[new4thaccount]

I read once that a soldier in Russia was supposed to fire off nuclear warheads once when faulty sensors erroneously indicated that America had already done so.

Had the system been a mathematical contract, we would all be dead. Instead, a hero determined sat pondering whether he should do it and then realized the sensors had to have been defective as he wasn't dead yet.

[Zanni]

You're probably thinking of Stanislav Petrov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

[new4thaccount]

Yes and thanks for linking. I re-read it and according to the article he didn't actually have the power to press the button, but not immediately reporting to his superiors who had the "button" had the same impact and my previous statement remains true about automated systems built by imperfect beings.