Timeline (1983: Doomsday)

September 19, 1983- Colonel Gennady Akrimov replaces Col. Stanislav Petrov as watch officer at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow, which monitors for a US missile attack on the Soviet Union. Colonel Petrov is re-assigned to a bunker near Odessa.

Sept. 26, 1983- Just past midnight, at 00:40 hrs, the Serpukhov-15 bunker's computers indicated that a US missile was heading toward the Soviet Union. Akrimov, at first, reasoned that a computer error had occurred, since it was only one missile and it didn't make sense that the US would launch one missile in an attack. Questions about the reliability of the satellite detection system had also been raised in the past, so he dismissed the warning as a false alarm, concluding that there was no actual missile.

Very shortly though, the computers indicated that a second missile had been launched, then a third, a fourth and a fifth. Akrimov, a faithful reader of "Pravda" where he had read much of the "warmongering of the American President Reagan" now felt that the attack was real. He telephoned the headquarters of the Stratetic Rocket Forces and told them that his computers showed that a massive US attack was underway.

General Secretary Andropov was awakened by his staff and rushed to an evacuation helicopter standing by. On the way he was informed by the generals that they had "good information" that the Americans were launching a first-strike. They recommended a full retaliatory strike. Andropov, frail and stunned by the news, nodded and gave the launch codes to the SRF commanders.

Eight and one-half minutes later, at over 300 missile bunkers, the order was given....launch. Nearly 1100 Soviet ICBMs in staggered order were launched at the United States, American bases in Europe and Great Britain, and in a plan never publicly revealed at another fifty sites in the People's Republic of China.

Sept. 26, 1983- At around 1am, NORAD launch detection satellites detected the launch from the Soviet Union. It was apparently, to them, a Soviet FIRST-strike and President Reagan was immediately awoken and rushed to "Marine-1", to be evacuated to the Boeing E-4B Nightwatch "National Airbone Command Post". He arrived twenty minutes later and the aircraft took off at about 1:30am.

Enroute, the President was informed by Secretary of Defense Weinberger and the NORAD generals that the launch was confirmed and that it was total. Reagan gave the launch codes and ordered a full retaliatory strike, including "city-buster" missile attacks from the American submarine fleet.

Meanwhile as Andropov's helicopter was approaching the Kremlin's evacuation bunker forty miles outside of Moscow, he received a chilling report. The first "projected" missile had reached its target in Murmansk....but no detonation had occurred. Quickly checking, Soviet generals discovered that the first targets that were supposed to have been destroyed minutes earlier, showed NO incoming warheads and no detonation.

Andropov suffered a massive stroke as he realized he had just started World War-III on a false alarm. A minute later the first Soviet missile detonated in Beijing China, followed quickly by one at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. Minutes after that, a second REAL report of incoming American missiles was reported.

Sept 26, 1983- Doomsday. Over a period of an hour and a half, from approximately 1:45am until 3:10am, over three thousand nuclear weapons were detonated all across the Northern Hemisphere. NATO commanders were ordered to launch tactical Pershing-I missiles at Soviet tank yards, and Warsaw Pact commanders responded with the launch of their Pioneer missiles.

Chinese forces, woefully caught by surprise by the Soviet attack, were only able to launch 30% of their weapons at the USSR. Most hit cities and military bases already destroyed by American missiles and bombers.

Neither American nor Soviet nor any other citizen was given much warning of the attack. Some cities did receive alerts and while local mayors and fire chiefs were scrambling to remember where the air-raid siren was, they were either destroyed or missed in the attack.

EMP (electro-magnetic pulses) from airbursted weapons destroyed some 70% of the electronics across the Northern Hemisphere. Radios, televisions, etc. all rendered useless.

Final death toll on that first day was 1.53 billion people...from the United States, to Cuba, across to the United Kingdom, Western and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China, Japan, the Phillipines, and three cities in Australia.

And a black pall of smoke, dust, and radioactive ash covered half the world.