Epic Incidents of History: The 1979 NORAD Nuclear Near Miss
summary
On 9 November 1979 a test reel and an NJ scenario tape reach NORAD s Honeywell 427M via the MGR and CSS while processors run in hot shadow mode a satellite serial counter jumps from 001 to 002 and consoles everywhere report 1400 missiles inbound. Command centers cross check Paypas radars find no launches and notice time stamps mismatch and within six minutes the alert is cancelled. Afterward NORAD builds a separate dev and test facility and changes data tagging and routing.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (15)
- 0:001979 NORAD near miss intro
- 0:52Military computing roots
- 3:48Analog to digital command
- 6:57Digital defense birth
- 9:50Cold War tech escalation
- 12:171970s missile detection
- 15:10Distributed military systems
- 17:21NORAD 427M system setup
- 19:26Cheyenne Mountain ops
- 20:32November 9 1979 events
- 23:23False alarm response
- 24:49Aftermath and response
- 25:31Systemic pressures
- 28:02Zero-sum fallacy
- 29:50Distributed systems lessons
