Cellar Blast from the Reaganaut Past

he Cellar: We've just outlawed all other messageboards. The bombing starts in five minutes.

Or, as I put it back when I worked in intelligence and the usual soft-on-despots suspects were in a scandalized flutter over Reagan's joke, "Nachnyem bombardirovku cherez pyati minut."

The Sovs did not launch.

This was also when common sense was common.
You could never get away with that today.
The Imus thing is a perfect example.
All Imus did was say something questionable on the radio.
Reagan, however, made a joke that could have started a world war.
The Russians, however, were able to understand that it was a joke.
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Reagan In 2008: He's Tanned, Rested, And Ready

Crimson Ghost;344015 wrote:

The Russians, however, were able to understand that it was a joke.

Jokes aside, we should thank this man for understanding an instrument error!

Just past midnight, at 00:40 hrs, the bunker's computers indicated that a US missile was heading toward the Soviet Union. Petrov reasoned that a computer error had occurred, since the United States was not likely to launch just one missile if it were attacking the Soviet Union — it would launch multiple simultaneously. Also, the satellite system's reliability had in the past been questioned, so he dismissed the warning as a false alarm and did not notify his superiors, concluding that no missile had actually been launched by the United States.

A short time later the computers indicated that a second missile had been launched, followed by a third, a fourth and a fifth...