And maybe it was just alcohol-fueled braggadocio, “loose lips sink ships” notwithstanding, but these young fellas, as we discussed the current frictions in the Sea of Japan offered that they had the authority to launch anti-ship and surface-to-surface nuclear-armed missiles on account of the fact that other stupid humans under the Hammer and Sickle had built warships and armed them, also, with nucelar-warheaded anti-ship missiles, so that even with the best radar, the US ships had maybe a three minute warning that, as we used to shout in Vietnam, ordnance was “INCOMING!” With no dugout or bunker to dive into — all there was to do was kill the “Commie bastards” that had fired the missiles that would kill YOU momentarily. These guys maintained that because of the short warning window, procedures gave them the direct authority to fire away, launch those nukes with great elan and grim enthusiasm. Without any kind of chain-of-command “circuit-breaker” but maybe conscience, to stop the “escalation” so rightly derided by WOPR in “War Games”, the line about “Strange. The only way to win is not to play the game.”