ABSTRACT
Historically, the first serious consideration of human reliability and risk may have been made during the Cold War (1945 to 1989). The United States was monitoring the possible launch of Russian missiles against the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Radar screens at places like Filingdales, Yorkshire, United Kingdom, were being inspected on a continuous basis to see if rocket launches were occurring, and when they did, they tracked their trajectories. The reliability aspect was to distinguish very quickly between an aggressive launch, which necessitated a response, and some activity that was quite harmless. Another aspect was what to do about a single launch that could be spurious, so the operators had to act quickly and be very correct in their interpretations, especially as far as England was concerned, because the flight time was about 5 minutes. Associated with human reliability is the element of risk. In this particular case, the consequences of being wrong could lead to the annihilation of cities and nuclear war.
