30. The Man Whose Hunch Saved Mankind
Most people have no clue who Stanislav Petrov is. Which is unfortunate, because everybody alive today, anywhere in the world, irrespective of race, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, political persuasion, or any other distinction, owes him a huge debt of gratitude. The man, acting on a gut instinct and placing a huge responsibility upon his own shoulders, saved the world from a full-blown nuclear holocaust. In a nutshell, if not for Petrov, most of us would not be alive today, and the relative few still alive would be struggling for survival in some barbarous and radioactive Mad Max hellish environment.
It began early in the morning of September 26th, 1983, when Soviet early warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the US. Computer readouts confirmed the warning, and advised that several American missiles had been launched. Soviet protocol for such a scenario called for an immediate response by launching their own missiles in retaliation. Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer in charge, and his job was to immediately alert the Soviet leadership to launch their own missiles. As he described it an interview decades later: “I had all the data [to suggest there was an ongoing missile attack]. If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it“.You are able to read this today because, as seen below, he chose a different course of action.
