Sunday, April 23, 2006

A Word Away from Nuclear War

TOM MURPHY:
In your book, Hegemony or Survival, you mention threats to human survival and I saw a speech where you talked about nuclear misfires and things like that. ... 1995 we came pretty close to an accident.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Many times, many times. Take the Cuban missile crisis, it literally came a word away from firing of a nuclear tipped torpedo which could have had a - probably would have had a nuclear response which could have set off a chain reaction to a nuclear war. A Russian submarine commander countermanded an order to fire nuclear tipped torpedoes at a time when Russian submarines were under attack by U.S. destroyers and the commanders thought there was a nuclear war going on. One commander countermanded the order which is why it didn’t happen. ...
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