[BRIEF NOTE] How Stanislav Petrov saved us all

[rfmcdonald]

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow on September 26, 1983, a time when the Cold War was at a peak: just three and a half weeks prior, the Soviets had shot down Korean Air Flight 007, killing all 269 people on board the Boeing 747. It was Lt. Col. Petrov's responsibility
to observe the satellite early warning network and notify his superiors of any impending nuclear missile attack against the USSR. In the event of such an attack, the Soviet Union's strategy was to launch an immediate all-out nuclear counter-attack against the United States, as the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction required.

Just past midnight, at 00:40 hrs, the bunker's computers indicated that an American missile was heading toward the Soviet Union. Lt. Col. Petrov reasoned that a computer error had
occurred, since the United States was not likely to launch just one missile if it were attacking the Soviet Union — it would launch many simultaneously. Also, the satellite system's reliability had in the past been questioned, so he dismissed the warning as a false alarm, concluding that no missile had actually been launched by the United States.

A short time later the computers indicated that a second missile had been launched, followed by a third, a fourth and a fifth. Petrov still felt that the computer system was wrong, but there was no other source of information with which to confirm his suspicions. The Soviet Union's land radar was not capable of detecting missiles beyond the horizon, so by the time land radar could positively identify the threat, it would be too late.

For the rest of the story, go to Petrov's Wikipedia article. The ending isn't that much of a surprise since, in fact, there wasn't a nuclear war in 1983. How we got to that point is a story worth learning.