This Soviet soldier prevented nuclear war in 1983; know how he did it

On September 26, 1983, a serious nuclear crisis was in the offing right in the middle of the Cold War. A satellite system reported that five US nuclear missiles were headed toward the Soviet Union. Stanislav Petrov, the duty officer in charge at the command center for a new Soviet early warning system called Oko, was in a tight spot. With the alarm blaring, he had a phone in one hand and an intercom in the other, staring at the screen while everyone around him grew anxious about why he wasn’t reacting faster.

Petrov’s training and instincts told him that the US wouldn't launch just a handful of missiles if they were really attacking. Instead, he trusted his gut and determined that it was a false alarm. Fortunately, he was right; those “missiles” were simply clouds that the system had misread. His decision potentially saved millions of lives that day. In this scenario, the Soviet strategy would be to launch a barrage of nuclear weapons as a counterattack without wasting any time, which would in turn trigger a full-scale nuclear war.

So, who was Stanislav Petrov?

Stanislav Petrov was born on September 7, 1939, in Russia's Vladivostok and came from a military background—his father was a fighter pilot in World War II, and his mother was a nurse. After finishing his studies at the Kiev Higher Engineering Radio-Technical College, Petrov joined the Soviet Air Defense Forces in 1972 as an engineer and worked his way up to lieutenant colonel.

In his role, Petrov learned all about data and warning systems that were supposed to detect ballistic attacks from the U.S. and NATO allies. Surprisingly, the Soviet Union neither punished him for his quick decision nor formally recognized him for it. The whole incident was kept classified for a long time, and it wasn’t until later that Petrov's critical role in averting a nuclear disaster was acknowledged.