The 1980’s, the decade of Legwarmers, Pac-man and that time the almost mythical “Computer”
was Time’s man of the year.
But in 1983 the world also came very close being destroyed,
and all because of a computer malfunction.
Almost twenty years after the Cuban Missile crisis, on the 26th of September 1983, a 44
year old Russian Stanislav Petrov was working as the duty officer at one of Russia’s nuclear
warning systems when a report came in that their arch enemy, the US, had just launched
a missile and it was heading straight for Russia.
The alarm went off four more times
Telling him that in total 5 nuclear warheads were heading for his home country
Both sides in the cold war were MAD,
in that they had a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction.
That meant if either one launched a missile the other would immediately retaliate no matter
the consequences.
Unfortunately, those consequences we’re the destruction of at least most of the Northern
hemisphere and the entire first world.
So, Stanislav had a decision to make.
Arguably the toughest decision ever.
Either, sit tight and do nothing, hoping that the warning system is wrong, or, abiding by
Russian military protocol, attempt to launch a retaliatory attack which, if the missile
system was in fact wrong, would be Russia striking first and the USA would go absolutely
MAD.
Given that you’re still sitting there watching this video quite happily.
You could probably guess what happened.
Stanislav reasoned that if the US was to launch an attack it wouldn’t only send five measly
missiles when they, at the time, had more than 20,000 of them.
So, he decided to wait it out.
Luckily he was right and the missiles never appeared.
That’s because the detection system that supposed protected the soviet union from total
annihilation was tricked by sunlight bouncing off some clouds.
Stanislav wasn’t commended or rewarded for his decision, instead, in true Russian fashion
they said his “correct actions” were “duly noted”.
It has since been argued that the decision would have had to have been referred to his
superiors and they would have looked for corroborating reports from other systems before launching
the attack.
So, maybe Stanislav isn’t the saviour of all mankind.
But he did get a documentary film made about him.
However, there is one Russian who came even closer to causing a nuclear apocalypse.
And an event in his life was made into a film with Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson so he kinda
wins on both levels.
People often call October 1962 “the closest the world has ever come to ending” because
it was the month of the Cuban Missile crisis.
Super quick run down of that.
The Russians and the Americans don’t like each other.
They’ve both got big bombs.
Russia wants to put its bombs here.
America really doesn’t like that idea one bit.
Then they sat in boats in the sea for a while until the Russians eventually backed down.
And all lived happily ever after.
However, you can actually pinpoint a day and decision that if made incorrectly would have
ensured destruction of a large proportion of the world.
And it was made by just 3 people.
And they were stuck in a submarine miles below the ocean.
And only one of them made the right choice.
Vasili Arkhipov was second in command of the B-59 submarine off the coast of Cuba.
Remember that’s where Americans don’t want the Russians.
So a group of US Navy ships began dropping depth charges to try and force the submarine
to surface.
The crew had two options go to the surface and be sent back to mother Russia with their
tail between their legs and probably face punishment or dive deep and try to evade the
Americans.
They chose the one that wouldn’t make them outcasts in their homeland.
Unfortunately, at that depth they could no longer communicate with Russian command or
hear US civilian radio signals.
This led the Captain to fairly wildly assume that war had broken out and say that they
should launch their nuclear warheads.
A move which would have once again made the Americans very MAD.
The political officer on the sub also agreed.
Fortunately, Vasili also got a say because he was the commander of the entire submarine
flotilla.
Vasili was also well liked among the crew because of an event the previous year in which
a sub he was in was nearing nuclear meltdown.
They all evaded certain death by cobbling together a engineering crew to replace the
broken cooling system.
Great success.
Well, when I said they “all evaded certain death” the engineering crew are an exception
as they all died within the next month from radiation overdose
Anyway, Vasili decided to not launch.
The decision had to be unanimous and therefore Vasili prevented an all out nuclear war.
They resurfaced and returned home to Russia.
However, they, again, weren’t celebrated.
One admiral even told them "It would have been better if you'd gone down with your ship."
This event wasn’t revealed to the world until 2002.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense said "We came very close" to nuclear war, "closer than we
knew at the time." and an advisor for the JFK administration continued "This was not
only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War.
It was the most dangerous moment in human history."