Man 'who saved the world' dies at 77
"Stanislav Petrov was on duty at a Russian nuclear early warning centre in 1983 when computers wrongly detected incoming missiles from the US.
He took the decision that they were a false alarm and did not report them to his superiors.
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."
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.
The Soviet Union and the US had huge nuclear arsenals trained on each other during the Cold War
If he had been wrong, the first nuclear blasts would have happened minutes later.
"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 recalled.
His actions, which came to light years later, possibly prevented nuclear war."
"Stanislav Petrov was on duty at a Russian nuclear early warning centre in 1983 when computers wrongly detected incoming missiles from the US.
He took the decision that they were a false alarm and did not report them to his superiors.
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."
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.
The Soviet Union and the US had huge nuclear arsenals trained on each other during the Cold War
If he had been wrong, the first nuclear blasts would have happened minutes later.
"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 recalled.
His actions, which came to light years later, possibly prevented nuclear war."
