Many Hollywood movies have depicted a world destroyed by a global thermonuclear war. #OTD in 1962, the world came to the brink of that happening in real life. This is the story of one man who effectively prevented global annihilation (1/n) 
Deep in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, 11 USN destroyers & the air force carrier USS Randolph spotted the Soviet nuclear powered submarine B59 in the Caribbean. The American ships started dropping depth charges to force the sub to surface (2/n)
B59 had not been in contact with Moscow for several days. Moving at great depth, it had also stopped picking civilian radio 'chatter'. With the Americans dropping depth charges in international waters, the captain argued that war must have begun (3/n)
He decided to launch a nuclear torpedo. B59 was carrying as it's Executive Officer Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov who was the commodore of the flotilla. Due to this unusual arrangement, rules of engagement were different on B59 (4/n)
For firing a torpedo, all 3 senior officers - captain Valentin Savitsky, political officer Ivan Maslenikov & Arkhipov - had to agree to do it. In the event, the political officer supported captain Savitsky but Arkhipov refused to fall in line (5/n)
Arkhipov finally managed to persuade captain Savitsky to drop the idea and surface as the sub was running dangerously low on power. The aftermath wasn't good for Arkhipov or the crew. When they returned to Russia, many were met with contempt (6/n)
One admiral apparently said he would've been happier if the men had "gone down with the ship." Vasily Arkhipov retired from service as a vice admiral. According to his wife, he rarely spoke about the incident and felt it wasn't appreciated enough (7/n)
In 2002, Thomas Blanton, then Director of US National Security Archive said that "Arkhipov saved the world." Same year, discussing the crisis, Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense, admitted "We came very close to nuclear war.." (8/n)
Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, an advisor to the Kennedy administration, called this naval engagement "not just the most dangerous moment of the Cold War, it was the most dangerous moment of human history" (9/n)
Humanity definitely owes a lot of gratitude to Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov (10/n)
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