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…