The man who saved the world by stopping a nuclear war
THE remarkable story of the Russian who single-handedly stopped a nuclear war breaking out is now the subject of a new film.

In a secret bunker in the forests near Moscow duty officer Stanislav Petrov was looking forward to the end of his shift.
As part of Oko, the Soviet Union’s early warning system for nuclear attack, his job involved staring at a screen for hours.

It was September 1983 and Cold War tensions were running higher than normal because the Soviets had recently shot down a South Korean passenger jet that had strayed into its airspace. Nonetheless, it was monotonous work and hardly what Petrov had dreamed of when he joined the army as a 16-year-old.

Suddenly, just after midnight, his daydreams were interrupted by the shrill ringing of an alarm.

One of the warning system’s satellites had apparently detected an imminent attack.
Five ballistic missiles were heading towards the Soviet Union from the west coast of the US.

On the monitor in front of Petrov the word “launch” flashed repeatedly in red. The horror of what was unfolding in front of him threatened to overwhelm the officer and he was initially frozen with fear.

If he believed his eyes he was witnessing a preemptive strike by the US, which could kill thousands of his people – the start of World War III.

Protocol demanded that Petrov, then 44, immediately telephone a senior Kremlin official.

However, he hesitated. The lieutenant colonel knew his call would probably trigger a retaliatory attack and a devastating nuclear war could ensue.

He was suspicious that Soviet ground radar had not picked up the approaching missiles. He was also mistrustful of the satellite technology, which was still in its infancy.

As the most senior man in the bunker, he faced an awful choice – follow the rules and make the call or trust his instincts and simply do nothing.

Petrov took the second option and reported the incident as a false alarm.
As the minutes ticked by his heart was racing and he could feel beads of sweat trickling down his back. Petrov’s story is told in a new drama-documentary about his life, The Man Who Saved The World, which reveals how close the world came to nuclear war on the night of September 26, 1983.

“I took a gamble,” admits Petrov.
“It was probably 50:50 but I had a funny feeling in my gut.”

It took 13 years and the collapse of communism before details of the incident leaked out of Russia, in a memoir by one of his commanding officers.

Petrov now recalls: “I remember just sitting there for a few seconds as the system howled and the screen showed the word ‘launch’.

"It was an adrenaline shock. I will never forget it. A minute later the siren went off again to show another missile had been launched.

And a Russian jet has been shot down again...

kllinxman:
And a Russian jet has been shot down again...

ok

"Then the third, fourth and fifth. Computers changed their alerts from launch to ‘missile strike’.

"There was no rule about how long we were allowed to think before we reported a strike.
“But we knew every second of procrastination took away valuable time that the Soviet Union’s military and political leadership needed to be informed without delay.

“All I had to do was to reach for the phone to raise the direct line to our top commanders but I couldn’t move.

"I felt like I was sitting on a hot frying pan. I knew perfectly well that no-one would be able to correct my mistake if I made one.”
He says he was haunted by the idea “millions of lives were hanging by a thread”.
Eventually Petrov called the duty officer in the Soviet army’s headquarters and reported a system malfunction.

After he went home Petrov drank half a litre of vodka to calm his shattered nerves, then slept for 24 hours.

The next day he reported back for work. He says he was the only officer in his team who had also had a civilian education.
After his initial military training he helped fix radars, then joined the team building his country’s new defence system.
“My colleagues were all professional soldiers, they were taught to give and obey orders,” Petrov explains.

In another twist, it has also emerged he was covering for a sick colleague that night.
An investigation later revealed there had been a malfunction in the Oko (meaning eye in Russian) system.
The satellite had picked up the reflection of the sun off a cloud and somehow interpreted it as a missile strike.

Such was the secrecy surrounding the Soviet military machine that at the time Petrov was not allowed to tell his wife what happened.
He was subsequently reprimanded, not for disobeying orders but for incorrectly filling in a log book.

He left the military the following year.
Looking back it is easy to be glib about the Cold War and the decades of posturing between the Soviet Union and the US, which ultimately amounted to nothing.
But at the time the Soviets were terrified of an American attack.

In 1983 Yuri Andropov, a former head of the KGB, was leader of the Soviet Union.
He had weapons at his fingertips, which were capable of wiping out half the population of America.
In March that year President Ronald Reagan proposed the creation of the “Star Wars” defence system, which would tip the nuclear balance in favour of the West.
He had described the USSR as “an evil empire”.

Scott Lucas, professor of International Politics at the University of Birmingham, says: “In 1983 the Soviet Union was trying to show it was still tough and could stand up to the US.
"Efforts to limit arms had collapsed. Each side had weapons that could wipe the other out and there was mutual mistrust.
“A mistake or accident was the most likely cause of nuclear war. There was a very small window for double checks to be made.”

Petrov, who later struggled with drink problems and the loss of his wife to cancer in 1997, retired on a military pension.
He lives in a modest flat in Fryazino, a nondescript suburb of Moscow, where he likes to grow onions on his window sill.
Over the years he has received awards from several countries for his bravery in doing nothing that night.

In the new film he is seen in America, grudgingly accepting an honour in New


The documentary has a recreation of events in the bunker 32 years ago and draws parallels with the modern-day Ukraine crisis.

The USSR and Russia has always treated Petrov with ambivalence.

Although he received a portable television from grateful colleagues, who realised that his cool head had saved the day, some believed it was his duty to make the call and allow his superiors to make the final decision.

The near-disastrous glitch in its former defence system was also a source of embarrassment.

Most Russians still do not know of his existence.
Now 76-years-old Stanislav Petrov does not consider himself to be a hero. “I was just doing my job but they were lucky it was me on duty that night,” he smiles.

www.express.co.uk/news/history/579218/Nuclear-war-Russia-Stanislav-Petrov

God has a way of doing things, he might use an insignificant fellow to do his will. He might have felt it was his instincts not knowing it was God who used him.
Never will this world be destroyed by nuclear weapons, but rather by His hands.

Incredible.

A huge risk...