A logic bomb essentially makes a program switch to a different mode after running several million cycles (changing its "logic"). The pipeline software's logic bomb was set to go off after 10 million cycles. The KGB thieves weren't stupid -- they checked the stuff they were stealing -- but since the software appeared to be working fine, they brought it back to a pipeline in Siberia that extended into Western Europe, singing songs of their good fortune.
The program ran fine for a few months (the aforementioned 10 million cycles), but after that, it took the pipeline's pumps and compressors aside and told them, "Today is the day that we run a pressure test at dangerously high levels." After careful calculations, the CIA expected the pipeline to merely spring leaks all the way across Siberia. Clearly, they overestimated Soviet engineering.
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"In Soviet Russia, pipes leak on YOU -- because of CIA meddling. Seriously."
In June 1982, American early warning satellites detected an extremely large blast in Siberia as the pipeline motherfucking exploded. The blast was 3 kilotons, or roughly one-fifth of the strength of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It was "the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space," a phrase that here means "the most brain-shittingly awesome spectacle ever witnessed by the endless folds of the universe."
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