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The Man Who Saved Us from World War III is No More  




The Man Who Saved Us from World War III is No More  SocialWorld

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Stanislav Petrov was a Soviet Military officer who is widely known for his decision in the cold war when he saved the world from another nuclear war. He died at the age of 77, his son said on Tuesday.

The amazing story of Petrov was picturized in the documentary movie named as “The Man Who Saved the World”, the movie received several international awards and was honored at the United Nations. He used to live in a small house outside Moscow and died in relative obscurity on may 19, the news of his death was published months later when his German friend wrote a blog about his death.

After the World War II the cold war beings, Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. On September 26, 1983, Petrov was on duty at the command center of the Oko nuclear early-warning system, when the system wrongly detected incoming missiles from the US. He judged the report as a false alarm if he had told his commanders about the attack they might have ordered an exchange strike, instead he reported it as a system malfunction, and an afterward investigation proved he was right.

His son Dmitry said, “He came home knackered but did not tell us anything,” Petrov received an award “for services to the Fatherland” a few months later after the incident. Although the incident was kept as a secret for many years until the fall of Soviet Union in 1991, after the fall his story came to the light and he became the subject of numerous media reports in Russia and abroad.

In an interview his son said that “my father never thought of himself as a hero, he was always surprised that people are making a hero out of him, he simply did his job well and added that his father received hundred of letter from Europeans thanking him for averting the outbreak of a nuclear war”.

In an interview with the BBC, Petrov recalls about that day and said ” he had received computer readouts in the early hours of the morning of 26 September 1983 suggesting several US missiles had been launched. I had all the data [to suggest there was an ongoing missile attack] if I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it”, he said.

“All I had to do was to reach for the phone; to raise the direct line to our top commanders – but I couldn’t move. I felt like I was sitting on a hot frying pan,” said Petrov.

Although his training dictated he should contact the Soviet military immediately, Petrov instead called the duty officer at army headquarters and reported a system malfunction. If he had been wrong, the first nuclear blasts would have happened minutes later. “twenty-three minutes later I realized that nothing had happened, if there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it, it was such a relief,” he recalled.

Petrov retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel and later joined research institute that develops Soviet Union’s early warning system. German film-maker Karl Schumacher, who first bought Petrov’s story to an international audience, on 7th September he called him to wish him for his birthday, then only he came to know from his son that he had passed away. Mr. Schumacher announced the death online and it was eventually picked up by media outlets.

Content By- Tohid Sheikh

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