In 1983, America was undergoing its biggest peacetime military buildup ever.
On September 26th, a software glitch in Russia caused their computers to interpret sunlight bouncing of the tops of clouds as incoming American missiles.
The Soviets already believed Ronald Reagan was preparing to attack them.
The Soviets were within five minutes of ordering an all out attack.
If they had, 100 million people would have been killed on each side.
Every major city in both the United States and the Soviet Union would have been destroyed, and the world would have been nothing but a living hell for the survivors. They would have envied the dead.
Just one man stopped it.
Colonel Petrov courageously went against procedure and aborted the attack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Any of his military superiors would have let the attack proceed rather than risk being wrong.
Colonel Petrov listened to love instead of fear. He did not see it that way, but he was listening to the Holy Spirit.
So he saved most of the human race, and nobody really knows who he is.
He was forced out of the military by his superiors.
The 20th century was ridiculous in it's violence, its seeming speed-up of industrial and technological progress and its frightening headlines.
This century, you can expect more of the same - only bigger, a lot faster and even scarier.
In this century, the biggest threat to safety in the West will be the threat of nuclear and biological terrorism.
Conventional bombings will continue, but they will get bigger as the need is perceived for bigger.
Terrorists
will manage to explode a nuclear device in a major city.
After that, life in this world will never be quite the same, but "life" will go on.