The Ever Thin Line That Almost Snapped in 1995

The date January 25 probably doesn't hold too many memories for most people. It's close to February so It's still cold and bleak, unless you live in Houston like me, and you're probably recovering from the holiday spending and trying to make some sort of feasible budget for the year. In 1995 it was probably the exact same for most people, unless you realize that the world cam just minutes from an all out nuclear war. Business Insider proclaimed "The World Was Never Closer To Nuclear War Than On Jan. 25, 1995" in what has become known as the Norwegian rocket incident. It started when Norway launched a missile that carried scientific instruments to study the aurora borealis. Former Soviet Russia, led by President Boris Yeltsin, apparently didn't get the memo from Norway to the proper channels and mistook it as a nuclear launch that was headed straight for Moscow. Remember, this is post-Cold War Russia. The Berlin Wall had fallen, supposed democratic elections had taken place and the U.S.S.R had been broken up into its various nation-states. Sure that doesn't mean that tensions weren't still high, but we at least had more open communications with the Politburo at that point.

Nevertheless, a missile was launched and Yeltsin and his advisors came minutes away from launching a counter-attack towards the U.S. that would've started an all out nuclear war. Five minutes. We literally came within the length of a Youtube video of the nuclear apocalypse. That's a pretty sobering thought.

Why not take five minutes today and write down what you're thankful for because in 1995, we came that close to losing everything.

Here's a quick video that recaps the incident.