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24 Years Ago Today, The World Didn't Blow Up
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Wednesday, September 26, 2007
9:47:00 AM EDT
Hearing Red Rain -- Peter Gabriel
And we have this fellow to thank for it:
Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the secret bunker outside Moscow that monitored the Soviet Union's early-warning satellite system, when the alarm bells went off shortly after midnight. One of the satellites signaled Moscow that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles at Russia.
Given the heightened tensions between the two countries -- the alarm coincided with the beginning of provocative NATO military exercises and barely three weeks after the Russians shot down a South Korean airliner that had wandered into Soviet air space -- Petrov could have been forgiven for believing the signal was accurate. The electronic maps flashing around him didn't do anything to ease the stress of the moment.
But Petrov smelled a rat.
And a good thing, too, because a) it was a system error, and b) if he hadn't smelled said rodent, the Soviet Union would have launched retaliatory measures, which would have been (accurately) seen as a first strike against the US, in which case our birds would have flown toward the USSR, and lots of the surface of the populated world would now be shiny bits of glass and what humans survived would probably not be cruising the Internet for fun (now you see why I said, two entries ago, that our caveman-refined senses are probably not so out of date as they would seem).
So thank you, Stanislav Petrov, for not initiating nuclear annihilation 24 years ago today. That was very decent of you. Hopefully that's as close as we'll ever get to that particular scenario.
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9:47:00 AM EDT
Hearing Red Rain -- Peter Gabriel
24 Years Ago Today, The World Didn't Blow Up
And we have this fellow to thank for it:
Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the secret bunker outside Moscow that monitored the Soviet Union's early-warning satellite system, when the alarm bells went off shortly after midnight. One of the satellites signaled Moscow that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles at Russia.
Given the heightened tensions between the two countries -- the alarm coincided with the beginning of provocative NATO military exercises and barely three weeks after the Russians shot down a South Korean airliner that had wandered into Soviet air space -- Petrov could have been forgiven for believing the signal was accurate. The electronic maps flashing around him didn't do anything to ease the stress of the moment.
But Petrov smelled a rat.
And a good thing, too, because a) it was a system error, and b) if he hadn't smelled said rodent, the Soviet Union would have launched retaliatory measures, which would have been (accurately) seen as a first strike against the US, in which case our birds would have flown toward the USSR, and lots of the surface of the populated world would now be shiny bits of glass and what humans survived would probably not be cruising the Internet for fun (now you see why I said, two entries ago, that our caveman-refined senses are probably not so out of date as they would seem).
So thank you, Stanislav Petrov, for not initiating nuclear annihilation 24 years ago today. That was very decent of you. Hopefully that's as close as we'll ever get to that particular scenario.
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
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This entry has 3 comments: (Add your own)
-
Better than a fruit basket, we ought to give him a pension and a life-size statue in every city in Europe and North America. He not only did the right thing to save a lot of people being vaporized, I think he knew what it was going to cost him. He wasn't court-martialed or shot, but his career was destroyed; as far as I know he never held a position of any authority again, and was retired as soon as possible.
Hell of a way to treat a guy who saved civilization as we know it. -
9/26/07 11:10 PM
-Paul
http://journals.aol.ca/plittl