Orts 856.5

from Vipin Narang, a nuclear scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, via Twitter:

“POTUS sees alert on his phone about an incoming toward Hawaii, pulls out the biscuit, turns to his military aide with the football and issues a valid and authentic order to launch nuclear weapons at North Korea. Think it can’t happen?”

That quote comes from a NYT article, Jan.14 2018, by Max Fisher: Hawaii False Alarm Hints at Thin Line Between Mishap and Nuclear War,   http://nyti.ms/2AXnufQ

Also from that article:

“ . . . in 1983 . . . a Soviet early warning system falsely registered a massive American launch. Nuclear war may have only been averted because the Soviet officer in charge, operating purely on a hunch, reported it as an error. . . . And, unlike the Soviets, who maintained global watch systems and spy networks, North Korea operates in relative blindness. [emphasis mine]