Thank you Stanislav Petrov!

On this date in 1983 the world "dodged a bullet".  The USSR defense's warning system recorded multiple ICBM launches in the USA, and the Soviet's had a launch on warning rule, a cold war rule too very much like the doomsday machine featured in Dr. Stangelove, a great cold war movie.  However, Lt. Colonel Petrov decided that these were false warnings and stopped the "retaliation" strike.  TPP too clearly remembers the Russian-Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s and our school days' "duck and cover" drills which we called kiss-your-ass-goodbye drills.  In those days TPP actually helped people build bomb shelters in their basements.  Everyone was just sure there was going to be a nuclear war, and these two events are as close as the world ever came.  On the whole Petrov should be made an international hero of world peace.  More on the story at Treehugger and Dr. Strangelove movie pics too!  Image of a USA nuclear test blast in the south Pacific (bikini atoll?).  Man, that would really ruin your beach vacation.