The Man Who Saved the World

The day the Soviets and the Americans nearly blew each other up,

Where were you that day?

September 26, 1983. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were locked in one of the tensest phases of the Cold War. President Reagan was in office, talking tough, and his counterpart in Moscow, Yuri Andropov, was blowing just as hot.

Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air Defense Forces was on duty in a missile detection station outside Moscow when the early warning satellite alarm went off, indicating that the U.S. had launched five missiles at the Soviet Union.

This 44-year-old Soviet military officer had to decide if the missile attack from the U.S. was real.

Petrov had to act quickly. The military high command was on alert, aware that U.S. missiles packing a nuclear warhead could detonate on their soil in 25 minutes. All the command members needed was Colonel Petrov’s confirmation of the incoming attack and they would unleash their own nuclear warheads.

Despite the pressure, Petrov considered his options. Just three weeks earlier the Soviets had shot down a Korean Air Lines plane, killing all 269 passengers on board. Could this be a retaliatory strike by the U.S., whose president had labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire?”