comment: >
  
  You're right to some degree, the soviet reports i've read had the missiles under ten before sounding the false alarm. 
  By immediate though do you mean before that singular nuke touches the mainland? Because at that point i think it's rational to believe the country in question would follow through at that point, even if it was a malfunction
context: This is nothing major. The risk of them using this is still very low, at least for now >
  
  It's terrible of Russia to want to litter the seabed with more of its nuclear garbage. >
  
  Lol who cares? I grew up in the cold war and these headlines were pretty common, the same problem Russia and the rest of the nuclear powers had then still exists now, if a single one of those warheads is ever used in anger the offending country gets turned to glass.
  After 50 years of hearing these "stories" you pretty much get immune to them >
  
  Still, It's sad to think we're always a push of a few buttons away from a collapse of the world order, humans are insane >
  
  We're really not, though.  You would need every person in the launch chain to be suicidally crazy.   It's not just like the president of the US or putin can just unilaterally declare they want to do a first strike, they'd have to get everyone in the chain to go along with that.   Soviet missile base commanders have refused the order in the past on more than one occasion. >
  
  In the event one side even launched a single nuke how would it be crazy to retaliate? Isn't that essentially the protocol? >
  
  A single nuke - no. We know it because previously false alarms were sounded, and nobody was that eager to jump to conclusions over what can be an observation equipment malfunction.
  It will sure have HUGE political consequences but not the immediate doomsday. That, and most countries have very strict protocols of what nukes can be used for, essentially only allowing their launch in the event of a similarly dangerous event already underway. That’s not something exactly easy to miss.