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RIP Stanislav Petrov--The Man Who Saved the World

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I confess, I'd not heard of Stanislav Petrov before today.    And he actually died May 19, though word was late in getting to the Western press.

His story was told in the 2014 documentary film The Man Who Saved the World

On September 26, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was working his shift, overseeing the staff at a missile detection center near Moscow, when the launch detect system sounded the alarm that five Minuteman ICBMs had been launched from the Western US, and were inbound to the Soviet Union.  It seemed almost plausible; weeks before, the Soviet Union had  shot down a Korean airliner, and tensions were running high.  The satellite-based launch detection system assigned it's highest level of confidence that the launch had occurred.   Lieutenant Colonel Petrov's job, at this point, was to confirm to his superiors that missiles were inbound, and recommend a full retaliatory nuclear strike.

But he didn't.   After several agonizing minutes, he decided the data was likely wrong.   It was only a hunch, but he successfully argued it up the chain of command, with the recommendation that the Soviets NOT launch a counterstrike.

Being right effectively ended his career, but the rest of us can be glad that he had the intelligence to make the right call, and the courage to stand behind it.

Vechnaya pamyat, Stanislav.

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There's an article about it in today's (failing) New York Times.  (I don't read it.  A friend sent it to me.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/world/europe/stanislav-petrov-nuclear-war-dead.html?_r=0

BTW, I wonder if the world was saved by a normalcy bias on his part?

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