Man who saved the world from nuclear war dies at 77
A FORMER Soviet military officer credited with single-handedly averting a nuclear war at the peak of the Cold War has died at the age of 77.
Stanislav Petrov was on duty at a Russian nuclear early warning centre in 1983 when computers wrongly detected incoming missiles from the US.
He took the decision that they were a false alarm and did not report them to his superiors.
His actions, which came to light years later, prevented nuclear war.
Holocaust
If he had confirmed the computer’s alert, Russia would have launched what it saw as a retaliatory strike without questioning Petrov’s message.
In a matter of hours, the world would have been engulfed in a global nuclear holocaust.
The computer had wrongly interpreted sunlight bouncing off clouds as US missiles being launced.
Petrov died at his home in Moscow in May – but his death has only now been made public.
In an interview with the BBC in 2013, Petrov told how he had received computer readouts in the early hours of September 26 1983 suggesting several US missiles had been launched.
“I had all the data [to suggest there was an ongoing missile attack]. If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it,” he said.
“All I had to do was to reach for the phone to raise the direct line to our top commanders – but I couldn’t move. I felt like I was sitting on a hot frying pan.”
Although his training dictated he should contact the Soviet military immediately, Petrov instead called the duty officer at army headquarters and reported a system malfunction. If he had been wrong, the first nuclear blasts from incoming missiles would have happened minutes later.
Petrov recalled: “Twenty-three minutes later I realised that nothing had happened.
“If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it.
“It was such a relief.”