Misc. Ramblings

The MosNews.com site has an article about a man who may have saved the world. According to the report, on September 26, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Petrov was in charge (a Lt. Colonel, in charge?) of the Soviet Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. He was the man who was responsible for pressing the button that would launch the Soviet missiles in retaliation to a US first strike.

At about half-past midnight, Lt. Colonel Petrov's monitoring systems indicated that the US had in fact launched a single missile towards the USSR. A few seconds later, two, then three, four, and finally five in bound missiles were supposedly detected.

Petrov was dumb founded. None of the launch scenarios he had been trained for covered this contingency. Why launch only five when the US had thousands of missiles? What to do? He had but minutes to decide whether to irrevocably launch the Soviet Union's missiles against the US.

Fortunately, for everyone, he had the courage to make the decision that this was a false alarm. Which indeed it was. A "bug" in the warning system had created the false report.

Now, I don't know if Petrov knew before hand the system was riddled with problems but, in any case, having a human being in the loop is what may have saved mankind from a nuclear winter.

Aloha!