I’ve been here before, only I didn’t know it. When I born in the summer of 1984, the world had already escaped nuclear holocaust on a number of occasions, but the biggest close calls happened in the early 1980s, with one of them so close to a Soviet-American thermonuclear war that the Soviet officer who de-escalated the event is dubbed “the man that saved the world” – Stanislav Petrov.
Like all incredible lucky stories, Stanislav was called to duty at the last second, because the officer originally assigned to the shift was sick.
Suddenly, his screen was filled with notices of nuclear warheads headed to the Soviet Union from the United States, and he had to decide whether or not to call Moscow ASAP and alert them that in five minutes, the entire country would be obliterated!
But something stopped him… he began reasoning that had the United States started on the path of nuclear war, they’d launch hundreds of missiles, not just a few, and decided to hold off and learn that no other station was reporting anything.
Subsequently, he learned that this was a new satellite detection system that was totally useless, and that even flares from the clouds and sun could make it beep.
Basically, he found out that the latest Soviet air defenses were garbage and was actually fired, instead of hailed for his deep thinking.
I was born the year after Stanislav Petrov saved the world, including my own parents.
Now, the Russians and NATO members are fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. France is ready to send troops to Ukraine already and, instead of having the country join NATO, it will essentially turn Ukraine into a buffer zone between Russia and the rest of Europe, but president Biden, of all people, is the one blocking it.
No wonder precious metals are soaring, but do I agree with hedge fund managers that it is overvalued?
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