Just after midnight on September 26, 1983, a Soviet early-warning system reported that nuclear war had begun. One officer had minutes to decide whether to believe it. What he chose — and why — may be the most consequential individual decision of the Cold War. This episode of Sidequests tells the full story of that night: what was actually happening in the world that made the moment so dangerous, what the officer saw and how he reasoned through it, what had actually gone wrong with the system, and why the version of this story that made him famous gets the most important detail wrong — in a way that makes the truth considerably more interesting.
","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}