Fail-Safe

Blurb

Fail-Safe is a best-selling novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. 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.
The popular and critically acclaimed novel, released in late October 1962, 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. In 2000, the novel was adapted again for a televised play, broadcast live in black and white on CBS. All three works have the same theme—accidental nuclear war—with the same plot.
Fail-Safe was extremely similar to an earlier novel, Red Alert—so similar that Red Alert‍ '​s author, Peter George, sued on a charge of plagiarism, settling out of court.