Stanislav Petrov: The man who saved the world

Reports of the death of Stanislav Petrov hit the news yesterday. For a man whose decision might very well have saved the planet from nuclear annihilation, it is kind of sad that the reports were four months late. Mr. Petrov died in May, but the news did not reach the press at that time.

34 years ago, on September 26^th of 1983, lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov was on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow, which was the command center of the Soviet early warning satellites, code-named Oko.

It was a difficult and very tense time. The USSR had shot down by mistake the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on September 1^st of 1983. The US Air force was using new tactics to test USSR defenses with swarms of planes heading directly towards USSR and changing course at the last-minute. A new missile, Pershing II, was almost fielded and the USSR had no defense for it. But most important was the perception the Russians had of Ronald Reagan as a man so starkly anticommunist and unhinged, that he would be capable of launching a first strike against the USSR.  That perception was pervasive through the whole government system in Russia. The Kremlin, the Armed Forces, the KGB: everyone was on edge and they had their fingers on hair triggers.