The world almost ended in 1983 due to a combination of Cold War tensions, military exercises, and technical errors that brought the US and Soviet Union closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Two specific incidents in 1983 are considered near apocalyptic. The first was on September 26, 1983, when Soviet early warning officer Stanislav Petrov received computer warnings that the US had launched five nuclear missiles. Protocol required him to report it and trigger a retaliatory strike, but he correctly suspected it was a false alarm due to sunlight reflecting off clouds, and he disobeyed protocol, preventing a Soviet nuclear launch that would have started World War III. Later investigation showed the satellite system malfunctioned. The second was in November 1983 during NATO exercise Able Archer 83, which simulated a nuclear war with realistic communications and included heads of state. Soviet intelligence, already paranoid after President Reagan called the USSR an evil empire and after the US deployed Pershing II missiles in Europe, misinterpreted the exercise as cover for a real first strike and put their nuclear forces on high alert, ready to launch. The US did not realize how scared the Soviets were until a spy informed them. Combined with the Soviet shoot-down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in September 1983, tensions were extremely high, and many historians consider 1983 the most dangerous year of the Cold War.
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