#014: Save the World, and Tell No One
It is September 26th, 1983. You have just assumed your duties as the watch officer in charge at Serpukhov-15, a secret bunker outside Moscow. You task is to watch over Russia’s brand-new early warning system, Oko (“Eye”). It used satellites to detect the glare of launched missiles as they rose through the atmosphere, and should give the Soviet leadership enough time to order a retaliatory strike if the Americans launched their missiles towards the USSR.
Just after midnight, the siren sounds. A satellite in the Oko system reports the launch of an American Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile. What do you do?
Tensions are already high between the East and the West. Early this year, Ronald Reagan had declared the Soviet Union an evil empire, and called for rejected calls for freezing the arms race. Three weeks ago, Soviet fighter jets had shot down Korean Airlines Flight 7, which had strayed into Soviet airspace. And now NATO just started their annual series of war games in Europe simulating all-out warfare with the East, airlifting over 15.000 troops from the US to Europe in total radio silence. The Soviets had never seen anything like this before, leading to fears among the Soviet leadership that the West was up to something.
On that day, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was the watch officer in charge at that time. Protocol dictated to immediately inform the Soviet leadership if a launch was detected, resulting in a retaliatory strike. Doing so would definitely start World War 3.
And then the alarm goes off again. More missiles have been launched, the early warning system claimed. There were now a total of five Minuteman missiles on their way.
But Petrov decided not to report the launches. He thought it weird that the Americans would open their first salvo in World War 3 with only five comparatively small missiles (A Minuteman missile carries a nuclear warhead capable between 170 and 350 kilotons). He reasoned that an American first strike would consist of a massive salvo, with much more capable ICBMs, along with bombers flying towards the USSR, of which there were none. It just didn’t make much sense.
So, he reported the alerts as a false alarm to his superiors. Half an hour later, when the supposed missiles were supposed to hit the Soviet Union, the lack of nuclear mushrooms proved him right. Later analysis uncovered that sunlight reflected off some clouds had lead the early warning system to believe the missiles had been launched.
Petrov was initially praised for keeping his cool, but later reprimanded for not recording all the events in his logbook (his reply was “Because I had a phone in one hand and the intercom in the other, and I don’t have a third hand”). Petrov continued to work for the military, eventually retiring in 1984, fading into obscurity. The West never knew how close we came to nuclear holocaust, were it not for the memoirs of a high-ranking Soviet general released in 1998. After that, Petrov was recognized by the West for his actions (or lack thereof), and received several awards and prizes, as well as being the subject of the documentation “The Man Who Saved The World”.
Lt. Col. Petrov died this year at age 77, as reported by his son and Karl Schumacher, a German political activist, who had become his friends after his tale was published.