The Soviet soldier who saved the world: how did Stanislav Petrov prevent nuclear Armageddon?

It was now Petrov’s responsibility to pass the information on to his superiors. The Soviet strategy in this scenario would be to launch an immediate barrage of nuclear weapons as a counterattack, thereby triggering full-scale nuclear war.

But Petrov chose differently.

Who was Stanislav Petrov?

Born on 7 September 1939 in Vladivostok, Russia, Stanislav Petrov was a Soviet officer whose quick thinking prevented a nuclear catastrophe during the height of the Cold War

Petrov came from a military family; his father had served as a fighter pilot in the Second World War and his mother worked as a nurse.

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After graduating from the Kiev Higher Engineering Radio-Technical College, Petrov joined the Soviet Air Defence Forces in 1972 as an engineer, eventually becoming a lieutenant colonel.

In his role, Petrov was trained to understand data and systems, working with early warning systems intended to detect any ballistic attacks from the US and other NATO countries.

By 1983, at the height of the Cold War, Petrov had been assigned to provide oversight at the command centre for the new Soviet early warning system, Oko.

The buildup to the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm

The early 1980s were a particularly tense period in the Cold War, with the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union having reached its most fragile and precarious point.

The Soviet Union, under the leadership of Yuri Andropov, viewed the US-led West with deep suspicion, while the US, led by President Ronald Reagan, was equally distrustful, ramping up its military capabilities and presence in Europe.

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By 1983, the Soviet Union actively expected an attack from the US, and its prepared responses were geared for all-out retaliation, ready to react at a moment’s notice. It had also invested heavily in early-warning systems like Oko, designed to detect incoming missiles as early as possible, providing a narrow window for retaliation as per the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

The spiking tensions underlined the hair-trigger nature of the Cold War, with peace balancing on a pinhead as suspicion on both sides ratcheted up to new levels.

Stanislav Petrov’s role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm

On 26 September 1983, Stanislav Petrov – the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker – was the first line of interpretation when the Oko system issued its cataclysmic warning, shortly after midnight. Oko’s data was clear: it showed that the US had launched five intercontinental ballistic missiles at the Soviet Union.

The next stage of protocol demanded that Petrov immediately report the detection as a confirmed attack to his superiors, who would almost certainly have ordered a retaliatory strike as per the ‘launch on warning’ policy at the time.

Instead, in that critical moment, Petrov waited. The weight of humanity’s fate hinged on his next move.

Knowing the potential repercussions of reporting that an incoming strike had been detected, Petrov reacted with caution caused by two doubts. First, he knew the Oko system was new and relatively untested, making him question its report. Second, it made no sense to him that a first strike from the US would consist of only five missiles, rather than thousands.

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So, contradicting official protocol, Petrov reasoned that the alarm was, in all likelihood, a false positive. He chose not to report it as an impending attack.

His decision may have saved the world from a potential nuclear disaster – and all the horrific, unimaginable consequences that would follow. On any other day, under the watch of any other officer, the outcome could have been staggeringly different, pushing humanity off the nuclear precipice.

In the end, the US strike was as Petrov assumed: a misreading from the Oko system. The early warning system had incorrectly interpreted an unusual phenomenon of sunlight passing through high-altitude clouds.

Petrov wasn’t rewarded for his actions; doing so would have been an admission of the failings of the Soviet system. Instead, he was interrogated and reprimanded for improperly following procedure with his filing of paperwork, and the entire incident was classified.

Stanislav Petrov’s legacy

It wasn’t until the late 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, that the incident, and Petrov’s response, were revealed. In the preceding years that followed, Petrov received several international awards and recognition for his actions.

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Stanislav Petrov died on 19 May 2017, at the age of 77.

Today, Stanislav Petrov is an obscure, peripheral figure in the history of the 20th century. But his story is a distinct indicator of how close humanity came to the brink of nuclear armageddon and a reminder of the fine margins of human judgement.