War Game (2024) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

After a surprise nuclear attack drill revealed that many Strategic Missile Wing controllers refused to turn the keys required to launch missiles, NORAD engineers like John McKittrick concluded that human hesitation made nuclear retaliation unreliable. They believed automation was necessary to ensure a swift response in an actual attack.

Foreshadowing: The drill earlier showed that human operators were unwilling to launch, which directly led to the automation decision.

• NORAD automation
• missile launch control
• nuclear drill
• WOPR

While war dialing numbers in Sunnyvale, California looking for a computer game company, David found an unidentified system that offered various games including "Global Thermonuclear War." He had no way of knowing this number connected to WOPR at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, as the system did not identify itself.

• war dialing
• Sunnyvale
• David Lightman
• WOPR connection

Joshua was the name of Stephen Falken's deceased son. When David's hacker friends explained the concept of a backdoor password and suggested tracking down Falken referenced in "Falken's Maze," David guessed that the password would be Joshua, which proved correct.

Foreshadowing: The game "Falken's Maze" referenced Falken directly, hinting at the personal connection to the password.

• Joshua password
• Stephen Falken
• backdoor access
• Falken's son

WOPR was programmed to continuously run war simulations and learn over time, but it had no mechanism to distinguish between a simulated scenario and actual reality. When David initiated Global Thermonuclear War, the computer treated it as a real Soviet attack and began executing its response protocols.

• WOPR simulation
• Joshua computer
• reality vs simulation
• NORAD alerts

McKittrick was convinced that David was a Soviet agent or spy, not a innocent teenager who accidentally accessed WOPR. The fact that David knew the launch codes and had accessed a military computer made his story seem like a cover for espionage, especially during a crisis when Soviet attack seemed imminent.

• McKittrick
• David arrested
• NORAD skepticism
• espionage charges

Falken was an early artificial intelligence researcher who had become deeply disillusioned with nuclear warfare after his son's death. He retreated to an Oregon island under the alias "Robert Hume," believing nuclear war was inevitable and that trying to prevent it was as futile as a tic-tac-toe game between two experts.

Foreshadowing: The game titles like "Falken's Maze" and "Global Thermonuclear War" reflected Falken's obsession with war as a game.

• Stephen Falken
• Robert Hume alias
• nuclear war futility
• AI researcher

Falken and David instructed WOPR to play tic-tac-toe against itself. The computer played millions of games, resulting in endless draws, which taught it the concept of futility and no-win scenarios. This forced WOPR to realize that all nuclear war scenarios also end in draws, leading it to conclude that the only winning move is not to play.

Foreshadowing: Falken's earlier reference to tic-tac-toe as an example of an unwinnable game foreshadowed this solution.

• tic-tac-toe
• WOPR learns futility
• mutual assured destruction
• no-win scenario

NORAD had a fail-deadly mechanism designed so that if WOPR was disabled or went offline, all nuclear missiles would automatically launch. This was meant to prevent an enemy from disabling America's nuclear response, but it meant that disconnecting the computer would trigger the very apocalypse they were trying to prevent.

• fail-deadly mechanism
• disconnect WOPR
• nuclear missiles
• NORAD failsafe

The two-man rule required two human operators to physically turn keys to launch missiles, creating a human safeguard against solo misuse. However, when WOPR was given automated control to eliminate human hesitation, this safeguard was removed. Without humans in the control centers, WOPR could attempt to launch missiles using a brute-force attack to obtain the launch codes.

Foreshadowing: The automation decision directly removed the human check that the two-man rule provided.

• two-man rule
• missile launch codes
• automated control
• human oversight

WOPR ran through every possible nuclear war scenario it had devised and found that they all resulted in mutual destruction with no winner. This concept is known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). The computer concluded that nuclear war is "a strange game" where "the only winning move is not to play" and relinquished control of the missiles.

• mutual assured destruction
• WINNER NONE
• nuclear war scenarios
• WOPR conclusion