"The Man Who Saved The World"
September 26, 1983. Stanislav Petrov, a lt. colonel in the Soviet Strategic Air Defence Forces, stations himself as the duty officer at the command centre of Oko, a brand new early warning system built to detect any nuclear attack from the US.
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It's half past midnight. All of a sudden, the warning light comes on. A siren starts screaming. This means a missile has been launched from US. A second warning light appears and the siren screams of another missile. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth. The writing is on the wall.
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Everyone in the room freezes for a while. Petrov finds himself in a dilemma. He has clear orders, i.e., pick up the phone and order an appropriate response. The window of reaction is so small that if a split second passes, there might not be any missile bases left in USSR.
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With a phone in one hand and an intercom in the other, he sits down for a minute. It occurs to his mind if this is an all-out attack, how come only 5 missiles are launched? His military uniform is drenched in sweat. His colleagues look stunned as he refuses to dial the number.
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In a few minutes, the truth is confirmed. Ground radar and geostationary satellites report there are no missile launches from America. By then, Cold War was a thirty year long psychological horror film. Both the sides knew one of them would hurl a nuclear missile eventually.
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The only reason we are alive to type this from a PC is thanks to Mr. Petrov who in an extreme high pressure situation decided to question the computer system, that too in the face of a probable nuclear attack which was on the cards anyway.
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A couple of decades later, when the world got to know about the story in its entirety and hailed him a hero, Petrov was quite calm, maintaining that he was simply doing his job. Standing in 2020, we can hardly fathom what he was going through in those eerie hours.
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Not many have heard of Stanislav Petrov. High profile secrecy during the Cold War years meant he was snubbed a Nobel Peace Prize. All we know, if the lieutenant colonel hadn't worked on his instincts that night, we might not have seen today's sunrise.
[END]
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