Did You Know?

After Major Kong lists the contents of the emergency ration kits, he says "Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good time in Vegas with all that stuff." His lips are saying Dallas instead of Vegas. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas shortly after filming was completed, and the producers did not want to offend anyone.
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De Sadesky says that the fallout from the doomsday device has a half-life of 93 years, but then he also says that the fallout would circle Earth for 93 years. This is a contradiction: half-life is the time it takes for radiation to be halved, not completely dissipated. It is common however for people to confuse these concepts, and the dissipation time for the fallout from a nuclear weapon salted with cobalt is indeed about a century.
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General Turgidson tries to dismiss de Sadesky's claim of the doomsday device by saying radiation from a nuclear fallout is "down to a safe level after two weeks". But the idea of creating so called "salted" nuclear weapons by using cobalt in them was put forth by 'Leó Szilárd' - the "father of the atomic bomb" - already in February 1950, and it is this concept that doomsday device in the movie is built on. The general would be well aware of salted bombs and their capabilities in 1963 when the movie takes place.
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When General Jack D. Ripper is firing the .30 caliber machine gun with the assistance of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, he is holding the machine gun by the barrel. In reality, this would quickly cause serious burns and would not be possible for more than a few seconds.
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When Gen. Ripper and Capt. Mandrake are using the belt-fed machine gun, in one shot Mandrake is holding a chair over his head for protection, but when it cuts and the camera is behind them and Ripper crawls away from the window, Mandrake isn't holding the chair, and the closest chair is 10 feet away from him.
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Strings can be seen holding up the model of the bomber.
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General Turgidson learns from his secretary, Miss Scott, of General Ripper's ordered attack on the USSR at 3 a.m. Washington D.C. time. However, the concurrent scenes at Burpleson Air Force base (somewhere in the Western United States) take place in the daytime.
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In reality incoming missile threats are not detected by a radar on an aircraft as depicted in the movie, but by a Radar Warning Receiver. An RWR assesses threats by detecting a ground radar as it directs its tell-tale emissions at the aircraft to guide a missile to it, or by detecting a radar on-board the missile itself.
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The depicted capabilities of the airborne radar in the B-52 are fantasy. The B-52 never had a fully rotating radar with a PPI scope, it had a ground attack radar, and the gun turret radar didn't operate like that. No airborne radar in the 1960's could detect a target as small as a surface-to-air missile at 50 miles away. A sweeping radar would not be able to display the missile exploding in mid-sweep.
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During the ending of the opening credits it says "Base on the Novel Red Alert" instead of "Based on the Novel Red Alert".
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When Major Kong is reading the contents of the crew's survival kits, he mentions, "one automatic pistol". The weapon shown as he reads that description aloud is a typical semi-automatic pistol, not a fully automatic weapon which continues to fire as long as the trigger is depressed - in other words, a machine gun. However, the correct military designation of the standard issue sidearm depicted is "Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911-A1."
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Since there has never been any real 100 MT nuclear devices detonated, stock footage of other, much smaller, devices stand in as "actors" for the 20-30 and 100 MT detonations in the film. Clearly we can forgive Stanely Kubric for not using real 100 MT nuclear weapons to make a movie. Also, megaton explosions would not be photogenic for the rapid cuts of the end sequence since they expand much slower on film, as they are being filmed from much further away. Finally we can assume that in the early 1960's there wasn't much declassified material of megaton explosions available to the public as such explosions were achieved only less than ten years earlier.
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According to the movie, Colonel Bat Guano is a member of the non-existent 23rd Airborne Division. As seen in the Coca-Cola machine scene, his shoulder patch is from the 2nd Infantry Division.
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The accent of the "Russian" ambassador is incorrect to the point that a native Russian-speaker would have difficulties to understand his "Russian".
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In the cockpit scenes, when the aircraft banks during evasive maneuvers, no change appears in the instruments: they continue indicating straight and level flight (notably the attitude indicator).
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The panel in the B-52 labeled "Auto Destruct" is in fact a flare launch control panel. Visible under the black paint are the instructions "INSTRUCTIONS 1) PULL COVER DOWN 2) MOVE MASTER (CENTER) SWITCH DOWN 3) RELEASE A FLARE BY MOVING EITHER SIDE SWITCH"
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