Raw LLM Responses

False alarms are a real thing. I was a USAF Minuteman III Missile Combat Crew Commander late 70’s - early 80’s. Missile crew duty is a 4-year assignment. Minuteman crews consist of two USAF officers, Commander and Deputy Commander (like pilot and co-pilot). In a given squadron we are electricallly connected to 50 Minuteman III missiles. When I was on crew, each missile had 3 nukes that could be independently targeted. That is a LOT of fire power for two Company Grade officers - often a 2nd Lt and 1st Lt or maybe a Capt. We typically get random messages (EAMs) throughout our 24 hours alert. They always decode to “Excersise” - except that one time. We got a message that directed us to remove our locks, grab the authenticators and insert the launch keys. Talk about a pucker factor. You can only get one of two EAMs after that; back down or turn keys to launch. By backing down you just do not take any further launch actions since once the keys are inserted in the launch switch they are designed such that they cannot be removed, which is intended to highly discourage unauthorized tampering. Maintenance crews must be dispatched from the support base to to swap out every Launch Control Panel (LCP) in the Wing - 30 panels. It later turned out the EAM we got was due to a glitch at NORAD where a training tape managed to go live over the wire (PAS, SACCS, HF, UHF, SLFCS). So yeah, screwups are a thing with potentially very dire consequences. … Crew member calls home. “HI Sweetheart. Kids asleep? Oh good. Hey I got good news and bad news. The good news is all the snow will be gone in about 25 minutes. The bad news is ……….”