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...thanks Doc. Just playing example by personal experience.
I remember time standing still, seeing each letter hit the paper, the never ending chukka-chukka of the decoder/telex, the name Schraub Lorenz in gray on blue, imprinted forever, TOP SECRET, NATO TOP SECRET, COSMOS, CRYPTO TOP SECRET and soforth. I'm following and correlating East Block targetting data from four independent East Block "sources", four columns on a one-time tape decrypted telex. About two meters down the roll:
"FL-1+MT-MR-LNG.*- LAT.* (McGraw Kasern, Perlacher Forst, Munich, Bavaria, BRD)"
I'm vaporized and everything dead on a radius Munich to Passau in one shot. Perhaps I would have been luckier than those in Passau, a microsecond opposed to a few days.
I think I remember four days, maybe longer, seemed like decades, where both sides were armed with a finger ON the button. We knew that so much as a truck backfire on the border would have meant launch, launch everything. We calculated East-West 80% annihilation.
Nothing you can do but shovel intelligence, watch and wait. Four days, one tiny, tiny mistake, impatience, flip-out. You would now be living, if at all, in the Southern Hemisphere. COLD war?
Why didn't it happen? Only God knows, literally.
On a relative scale, Saddam Hussain is a small problem, blown all out of proportion, along with many other things, that need solid solutions that don't further escalate our madness.
I remember time standing still, seeing each letter hit the paper, the never ending chukka-chukka of the decoder/telex, the name Schraub Lorenz in gray on blue, imprinted forever, TOP SECRET, NATO TOP SECRET, COSMOS, CRYPTO TOP SECRET and soforth. I'm following and correlating East Block targetting data from four independent East Block "sources", four columns on a one-time tape decrypted telex. About two meters down the roll:
"FL-1+MT-MR-LNG.*- LAT.* (McGraw Kasern, Perlacher Forst, Munich, Bavaria, BRD)"
I'm vaporized and everything dead on a radius Munich to Passau in one shot. Perhaps I would have been luckier than those in Passau, a microsecond opposed to a few days.
I think I remember four days, maybe longer, seemed like decades, where both sides were armed with a finger ON the button. We knew that so much as a truck backfire on the border would have meant launch, launch everything. We calculated East-West 80% annihilation.
Nothing you can do but shovel intelligence, watch and wait. Four days, one tiny, tiny mistake, impatience, flip-out. You would now be living, if at all, in the Southern Hemisphere. COLD war?
Why didn't it happen? Only God knows, literally.
On a relative scale, Saddam Hussain is a small problem, blown all out of proportion, along with many other things, that need solid solutions that don't further escalate our madness.
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