Today is my friend Carole's birthday, but in a way it is all of our birthdays. How so? Allow me to explain. Rare is it when we witness a moment in time that will have a profound impact on people as a whole. Before you is a story, that in this author's opinion, will either alarm you or not surprise you. Be forewarned, all of what I am going to tell you is true.
In the beginning, there was The Bomb
One should realize that all of our lives are constantly hanging in to the balance. That we must not take for granted what we have, even the most minor of things. Sometimes, by chance, one action we take leads to our demise. Be it that one last drink before driving, that one recreational drug that causes your heart to stop, or that piece of food that chokes you. At least here, we have an idea, but then there are actions or events not in your control or knowledge that will decide whether you live or die. September 26th, 1983 was one such event.
The world was locked in a Cold War, on an ideological front and sometimes a military one. Some say it was Communism versus Capitalism, or authoritarian Stalinism versus Liberal Democracy. However you looked at it, the world was divided into two heavily-armed camps. The centrepiece of this conflict was the looming specter of nuclear annihilation. For decades, since Hiroshima bombing by the US and the detonation of the Soviet bomb known as "Joe-1" in Kazakstan, the world has lived with this ghost. As the years went by, the bombs became bigger and more mobile, until the day came when bombers could be replaced by Intercontinental Balistic Missiles (ICBM). These talons of genocide, launched from a ground-based silo, reach it's target in 32 minutes.
9-26
Up until 1983, the closest the world ever got to nuclear war was the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of '62. Sitting in his control room at the Serbukov-15 Nuclear Command Centre, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was watching the array of computer monitors. For the past year, the US and the USSR have witnessed their relationship virtually collapse. The Soviets were in the midst of leadership change, their leader Brezhnev recently dying. His successors along with the rest of the nomenklaturawere enshrined with the belief that the West would strike first.
Prior to the twenty-third, several incidents heightened the global tensions. This was started with US President Reagan’s “Star Wars” announcement, which was the possible deployment of space-based weapons, to the Soviets shooting down a Korean passenger airliner. On top of all this, NATO was conducting military exercises, including the simulated use of a nuclear attack. One can only guess this added to the paranoia of the Kremlin.
In the early hours of September 26th, as Lt. Col. Petrov was looking at his monitors, one of them alerted a single US missile heading towards Moscow. Petrov quickly dismissed this, as he had known that recently some of their systems were acting up. Moments later, the bank of monitors showed five more incoming ICBMs. He could not contact any early warning system because he was the early warning system!
His intuition told him this was a mistake. It was known that the US had a no First Strike Policy, and that if the Americans were going to wipe out the Soviet Union, it would be with more than five missiles. Alarms blaring, monitors showing the same missiles edging closer towards Russia proper, a bright crimson lit button came alive.
It was essentially an electronic link to the authorities who would launch the missiles, the button connected to a phone line to his superiors who would make the final decision. It began to blink, Petrov probably glanced back at the monitors while his ears picked up the near panic of the 200 or so officers. If he was wrong, then his nation would perish in a matter of minutes; a quick shot of vodka and a single bullet in his pistol would probably end his guilt. But if he was right and still pressed the button, he would essentially commit the world to perish in a nuclear fire.
But, as Lt. Col. Petrov would later recount, he had a “funny feeling” in his gut. Instead of pressing the button to connect, he wrote up the whole thing as a computer failure. Waiting for what seemed to be the longest several minutes, waiting to see any confirmation of EMP bursts or even feel a shockwave, Petrov’s intuition was his only guidepost. Minutes later, his gut instincts proved true, as incoming reports from other stations reported the usual. Armageddon had been averted. But here is the most shocking thing of all, Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov was not slated to work that night. Someone else was to man that post but became ill, Petrov was a fill-in.
The Day After
The 44 year old Lieutenant Colonel reported to his superiors about what had happened. His written reports, which would later be classified until the 1990s, showed how their new system was a bust. Petrov was told that he would be congratulated. But politics soon overtook the minds of his bosses, the report was damning to say the least. Obviously, they thought, they would get some sort of blame, and as was the system back then so would the subordinates. Instead, the generals and political officers decided to reprimand him on the most trivial charges. His superiors even managed to find a way to blame him for the crisis!
Soon, the man who managed to avert World War 3, was stationed in some useless post within the Soviet military structure. Deemed politically damaging, prospects for career advancement were essentially dead. Stansilav Petrov would eventually take early retirement and live out alone (his wife died of cancer) in poverty in some flat in Fryazino, outside of Moscow. He would later receive a World Citizens Award and other accolades. To this day, this hero of humanity doesn't regard himself as such, that all he was doing was just his job. Well, regardless, thank you Petrov for being one cool cat and averting a "Day After". Still, the weapons are still out there, waiting to be used.
To my good friend Carole, and the rest of human civilization....Happy Birthday.
LINK TO STORY:
Stanislav Petrov Averts World Wide Nuclear War - Word Citizen
Moscow News: On the Brink
London's Daily Mail: Stan the Man (reprint)
Wikipedia: Stanislav Petrov