Retired Soviet officer rewarded for averting nuclear war

[Garik]

[QUOTE=Alien_23;34876471]Another way of seeing it: If he didn't, we would be in our own live-action Fallout game.[/QUOTE]

Except without humanity in general.

[Griff]

Reminds me of a certain [URL="http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9whehyybLqU"]song.[/URL]

[Noble]

[QUOTE=cecilbdemodded;34874375]I'll remind you that they say that NOW, 20 some years later. And it's not like they would lie or anything right?

I admit it could be true, but consider this: This was their newest early warning system, in theory this is the best system they had. If the guy running their best warning system starts telling everyone 'The Americans have launched' and they know US missiles could be impacting anytime from 15 to 30 minutes after that warning(depending on launch point), they MIGHT have felt they don't have time to wait for older systems to confirm.

One of the more dangerous aspects of the Cold War was both sides' attempts to position missiles as close to targets as possible. Why do you think we almost had a war over missiles in Cuba? Cause it would have made it impossible for us to take the time to verify a real launch. No one wanted to have their missiles destroyed on the ground.[/QUOTE]

I'll give the man credit for avoiding spreading a panic, but I don't believe for a second that Russia would have started a nuclear war over a single station showing a false reading. The computer systems were often vulnerable to false readings (as the official statement says), and had it been a real launch, it would have been quickly confirmed by their satellite systems and multiple stations before the decision to launch nukes would even be considered.

[quote]Petrov later indicated the influences in this decision included: that he was informed a U.S. strike would be all-out, so five missiles seemed an illogical start,[1] that the launch detection system was new and, in his view, not yet wholly trustworthy, and that ground radars failed to pick up corroborative evidence, even after minutes of delay.[/quote]

The man used common sense and did his job, but I don't think there's any reason to believe that he "saved the world"

[neosloth]

[QUOTE=crackberry;34878530]Good to know that not every Russian was an ultimatum type person. The balls to say it was a false alarm AND report it to superiors is amazing.[/QUOTE]
Who said that every Russian is an ultimatum type person?