41–50 of 54 posts
Great story, but not really tech related
From the Guidelines [1]: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Armenian Radio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Yerevan_jokes) was asked: "what do to if a nuclear attack is imminent?"
Armenian Radio responded: "wrap yourself in a linen sheet and slowly, in organized fashion, without creating any panic, crawl to a cemetery."
To paraphrase War Games (a classic which I watched only after coming to the US), the winning move is not to play."
Opportunity for a playwright to write a really tight two scene piece there. Doubt if we could get it up to 50,000 words[1] even if we did the 'follow three scenarios with multiple endings' trick, and even if we had the Bobby Kennedy/LBJ dynamic in the committee going.
Edit: The K-19 'incident' would have made a major psychological impression on anyone, even allowing for the high threshold that I imagine Soviet navy commanders of that era had.[2]
Great story, but not really tech related
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup in 1983. Thanks to both of them. Petrov is still alive, so you can send him a Hallmark card if you're over 30 and glad to be alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Do you have his address?
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dkear/can_anyone_...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the Guidelines [1]: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That basically translates to "any off-topic shit that the community and mods will tolerate". Shame on them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the Guidelines [1]: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That basically translates to "any off-topic shit that the community and mods will tolerate". Shame on them.
The best way of playing by hos rules is creating content that we would find interesting. It's a lot more fun than whining for everyone.
I was lucky enough to learn about this in high school - Andover. I forget the speakers name but he gave the speech between 2001 - 2005 (I can't remember). It was an incredible speech about Mutually Assured Destruction and how the theory was absurd. The speaker pointed out that no one thought that we would exit the Cold War without a horrible war. And then he asked, "Why did this not happen?" He pointed to Vasili's ex…
Incidentally, I think that's what good parenting looks like.
"Three officers on board the submarine [...] were authorized to launch the torpedo if agreeing unanimously in favor of doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch." Opportunity for a playwright to write a really tight two scene piece there. Doubt if we could get it up to 50,000 words[1] even if we did the 'follow three scenarios with multiple endings' trick, and even…
Has the charts, photos, signals and some wonderfully unreliable reminiscences by crew members. (edit link has gone hence reply to my own post).
In the aftermath, the U.S. military executes air strikes on Cuba followed by an invasion. The Soviet forces obliterate Guantanamo with a nuclear strike, send nuclear cruise missiles at the incoming invasion force,and, most seriously, manage to launch two of the SS-4 missiles...one of which hits Washington D.C. and wipes out the entire National Command Authority. In response, U.S. forces execute the entire SIOP against the Soviet Union, an effort which gives "overkill" a new name.
The aftermath of "The Two Days' War" includes the near-extermination of the Soviet Union, radiation issues in large parts of the world, and a "nuclear twilight" causing worldwide food shortages and famine. Ultimately, the United States was viewed as the aggressor by the rest of the world, compounded by the actions of President Richard Nixon (elected in 1964, replacing Acting President John McCormack). The U.S. stood alone in refusing to join the Geneva Convention for the Abolition of Nuclear Armaments in 1966, and renounced UN membership in 1968, ordering the organization out of New York City. The American public felt Nixon had taken the wrong turn, and elected Eugene McCarthy to succeed him in 1972.
The essay is written as the report of an investigative commission written in 1972 and finally declassified in 2002, in part by the actions of U.S. Archivist Newton Leroy Gingrich (who never went into politics in this timeline) at the New Capital District in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.