Slashdot Mirror
US-Russia Joint Force to Monitor Missiles' Y2K Problems
Hapster sent in the link to a New York Times story (free reg. req. to read) about how the US and Russia are setting up a joint task force to make sure we don't accidently get into a nuclear exchange because of Y2K bugs in missle warning and launch software. According to the article, "The confidence-building operation will use U.S.
early-warning satellites and advanced computers, and
could reassure Moscow if Y2K computer problems in
Russia mistakenly signaled a missile launch somewhere
in the world."
Well, China was going to launch the capsule this year, but unmanned. It may be some time (2001, at least) before they launch a manned craft.
Take a look at this BBC news story for details and nice pictures.
I seem to recall another article that stated that China's manned launch wouldn't be well into the next decade, but I couldn't find it.
Looking forward to the next moon race! I wasn't even born yet for the last one...
Its because when the cold war ended all those tens of thousands of nuclear warheads didn't disapear. The nuclear threat is just as real today as it was in the 80's. In 96 or 95 [someone correct me here if my date is off] Norwegian/American scientists launched a high altitude rocket from Norway for weather experiments. Even though russia space command was notified some months in advance.. the information never reached the missle command crew who interpreted the launch as a US first strike from a submarine in the north atlantic. Boris Yeltsin had his finger on "the button" if you will for about 20 minutes until it was determined that it was not a missle attack. This was covered in the news and I'll follow up with a link to it when I find it. Stuff like this seems to happen every few months.. If there is to be a nuclear war it will be most likely accidential. [I seem to recall times when the US almost launched their missles when they forgot that the computers were running a simulation that some officer left running on the system... doh]
You left out China, which actually does have missiles with sufficient range to hit the Lower 48.
Indeed. In fact China is about to launch it's first manned mission in a few months, please browse Mark Wade's excellent Encyclopedia Astronautica for more information. AFAIK, most other nuclear powers ('sides Russia) don't have land-based ballistic missiles of sufficient range, and generally don't need to (as their arsenals are mostly aimed at their immediate neighbors).
Well, India has launched some satellites on it's own, so I guess they can nuke whoever and whereever they want - even with heavy warheads.
Let's stop pointing missles at each other. Face it, we might need a socialist revolution in this country before the government will pay more attention to "we the people" than to the never-ending state of war which we're getting.
From the beginning, i've always contended that the biggest problem with Y2K is *not* the machines. Its the people who will go and do something retarded or nutty out of the fear that something might happen.. Stockpiling weapons, hoarding food, withdrawing huge sums of money from banks..that sort of thing is the greatest threat here. The redneck factor plays into it way more than anything else.
There will be riots -- but not because of anything computer related. There will be riots because people *expect* rioting to occur. Its completely psychological. It goes hand in hand with "My city's basketball team won a game -- Now I think i'll go turn over a squad car and set my own neighborhood on fire." People will use a simple 4-digit roll of our Gregorian calendar as a reason to steal a television. Why? Because people *expect* it to happen.
If you ask me, Times Square in NY is the absolute worst place you could be on New Years Eve. Given the number of people who will try and pack themselves into such a small space, something bad is bound to happen. Mix in some alcohol into that equation, and the outlook is even worse. Add into it the fact that 20% of the population have serious mental health issues, and greater than 1% of the population is schizophrenic, and you've got yourself a big human fruit-salad of errors ready to propogate. Think about that next time the camera pans the crowd..One out of every 100 faces in that crowd thinks that dogs can send telepathic messages from Satan directly into their minds.
Lets suppose some nutcase has it in his head that the world will be coming to an end at the stroke of midnight. He figures, "Well, since I have to go to hell, i'm going to bring the greatest party in the world with me!"
10 seconds later, 300 people are dead, 1000 are injured, most of them killed by the ensuing stampede.
I'm not worried about the machines. I'm worried about the morons being worried about the machines.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Ah, but this could be taken a step further, into the propaganda/government conspiracy stage. Say a missile did go off. The government says 'It was a Y2K bug we missed.' Was it? Or was it deliberate?
--
Jeremy Tout
photon-atsign-home.com
India/Pakistan/Indonesia/Iran/Isreal and god knows
:)
who else has Nukes also..
What happens if one of THEM goes off from a y2k
bug? Heh then we nuke them first and while we
are nuking them.. Russia nukes us
Actually.. I am worried about a lot of the nukes
and nuclear reactors that are NOT y2k bug free.
Specially since im living here in Florida and
Cuba wants to start up their Nuclear Reactor that
they built in the 60s..
Im SURE that plant is y2k compatable... NOT.
I mentioned this sometime earlier on slashdot, the U.S. and Russia have an exchange program for defence analysts to keep an eye on each others silos and command centres.
During the mini-revolution that almost unseated Gorbachev, the russian missile command centre opened all the doors on the silos so the CIA (actually the NRO) could peer into them with the spy satellites and confirm that rogue forces hadn't taken over the government and ordered a launch. They even grabbed a CIA analyst from the moscow embassy and flew him to one of the military bases so he could report back on what was going on. It kept the U.S. in a "peaceful posture".
There were some small announcements in defence magazines more than a year ago that both sides would be monitoring each other, and were working to get the chinese involved as well. Now they also have to worry about India and Pakistan, although only India has orbital technology and isn't currently pissed at anyone other than neighbor Pakistan.
But its nice to see a splashy PR piece to calm Y2K fears.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Where's General Jack D. Ripper when you need him?
Let's protect our precious bodily fluids on December 31. There's nothing like revenge long after the fight is over!
Are you with me, Slashdotters!
--
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
Yeah, US, Russia, big deal. This is obviously needed, but really it's just giving Russia a sneak peak at our top secret early-warning system, since they aren't smart enought to build a good one themselves. This was all a Russian ploy to get into our systems, maybe? Why didn't we just help them fix their systems?
Oh, and about nuclear power plants - meltdowns are coming! I don't think we can avoid this one, with hundreds of plants still not Y2K ready! Maybe we should just shut them all down for a few hundred years.
-------------------
Visit Mind.Wire, the new web site for intelligent science, technology, and mathematics discussion. http://www.mindwire.org
Well, we got through 9999 pretty much all in one piece. I notice that most news services were saying things like "what an anticlimax", and how there was "nothing to worry about." Strange how most of those same news services run the occasional Y2K article saying how we're all doomed.
There was a small article in the newspaper this morning saying how there was only one problem reported in Japan with 9999 - the fire service in Okinawa lost the use of its fire reporting system (the system that lets them notify firefighters of the location of a fire) for several hours. Apparently, the system was installed a long time ago.
If there's going to be any problems at 12:00:01, January 1st, it's going to come from systems like these - installed years ago and forgotten about - rather than things like bank databases or communications systems. On the other hand, embedded systems are supposed to be the big bugaboo, but any embedded systems programmer worth his/her salary is supposed to ensure that no matter what happens, the system will reset itself to a known state rather than opening all water valves or whatever.
Still, I'm not going to be taking any plane flights...
I suspect their apathy over this issue has to do with the question of trust - would they have any reason to trust us to not fire our own nukes, and tell them they were a false alarm?
I know that doesn't seem too sensible, since we have no particular reason to destroy the Russians at this point. But Russian paranoia runs deep.
D
----
It's amazing that the majority of the American populace isn't bracing for the end of the world... Forget Y2K. In 1899, there was a huge dip in the stock market, and there was way more panic by September a century ago than there is today. (The stock market did jump back within a few months in 1900).
:)
I think by focusing everyones attention on Y2K, we're not panicing! A modern day apocolypse myth can be explained away as a technical problem to be solved. "Yes, there is a problem with the end of the century, but our best technicians are working on it and we'll have it fixed just in time!". I bet they couldn't say that in 1899...
It doesn't matter how bad y2k is. It's the end of the millenium! Where are the thousands of doomsday cultists committing suicide? Where is that stock market panic? Why haven't end of the millenium trinkets shown up everywhere?
Well, I guess I could be wrong about the trinkets...
It then falls to Ivan to decide what to do next, according to my (wildly limited) understanding of the way they've got things set up. The warning system tells Ivan how many missiles are flying, and from where. If it looks plausible, he presses a button to set things in motion on his end.
This button, I understand, is labelled "Start."
After he clicks "Start," he chooses "Programs" from the resulting menu, then "Applications" from the submenu, then "ICBM Manager."
No, I'm lying. But it is labelled "Start."
Mind the Gap