Serious question for anyone who knows. Why would a nuclear detonation over the city of Donetsk start an automatic response from the Soviets? I can not see why that city has any strategic or military value. Clearly, the Soviets would see that no other missile was launched by NATO forces. So why wouldn't they wait and analyze the situation before responding? Clearly there must be some fail safe protocols to prevent the Soviet forces from just blindly firing.
shareGood point and this is actually a major plot hole since it’s that incident that starts the war in the first place. The missile was launched from Turkey (a NATO member) at Donetsk. In a communication to the White House shortly afterwards, the Soviet president indicates that this was actually pulled off by members of his own military who didn’t like the improved relations and conspired to start the war.
One thing I can’t figure out is how the Soviet military personnel managed to get a hold of a missile that they could launch from Turkey. At SAC, an officer reports that all of their missiles were accounted for and that no one in Europe launched either. What did these guys do? Steal one from the Soviet Union, drive it across the border without being noticed and then launch it themselves? Highly unlikely! They certainly didn’t steal one from the Turks.
From the Soviet point-of-view, one of their cities was hit and they tracked it being launched from a NATO member country. Remember, in such a war, response time is critical as you only have a short time to launch once missiles are launched at you. They most likely responded as fast as they did out of fear that NATO and the Americans would launch additional missiles at the their missile silos.
Again, I see this as a major pot hole and agree that the Soviets probably would have analyzed that first before launching their response.
One thing I can’t figure out is how the Soviet military personnel managed to get a hold of a missile that they could launch from Turkey. At SAC, an officer reports that all of their missiles were accounted for and that no one in Europe launched either. What did these guys do? Steal one from the Soviet Union, drive it across the border without being noticed and then launch it themselves? Highly unlikely! They certainly didn’t steal one from the Turks.
Any nuclear attack on any city of any size in the USSR or USA would have been regarded as an attack and responded to in kind during that era of the cold war. A terrorist threat of that magnitude was unimaginable then. No matter how the bomb got to Donetsk it would be considered an attack by the United States.
shareI vaguely remember the retaliatory strike being semi-automated, akin to the WAPR retaliatory strike that would have occurred in 'WarGames'.
It's been too long since I've seen it.
At the time only five nations (maybe six) were known to have strategic arsenals, the US, USSR, UK, France and China , (and maybe Israel). If a detonation took place over Russia, then by default it had to be the US because we were fighting them all over the globe; Korea, Central and South America, Europe, and the Middle East.
Now Pakistan and North Korea both have nuclear arsenals, and Iran is attempting to make warheads (and they will, in my opinion), not to mention Syria has wanted nuclear weapons as well.
So, the world picture back then was pretty plain. If someone detonated a nuke over Russia, then it had to be us, or someone acting on behalf of the US.
I hope that helps.
It was an automated response. Meaning the Russian computers launched a strike. The Russians actually did have such a system in place called Perimeter. Basically it would launch an all out strike if the Russian command bases were wiped out in a decapitation strike.
The missile looked like it was launched from Turkey but was actually a Russian sub close enough that the radar systems thought it had been launched from Turkish soil. This was even on US radar and sat systems which were more advanced then the Russians.