In questo giorno del 1983, al culmine della Guerra Fredda: il tenente colonnello sovietico Stanislav Petrov scongiurò una potenziale guerra nucleare identificando come falsi segnali di allarme che sembravano indicare un imminente attacco missilistico statunitense.
https://i.redd.it/p5qwajfam3rd1.jpeg
di tllon
6 commenti
A true hero to the world he saved as all, never forget that 😃😃💪💪💪💪
On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to four more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm.
His subsequent decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol, is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that would have resulted in a large-scale nuclear war.
An investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.
He received no reward. According to Petrov, this was because the incident and other bugs found in the missile detection system embarrassed his superiors and the scientists who were responsible for it, so that if he had been officially rewarded, they would have had to be punished.
He was reassigned to a less sensitive post and took early retirement.
I think “identifying” is a bit misleading here.
It was more having a gut feeling that something was strange, and taking a huge gamble that turned out to be right in the end. If he had 100% identified that it was a false alarm, it wouldn’t have taken much courage to defer the ripost.
And on this day today Putin changed the nuclear doctrine. The choice of date feels symbolic.
Russians create threats and conflicts and then demand gratitude when they back off. Fuck russia
Since I was born on that exact day in 1983 – thank you, Stanislav.