There have been a few false alarms that almost triggered a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and decided to wait for confirmation before launching an all-out nuclear war. Although some of the false alarms were cases of human error, others were related to design issues of the detection systems being employed. There has also been concern that natural phenomena such as meteors could trigger the early warning systems.
On July 25, a meteor exploded in a fireball twenty-six miles above Thule Airbase in Greenland with a force of about two kilotons. Thule hosts a Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site which is one of the early warning radar bases built primarily to detect a Russian nuclear attack.
Hans M. Kristensen is the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. He said, “We’re still here, so they correctly concluded it was not a Russian first strike. There are nearly 2,000 nukes on alert, ready to launch. A freak incident like this could potentially trigger an alert that caused the United States to overreact, although such an event is unlikely.”
“The potential risks are about what could happen in a tense crisis where two nuclear powers were at each other’s throats and a conventional shooting war had broken out and part of the command and control system degraded. The early warning systems are supposed to be able to differentiate and in most cases probably would be able to do so. But with large number of nuclear weapons on high alert, the concern would be that an overreaction could trigger a series of events that escalated the conflict significantly. There have been cases during the Cold War where atmospheric events caused early warning systems to falsely report nuclear attacks. Fortunately, military officers figured out that they were false alarms.”
He pointed out that tensions were low between the U.S. and Russia at this time, so it is unlikely that something like a meteor could trigger a nuclear war between the two nations. He said, “I don’t think there is any risk that such an event could trigger a nuclear launch under normal circumstances. There are no other indicators that nuclear adversaries at this point are about to launch nuclear weapons against the United States.”
Most of the nations on Earth that do not have nuclear weapons have signed a treaty to work for the elimination of all nuclear weapons on Earth. It is not surprising that the nations with nuclear weapons did not sign the treaty. The possibility of an accidental nuclear war that would end human civilization is a powerful argument for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to prove that a particular nation did not have nuclear weapons hidden somewhere. The nations who have nuclear weapons offer this as a reason that it would be unwise to give up all their nuclear weapons. They believe that their nuclear weapons will continue to act as a deterrent against nuclear attacks by other nations. The best we can do is try to reduce nuclear stockpiles, reduce tensions between nuclear armed nations and improve remote early detection systems for missile launches.