How a Soviet duty officer may have saved the world from nuclear war
You’ve probably never heard of the man or the incident. Either I never knew about it or I had forgottob until I started reading a book this week: “War: What Is It Good For”? The author of the book is Ian Morris and I attended a talk he gave at the House of Commons upon the release of the book [see my blog posting here].
The book opens with an account of an incident on 26 September 1983 when the nuclear early warning system of the Soviet Union twice reported the launch of American Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from bases in the United States. These missile attack warnings were correctly identified as a false alarm by Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.
This decision is seen as having prevented an erroneous data for decision about retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies, which would have probably resulted in nuclear war and the potential deaths of millions and millions of people. Investigation of the satellite warning system later confirmed that the system had malfunctioned.
You can read more about the incident here.