The year was 1967, the middle of the Cold War. America and Russia were locked in a staring contest from opposite sides of the world, each daring the other to blink. Nuclear missiles were armed and ready to fire at a moment's notice. In the U.S., the military was constantly on high alert, waiting for the Soviets to launch some sort of surprise invasion or preemptive strike.

Finally, on May 23, that moment came.

The Air Force's Ballistic Missile Early Warning System was a series of radar installations arrayed around the world to detect a Soviet missile launch. It was the first line of defense, giving the military as much advance notice as possible to prepare for a nuclear strike. On May 23, 1967, multiple radar installations in the Arctic suddenly and inexplicably went dark.

The U.S. military believed the Soviets had managed to disable the Early Warning System. With war imminent, the Air Force began prepping aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons. However, those aircraft never launched, as commanders received crucial information at the last minute that may have averted full-scale nuclear war.

A bulletin issued by the Solar Forecast Center warning of an imminent solar flare on May 23, 1967. Space Weather

That information came from the North American Aerospace Defense Command's (NORAD) newly established Solar Forecasting Center. A few days prior, it had detected a massive solar storm, one of the largest of the century. The storm produced solar flares and radio bursts that knocked out communications around the world, including the Air Force's Early Warning System.

The Solar Forecasting Center issued a bulletin warning that severe solar flares were incoming, and that bulletin managed to reach a commanding officer in time to avert action against the Soviets. If that bulletin had been delayed a few minutes, those nuclear aircraft could have launched, and the solar flares would have made it impossible to communicate in the air. If those aircraft had launched, there would have been no way to call them back.

Fortunately for the world, those planes weren't launched and nuclear missiles were never fired. But this near-miss underscores the importance of preparing for solar storms. Today, a significant portion of our communications rely on satellites, which can easily be disrupted by a strong solar storm. An extremely powerful storm could even cripple the entire power grid, leaving millions of people without power for weeks or months.

If a solar storm could cause enough damage in 1967 to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war, imagine how much damage one could do to us today. Our increasing reliance on advanced communications technology places us at greater risk of solar storms than ever before. We need to start preparing for future solar storms, or the entire grid could be knocked out with hardly a moment's notice.

Source: Space Weather via Space.com

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