Stanislav Petrov: The man who saved the world from nuclear war

Decisions are the link between thought and action. Our world has been shaped to a large extent by individuals wielding great power and influence. But as we browse through the annals of history we find that there have been rare occasions when the decisions of an ordinary person sent ripples through the very fabric of human existence. On 26th September 1983 Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces made one such decision.

The backdrop

It was at the height of the cold war between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Just three weeks earlier, Korean Airlines Flight 007 traveling from New York to Seoul had deviated from its original path and entered prohibited airspace over the Soviet Union. It was treated as a U.S spy plane by the Soviet Air Force and was shot down killing all 269 passengers aboard including Larry McDonald, a member of the United States House of Representatives. Nuclear security expert Bruce Blair described that the relations between the two countries -

“had deteriorated to the point where the Soviet Union as a system — not just the Kremlin, not just Andropov, not just the KGB — but as a system, was geared to expect an attack and to retaliate very quickly to it. It was on hair-trigger alert.”

The incident

Petrov was the duty officer that day at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system. The system detected that up to 5 missiles had been launched from the United States. Standard protocol dictated that Petrov immediately relay the report up the chain of command. But Petrov suspected that it was a false alarm caused by a system malfunction. He had been informed that a U.S strike would be an all-out attack, so just five missiles seemed like an illogical start. The launch detection system was also new and not completely trustworthy in Petrov’s opinion. Moreover the ground radar had not picked up corroborative evidence. So Petrov decided that the warning was a system error and did not report it to his superiors. A decision that in all likelihood prevented a devastating nuclear war. If he had chosen to inform his superiors about the warning would it have definitely led to nuclear war? We cannot be sure but as Bruce Blair put it :

“The top leadership, given only a couple of minutes to decide, told that an attack had been launched, would make a decision to retaliate.”

As Petrov himself stated later, he was not certain that the warning was a false alarm but he decided to trust his own reasoning. The fate of a million lives had inadvertently ended up in the hands of one unassuming man. That man Stanislav Petrov took a chance on his own judgement, a chance that has undeniably affected the course of human history.

The aftermath

Petrov was initially praised for his decision and promised a reward while also being reprimanded for improper paperwork as he had failed to record the incident in the war diary. However he was not rewarded as the incident was an embarrassment to the senior leadership and the scientists who designed the system. An official reward for Petrov would mean that these influential people would have to be punished.

Years later as the incident came to light in the mainstream media, Petrov received a number of awards for his decision including the World Citizen Award and the Dresden Peace Prize.

On his role in averting a nuclear catastrophe Petrov only had this to say:

“All that happened didn’t matter to me — it was my job. I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the right time, that’s all.”