2010: When the Earth Stood Still

On 26 September 1983, the world as we know it nearly came to an end. Several weeks after the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over Soviet airspace, a satellite early-warning system near Moscow reported the launch of one American Minuteman ICBM. Soon after, it reported that five missiles had been launched. Convinced that a real American offensive would involve many more missiles, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Air Defense Forces refused to acknowledge the threat as legitimate and continued to convince his superiors that it was a false alarm until this could be confirmed by ground radar. Thankfully, it was a false alarm, but it was the last time when the world came close to war.

On 23 October 2010, commanders at a U.S. Air Force base in Wyoming lost most forms of command, control, and security monitoring over 50 nuclear ICBMs for approximately 45 minutes. The missiles were taken offline after a suspected hardware problem caused multiple errors with control computers. Although military officials maintain that the missiles remained under control and were not susceptible to outside attempts to gain control, former Air Force launch officer Bruce G. Blair expressed concerns that missiles in this status could be vulnerable to launch attempts by hackers or compromised missile crews.

What if a sinister individual or force was able to use this opportunity to bring chaos and destruction?