Happy Stanislav Petrov Day!
Many people have received the Nobel Peace Prize for doing a lot less than him. On this day 43 years ago, Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet military, the commanding officer of a USSR nuclear early warning site.
On Sept. 26th 1983, he watched in disbelief as the monitoring software showed that the US had launched 5 nuclear missiles. Why would America send 5 missiles when they had thousands? It didn’t add up.
Petrov stayed calm. His job was to suggest retaliation, but he chose not to, and did nothing. He was proved 100% right – it had been a false alarm.
Stanislav’s choice to do nothing saved the world from destruction.
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