Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces and served at Serpukhov-15, a Soviet base. The aforementioned base monitored early warnings of ballistic missile launches.
Come the night of September 26, 1983. Petrov just replaced a colleague at the night shift. Fifteen minutes after midnight, the alert went off. The system has warned that the U.S. had launched a missile.
“Naturally, he began to check all the services in case there had been a software failure,” Dmitry Petrov, Stanislav’s son, recalls the story. “He trusted the visual services the most. After all, they could observe the launch of missiles via the satellite.”
Visual inspection, however, was impossible, as the sun was already setting at that moment. He only had less than half an hour to decide whether the launch was true or false.
Around that time, the air between the U.S. and the Soviet was very tense. “In such a situation, a wrong decision would have been enough,” German Gigolaev states.
What did Stanislav do? Find out on the full story over at BBC Reel.
(Image Credit: Queery-54/ Wikimedia Commons)