History Main / ANuclearError

** Although the Vela Incident was likely a simple equipment error on what was then an aging satellite, one the popular theories circulating about it is that it detected a real detonation -- perhaps even a joint Israeli/South African nuclear test, as S. Africa was being subjected to multiple embargoes and sanctions due to Apartheid, and Israel was looking for a nation to help them gain nuclear capability because they were being embargoed by some countries in NATO.

* ''[[Film/DrStrangelove Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb]]'' may be the epitome of this trope. [[GeneralRipper General Jack D.]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Ripper]] issues an order for his bomb wing to attack their targets inside the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had developed a device that would immediately trigger a nuclear holocaust in the event of an attack on Soviet soil. Nobody but Ripper could order his wing to return, and the Soviet device would go off it any attempt was made to disable it. The film opens with a disclaimer from the US Air Force, assuring moviegoers that their safeguards would prevent such events from happening.

* ''Literature/NineteenEightyThreeDoomsday'' is an alternate history where the false alarm in the Serpukhov-15 bunker (see the RealLife section for [[ForWantOfANail how things really turned out]]) was reported to the superiors, resulting in nuclear war.

** In 1983, war tensions were high between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. For a few years, the USSR under Brezhnev and Andropov were terrified that a United States first strike was imminent, and had instituted the [=RYaN=] (from the Russian meaning something like "Nuclear Rocket Attack") program to find any hints of warlike intentions. [[note]](To make things even worse on this score, the agents tasked with finding this information were berated if they didn't gather positive signs of preparation for a US first strike -- anything that suggested the US was NOT about to nuke Moscow was derided as "misinformation" --, and so liberally interpreted every scrap of info in the worst possible sense. In short, the Soviets were talking themselves, quite by accident, into the very nuclear war they feared was coming from the other side.)[[/note]] In the summer of '83, the Able Archer '83 exercises (a NATO communications exercise meant to simulate the first week of WorldWarIII, culminating on the last day with a rehearsal of an expected nuclear exchange) were held, this coinciding with the controversial arrival of Pershing nuclear missiles [[note]]which were capable of hitting Russia within five to six minutes, well under any sort of Soviet early-warning capability[[/note]]. The Soviets were monitoring in real time and were becoming increasingly alarmed at the exercise. The coinciding of the two events sent Soviet suspicions through the roof. [[FromBadToWorse And, the Soviet early-warning satellite system was fundamentally flawed.]] The system registered five [=ICBM=]s from three separate launches headed towards Russia.[[note]]In reality, what had happened was that sunlight reflecting off the Earth hit in just the right manner to appear to the satellite's IR sensors to be missile launches.[[/note]] [[OnlySaneMan Colonel Stanislav Petrov]], the officer in charge of the station, realized quickly that the United States would not launch a first strike with just five missiles -- had they actually intended to initiate war they'd have launched ''everything'', in an attempt to cut the head off their enemy before it could retaliate significantly. Suspecting an equipment error, especially since he could not corroborate the apparent launches with radar data (which said there were no missiles at all), he shut down the first two alarms, and explained to his superiors that he was ignoring the third, citing the fact that only five missiles had been launched. It is somewhat exaggerated how much of a threat this was given the non-correlation of the radar and satellite data, and this example is often treated as if Petrov had authority to launch missiles ''himself'', but it is ''possible'' that if he had treated the alarm as genuine the Soviet Union would have responded with a "counter" launch, leading to a real counterlaunch from the US and MAD. [[ForWantOfANail And, to top it all off, Petrov wasn't supposed to be the man on duty that day. He had taken the shift for another operator who was sick.]] The Soviet Union being what it was, Petrov was [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished promptly relieved of duty]] pending [[HauledBeforeASenateSubCommittee an official inquiry]], primarily because admitting the satellite system was flawed would be a huge embarrassment for the Soviet Union. (For what it's worth, they decided he'd acted properly and he was reinstated.)

* ''[[Film/DrStrangelove Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb]]'' may be the epitome of this trope. [[GeneralRipper General Jack D.]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Ripper]] issues an order for his bomb wing to attack their targets inside the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had developed a device that would immediately trigger a nuclear holocaust in the event of an attack on Soviet soil. Nobody but Ripper could order his wing to return, and the Soviet device would go off it any attempt was made to disable it.
** The film opens with a disclaimer from the US Air Force, assuring moviegoers that their safeguards would prevent such events from happening.

* ''Film/SupermanTheMovie'' (1978). The United States would '''never''' test launch missiles with nuclear warheads (armed or not), for exactly the reason shown in the film: any accident could cause vast destruction. Dummy warheads are always used[[note]]There were two exceptions to this. The first was the ''Frigate Bird'' test, which was a live-fire test of a Polaris missile with a 1.5 MT warhead. The test was performed mainly for political reasons, as one of the last open sky tests before the Partial Test Ban took effect; also, it was launched from a submerged submarine well out to sea, and the missile was not only provided with just enough fuel to reach its target, the warhead was modified so that it wouldn't detonate '''below''' a minimum height of 30km. The other exceptions were the various high-altitude/near-Earth space effects tests such as the infamous ''Starfish Prime'', which were performed with modified sounding rockets rather than weapon-type missiles -- they couldn't reach anywhere except 400km straight up.[[/note]]. Even worse, a newspaper headline before the test mentions that live warheads would be used. So the U.S. military said publicly that they were going to pull this harebrained stunt and ''no one objected''. This of course creates an opportunity by ComicBook/LexLuthor to murder millions in a way that takes the first SuperHero to stop.

* ''WhoopsApocalypse'':

* ''{{Woops}}!'':

* ''Film/DeadMansLetters'': According to Prof. Larsen, this trope is what caused the apocalypse -- a computer error caused the first missile launch, and a technician attempted to stop it, but was unable to do so [[BlackComedy because he was slowed down by a cup of coffee in his hands]].

*** A good deal of that "bad year" thing is because (according to his memoirs) Reagan ''didn't know'' [[TooDumbToLive the Soviets genuinely feared an American first strike]]. It was not until the reports of the Soviet reaction to Able Archer 83 made their way back to him six months later that he began to properly understand how they regarded the US and how close it had been.

* TropeNamer "Music/LondonCalling" by Music/TheClash is about a post-apocalyptic London after an accidental nuclear disaster.