Oh NORAD, you're like the Mr Bean of the American military, always comically messing up and ruining lives! Except Mr Bean never got handed the keys to a country's nuclear arsenal. We hear that might be the plot of the next film, however. Good for a Johnny English, at the very least. Anyway, surely after that previous technical mishap that very nearly incited World War III and would have finally put paid to the coinage of Mutually Assured Destruction, you would think they'd buck their ideas up, right? Or not. You've learned well, grasshopper. You know to never expect too much of NORAD. Or you'd be perpetually disappointed. Because they totally make these sorts of mistakes all the time and that is terrifying. They should really vet their employees a little better, since once again it was a fairly lowly member of NORAD mission control that very nearly tipped us over into oblivion. Before it was some dork playing video games, and on this particular occasion civilian teletype operator Wayland S Eberhard who mucked up and, at half nine in the morning on February 20, 1971, accidentally broadcast a message to every radio station in the country which announced Russia was attacking the US. What he actually meant to play was a message confirming that the system worked, which it most definitely did. When DJs around the US of A got told to expect an emergency alert direct from the president, they assumed the worst, and began informing their listeners of such. The word began to spread that the Cold War had finally hotted up, and the reason it took NORAD so long to fix things was...they couldn't remember the proper message to send. And considering Russia were keeping close tabs on the US at this point, the sight of thousands of Americans freaking out and hiding in bomb shelters might've been enough for them to believe an attack was coming, and they'd reply in kind. So poor old Wayland very nearly ended the world, on behalf of his country. Great job, guy.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
