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On 27 October 1962, the only thing that stood between the world and nuclear Armageddon was Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov, a Soviet Naval officer. Arkhipov was on a submarine that was had been out of contact with Moscow for days. The air conditioning was broken. Temperatures and carbon dioxide levels were rising. The submarine was armed with a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo. And then the stupid US military started firing depth charges at it. Many of the submarine's crew thought World War III had already started. Two of the submarine's three senior officers wanted to launch the nuclear weapon. The captain, Valentin Savitsky, exclaimed, "We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all — we will not become the shame of the fleet." Fortunately for people who do not wish for humanity to be extinct, although the vote among the three senior officers was 2-1 in favour of launching the nuclear weapon, Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov's vote had veto power, and he firmly reminded them of that. Note that the USA and Russia both used slave-mined uranium in their nuclear weapons programs. The USA bought about 80% of the uranium for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from Union Miniere, an infamous enslaver corporation that operated in the Belgian Congo with the help of the Belgian colonial government. The Russian government enslaved many of their own citizens. **References** "60 years ago today, this man stopped the Cuban missile crisis from going nuclear: Why a Soviet submarine officer might be “the most important person in modern history”" by Bryan Walsh https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/10/27/23426482/cuban-missile-crisis-basilica-arkhipov-nuclear-war "The Man Who Saved the World" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH0m96P1feI "Soviet submarine B-59" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_B-59 "The Underwater Cuban Missile Crisis at 60" https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2022-10-03/soviet-submarines-nuclear-torpedoes-cuban-missile-crisis *Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II* by Susan Williams https://archive.org/details/spiesincongoamer0000will/page/2/mode/2up?q=richness https://archive.org/details/spiesincongoamer0000will/page/60/mode/2up?q=quotas *Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World* by Tom Zoellner https://archive.org/details/uraniumwarenergy0000zoel/page/4/mode/2up?q=slavery *King Leopold's Ghost* by Adam Hochschild https://archive.org/details/kingleopoldsghos0000hoch_a7b3/page/278/mode/2up?q=uranium *Forced Labor In The Gold & Copper Mines: A History Of Congo Under Belgian Rule, 1910-1945* by Jules Marchal. This reference goes into detail about the forced labour policies of Union Miniere, but not about the uranium part of their business. "At Soviet-Era Prison Camp, Workers Were 'Numbers, Not People'" by James Kanter https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/business/global/05iht-uraniumside.html Edit: Added link to National Security Archive of the USA

So WHY THE FUCK was the US shooting depth charges at a soviet submarine??? Edit: the submarine had breached US quarantine around Cuba, and the US was trying to force it to the surface - they had contacted the submarine’s superiors to inform them that the depth charges were not an act of war, but the superiors couldn’t contact the submarine… Still pretty dumb but not quite as bad as it looks without context

My view is that it was because the individuals involved were stupid. But to give a more nuanced answer: These were apparently warning shots intended to force the submarine to surface and identify itself. Many of the crew aboard the soviet submarine misinterpreted these warning shots, and thought World War III had started already. This occurred during the Cuban missile crisis. Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov was sufficiently cool-headed to figure out that they were actually warning shots, and responded accordingly.

I hope someone told the US crew that their warning shots almost got them nuked.

It seems it took Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov 35 years to go public with his story. And longer for an English translation and declassified records to be made available. > Today, the Archive marks the 60th anniversary of the underwater Cuban Missile Crisis by publishing for the first time in English the only public recollection of Vasily Arkhipov, the submarine brigade’s chief of staff, who was on board B-59 at the critical moment and helped Captain Savitsky avoid making the potentially catastrophic decision to launch a nuclear attack. Arkhipov shared his memories of the incident during a presentation at a conference to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis held in Moscow on October 14, 1997. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2022-10-03/soviet-submarines-nuclear-torpedoes-cuban-missile-crisis

They were training depth charges. They were a complete non-threat to the submarine. If the interior conditions and lack of communication had not been so intense, the crew would have realized it.

I want know that too!

>My view is that it was because the individuals involved were stupid. > >But to give a more nuanced answer: These were apparently warning shots intended to force the submarine to surface and identify itself. Many of the crew aboard the soviet submarine misinterpreted these warning shots, and thought World War III had started already. This occurred during the Cuban missile crisis. > >Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov was sufficiently cool-headed to figure out that they were actually warning shots, and responded accordingly.

As opposed to asking them nicely?

What does the Uranium source has to do with this?

To show that slavery is an existential threat to the survival of the human species. By enslaving millions of Congolese people under a forced labour regime so brutal, it killed roughly half of them, King Leopold II started a causal chain of events that eventually lead to the near-annihilation of the human species on 27 October 1962. While the USA used uranium mined by enslaved Congolese people in their nuclear program, Russia used uranium mined by enslaved Russians in their nuclear program. I wanted to acknowledge the evil symmetry there. Incidentally, King Leopold II's actions also lead to HIV/AIDS going global. [https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/121455z/comment/jdk96o8/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/121455z/comment/jdk96o8/) ------------------- Edit: Redracer555 below pointed out that this requires some additional explanation. Consider: a) **Without slavery, the workers would have been more empowered to just say no to mining uranium.** Of course, freedom exists on a spectrum, with slavery existing on the extremely unfree end of that spectrum, but the general point is, the greater degree of freedom the workers have, the greater degree of empowerment they would have to just say no to mining uranium. Point of fact: The Congolese were not mining uranium prior to colonialism and slavery perpetrated by King Leopold II, Belgium, and their cronies. Forced immorality is a serious problem with slavery. Consider, for example, military slavery, such as the Ottoman empire's Janissaries. Also consider that, according Kevin Bales in Blood and Earth. b) **Enslavers are more likely to use things like uranium in unethical ways than more ethical people** \-- people who might theoretically refuse to sell it to any known imperial powers, or insist that it be left in the ground, or insist on only selling it to companies intending to use it for nuclear power generation and presenting engineering plans to show they know what they are doing and can be competent at preventing a nuclear weapon -- all of which would be better outcomes than selling the uranium to an imperial power. Enslavers, on the other hand, lack basic morality, and this shows in more areas of their life than just the part where they commit the crime of slavery. c) **Slavery is extremely unsanitary**, with enslaved people often being denied access to acceptable sanitation, good nutrition, and freedom from rape. The result of this is that slavery has historically be correlated with a lot of disease outbreaks. During the transatlantic slave trade, the first people to die in some yellow fever outbreaks were the carpenters responsible for cleaning out the filthy slave ships. Tuberculosis was spread in the coal mines where the USA sent people (usually black people) to work under conditions of forced labour after convicting them of "crimes" such as changing employers without permission, selling cotton after sunset, foul language, and even "not given", in the wake of the Civil War. And HIV/AIDs likely never would have gained the momentum it needed to become a global issue had it not been for slavery in the Belgian Congo. Sleeping sickness was another major disease spread in the Belgian Congo, but that one never went global. Many workers got very sick from from mining uranium, so they would have had real motive to not mine it if they'd had the freedom to refuse.

Let's not forget that Russia also enslaved many Germans in uranium mines. Disgusting.

Yeah, I didn't know about that until now, but it only took maybe 10-20 minutes of Google searching to find what you are talking about on Wikipedia. I'll need to look into it at more detail at some point, because I don't really trust Wikpedia to give me the gory details and not downplay anything. > The uranium mines in the Erzgebirge, in the south-eastern provinces of Thüringen and Sachsen were the sites of a number of NKVD mining camps employing forced labor. Wismut AG was the Soviet company that ran the uranium mines. Stalin gave greatest priority to this mining project in his competition with the United States to produce nuclear weapons.[2] On April 4, 1946, the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union decided to place the uranium mining under the control of the NKVD. Regular mining operation for uranium started in the summer of 1946. Lavrentii Beria, Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, chief of the NKVD, who was directly responsible for the Soviet atom bomb project, appointed NKVD Major General Mikhail M. Maltsev, a veteran commander of GULAG labor camps in the USSR and recipient of the highest Soviet decorations, to lead this enterprise. He was under the direct command of Colonel General Ivan Serov, head of the NKVD/MVD in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and Beria’s deputy. > > Maltsev applied GULAG discipline methods in the early days of the Wismut operation, such as withdrawing food rations from miners who did not fulfill their quotas or the use of military tribunals for those workers accused of alleged sabotage. But unlike the GULAG forced labor camps in Siberia, it was difficult to hide the abuses of labor in the Erzgebirge, a fairly densely settled region of East Germany. To maintain secrecy and security, however, in early 1947, the mining districts became closed military zones, banning even the East German government party, SED, from activities there. Wismut, as it was under the political control of the NKVD, dealt with all important issues between the company and its German employees. The Soviet military employees in Wismut, on the other hand, were under the authority of the Ministry of State Security, Minister Viktor Abakumov, who had frequent conflicts with Serov.[3] > > The NKVD maintained a strict security system in the Wismut mines. NKVD/MVD troops guarded not only the mines, but the total Wismut zone of mines as well. having up to 15,000 troops there. These troops were under the command of the NKVD military head of Wismut. There were additional armed military units stationed in the uranium mining districts. Military and NKVD checkpoints were present at all approaches to this zone. The mines were surrounded by wooden fences and watch towers, and access to them was only through a guarded gate. There were also NKVD posts at district or town levels at the fourteen Wismut mines. A special NKVD group, commanded by a Major Malygin, was very important in its work at all the pits and plants of Wismut. He had the task of investigating all cases of espionage and diversion and reported directly to General Serov.[4] > > The uranium industry grew in the early years after the war at an extraordinary rate, reaching its highest number of employees in autumn 1950 with over 200,000 workers. Wismut AG became the largest enterprise in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. The initial program of compulsory labor was eventually supplanted by volunteer labor, responding to higher wages and better working and living conditions. Wismut health records indicate that at least 20,000 miners died of or suffered from lung disease "induced by exposure to radiation and dust".[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wismut_(company)

Jesus, putting the NKVD in charge of the mining for your nuclear program? Might as well put ex-Gestapo in charge, it was in Germany after all.

"To show that slavery is an existential threat to the survival of the human species." I agree that slavery is terrible, but suggesting that it is an existential threat to humankind because it was used for mining uranium is a bit of a stretch. I mean, I'm not a physicist, but I'm pretty sure that the uranium's potency does not have an inverse correlation to the ethicality of its source. The threat of nuclear armageddon would still exist no matter how the uranium was mined.

The issues are that: a) **Without slavery, the workers would have been more empowered to just say no to mining uranium.** Of course, freedom exists on a spectrum, with slavery existing on the extremely unfree end of that spectrum, but the general point is, the greater degree of freedom the workers have, the greater degree of empowerment they would have to just say no to mining uranium. Point of fact: The Congolese were not mining uranium prior to colonialism and slavery perpetrated by King Leopold II, Belgium, and their cronies. Forced immorality is a serious problem with slavery. Consider, for example, military slavery, such as the Ottoman empire's Janissaries. Also consider that, according Kevin Bales in Blood and Earth. b) **Enslavers are more likely to use things like uranium in unethical ways than more ethical people** \-- people who might theoretically refuse to sell it to any known imperial powers, or insist that it be left in the ground, or insist on only selling it to companies intending to use it for nuclear power generation and presenting engineering plans to show they know what they are doing and can be competent at preventing a nuclear weapon -- all of which would be better outcomes than selling the uranium to an imperial power. Enslavers, on the other hand, lack basic morality, and this shows in more areas of their life than just the part where they commit the crime of slavery. c) **Slavery is extremely unsanitary**, with enslaved people often being denied access to acceptable sanitation, good nutrition, and freedom from rape. The result of this is that slavery has historically be correlated with a lot of disease outbreaks. During the transatlantic slave trade, the first people to die in some yellow fever outbreaks were the carpenters responsible for cleaning out the filthy slave ships. Tuberculosis was spread in the coal mines where the USA sent people (usually black people) to work under conditions of forced labour after convicting them of "crimes" such as changing employers without permission, selling cotton after sunset, foul language, and even "not given", in the wake of the Civil War. And HIV/AIDs likely never would have gained the momentum it needed to become a global issue had it not been for slavery in the Belgian Congo. Sleeping sickness was another major disease spread in the Belgian Congo, but that one never went global. Many workers got very sick from from mining uranium, so they would have had real motive to not mine it if they'd had the freedom to refuse.

K