Hero who saved the world from a nuclear war.. then got sacked for doing it
Russian Colonel’s amazing story
AS sabre-rattling North Korea continues its high-stakes faceoff with the US, the world is closer to nuclear Armageddon than it’s been since… well, the last time.
It was more than 30 years ago, as the Cold War reached a terrifying new peak, that the common sense of one man saved the planet from destruction.
He was Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, whose death at the age of 77 has just been announced.
You may not have heard of him, but Hollywood stars including Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro and Matt Damon have queued up to shake his hand. And we should all be equally grateful, because we owe our lives to him.
In the early hours of September 26, 1983, Petrov, then 44, was monitoring Russia’s early-warning defence system when the alarms went off.
As warning lights flashed all around him in his secret military bunker, it seemed the world was just 15 minutes from nuclear destruction. The system had just picked up five nuclear missiles, launched from the US, heading for Moscow. Petrov said later: “I saw that a missile had been fired, aimed at us. It was an adrenaline shock I will never forget. I just sat there staring at the big, back-lit red screen with the word ‘launch’ on it.” Years of training told him to warn his commanders they were under attack. They had no weapons that could shoot down the missiles, but it would give them time to launch a counter-strike. Luckily for all of us, his instincts said otherwise. Would America really start a nuclear war with just five missiles, instead of firing hundreds to obliterate their Soviet enemies? Or had the state-of-the-art radar simply malfunctioned? Petrov had minutes to make a 50/50 guess, knowing a mistake would cost billions of lives. “I had a funny feeling in my gut,” he recalled. “Everyone jumped from their seats, looking at me. I had all the data to suggest there was an
on-going missile attack. If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it.
“I didn’t want to make a mistake and start World War Three. I made a decision and that was that.”
Petrov decided it was a false alarm and refused to hit the button. An estimated 11,000 Soviet missiles, armed and ready to wreak destruction, stayed in their silos.
It was the biggest gamble of his career, and under the circumstances it would have felt safer to make the opposite call.
Just weeks earlier the Soviets, led at the time by Yuri Andropov, had shot down a Korean airliner that strayed into Russian airspace, killing all 269 passengers and crew.
US President Ronald Regan branded the Soviet Union an “evil empire”. The Kremlin assumed the US and its NATO allies were planning a nuclear strike on Russia. The KGB had warned its Western operatives to prepare for a possible nuclear war.
But Petrov went with his instinct and, minutes before the US nukes were due to strike, the five dots on the radar disappeared into thin air.
There were no missiles, and nuclear obliteration had been averted.
Former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky said: “If war had come, Soviet missiles would have destroyed Britain entirely and at least half of Germany and France.”
Petrov painted an even more terrifying picture: “A second strike would see chaos reign over planet Earth.
“The sun’s rays wouldn’t be able to reach the surface of the Earth.
“At first billions would die. Eventually everyone would simply vanish and our planet would turn into a vast desert.”
It was pure chance that Petrov was even on duty that night, covering for a sick colleague. Another man may have lacked the courage of his convictions and sent the world into war.
Relieved beyond words he had made the right decision, Petrov celebrated by downing half a litre of vodka “as if it were a glass” and slept for 28 hours before sloping quietly back to work.
He didn’t tell anyone about his heroics – not even his wife – for 10 years, until after the fall of the Soviet Union.
“I didn’t see it as any kind of special thing,” he said. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”
Instead of being rewarded for saving the world, he was reprimanded for not filling out forms to document the crisis correctly. A reward would have meant blame would fall elsewhere, including on those who spent billions on a defence system that did not work properly.
“They reduced me to nothing,” he said. “High-ranking a ****** s. They always find a scapegoat.”
Petrov was ushered out of the army to work for the team who developed the early-warning system, but had to quit to nurse his wife, who was seriously ill with brain cancer.
They became so poor they survived on onions they grew in a window box at their flat in a run-down block in a rough suburb of Moscow. He would boil his belt to give taste to cups of watery soup.
When a journalist arrived at his door in 1993, asking about that night, Petrov refused to speak to him at first, afraid he was being tested by his former military employers. But eventually he invited him in and agreed to share his story.
He said: “You should have seen the eyes of my wife. She was very, very surprised. ‘Were you doing that?’ she said. I said: ‘If I had told you, the whole city would have known it and the next day I would have been in prison.’”
When Petrov’s story reached Hollywood, Kevin Costner sent him a cheque for $500 and agreed to narrate a documentary film about him. The Man Who Saved The World was released in 2015.
Introducing him to the crew, Costner said: “I’m lucky enough to play heroes. Often what we are portraying are men like Stanislav, a guy who didn’t listen to the noise. He listened to his heart.”
He was also presented with a special award at the United Nations by the Association of World Citizens.
But still he died in poverty at home in Fryazino in May, though his death was only announced this month.
As he said in the film: “We all want to live without fear that this world can be destroyed.” If only Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump would heed his words.
The screen had the word ‘launch’ on it. I didn’t want to start World War Three STANISLAV PETROV ON THE MORNING HE SAVED WORLD