While the Nobel Committee is choosing which of the current candidates to award the Peace Prize, I remembered this story.
Stanislav Petrov is the man who prevented nuclear war in 1983.
Dry information from Wikipedia:
“On the night of September 26, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the operational duty officer of the Serpukhov-15 command post, located 100 km from Moscow. At this time cold war was at its peak: three and a half weeks ago, the Soviet Union was shot down by a South Korean passenger Boeing 747.
The command post, where Petrov was on duty, received information from the space early warning system that had been put into service a year earlier. In the event of a missile attack, the country's leadership was immediately notified, which made a decision on a retaliatory strike.
On September 26, while Petrov was on duty, the computer reported the launch of missiles from an American base. However, after analyzing the situation (“the launches were made from only one point and consisted of only a few intercontinental ballistic missiles”), Lieutenant Colonel Petrov decided that this was a false alarm of the system.
A subsequent investigation determined that the cause was the satellite's sensors being illuminated by sunlight reflected from high-altitude clouds. Later, changes were made to the space system to eliminate such situations.
Due to military secrecy and political considerations, Petrov's actions became known to the general public only in 1988.
On January 19, 2006, at the UN headquarters in New York, Stanislav Petrov was presented with a special award from the international public organization “Association of World Citizens.” It is a crystal figurine of “Hand Holding the Globe” with the inscription “To the Man Who Prevented Nuclear War” engraved on it.
After his retirement, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov lives and works in Fryazino, near Moscow."
The Nobel Prize is given for achievements that have influenced the entire life of mankind. They are given for discoveries that could actually have been made decades ago and have proven their value over time. Nobel prizes are given for books written a long time ago: so that their value can be proven by time. They are given alive, although this year the committee made an exception. And only the Peace Prize in last years is a constant source of confusion.
So: in my opinion, the actions that Colonel Petrov took saved the world from a nuclear disaster: if he had been mistaken in his assessments, we all might not have existed at all. Perhaps, together with the planet on which we all live. The accuracy of his assessment has been confirmed by time, and its significance is difficult to underestimate. He is our contemporary and a completely worthy candidate from our country.
I would very much like it to be remembered not only about politicians (whose actions cannot always be unequivocally assessed over the course of one life) when deciding who should receive the Peace Prize.
Yes and simply - good story with a happy ending. Just what you need on a warm and sunny Friday.
PROLOGUE.
This little information was included in the news that arrives in my email every day. After reading it, I became interested in it in the sense that I had heard about it once, but nothing more than something! Yes, it turns out that a film was made on this topic...
I found the film, watched it, looked up information on the Internet, and now I’ve come up with this article in which you might be interested in something you haven’t heard about.
But, let's take it in order, and if you are interested in the information, then maybe you will watch the film and express your opinion.
***This video is quite “fresh” in time, I saw it after the end of the entire presentation, and therefore I am posting it in the prologue.
The man who saved the world: who was Stanislav Petrov from Fryazino?
The name of Stanislav Petrov, whose death became known by chance just three days ago, is widely known, but not in Russia. The world calls him the man who stopped nuclear war. Pavel Aksenov, a correspondent for the BBC Russian service, who spoke with the hero personally, spoke about who Petrov was and why a whole film was made about him.
Stanislav Petrov /2016/
THE DEATH OF OFFICER PETROV, WHO PREVENTED A NUCLEAR WAR, HAS BEEN CONFIRMED.
The son of Soviet Army Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who prevented a nuclear war in 1983, confirmed his father’s death. This was reported on the website of the Zvezda TV channel.
“Yes, I confirm, he died back in May,”- said Dmitry Petrov.
The death of 77-year-old Petrov, one of the main heroes of the Cold War, was reported on September 14 by the German newspaper WAZ, and on September 18 by the American The New York Times and the British broadcasting corporation BBC. It was noted that the man passed away on May 19 at his home in Fryazino, near Moscow, where he lived alone. The cause of death was congestive (hypostatic) pneumonia.
The BBC indicates that this became known to the media thanks to a call from German director Karl Schumacher, who wanted to congratulate the Soviet officer on his birthday on September 7. Then Dmitry Petrov told him about his father’s death. Then Schumacher posted the information on the Internet, and the press paid attention to it.
Stanislav Petrov was born on September 7, 1939 near Vladivostok. In 1972 he graduated from the Kiev Higher Engineering Radio Engineering School of Air Defense named after. Air Marshal A.I. Pokryshkin (KVIRTU Air Defense) and arrived to serve in the Serpukhov-15 unit in the Moscow region. In 1983, the lieutenant colonel was responsible for the proper functioning of the satellites that were part of the missile attack warning system. In Serpukhov-15 he worked as chief analyst. On the night of September 26, 1983, Petrov was an operational duty officer whose duties included monitoring information coming from the Oko system - the newest at that time satellite system detection of launches of American intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Then she recorded the launch.
If such information was received, the duty officer had to notify senior management about the missile attack, who would decide on a retaliatory strike. However, Petrov did not trust the system. He later said that he was guided by the principle “a computer, by definition, is a fool.” From his point of view, the United States could not attack the USSR by launching missiles from only one base, and there were no other launch signals. Petrov's decision turned out to be correct. In fact, the sensor of the satellite entering the "Eye" mistook solar "flash" for the launch - the reflection of the sun's rays from high-altitude clouds.
In 2014, a film dedicated to Petrov by Danish director Peter Anthony, “The Man Who Saved the World,” was released. The lieutenant colonel plays himself there. Natalia Vdovina, Sergei Shnyrev, Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Matt Damon, Ashton Kutcher also played roles in the film.
*I tried to supplement this small information, which most of the living citizens of the Russian Federation and all other countries of the planet may have missed, with several fragments.
Before watching the film, I found about this man on the Internet interesting information, which supplemented the message. From a more interesting perspective
Having shortened it somewhat, I also present it here, since it contains very useful information...
Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov was born on September 7, 1939 in Vladivostok. He died a few months before he turned 78 - on May 19, 2017 in the city of Fryazino / Moscow region /.
Soviet officer, lieutenant colonel, who prevented a potential nuclear war when a false missile warning system alerted him to a US attack.
At this time, the Cold War was at its peak: just three and a half weeks earlier, the Soviet Union had shot down a South Korean Boeing 747 that had twice crossed the border.
On the night of September 26, 1983 /Stanislav Petrov is almost 44 years old/, when Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the operational duty officer of the Serpukhov-15 command post, located 100 km from Moscow, information began to arrive from the Oko space early warning system, which had been put into service a year earlier. ": the computer reported the launch of missiles from an American base.
According to the instructions, during a single launch, the system qualifies it as a “start”; during repeated launches, it is classified as a “nuclear missile attack.”
But, after detecting a target, which must be confirmed by over-the-horizon and over-the-horizon detection means, after which information is automatically transmitted from the command post to the notified objects, red displays light up in the “nuclear suitcase” of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, on the “crocuses” of the Minister of Defense, chief General Staff, commanders of the military branches.
The operators then launch the gyroscopes of Soviet ballistic missiles, awaiting the decision of the country's highest military-political leadership to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike. After him, the Commander-in-Chief of the Missile Forces automatic system communications with the troops must transmit a coded version of the retaliatory strike and a cipher to remove the lock from the missile launchers, and the commanders of the combat complexes will have only two keys to simultaneously open the safes with punched program cards, enter them into the ballistic weapons computer and press the start button. For everything - about everything - 40 minutes - this is the flight time of a ballistic missile to the territory of the USSR when launched from Cape Canaveral, where the main US ICBM base was located.
*This describes the entire process in WIKIPEDIA.
Having analyzed the situation and the reports from the visual specialists, Lieutenant Colonel Petrov decided that this was due to a false alarm of the system:
“launches” were noted by the system from only one point, and there were only a few of them; The “visualists” who watched on computer screens did not record the rocket launches.
Therefore, the corresponding notification went down the chain of command.
Colonel General Yu.V., having arrived at the command post, reported about the false alarm of the system to the Commander-in-Chief and Minister of Defense D.F. Ustinov.
A subsequent investigation determined that the cause was the satellite's sensors being illuminated by sunlight reflected from high-altitude clouds.
But as Stanislav Evgrafovich himself said: journalist of the newspaper “Top Secret” Dm. Likhanov,
— On July 13, 1983, planned routine maintenance work was carried out at the Central Control Center under the new combat program. However, when it was tried not in simulation, but in operating mode, due to a malfunction in one of the blocks of the exchange system, the machine produced false information about the mass launch of ballistic missiles. The chief of staff of the army, General Zavaliy, gave a verbal order to remove all developments from service. The developers, and they are civilians, categorically refused to carry out the general’s order and left the site. Then the military removed these developments with their own hands. I think this incident was directly related to what happened here in September. As a result of the investigation, we brought to light a whole bunch of shortcomings in the space warning system for the launch of ballistic missiles. The main problems were the combat program and the imperfection of spacecraft. And this is the basis of the entire system. All these shortcomings were eliminated only by 1985, when the system was finally put on combat duty.
Due to military secrecy and political considerations, Petrov’s actions became known to the general public only in 1991, when an essay by journalist Dm was published in the weekly “Top Secret”. Likhanov about the feat of S.E. Petrov, written on the basis of an interview with that same General Yu.V. Votintsev, which took place at the end of 1990. Subsequently, the retired general reflected those events in his own memoirs.
In 1984, Lieutenant Colonel Petrov retired, began working, and then retired and stayed to live in the town of Fryazino near Moscow, the center of Russian / Soviet / microwave electronics.
On January 19, 2006, in New York at the UN Headquarters, Stanislav Petrov was presented with a special award from the international public organization “Association of World Citizens.” It is a crystal figurine of “Hand Holding the Globe” with the inscription “To the Man Who Prevented Nuclear War” engraved on it.
On February 24, 2012, in Baden-Baden, Stanislav Petrov was awarded the German Media Prize for 2011.
On February 17, 2013, he became a laureate of the Dresden Prize, awarded for the prevention of armed conflicts.
Dresden 2013
the ending follows
Note from Altaich.
I will express my thoughts at the end of the second part of this story about a man who played a decisive role in preventing a new world war, finding himself in right time and in the right place. I think that in the history of confrontation between states, at all times there have been people who, “doing their job,” made every effort and did not spare their lives to preserve peace on Earth. But, in the described case, the probability of extinction of human and all other species of the living world was very high. Maybe that’s why in our country they try to remember such people less, because this is a reminder that people in general are destroyers, not creators. And who likes to speak honestly about themselves?
HAPPY READING!
SEE ENDING.
Altaich, s. Altai,
The son of Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet officer who prevented nuclear war in 1983, has confirmed that his father has died, according to media reports. According to him, this happened back in May; the cause of Petrov’s death was pneumonia.
Lieutenant Colonel of the Soviet Army Stanislav Petrov, who prevented a nuclear war, died in May of this year. His son reported this Dmitry Petrov, who confirmed the information about his father’s death, which had previously appeared in the foreign press.
In mid-September, the German publication WAZ reported that Stanislav Petrov, considered one of the heroes of the Cold War, died as a result of hypostatic pneumonia. A few days later this information was published The New York Times And BBC. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that the first media representative to learn about Petrov's death was Karl Schumacher, a director from Germany who called the retired officer on September 7 to wish him a happy birthday. Dmitry Petrov told him that his father had passed away, and Schumacher shared the sad news on the Internet, which attracted the attention of the media.
Threat nuclear war
Stanislav Petrov was born near Vladivostok in 1939. In 1972, he graduated from the Air Defense Radio Engineering School in Kyiv and was sent to serve in Serpukhov near Moscow. Petrov held the position of chief analyst. In his job responsibilities included monitoring the operation of satellites that were part of the Oko missile attack warning system - at that time it was the latest and was considered as accurate as possible. These were the years of the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear war hung in the air. It was believed that the Americans could attack at any moment, so the Soviet missiles were also on alert, and even a minor reason could upset the fragile balance.
"The computer is a fool"
On the night of September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was on duty, and the launch detection system for American intercontinental missiles detected the launch. According to job description, the duty officer immediately had to report the incident to senior management, who would have to decide on a retaliatory strike. Despite the signal about the attack, Petrov did not blindly trust the system. He later said that he reasoned according to the principle “a computer, by definition, is a fool,” and his own logic said that there was no attack. According to Petrov, the United States would never have launched a missile attack against the USSR from a single base, and there were no other launch alerts. The officer decided not to notify his superiors about the signal, and he turned out to be right - the system simply failed. What the Eye took for a rocket launch turned out to be the sun's rays reflected from high-altitude clouds. Later this flaw in the system was eliminated.
A feat that has not been forgotten
For reasons of military secrecy, Petrov’s feat became known only in 1993, ten years after those events. In 2006, Petrov received a UN award for preventing the outbreak of a nuclear war. In addition, he won the Dresden Prize, which is awarded to people who played an important role in preventing armed conflicts. In 2014, the film “The Man Who Saved the World” was released, directed by a Danish director. Peter Anthony. In this film Petrov played himself.
Over the next few minutes, markers for five more missiles appeared on the computer screen. At this time, the Cold War was at its peak - three and a half weeks earlier, a South Korean Boeing 747 was shot down.
According to the instructions, in the event of a missile attack, the duty officer was obliged to immediately notify the country's leadership, who made the decision on a retaliatory strike. The flight time of a ballistic missile from the continental United States to the USSR was about 30 minutes, so Petrov had a very limited choice: either report to the Secretary General, who would have to make the final decision using his nuclear suitcase, or report to his superiors: “We are giving out false information” and be responsible for the consequences yourself. Considering that Andropov had only 15 minutes left to make a decision, it is safe to say that he would have believed Petrov and pressed the button for a retaliatory nuclear strike. But Petrov did not take responsibility for billions of human lives and did not act according to instructions - he did not press the button, despite the fact that all 30 checks gave positive results.
Guided by common sense (they say, 5 missiles are too few for the first strike in a war), Petrov decided that the computer had malfunctioned. As a result, this brave man was right: there was indeed a failure in the warning system. After a year-long secret investigation into the incident on September 26, 1983, it was concluded that the system readings that shocked Petrov and his duty shift were caused by a rare but predictable effect of signal reflection from the surface of the Earth. The reason was that the satellite sensors were illuminated by sunlight reflected from high-altitude clouds. Later, changes were made to the space system to eliminate such situations.
However, the system failed again in 1995, when the Russians briefly mistook a scientific rocket launched from Norway for an incoming American nuclear missile. There have been cases when launches of meteorological satellites, the rising of the full moon, or flocks of geese were mistaken for a missile attack. They intended to solve the problem of failures in the warning system by deploying a joint early warning control center in Moscow, but they never had time to build it.
Today, the United States and Russia still maintain thousands of fully alert nuclear missiles aimed at big cities each other. Therefore, there is a possibility that similar false alarms may occur again. And this could provoke a real retaliatory strike.
In January 2006, the international public organization The "Association of World Citizens" for the Prevention of Nuclear War presented retired Colonel Stanislav Petrov with its prize - the "Hand Holding the Globe" figurine.
If another person had been in Stanislav Petrov’s place, we might no longer exist.
It’s not hard to say, but now Stanislav Petrov lives in a tiny apartment, almost unsociable. He tries not to remember that incident... Maybe the consequences of those checks affected...