Modes of Petrov Day

I built a small app that allows you participate in the button game:

https://petrovday.bubbleapps.io/

• You can sign up for an account by providing a house name
• You can lock-on to another user by entering in their name
• If you do that a large button appears and the other player can see that you are locked-on to them
• If you press the button, an alarm will play on their screen and will give them 60 seconds to retaliate
• If they retaliate, you are both dead
• If they do not, they die, but you are still alive
• If you are dead, you can no longer target other locations and launch rockets

You are welcome to use this for your own Petrov day celebration. There is no way to get other people's house names without them telling it to you, so if you choose something non-obvious there should be no way for other users to ruin your event.

I have completed the updates for the 2018 version of my fork of the ceremony. I'm fairly happy with it's google doc form and expect to maintain in the future. Version notes include:

Version Notes

2017

• Introductory segment to ensure everyone is ready
• Added death of Petrov
• Added Litany of Gendlin (from Daniel Speyer 2017)
  

2018

• Removed Fermi Paradox
• Added Sadako Sasaki quote (h/t Ozy)
• Added Milgram Experiment
• Added explicit notes for The Button
• Reduced strength WWII and Arkhipov claims
• Added explicit notes for the slightly-dangerous-candle
• New readings for final candles (inspired by Ozy 2018)
• Updated Arkhipov version to be less certain / Orlov quote
• Moved Industry Candle in-between science and WWII— Added moments of silence of escalating length

Made a blog post summarizing the events and takeaways of the 22nd.

https://tragedyofthecomments.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/petrov-day-shenanigans/

One fun fact about the Petrov Day ceremony is that it pairs surprisingly well with the Tron Legacy soundtrack. It's sort of like the Wizard of Oz / Dark Side of the Moon thing – the pacing of the soundtrack just happens to perfectly sync up with each section of the booklet as you read it aloud (when human history gets sad, the soundtrack gets sad, etc)

You do have to remove the tracks "The Grid" (which has spoken words), and the last two songs (End Credits and Finale, which ironically is not the actual Finale). The playlist I use is here:

http://tinyurl.com/petrovdaysoundtrack

Stickying this post for the next week to help people who'd like to coordinate on Petrov Day celebrations. See habryka's comment for details on the web app for mutually assured destruction [LW(p) · GW(p)].

anyone who can guess the name of your house could potentially target it with nuclear missiles

this seems like a major downside ;)

Typo in pg. 31 of the ceremony guide: "sir ead" -> "is read".

Some disconnected thoughts:

In Boston [? · GW] we're planning Normal Mode. (We rejected Hardcore Mode in previous years, in part because it was a serious problem for people who underwent significant inconvenience to be able to attend.)

I'm good at DevOps and might be able to help the Seattle folks make their app more available if they need it.

I happened to give a eulogy of sorts for Stanislav Petrov last year.

I'm currently going through the latest version of the ritual book and looking for things to nitpick, since I know that a few points (notably the details of the Arkhipov story) have fallen into dispute since last year.

I'd be curious to know what considerations are affecting your decisions to possibly change Petrov Day.