Colonel Grady, the head of the group, tries to contact SAC Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska to verify the fail-safe order (called Positive Check), but Soviet radio jamming prevents Grady from hearing them. The SAC threat level is immediately reduced, and the bomber fleet is sent a recall order.Īn unobserved electronic technical failure at the height of the alert allows the attack code to be accidentally transmitted to Group Six, which consists of six Vindicator supersonic bombers. After a short time, the unknown target is reacquired and identified as an off-course commercial airliner. From there, they can proceed to their targets only if they receive a special attack code from the on-board 'fail-safe box'. The unknown aircraft then disappears from radar, causing the alert status to continue to increase, eventually leading to the bombers being sent into the air to the fail-safe points. The alert status of the Strategic Air Command's (SAC) bomber forces is raised, a standard precaution against a sneak attack. Air Force command center receives information that an unknown aircraft is approaching from Europe.

The title's irony is that the nature of SAC's fail-safe protocols could make things worse, causing the event it was intended to prevent.Ī U.S. In general, a fail safe ensures that, as far as possible, the machine or process will not make things worse in the event of something going wrong. The title refers to the 'fail-safe point' used by the Strategic Air Command (SAC) to prevent any SAC bomber from accidentally crossing into Soviet airspace and precipitating a nuclear war.

All three works have the same theme, accidental nuclear war, with the same plot.įail-Safe was purported to be so similar to an earlier novel, Red Alert, that Red Alert 's author, Peter George and film producer Stanley Kubrick, sued on a charge of copyright infringement, settling out of court. In 2000, the novel was adapted again for a televised play, broadcast live in black and white on CBS. The novel was released on October 22, 1962, and was then adapted into a 1964 film of the same name directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, and Walter Matthau.

The story was initially serialized in three installments in the Saturday Evening Post, on October 13, 20, and 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fail-Safe is a bestselling American novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler.

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