If you ever wondered what the mind of an ADHDer with access to the internet is like, then read on.
Today I listened to a song called Aurora Borealis by Ylvis, brothers from Norway who are most famous in the UK for producing What Does the Fox Say? Well, apart from signing about a fox they have a fine back catalogue of music, among them the Stories from Norway series which musically retells infamous events in recent Norwegian history.
Episode three, which starts with Aurora Borealis, titled ‘Rekettskandalen’ (the Andøya Rocket Incident), tells the story of the Black Brant Scare which occurred on January 25, 1995.
The incident came about after scientists from Norway and the US launched a rocket carrying equipment for the study of the aurora borealis over Svalbard, the launch was to take place from the Norwegian island of Andøya in the far north of the country. The four-stage rocket launched without issue and reached an altitude of 1,453km, about the same altitude that a US Navy submarine-launched Trident missile would fly at.
Norway, being the thoughtful country it is, had announced a launch would take place somewhere between January and February 1995, but for some reason that news never reached the officers at the Russian Missile Attack Warning System Centre (MAWS) and was only interpreted as being a warning to shipping in the area.
I think we can see where this is going…
What followed was possibly the closest 10 minutes the world ever got to a nuclear disaster. Russian strategic forces were put on high alert. Launch on warning procedures were put into place, President Boris Yeltsin, Defence Minister Pavel Grachev, and Chief of General Staff Mikhail Kolesniko were each handed a ‘nuclear football’ and while only Yeltsin has the legal authority to ‘Push the Button’ (another track in the episode) each man had the technical ability to do so.
It was the only time (that we know of) when the Russian nuclear briefcase was open, armed, and ready to launch, and we were just minutes away from everything we knew and loved ending in a blinding flash of light.
But this is where my squirrel brain really comes into play and why you possibly shouldn’t let an ADHDer with an interest in history have access to the internet because I went looking for other near-world death incidents within my own lifetime.
Famously we have the Able Archer incident in 1983 where NATO forces in Brussels embarked on a joint military exercise simulating a response to a hypothetical Soviet nuclear attack.
The purpose of Able Archer 83 was to test command and control procedures for NATO’s forces in the event of a global crisis, but unlike previous training events Able Archer 83 featured elements designed to confuse and disorientate the Soviets…and it did.
KGB operatives alerted Moscow of the unusual activity and the Soviet Union being the Soviet Union got a little bit paranoid. Believing the exercise was a NATO offensive in disguise the Soviets prepared for retaliation and leader, Yuri Andropov mobilised entire divisions to transport nuclear weapons to their launch sites and scrambled a fleet of bombers carrying warheads. Once again, the nuclear football, known in Russia as the Cheget made an appearance.
In what would be seen as a ‘fortuitous, if ill-informed decision’, US Air Force intelligence officer, Leonard Perroots, observed the Soviet response but instead of raising the Western alert he waited. The wait would mean the Soviets would realise it was an exercise and not a surprise attack.
But that’s not all! Just days before Able Archer 83 on September 26 a Soviet-designed early warning system code-named Oko malfunctioned. At around midnight Oko’s alarms sounded alerting the base of an incoming missile. The screen screamed ‘LAUNCH’ in a manner which wasn’t a suggestion, and which went against the Hitchhikers creed of ‘DON’T PANIC!”.
Indeed, most of the base decided the best thing to do was panic, but some officers however were skeptical, not believing that the US would choose to send just one missile. One officer knew that Oko was prone to error as he had created the code for the system. He did the IT cure-all solution of switching the system off and on again. The alarms still sounded.
Instead of following protocol however the officer decided to wait for more evidence which never came, and the alarms eventually stopped.
So, there we have it, in my lifetime of just 45 years so far, we have has three KNOWN incidents where we have come close to creating our own shadows, and Boomers wonder why we Gen Xers are so screwed up and have trained Gen Zers and Alphas to become the honey badgers they have!
Going back to Stories from Norway however I would seriously recommend you catch up with it on Spotify (other streaming services are available!) it’s hilarious, brilliantly written, and deserves all the love it can get from outside of Norway. It also gives us good reason to forgive Ylvis for What Does the Fox Say and the pain we had to endure listening to kids screaming it in the streets.
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