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Russia’s Stanislav Petrov awarded for averting nuclear war

Tags: Russia, Opinion & Analysis, Society, World, nuclear weapons

Natalya Kovalenko

22.11.2012, 19:19

Stanislav Petrov, the retired Soviet officer, who averted a nuclear war back in 1983, has been awarded the Dresden Preis 2013.

Late September 26, 1986 an alarm signaling a US missile attack went off inside the secret bunker at Serpukhov-15, 100 km off Moscow. The warning system's computer concluded that five missiles had been launched from a base in the United States. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was on duty that night and had to make a decision. He had little time to think. Instructions prescribed him to report to superiors who, in their turn, were to consult with Soviet leaders on launching a retaliatory attack. But common sense told him that five intercontinental ballistic missiles were too few for a nuclear war. So Petrov decided that the alert was a false alarm and didn’t press the Start button.Petrov was right: the satellite early-warning system had a flaw as it was activated by sunlight reflected from high-altitude clouds. Later, the space monitoring system was adjusted to avoid such glitches. As the incident was Top Secret it wasn’t spoken about until 1988.

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Source: Voice of Russia