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When it comes to nuclear weapons, sometimes truth is stranger (and scarier!) than fiction. Find out if you have what it takes to separate real-life facts from Hollywood fiction.

Hollywood Fiction Or Real-Life Event?

On a routine night flight mission an Air Force pilot purposefully crashes the nuclear bomber he’s flying. The pilot is a traitor who plans to steal the two nuclear warheads onboard and sell them to terrorists in order to blackmail the government.

This traitorous pilot is a Hollywood plot device from the movie Broken Arrow. But the U.S. military has temporarily lost track of nuclear weapons before, including in August 2007 when six cruise missiles, each loaded with a nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded onto a US Air Force bomber and flown from North Dakota to Louisiana. The warheads were not reported missing and remained mounted on the aircraft (and thus not protected by the various mandatory security measures usually required of nuclear weapons) for more than 36 hours. And a nuclear bomb dropped after a mid-air collision in 1958 is STILL lost off shore from Savannah, GA.

Hollywood fiction: Broken Arrow

Stolen nuclear bomber: Hollywood fiction or real-life event?

An intrepid team of U.S. and Norwegian scientists are working off the coast of Norway, studying the Northern Lights. Battling the elements, they successfully launch their primary research instrument into the heavens. Unbeknownst to them, Russian radars detect it and the military misinterprets the launch as a U.S. submarine-launched nuclear missile, Russian nuclear forces are put on full alert, waiting for the president to authorize nuclear launches in response.

This happened. Retaliation was avoided when Russian early warning satellites failed to detect additional launches. While Norway had notified Russia in advance of the launch, the information didn’t prevent a false alarm—and the innocuous science experiment escalated into a high-risk nuclear incident.

This actually happened.

Science experiment gone horribly awry: Hollywood fiction or real-life event?

It all starts with a simple mistake. A technician at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) mistakenly inserts a training tape into an operational computer, without his colleagues' knowledge, kick-starting a simulation of a full-scale nuclear attack on the United States. As a result, crews responsible for launching U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles are notified, nuclear bomber crews board their planes , fighter planes take off, and more as the U.S. military prepares for all-out war.

As more and more data came in, failing to confirm incoming missiles, leaders decided against retaliation. They later discovered the mistakenly inserted training tape. Following the incident, new processes ensured training tapes couldn't run on the main system—though Marshal Shulman, a senior State Department advisor, would later note that “false alerts of this kind are not a rare occurrence. There is a complacency about handling them that disturbs me.”

This really happened.

Attack simulation taken for reality: Hollywood fiction or real-life event?

A young hacker breaks into the online systems of what he thinks is a computer gaming company. Unfortunately, he’s actually hacked into NORAD, and what he thinks is a game of global thermonuclear warfare actually sets off a chain of events that could have started World War III.

This crazy turn of events happened in the seminal 80s movie “War Games.” Matthew Broderick plays the young hacker who eventually teaches the computer that, when it comes to nuclear warfare, “the only winning move is not to play.”

Hollywood fiction: War Games

Attack simulation taken for reality...again: Hollywood fiction or real-life event?

At the height of the cold war, tensions are high between the U.S. and Soviet Union, which had downed a South Korean passenger plane just weeks before. Now, deep in a Soviet command center they receive an alert: a Soviet early-warning satellite indicated first one, then two, then eventually five U.S. nuclear missile launches. The officer on duty has only a matter of minutes to decide what to do.

The officer in question, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, deemed the readings a false alarm, reasoning that “when people start a war, they don’t start it with only five missiles.” Later investigations revealed that satellites mistook sunlight reflecting off the tops of clouds for missile launches. The orbit used by Soviet satellites was designed to minimize the chances of false alerts, but that night, shortly after the equinox, satellites, sun, and U.S. missile fields aligned in a way that maximized the sun’s reflection. Petrov’s actions earned him the nickname “the man who saved the world.” But if the satellite data had indicated the launch of a hundred missiles—or if a different officer had been on duty—this false alarm could have easily turned into catastrophe.

This DID happen.

The man who saved the world: Hollywood fiction or real-life event?

In the darkest days of the Cold War, Soviet leaders fear that a first strike nuclear attack from the United States would wipe out their ability to retaliate. They develop plans for a super-secret project—a doomsday device that will automatically ensure nuclear retaliation if the leadership is killed and cannot give the orders. Although the device is meant to guarantee the United States will know that any attack would mean suicide, the Soviets keep its existence top secret.

The idea of an automated doomsday machine that is kept secret, defeating its purpose, is the basis of the famous 1964 Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove. In reality, however, the Soviet Union did consider building such a computerized system in the early 1980s called the Dead Hand. While they did not ultimately go that far, they did build and put into operation a system called “Perimeter.” In the event that a first strike wiped out Soviet leadership, Perimeter would have turned control of a nuclear retaliatory strike over to any officers who were left alive in a buried concrete bunker. But rather than announcing Perimeter’s existence to the world, the Soviets treated it as top secret, defeating its ability to discourage a U.S. attack.

In this cased, it's both. This is a famous movie plot…and then actually happened.

Doomsday device: Hollywood fiction or real-life event?

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Hollywood Fiction Or Real-Life Event?

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