MikeDunnAuthorToday in Labor History June 3, 1983: The world was nearly ended when a false alarm brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union within seconds of a nuclear exchange. The Soviet nuclear early warning system had reported the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile from the U.S. However, Stanislav Petrov, an engineer on duty at the command center, decided to wait for corroborating evidence—but none came. He thought the detection had to be a computer error, since a first-strike nuclear attack by the United States would have involved hundreds of simultaneous missile launches in order to disable any Soviet counterattack. His decision prevented a retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States and its NATO allies, which likely would have led to a full-scale nuclear war. This event occurred at a time of already heightened tension between the U.S. & the USSR. The Bulleton of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock to 3 minutes before midnight, the closest it had gotten to annihilation of the Earth since the first Hydrogen bomb tests.
In 2010, President Obama and Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev signed the New START treaty, the last nuclear non-proliferation treaty the U.S. has participated in. This treaty prompted the Bulleton of the Atomic Scientists to push the clock back to 6 minutes before midnight, since the treaty significantly reduced the risk of nuclear war. However, the treaty expired in February of 2026. The U.S. currently has no major nuclear nonproliferation treaties with any other nation. The U.S., Russia, China, France, the UK all have fully operational long-range ballistic missile systems. India, North Korea and Israel do, as well. The wars in Ukraine and Russia, Iran and Lebanon, as well as U.S. and Chinese provocations in the Pacific, all increase the risk of larger regional wars and accidental, or intentional, launches of nuclear weapons. Add to this the threat of the Climate Crisis, Artificial Intelligence and, especially, President Trump’s erratic and provocative policies and behavior, and the clock is now at 85 seconds before midnight. This is the closest the world has ever been to complete annihilation according to the Bulleton of the Atomic Scientists.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #ussr #soviets #coldwar #nuclear #bomb #missile #russia #icbm #NATO
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