Posted on 09/18/2017 12:03:27 PM PDT by Borges
Early on the morning of Sept. 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov helped prevent the outbreak of nuclear war.
A 44-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces, he was a few hours into his shift as the duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the secret command center outside Moscow where the Soviet military monitored its early-warning satellites over the United States, when alarms went off.
Computers warned that five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched from an American base.
“For 15 seconds, we were in a state of shock,” he later recalled. “We needed to understand, ‘What’s next?’ ”
The alarm sounded during one of the tensest periods in the Cold War. Three weeks earlier, the Soviets had shot down a Korean Air Lines commercial flight after it crossed into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people on board, including a congressman from Georgia. President Ronald Reagan had rejected calls for freezing the arms race, declaring the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” The Soviet leader, Yuri V. Andropov, was obsessed by fears of an American attack.
Colonel Petrov was at a pivotal point in the decision-making chain. His superiors at the warning-system headquarters reported to the general staff of the Soviet military, which would consult with Mr. Andropov on launching a retaliatory attack.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Astute observation. Very intelligent man......................
Reminds me of the last scene in ‘The Bedford Incident.’
Several years after that movie ran in theaters, I was assigned to a FRAM II tin can. I always thought the ASROC’s were cool weapons. “...fire one...”
As he didn’t trust the system in the first place - he probably also knew that he would have a confirmation in a very short time from ground-based radars as well.
Thank God the Soviet Union had some people with common sense.
In my opinion, the guy single-handedly averted nuclear world war because he thought first.
Rest in peace, Col. Petrov - and THANK YOU for being level-headed and logical in the most trying of circumstances. All of humanity owes you a debt of gratitude.
even allowing that Lenin may have meant well, his “contribution” to the world was mostly a giant failure...
and once Stalin got ahold of it, it also cost millions of
innocent lives inside the USSR alone
Lenin should be buried and forgotten about, imho.
This Russian navy guy should have a statue put up in Lenin’s place.
(and I’d contribute to a statue for him here in USA, too)
Nah. I’m kinda stupid and it’s the first thing I thought :)
Yep, he most likely saved millions of lives.................
The article seems to blame Reagan for almost starting a nuclear war until Petrov calmly ends it.
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