The Man Who Prevented Nuclear War

On 26th September 1983, the world almost plunged into the third world war. However, a military officer in the Soviet Union, Stanislav Petrov, “prevented nuclear war” by disobeying orders.

Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the air defense forces of the Soviet Union. He was also the duty officer at a hidden command center named Serpukhov-15. The site monitored Soviet satellites over the US, designed to detect if nuclear missiles had been launched as early as possible.

In the early hours of 26th September, alarms had been set off by computers signaling that a base in America had just launched an intercontinental ballistic missile. Some seconds later, the computers indicated that 4 more of them had just taken off.

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