My frequent readers know that World War III is something that I discuss often on this blog. I am obsessed with learning about what goes on behind the scenes starting with the second our military detects a nuclear launch, especially from Russia.
There are many articles from which to choose, so here, here, here and here. In no order whatsoever. Today, however, I want to discuss a news story from 1983 that no one knew about until many years later. Back then, of course, Russia was known as the Soviet Union.
Back then, during the Cold War era, the Soviet Union was our enemy, perhaps our biggest enemy ever. Each of our nuclear assets were aimed directly at each other and, around the clock, the weapons were ready launch without hesitation or question. We had missiles at the ready, bombers on warm stand by at all times and nuclear submarines ready to fire within mere minutes of a legitimate order.
Back in 1983, then, things were serious. They were our enemies (a whole different and longer tale than this one), but turns out that we have a Soviet to thank for us even being here. Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (seen on the left in 2007) was in charge of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal on September 26.
It had been three weeks since the Soviets maliciously shot down a commercial jet and tensions were obviously high. That alone could have, and actually should have, caused massive retaliation of some sort on our part. After all, 63 of our countrymen were killed.
The Soviet Union blamed us, saying that we provoked them and thereby caused the incident. Any country could have retaliated, and rightly so, especially the South Koreans and that’s what the Soviets were scared of. That’s why this whole story is so scary.
On that night, the Soviet Union’s early detection system sent out an alert that our country had launched five nuclear missiles. He quickly decided that this threat couldn’t possibly be real, because if the United States were to attack, they would not send a measly five ICBM’s.
He could not confirm this attack, and that confirmation was needed under Soviet nuclear retaliation protocol that was in place at the time.
Everyone was screaming at him to launch their retaliatory strike. But he remained steadfast in his decision that this was not a true threat. Something was terribly wrong. Indeed it was. And it all came down to the false alarm coming down because the sun reflected off the satellite in just the right way above North Dakota at just the right time.
That, of course, begs the question: how did the Soviets manage to have a satellite watching (and several others played a role in the false detection situation) without any action taken against them? That is a frightening thing to think about on its own, but that’s for another article at another time.
Petrov defied direct orders, and he was initially lauded for his actions, but his superiors quickly turned on him. This is likely because the Soviet failure made them a global laughingstock to say the least.
The failure also exposed just how quickly Russia would have been ready and willing to destroy us, their greatest enemy at the time. It also exposed serious and dangerous flaws within the Soviet nuclear system, a system that went through a whopping thirty verifications way too quickly.
A simple computer error, part of a new system and caused in part by malfunctioning satellites embarrassed Soviet leadership. Numerous verification methods failed under pressure and during a real world event. This had to humiliate the Soviets in a huge manner.
Despite the fact that he truly did save the world, Petrov wound up taking early retirement. That was his reward for preventing the end of this experiment called life.
Had Petrov given the order to launch what they thought was a retaliatory strike but would actually have been a first strike, you wouldn’t be sitting here, reading this article. Humanity as we know it, especially in the United States, would have ended the world in just a couple of hours.
Just think about this story for a moment: an enemy became our hero. He did in fact die a hero May 19, 2017 from causes incident to pneumonia. So make all the Russian jokes you wish. Be wary of Vladimir Putin’s leadership and his ability and desire to start a nuclear war at any moment now.
We have a system in place to respond to nuclear strikes. There is no red button, but only a serious of code verifications and turns of keys. Clips from television shows and movies tell fictional tales of course, but things like this could happen in reality and this time Russia will not be our pal.
This whole story is epic and should be taught in schools. This whole event was so impactful that people are still discussing it even to this day.
Now, just remember: you’re living the life that you’re leading only because a brave Soviet man defied orders. Some of you probably wouldn’t exist without that man being in charge that night.
(Photo credit, public domain, NPS/Minuteman Missile National Historic Site)