Right, but none of the incidents on that list involved a nuclear missile silo. I read the author's sentence as "It would have been impossible (for Morris or other silo crew members) to start World War Three by accident."
> "It went to a national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was awakened on 9 November 1979, to be told that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the combined U.S.–Canada military command–was reporting a Soviet missile attack. Just before Brzezinski was about to call President Carter, the NORAD warning turned out to be a false alarm. It was one of those moments in Cold War history when top officials believed they were facing the ultimate threat. The apparent cause? The routine testing of an overworked computer system." [1]
Compounded with the thirty-four nuclear missile officers "texting answers to each other on a monthly proficiency exam" in 2014 [2] or the silo whose blast doors were left open while one crew member slept and the other awaited food deliver in 2013 [3], I'm don't see how that claim can continue being held.
>Just before Brzezinski was about to call President Carter, the NORAD warning turned out to be a false alarm.
These stories are usually ignorant of what the actual procedures were and how very far any launch scenario was. There would be secondary detection confirmation and everyone was well aware of what a false positive was.
No one was just launching on one set of data, if they did, we wouldn't be here to discuss it.
Compounded with the thirty-four nuclear missile officers "texting answers to each other on a monthly proficiency exam" in 2014 [2] or the silo whose blast doors were left open while one crew member slept and the other awaited food deliver in 2013 [3], I'm don't see how that claim can continue being held.
[1] http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb371/
[2] http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/15/22317264-34-nucle...
[3] http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/23/us/air-force-nuclear-silo-door... "derelict in his duties in that he left the blast door open in order to receive a food delivery from the onsite chef"