During the Cuban missile crisis wasn’t there a Russian Submarine Officer who refused to go along with launching a nuclear torpedo at the US Navy, which probably adverted a nuclear exchange between Russia and the USA.
Yup! And there was also a Russian officer who REFUSED to go ahead with a launch order when there was a false alarm in the Russian defense system in 1983 indicating an all out nuke attack by the USA. I saw a documentary about him that referred to the officer as "The man who saved the world."
Khrushchev deescalated that situation because he didn’t want to go down in history as the man who killed the earth.