Soviet officer who averted cold war nuclear disaster dies aged 77

‘Gut instinct’ told Lt Col Stanislav Petrov that apparent launch of US missiles was actually early warning system malfunction

A Soviet officer whose cool head and quick thinking saved the world from nuclear war has died aged 77.

Stanislav Petrov was on duty in a secret command centre outside Moscow on 26 September 1983 when a radar screen showed that five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched by the US towards the Soviet Union.

Red Army protocol would have been to order a retaliatory strike, but Petrov – then a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel – ignored the warning, relying on a “gut instinct” that told him it was a false alert.

“The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word ‘launch’ on it,” he told the BBC’s Russian Service in 2013. “All I had to do was to reach for the phone; to raise the direct line to our top commanders.”
In praise of ... Stanislav Petrov

Editorial: The 44-year-old lieutenant colonel, used to monitor the Soviet Union's early warning satellites
Read more

Instead of triggering a third world war, Petrov called in a malfunction in the early warning system. But even as he did so, he later admitted, he was not entirely sure he was doing the right thing.

“Twenty-three minutes later I realised that nothing had happened. If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was such a relief,” he said.

It later emerged that the false alarm was the result of a satellite mistaking the reflection of the sun’s rays off the tops of clouds for a missile launch.

“We are wiser than the computers,” Petrov said in a 2010 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. “We created them.”

The incident occurred at the height of the cold war, just three weeks after the Soviet army had shot down a Korean passenger jet, killing all 269 people on board.

Ronald Reagan had recently called the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” and Yuri Andropov, the ailing Soviet leader, was convinced the Americans were plotting a surprise nuclear attack.

Petrov was never honoured by the Soviet authorities for his role in saving the world from thermonuclear conflict. He was, however, reprimanded by his authorities for failing to describe the incident correctly in the logbook that night.

His story did not become widely known until 1998, when Gen Yury Votintsev, the retired commander of Soviet missile defence, published his memoirs. In the following years, Petrov achieved worldwide recognition for his actions.

He was honoured by the Association of World Citizens at the UN headquarters in 2006 as “the man who averted a nuclear war”. In 2013, he was awarded the prestigious Dresden peace prize.

He was also the subject of a 2013 documentary film entitled The Man who Saved the World.

The son of a second world war fighter pilot, Petrov was born in Vladivostok on 9 September 1939. He later studied at a Soviet air force college in Kiev.

He died on 19 May in Fryazino, a Moscow suburb, where he lived alone on a state pension, but his death was only reported on Monday. No cause of death has been announced. He is survived by a son and a daughter.

Last Saturday. Bit late.

The White Helmets disbanded after 90 years.

No relevance in the modern, digital world.

Geoff Hurst one of 119,000 in run next month to raise as awareness of dementia.

Fellow players Martin Peters, Nobby Stiles and Ray Wilson, in the 1966 team, have it.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/its-duty-fight-dementia-england-11221756

House-sized asteroid will pass by Earth at just above satellite altitude. Nasa says there will be ‘no danger’ when the asteroid 2012 TC4 shaves past Earth at just above the altitude at which most satellites operate on Thursday. Dubbed 2012 TC4, the space rock will shave past at an altitude of less than 44,000km (27,300 miles) – just above the 36,000km plane at which hundreds of geosynchronous satellites orbit the Earth. That represents about an eighth of the distance between the Earth and the moon. It is 15 to 30 metres (50 to 100ft) wide – about the size of the meteoroid that exploded in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk in central Russia in 2013, with 30 times the kinetic energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

That might get the attention of some people in a position to do something about future ones. Would make a change from the uninspired inward gazing of the average dork politician.

We could do with that ability

Coloured vinyl - the next Big Thing.

What about flexi ones?


....or floppy ones?

Could be the next, next Big Thing.

It was on a Radio 4 item today. Ian Dury's New Boots and Panties!! is out as a boxset with clear vinyl.

In the 80s there was was the suggestion that sound quality wasn't the same with coloured compared to the standard black. That's said not to be an issue now. For young 'uns now though, it's a bit too much for them to take in.