Able Archer Declassified

[Lt DeFault]

The U.S. National Security Archive has recently declassified over one thousand pages of information relating to the incident in 1983 which almost caused a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In addition to papers from western intelligence agencies, there are reports from the Soviet KGB, East German STASI and various other Warsaw Pact countries.

All of the info can be found on the National Security Archive's Able Archer 83 Sourcebook page.

7ciy5R-tLiE

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Found on Dirk Rijmenants' weblog.

[Marko]

I posted something similar over on Sim HQ,

One of the guys over there posted this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

Its about a Soviet air force officer who really did save the world

Just by staying calm. the soviets early warning system detected five incoming ICBM's

He reasoned why would the US only launch five missiles. kept his nerve and discovered it was a computer glitch.

[Lt DeFault]

Yes. That particular incident happened on my 5th birthday. I'm not sure if my family had yet left Germany, where my father was stationed...preparing for a Soviet attack.

[smithcorp]

Able Archer is pretty fascinating. Shocking how close the world came to disaster because of political and bureaucratic decisions almost aimed at ensuring a war.

There's a good Sundance TV series called Deutschland 83 about an East German border guard forced into spying and it weaves Able Archer cleverly into the story - recommended.

There's also a good paper here that Rhys put me onto: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/304879825.html?FMT=ABS

smith