage bubbles up too.

I don't think /r/slatestarcodex, and especially the blog it's related to, is that niche among HN readers :)

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

#52
post #18
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recurring theme in doctor who stories For others confused like me: recurring theme in the Doctor Who stories.

I corrected for clarity. But some fans would cringe because you can refer to "Doctor Who" as the show or "The Doctor" for the character but "The Doctor Who" Make no sense so your initial correction might be even more confusing to some ;)

But you would use the phrase the Doctor Who show. As The wasn't capitalized is how I would read it.

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

#53

When "just doing my job" saves the world. “My cozy armchair felt like a red-hot frying pan and my legs went limp. I felt like I couldn't even stand up. That's how nervous I was when I was taking this decision,” he told RT. How well would any of us have done in that situation? It's tempting to think that we'd have said no, don't launch. But picture yourself as a military commander, raised in that lifestyle. Then add t…

I wish it were possible to make a service that lets you upload encrypted notes that will be made public after your death.

That sounds like an awesome startup idea. Except that the startup will run out of money after two years and sell your secrets to the highest bidder. Or they will become big enough to be bought by one of the Internet majors who will just shut down the servers and keep the developers.

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

#55

Perhaps the better story for this audience is the one about the electrical engineer who nearly caused nuclear war...

I imagine this was said a bit tongue-in-cheek but seriously tho, that would not be the better story since the reality of engineering is mistakes happen. Bugs exist in every system. Yes, these might even cause nuclear war and that's why the 'better story for this audience' is why it didn't.

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

#56
The concept that people 'believe' the USSR would not have considered that a satellite might give off a false positive seems the most important piece thing to learn here.

It sounds like a well trained person, who was good at their job, did their job well. Had they not of, which we all know happens, it would have been caught up the chain.

It seems like people are more surprised that a Soviet officer was an intelligent, controlled human being and I think this says more about us than anything else.

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

#58
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…

> 1) The reported starts (5 in total) happened from a single base in the US which didn't make sense from the military point of view: the US would have put themselves at a grave disadvantage by sending just a few missiles

There was an interview with Petrov (in the 90s or 00s) when he spoke about this point, and the interviewer said that in 1983, the US plans for a preemptive strike started with a "beheading strike", in which a few missiles would be sent to hit the Kremlin and a handful strategic military bases. Then the US would wait if the Soviets were still twitching, in which case the second, more massive round would've been fired. Petrov admitted that, if he had known that, he would've decided differently on that fateful day.

(Don't have a direct source link to back this up, sorry. My source is one of the earlier episodes of https://alternativlos.org where they talked about the Cold War.)

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

#59
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many secrets are you sitting on, bound by your NDAs Zero. I don't sign NDA's.

Oh? I feel like that only works while you're young and in demand. Give it a decade or so. But I'm curious about your strategy. There are many contexts that you simply can't work for someone if you won't sign an NDA. It'd be interesting to know the areas where that isn't true.

I work in cloud infrastructure, and I cannot recall anyone here signing an NDA. Instead, our senior architects are giving talks about our network design etc. at prestigious conferences to earn street cred for the company.

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

#60
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…

Ignoring the warning for 1) and 3) would have been a mistake in a Dr Strangelove scenario.
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