"The Man who saved the world!"

[walterleo]

Those of us, who can watch ARTE television have the chance to see the mentioned film today at 21.45 MEZ. It treats the case of a near outbreak of nuclear war on 26 of september 1983, when a new soviet antimissile early warning sattelite reported an attac by 5 strategic missiles on the Soviet Union and Stanislav Petrov on duty in the Soviet air defence center juged that alarm a false positive one and did not report to the Soviet missile comand, arguining that an all out attak by the USA had to be more than five missiles. And he waited for an affirmation by ground radar. All that happened 3 weeks after the Soviet airdefense had shot down KAL 007 and an US retaliatory action could not be seen as imposible.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

This was not the only nuclear close call, but one of the close calls avoided by humans thinking not only in the trained procedures.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls

Another Russian officer Vasily Arkipov achieved the same during the Cuba crises:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)

Kind regards

Walter

[Herman]

Interesting set of events and stories, and likely not general knowledge to the public.

Herman