Risks and responsibilities

Risks and Responsibilities

After the end of World War II, the involvement of scientific research in military purposes increased substantially . as the Nuclear era emerged from WWII all the nations started developing systems for the security purposes .One such example is the missile warning systems

The Cold war saw the development of faster and advance systems to make the country stronger and thus security wise stable . the development of Whirlwind system and SAGE missile warning systems were the forerunner in the development . all the countries starting building up weapons , defense  systems and so on for the purpose of National security . lots of funds were allotted top the scientific development for military purpose .

In the contemporary context  , the alarm warning systems for missile poses a lot of risks for the world . the greatest risk is when the system gives false alarm and thus may lead to more misunderstanding and war . In 1983 ,Lt. Colenel Stanislav Petrov was the officer incharge of the warning system monitoring station outside Moscow for Soviet Union . One fine warning he got signals indicating 5 ballistic missiles have been launched by US .The tensions between the states was already present and this false alarm could have resulted in a war .Petrov thought that had America launched a nuclear attack against Russia ,missiles would have been raining down not just 5 thus considered that it is a false signal ,thus saving the world of another devastating war .

The risk is in this system is that ,it may give wrong signals and this has happened many times till now , but for national security this is required .In this nuclear era , one needs to be quick and well prepared for any disaster .The responsibilities involved is that proper testing of these systems , so that the risks can be minimised .The Whirlwind computers developed during cold war is a classic example o risk involved in any systems The duplex computer enables us to keep the data safe even if one of the computers gets damaged or destroyed the other can take over . this kind of computer systems is used in banks all across the globe .Some of the extra risks involved in the alarm warning systems is the human error or any software failure which can lead to false signals or no signals at all  

references:

Risk Digest 

Wikipedia

Submitted By ,

Prajul Bagri 

CH09B045