Perhaps the closest was in 1995 when a US/Norwegian scientific rocket happened to enter the flight path an ICBM would take from US launchers to Moscow. The alert was sudden and fast-moving, and led to Yeltsin activating his launch codes and submarines placed on alert for imminent retaliation, the only time a nuclear state has been known to do so.
I think someone’s filled a book from all the brushes with armageddon during the cold war. This was far from a rare occurence.
The number er of times we’ve been itching to destroy ourselves, you’d swear someone else had to be intervening to keep us from doing it
Perhaps the closest was in 1995 when a US/Norwegian scientific rocket happened to enter the flight path an ICBM would take from US launchers to Moscow. The alert was sudden and fast-moving, and led to Yeltsin activating his launch codes and submarines placed on alert for imminent retaliation, the only time a nuclear state has been known to do so.
But, wait! There’s more!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_close_calls
I’d save that page for the morning.