The Human Race has been extremely lucky to
get this far.
Taking into account how incredibly fortunate
we have been in many ways, it’s easy to
come up with ideas for why we have not yet
found intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
However, there have been a number of occasions
when the human race was almost confronted
with an apocalyptic situation.
Coronal Mass Ejection
[2012]
as were all aware by now the world didn’t
actually end in 2012 as the Maya supposedly
predicted.
However, the apocalypse was closer than you
probably think.
An abnormally large ejection of plasma from
the Sun occurred in July of that year, tearing
through the orbit of Earth at the exact place
where the planet had been just nine days earlier.Had
this solar mass hit the Earth itself, the
damage to electronic devices would have been
catastrophic.
It would have caused trillions of dollars
of damage and taken upward of a decade to
fully recover from.
In an age when we rely so much on our technology,
something like 
this 
is truly terrifying.
The 
B-59 Submarine
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
a lone Soviet submarine trecked silently through
the ocean.
It was soon picked up by US Navy warships,
which set about releasing small, grenade-sized
depth charges.
This was a signal for the B-59 to surface
for identification, but the Russian crew was
unaware of this.
Unknown to the Americans, the B-59 was armed
with a single nuclear torpedo with a destructive
power equal to that of the Hiroshima atomic
bomb.
The submarine was being rocked by small explosions
left and right, and the temperature inside
had far surpassed 38 degrees Celsius (100
°F).Desperate to surface but certain they
were under attack, the commanding officers
of the submarine argued as to whether to fire
the torpedo.
Three votes were needed, and only one stood
in the way of nuclear war.
Vasili Arkhipov, the second-in-command aboard,
convinced the captain that they were not under
attack and had to surface.
As Secretary McNamara put it: “Nuclear war
had come much closer than people thought.”
The Moon Nearly Kills Us All
In October 1960, early warning radar bases
located in Greenland began sending frantic
alerts that a nuclear attack on the United
States was underway.
As everyone in the military began to freak
out, details of the large-scale attack flowed
in.The North American Aerospace Defense Command
(NORAD) went on high alert.
Then someone asked, “Why would the Soviet
Union launch an attack when their leader is
in the US for talks?”
The reports were double-checked, and the rising
Moon was found to be the cause for the nearly
world-ending misinterpretation.
Training simulation Treated As Reality
In 1979, programmers at NORAD nearly triggered
World War III when they ran a regularly scheduled
computer simulation of a Soviet attack.
Unfortunately for them, the computer systems
on which they ran the simulations were connected
to the NORAD network, broadcasting live data
of the fake attack to defense systems across
the nation.Jet fighters scrambled, those in
the know said goodbye to their loved ones,
and there was terror across the military.
A big sigh of relief was likely breathed when
the news broke that it was all a simulation.
Cuban Missile Crisis
1962
Around midnight in October 1962, the Cuban
Missile Crisis was at its peak.
Nuclear-armed bombers were in the air at all
times, and the world collectively held its
breath and prayed for a peaceful conclusion
to the terrifying ordeal.
A guard at Duluth air base caught sight of
a mysterious figure attempting to scale the
fence.
The guard shot a few times and activated the
intruder alarm, which was set up to activate
identical alarms at nearby bases.
However, at Volk Field air base, the wrong
alarm rang—and it just happened to be the
alarm that signaled the beginning of World
War III.
Pilots were scrambled and began to line up
their fighters and nuclear-armed bombers on
the runway.
They were seconds from taking off and delivering
atomic devastation to Russian soil.
Then a truck came racing down the runway toward
them.
It was frantically flashing its lights in
a desperate attempt to inform the pilots of
the false alarm.
You might be asking, who was the shadowy figure
that started this near-apocalyptic chain reaction?
A Soviet saboteur?
Nope, it turned out that it was nothing more
than a confused bear.
