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posted by takyon on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the only-winning-move dept.

'I Was Just Doing My Job': Soviet Officer Who Averted Nuclear War Dies at Age 77

A Soviet officer who prevented a nuclear crisis between the US and the USSR and possible World War III in the 1980s has quietly passed away. He was 77. In 2010 RT spoke to Stanislav Petrov, who never considered himself a hero. We look at the life of the man who saved the world.

A decision that Soviet lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov once took went down in history as one that stopped the Cold War from turning into nuclear Armageddon, largely thanks to Karl Schumacher, a political activist from Germany who helped the news of his heroism first reach a western audience nearly two decades ago.

On September 7, Schumacher, who kept in touch with Petrov in the intervening years, phoned him to wish him a happy birthday, but instead learned from Petrov's son, Dmitry, that the retired officer had died on May 19 in his home in a small town near Moscow.

On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was on duty in charge of an early warning radar system in a bunker near Moscow, when just past midnight he saw the radar screen showing a single missile inbound from the United States and headed toward the Soviet Union.

"When I first saw the alert message, I got up from my chair. All my subordinates were confused, so I started shouting orders at them to avoid panic. I knew my decision would have a lot of consequences," Petrov recalled of that fateful night in an interview with RT in 2010.
...
It was later revealed that what the Soviet satellites took for missiles launch was sunlight reflected from clouds.

Many of us feel that one person can't make a real difference in the world. Stanislov Petrov did.

R.I.P. Stanislav Petrov, the man who saved the world

The Guardian and other news sources report, that Soviet Colonel Stanislav Petrov has died, age 77.

Petrov has become (not very) famous, because in 1983 his quick decision making averted a possible nuclear war.

I think that we, humans, are bad at recognizing significant events that led to everything continuing as normal..


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:17AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:17AM (#570949) Journal

    "n 2012, Petrov was honored with the German Media Prize, also awarded to Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama and Kofi Annan."

    When the public gets wind of your name, that public draws some peculiar connections.

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