A Shout Out to Stanislav

A Shout Out to Stanislav
Anniversaries we were lucky to ever commemorate, at least once more

Gene Marx
Sep 27, 2024

Just after midnight, on September 26, 1983, the most destructive species on planet earth almost went up in smoke.

Stanislav Petrov in an image from a family album. Via Statement Film

In the Soviet Serpukhov-15 satellite control center, ninety miles southwest of Moscow, alarms shrieked and red lights were flashing. An American intercontinental ballistic missile launch had been detected. System data indicated with high reliability that five Minuteman ICBMs were definitely en route to strike Red Square with nuclear weapons. One after another, sirens howled, but the officer on duty, Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, wasn’t buying it. Something just wasn’t right. Call it intuition and years later, Petrov was quoted as saying his intuition won out.

I had a funny feeling in my gut. Who starts a nuclear war against another superpower with just five ICBMs?

The U.S. would have launched hundreds, possibly thousands, yet ground-based radar installations – which search for missiles rising above the horizon – still showed no evidence of an imminent attack. A skeptical Lt. Col. Petrov ignored launch protocol. With a “phone in one hand, the intercom in the other,” relayed nothing up his chain of command. A full Soviet retaliation was avoided by a 50-50 gut decision.

Read complete article on Substack.