WarGames went into wide release in June 1983.
"Unaware that the Sunnyvale phone number connects to the WOPR at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, David initiates a game of Global Thermonuclear War, playing as the Soviet Union and targeting American cities. The computer starts a simulation which briefly convinces NORAD military personnel that actual Soviet nuclear missiles are inbound. While they defuse the situation, the WOPR nonetheless continues the simulation to trigger the scenario and win the game, as it does not understand the difference between reality and simulation. It continuously feeds false data on Soviet military deployment to NORAD, pushing them to escalate the DEFCON level toward a retaliation that will start World War III."
"The WOPR stages a massive Soviet first strike with hundreds of missiles, submarines, and bombers. Believing the attack to be genuine, NORAD prepares to retaliate. Falken, David, and Jennifer persuade military officials to cancel a planned second strike and ride out the attack. When the targeted American bases report no enemy attacks or casualties, NORAD attempts to cancel the strike but cannot, as changes to the program have been locked out. The WOPR initiates a brute-force attack to obtain the missile launch codes, intending to carry out the strike itself since humans are no longer in the control centers to implement the two-man rule. All attempts to log in and order the WOPR to cancel the countdown fail. The staff dismiss the idea of disconnecting it, since the computers in the silos would carry out their last instructions and launch, resulting in a fail-deadly situation and the start of World War III..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames#Plot
Then a few months after the release of the WarGames movie, this happened.
"On 26 September 1983, during the Cold War, the nuclear early-warning radar of the Soviet Union reported the launch of one intercontinental ballistic missile with four more missiles behind it, from bases in the United States. These missile attack warnings were suspected to be false alarms by Stanislav Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air Defence Forces on duty at the command center of the early-warning system. He decided to wait for corroborating evidence—of which none arrived—rather than immediately relaying the warning up the chain-of-command. This decision is seen as having prevented a retaliatory nuclear attack against the United States and its NATO allies, which would likely have resulted in an escalation to a full-scale nuclear war. Investigation of the satellite warning system later determined that the system had indeed malfunctioned." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident
"On 26 September 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces, was the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow which housed the command center of the Soviet early warning satellites, code-named Oko.[10] Petrov's responsibilities included observing the satellite early-warning network and notifying his superiors of any impending nuclear missile attack against the Soviet Union. If notification was received from the early-warning systems that inbound missiles had been detected, the Soviet Union's strategy was an immediate and compulsory nuclear counter-attack against the United States (launch on warning), specified in the doctrine of mutual assured destruction.[11]
Shortly after midnight, the bunker's computers reported that one intercontinental ballistic missile was heading toward the Soviet Union from the United States. Petrov considered the detection a computer error, since a first-strike nuclear attack by the United States was likely to involve hundreds of simultaneous missile launches in order to disable any Soviet means of a counterattack. Furthermore, the satellite system's reliability had been questioned in the past.[12] Petrov dismissed the warning as a false alarm, though accounts of the event differ as to whether he notified his superiors[11] or not[8][full citation needed] after he concluded that the computer detections were false and that no missile had been launched. Petrov's suspicion that the warning system was malfunctioning was confirmed when no missile in fact arrived. Later, the computers identified four additional missiles in the air, all directed towards the Soviet Union. Petrov suspected that the computer system was malfunctioning again, despite having no direct means to confirm this.[13] The Soviet Union's land radar was incapable of detecting missiles beyond the horizon.[12]
It was subsequently determined that the false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' Molniya orbits,[14] an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite.[15]
In explaining the factors leading to his decision, Petrov cited his belief and training that any U.S. first strike would be massive, so five missiles seemed an illogical start.[11] In addition, the launch detection system was new and in his view not yet wholly trustworthy, while ground radar had failed to pick up corroborative evidence even after several minutes of the false alarm." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm
