Most people don't realize it, but we nearly went to nuclear war in early 1980 over a computer glitch. The only reason I know about it was that I was an avionics technician at a remote FB-111A SAC base at the time. But you can find some mention on the internet, today. Wiki gets it wrong and says it happened in Nov '79. They also say the glitch was detected immediately -- which is absolute B.S..
We were called to work in the middle of the night for an "surprise alert", which we later learned was a real computer glitch that indicated that thousands of Soviet missiles were in-bound. We launched the Alert Birds immediately (10 planes always armed and ready), and then every flyable plane on base within the next hour -- and then waited to die. If it was a real war, none of us had any hope, since the base was known to be the #3 nuclear target in North America. FB-111A's were the only nuclear bombers in the inventory capable of evading Soviet defenses, due to their "terrain-following" radar. Bombers, not missiles, were the first wave in any attack, because they could be recalled.
There was a lottery every year to see who got to survive a nuclear war. The winners were the guys who were dispatched to a secret recovery field, to receive any planes that survived the attack, so they could be reloaded and sent back. During my entire hitch at that base and countless "alerts", that was the only time I ever saw the lottery winners actually load up and leave. This was also the only "surprise alert" I ever experienced where we didn't know about it a month in advance.
We later learned that the Alert Birds had actually penetrated Soviet Airspace by the time they received the recall order -- less than 20 minutes from Moscow.
So if you lived in any major city in America, you more than likely came within 20 minutes of being a casualty of Nuclear War in 1980, and never knew about it until today.
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