The Human Factor: How human mistakes could cause a nuclear war

Room: 116
28.08.2010, Sat 10.30 - 12.00


Organizer: SLMK; the Swedish Affiliate of IPPNW

Speakers: Lloyd Dumas, Professor of Political Economy, Economics, and Public Policy in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas

More than 2500 nuclear weapons are today ready for instant firing, should the President of Russia or USA believe their country is attacked. The time to make the decision is 10 minutes or less. Mistakes and malfunction have occurred many times in the systems for control of nuclear weapons and on a few occasions we have been close to a nuclear war. Humans fail, humans make mistakes, but you must not make mistakes with nuclear weapons.- In this workshop we will discuss general factors that may cause fateful mistakes, with examples from several areas, e.g. air traffic, nuclear power industry, road traffic etc.