Hey Thoughty2 here.
On the 26th September 1983, in the midst of the Cold War, a Russian Colonel named Stanislav
Petrov was sat in the soviet missile control centre monitoring incoming satellite data,
as he did every day.
His job was to monitor the nuclear missile early warning system and report a suspected
launch higher up the command so they can retaliate.
But on this day something happened for the very first time, something he had been waiting
for, yet dreading, his entire career.
The alarm sounded, the early warning system had detected that a nuclear missile had been
launched from the United States, heading towards the USSR.
Then, moments later, more warnings appeared, five more missiles had been launched by the
US.
But Petrov sat there and did nothing.
He didn't report it higher up the command because he knew that would mean a full-scale
nuclear retaliation from Russia and the end of the world as we know it.
For he had a gut instinct, he felt that the computers were malfunctioning and the warnings
were no more than false alarms.
He was right.
He went on to fix the bugs in the system that caused the false alarm.
His gut instinct saved the world and he has thus come to be known as "The man who saved
the world".
He received no reward from the Soviets for his actions.
He was in fact fired from his position and re-assigned to a less sensitive post.
Petrov believes his superiors were embarrassed about there failings within the early warning
system.
People often tell you to trust your gut instinct, but what exactly does that mean?
Do you ever see someone and instantly get an uneasy feeling in your stomach?
A little voice inside you that says that person is up to no good.
When you're driving you just know the person to the side of you is going to suddenly change
lanes, before they even begin to move.
The moment right before something bad happens or you receive bad news you get a sinking
feeling in your stomach, a distressing anxiety and tenseness.
Well what if I said that this feeling is caused by your second brain.
That's right, some experts believe we have two brains and one of them is in our stomach.
Now we're not talking about a traditional brain here, it certainly doesn't look like
one.
The brain and the gut are intricately connected by a network of neurons and nerves, these
information superhighways transport chemicals and hormones between our brain and our stomach.
It's how you know when you're hungry, your stomach tells your brain.
This connection is called the brain-gut axis.
But it's much more than a connection between your brain and gut, this chemical highway
is part of a larger network of hundreds of millions of nerves and neurons, called the
enteric nervous system.
It monitors your entire gastrointestinal system from the oesophagus all the way down to your
anus.
It reports to the brain when we should feel hungry, full, when we're ill, nauseous and
more.
But this is more than a fancy monitoring system, research has proven that the enteric nervous
system really can act as a second brain.
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So how is it we have a second brain?
Well the enteric nervous system is so complex and contains so many nodes that it can act
as a neural network and process information exactly like our brain does.
So your gut isn't just reporting facts, it's thinking them up too.
Now, our second brain can't compose music or help us out with our maths homework but
it can certainly think for itself.
One area it excels in is hormones and emotions.
The gut contains 95% of the body's supply of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that affects
our mood, it can make up happy, sad, anxious and an array of other emotions.
The gut is therefore hugely responsible for controlling your mood.
Happy gut, happy mind.
So much so that there is even talk of medication that directly targets your gut as a potential
cure for depression.
But the key emotion here is anxiety and it's how your gut can predict the future and often
make better decisions about a situation than your actual brain.
The enteric nervous system can make your brain feel anxiety at the drop of a hat but it doesn't
just do it for fun.
Our brain is constantly taking in massive amounts of data and I mean MASSIVE.
The brain processes 400 Billion bits of information per second.
The colours and shapes of every single object in our surroundings, every sound we can hear,
the temperature, what we're going to say next.
400 Billion bits of information at a time sounds like superhuman levels of cognition
and it is.
Because unfortunately, our conscious mind is only aware of a measly 2,000 of these 400
billion bits of information.
That means out of every 200 million bits of information our brain takes in and processes,
we only pay attention to one of them.
It's why experience tunnel vision or single-mindedness.
Although our conscious mind doesn't make use of those 400 billion bits of information,
our gut does.
The enteric nervous system and the brain can work together to deduce things from the constant
tidal-wave of ignored information and using this collective information, the brain and
the gut, together can actually predict the immediate future.
And if the future looks somewhat uneasy our gut immediately responds by making us feel
anxious.
Researchers in Columbia carried out experiments and stumbled upon something they called the
"emotional oracle effect".
Over eight separate studies test participants were asked to make predictions on various
topics, such as who will be the next US president, which movies will win awards, will the Dow
Jones index go up or down and even the weather.
Some of the participants trusted their initial gut feeling, whilst others made an educated
and calculated guess based on their knowledge.
72% of people who trusted their gut instinct predicted that Barack Obama would beat Hilary
Clinton for the 2008 Democratic nomination.
Whilst only 64% of people who actually put thought into it made the same, correct prediction.
At the time the two candidates were neck and neck in the polls.
In fact the gut instinct trusters were significantly better at all the predictions than those who
thought about it logically.
They were 25% better at predicting the Dow Jones Index and they could even predict the
weather with some degree of accuracy, using nothing more than what their enteric nervous
system was telling them.
But the researchers found that this amazing stomach-powered predictive talent only works
if the individual has at least some knowledge of the situation, our gut feeling doesn't
work for things we know absolutely nothing about.
Suggesting that the test participants weren't actually predicting the future in a supernatural
sense, but their enteric nervous system and brain were collectively using their aggregated
knowledge to quickly form the most accurate prediction possible.
All those billions of bits of information we take in each second are collectively summarised
and these summaries are sent to our enteric nervous system, which uses it to determine
which emotion we should feel in our gut, anxiety, fear, happiness?
Remember in school when the teacher left the classroom for a few minutes and all hell broke
loose, you could guarantee that within five seconds, someone would be stood on top of
a desk or drawing phallic images on the chalk board.
But then suddenly you got a gut feeling that the teacher was returning, you couldn't hear
them, but nevertheless, out of nowhere a wave of silence and obedience would wash over the
classroom in an instant.
Then the teacher would walk in, none-the-wiser.
It's almost as if we predicted the future, or our gut did anyway.
You may have had the exact same experience at work, when you're watching Thoughty2 on
YouTube and suddenly, you sense that the boss is walking down the hallway about to enter
the room and rumble you, so you quickly hit the like button and close your browser.
Whilst this seems very mystical, it's not, your brain and enteric nervous system are
actually using billions of bits of data and past knowledge to make an educated guess at
the typical behavioural patterns of your teacher or boss.
Whilst your conscious mind is too distracted with whatever is presently happening in front
of you.
Perhaps your boss always comes and checks on you around the same time each day, but
you've never realised, you don't look at the clock, but your unconscious mind has, and
it has created a schedule of your boss's daily actions and stored it at the back of your
brain, without you even realising it.
So it seems Petrov's lack of action on that day he saved the world wasn't random, he may
not have known why at the time, but there will have been good reasons that his gut decided
to signal to him that something was amiss with the alarm system, perhaps his unconscious
brain had picked up a few subtle signals from his environment and past knowledge, that the
computers were malfunctioning.
Petrov has later reflected back on the events of that monumental day and he himself said
that, at the time, he had no idea why he didn't report it to his superiors, he just felt it
was wrong, but couldn't explain why.
Looking back now he says there were definite reasons why he should have suspected a false
alarm, such as, five or six missiles seemed like an illogical first strike by the US,
compared to America's total arsenal that is a tiny number of missiles and if you want
to suppress your opponent's chances of retaliation, surely you would use your full nuclear force
against them upfront.
It's little things like this that Petrov's gut will have picked up on that day, but his
conscious mind wouldn't have.
So yes, a man's stomach really did save the world.
Thanks for watching.