The Military Glitch That Almost Ended the World
3,298It was early morning on November 9, 1979, deep inside the NORAD command center buried deep beneath Cheyenne Mountain.
The fresh shift was still settling in—half the crew yawning, the other half squinting at blinking terminals.
A technician dropped into his seat, scanning the exercise schedule. Something wasn’t right. The system lagged, screens hung mid-refresh, and the simulation module refused to load.
Someone muttered: "Try the J Tape."
He grabbed it without thinking. A worn reel, labeled in faded marker. He’d seen it used in training runs before. No one told him not to.
He slid it into the reader, keyed in the command, and watched the data start feeding through.
But something was wrong.
The usual "SIMULATION" tags didn’t appear. The interface wasn’t in test mode. Warning lights lit up the board. Then the numbers climbed: 002… 200… 2,200 incoming warheads detected.
The alarm rang, and that could only mean one thing. The J Tape was about to change the world.
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