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'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.
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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..
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 21 2017, @02:48PM (3 children)
That was basically what they did in the Stargate series--every time the (TV) viewer sees an alternate reality, it's always worse off than the primary one. Which I thought was a nice lampshade hanging on the whole bit where you're 6 seasons in and only one of the main characters has died (he gets better).
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:13PM (2 children)
Yep, and this reminds me of my theory about Star Trek: the reason the Star Trek shows we have seem so unrealistic is because they're not set in our universe. They're set in a parallel universe where humans are generally benevolent and competent. We're actually living in the "mirror universe", or one like it, where humans are generally evil, and only got as far as they did because of accidents of history.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 21 2017, @03:59PM (1 child)
Depressing but pretty plausible :-/
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 21 2017, @06:53PM
Yep. I highly recommend watching the Enterprise season 4 two-parter, "In a Mirror, Darkly". The first episode shows how First Contact with the Vulcans goes in our universe: the Vulcans land, show their hand-sign for peace, and Zephram Cochrane pulls out a shotgun and shoots them, then the humans kill the rest and raid the ship. That's us.