Probably not – but you may very well owe him your life.
Petrov, a former member of the Soviet military, didn’t actually do anything – but that’s precisely the point.
In 1983, Petrov held a very important station: As lieutenant colonel, he was in charge of monitoring the Soviet Union’s satellites over the United States, and watching for any sign of unauthorized military action.
This was the Cold War era, and suspicions were high – on September 1st, the Soviet Union had mistakenly shot down a Korean aircraft it had believed to be a military plane, killing 269 civilians, including an American Congressman. The Soviet Union believed that the United States might launch a missile attack at any moment, and that they would be forced to respond with their own arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Several weeks after the airplane disaster, on September 23rd, another officer called in sick, so Petrov was stuck working a double shift at a secret bunker, monitoring satellite activity, when “suddenly the screen in front of me turned bright red,” Petrov told BBC News. “An alarm went off. It was piercing, loud enough to raise a dead man from his grave.”
According to the system, the United States had launched five missiles, which were rapidly heading into Soviet territory. The U.S.S.R. was under attack.
All Petrov had to do was push the flashing red button on the desk in front of him, and the Soviets would retaliate with their own battery of missiles, launching a full-scale nuclear war.
“For 15 seconds, we were in a state of shock,” he told The Washington Post. “We needed to understand, what’s next?”
Though the bunker atmosphere was chaotic, Petrov, who had trained as a scientist, took the time to analyze the data carefully before making his decision. He realized that, if the U.S. did attack, they would be unlikely to launch a mere five missiles at once. And when he studied the system’s ground-based radar, he could see no evidence of oncoming missiles.
He still couldn’t say for sure what was going on, but “I had a funny feeling in my gut,” he told The Post. “I didn’t want to make a mistake. I made a decision, and that was it.”
Luckily for all of us, he decided not to push that button. Later, his instincts were proven right – the malfunctioning system had given him a false alarm, and the U.S. had not deployed any missiles. Thanks to Petrov’s cool head, nuclear war had been narrowly averted, and millions of lives were saved.
Unfortunately, Petrov didn’t exactly receive a heroic reward from the Soviet military: Embarrassed by their own mistakes, and angry at Petrov for breaking military protocol, they forced him into early retirement with a pension of $200 a month. Petrov’s brave act was kept secret from the outside world until the 1998 publication of a book by one of Petrov’s fellow officers, who witnessed his courage on that terrifying night.
Since the book’s publication, Petrov has been honored by the United Nations and presented with a World Citizen Award, and there has been talk of giving him the Nobel Prize. Still, the humble Russian scientist plays down his role in averting a nuclear crisis: “I was simply the right person in the right time, that was all,” he said in the upcoming documentary, The Red Button and the Man Who Saved the World.
We’ve got to disagree with him. Sure, he may have done nothing – but in this case, it might just be the hardest thing to do.
A few more for you from our side. My dad was a major in the USAF when I was in high school. He was stationed at NORAD HQ in Cheyenne Mt. (Colorado Springs). Part of his job was to man the "hot line" when the general was away (dinner, etc)...no stress there.
[This message has been edited by carnut122 (edited 03-04-2014).]
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08:08 PM
TheDigitalAlchemist Member
Posts: 12459 From: Long Island, NY Registered: Jan 2012
I read about that before. THAT is the person who should be celebrated the world over. But sports stars and singers are just sooo much more important to humanity!
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11:12 AM
Blacktree Member
Posts: 20770 From: Central Florida Registered: Dec 2001
A similar event occurred in the U.S. in 1960, shortly after the Ballistic Missile Early warning System (BMEWS) component of the North American Air Defense (NORAD) system became operational:
"[An incident] occurred shortly after the BMEWS at Thule went into operation. In October, 1960, the moon rose over the horizon directly in line with one of J Site's detection radar beams. The engineers who designed the BMEWS system had apparently not considered that the ultra-high powered radar beams would reach the moon and in about 2 seconds, return to the super-sensitive BMEWS receivers. The resulting returns swamped the MIPS with return information, sending thousands of threat warnings to Cheyenne Mountain. While the angles, speeds, and doppler information did not fit the model algorithms of a real threat, the sheer vastness of the return information overwhelmed the system. The U.S. did not react to the point that we were brought to the brink of war, but the doors to Cheyenne Mountain were closed and locked for several hours while analysts tried to determine the cause of the fiasco. Once it was understood what caused the problem, a solution was quick to come. A modification to the radar receivers, called a "Moon Gater" for its ability to block, or gate, moon returns by shifting receiver frequency every one-and-a-half seconds, was designed by RCA engineers and installed on all the BMEWS receivers. When moonrise was forecast in one of the BMEWS sectors, the Gater was turned on. Every second and a half, the receiver frequency shifted, and the returns from the moon were ignored."Source
Another version of the same story:
"The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) performed well for over three decades. However, during the Initial Operating Capability (IOC) phase in the fall of 1960, it generated a high-level threat warning report that was an incident of great concern to the Defense Command Staff.
"On 6 September 1960 [sic], the Thule, Greenland, BMEWS site began generating warning reports at the lowest threat level that rapidly escalated up to the maximum level. It automatically sent a series of messages warning of an impending missile attack to the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Before alerts could be sent to the President and dispatched to the Strategic Air Command bombers, the alerts had to be validated by means of a direct telephone conversation between Command Center personnel and the radar site. An Air Force captain at the site asked for time to perform a check on the radar because he believed it was malfunctioning. He temporarily turned off the transmitter in the sector that was generating the alarms and noted that the echoes ceased. He correctly inferred that the echoes were caused by reflections from the Moon; a hostile missile threat did not exist. The great power and aperture of the BMEWS radar allowed it to detect reflections from the Moon, which was 384,400 km away.
"In December 1960, a Lincoln Laboratory team was sent to Thule to investigate a number of issues related to the IOC, including the Moon echoes. The BMEWS contractor, Radio Corporation of America, had proposed a low-perigee test that eliminated most but not all of the false-alarm conditions attributed to Moon echoes. A member of the Lincoln Laboratory team recognized that simply changing the operating frequency of the radar about every two seconds (less than the round-trip Earth-Moon travel time) could unconditionally eliminate the Moon echoes. This recommendation was presented to the Commander of the North American Air Defense Command on 20 January 1961 and implemented in the radar in conjunction with other improvements. The Moon ceased to be a source of false alarms."Source
Even though I was still in high school at the time, I had worked for several years as a volunteer in an unclassified auxiliary of the U.S. air defense system. I learned of the moonrise incident shortly after it occurred, so the information must not have been classified at the time. I also learned some of the less-well-known details. As originally implemented, the target-ranging calculations performed by the BMEWS computers never expected to "see" anything farther away than about 12,000 miles, so the actual distance to the moon got truncated to an estimated range that, quite by chance, placed the "targets" somewhere over the Soviet Union. (For the computer geeks among us, it was like a 24-bit register value losing its high-order bits when stored as a 16-bit integer.) For the first few minutes of the event it appeared to NORAD computers that "thousands" of objects had been launched almost simultaneously and were heading west at approximately 1000 miles an hour.
A decade later I had a friend who worked on the futuristic phased-array Perimeter Acquisition Radar (PAR) site in North Dakota, a key component of the Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system being developed at the time. He reported that one of the first things they did in the software was to allow for ranging and tracking the moon. They even went so far as to allow for detecting a possible real missile launch by an enemy using the moonrise as camouflage/decoy.
[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 03-05-2014).]
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12:38 PM
Formula88 Member
Posts: 53788 From: Raleigh NC Registered: Jan 2001
I disagree with the story. He did FAR more than "nothing." He analyzed the data. He didn't just react like a trained chimp. He looked at all available data and made a reasoned decision. It would have taken much less thought and effort to hear buzzer, push button.
I think the only reason they were "angry" at him for "breaking protocol" was because it exposed the failure and was embarassing, so they had to punish someone.
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12:46 PM
PFF
System Bot
84fiero123 Member
Posts: 29950 From: farmington, maine usa Registered: Oct 2004
"the malfunctioning system had given him a false alarm, " OOOPS!
Wow.
But the computer says its so, so it must be so!
quote
Originally posted by Marvin McInnis:
A similar event occurred in the U.S. in 1960, shortly after the Ballistic Missile Early warning System (BMEWS) component of the North American Air Defense (NORAD) system became operational:
" [An incident] occurred shortly after the BMEWS at Thule went into operation. In October, 1960, the moon rose over the horizon directly in line with one of J Site's detection radar beams. The engineers who designed the BMEWS system had apparently not considered that the ultra-high powered radar beams would reach the moon and in about 2 seconds, return to the super-sensitive BMEWS receivers. The resulting returns swamped the MIPS with return information, sending thousands of threat warnings to Cheyenne Mountain. While the angles, speeds, and doppler information did not fit the model algorithms of a real threat, the sheer vastness of the return information overwhelmed the system. The U.S. did not react to the point that we were brought to the brink of war, but the doors to Cheyenne Mountain were closed and locked for several hours while analysts tried to determine the cause of the fiasco. Once it was understood what caused the problem, a solution was quick to come. A modification to the radar receivers, called a "Moon Gater" for its ability to block, or gate, moon returns by shifting receiver frequency every one-and-a-half seconds, was designed by RCA engineers and installed on all the BMEWS receivers. When moonrise was forecast in one of the BMEWS sectors, the Gater was turned on. Every second and a half, the receiver frequency shifted, and the returns from the moon were ignored."Source
Even though I was still in high school at the time, I had served for several years as a volunteer in some unclassified facilities of the U.S. air defense system. I learned of the moonrise incident shortly after it occurred, so it must not have been classified at the time. I also learned some of the less-well-known details. As originally implemented, the target-ranging calculations performed by the BMEWS computers never expected to "see" anything farther away than about 12,000 miles, so the actual distance to the moon got truncated to an estimated range that placed the "targets" somewhere over the Soviet Union. (For the computer geeks among us, it was like a 24-bit range value losing its high-order bits when stored as a 16-bit integer.) For the first few minutes of the event it appeared to NORAD computers that "thousands" of objects had been launched simultaneously and were heading west at approximately 1000 miles an hour.
A decade later I had a friend who worked on the phased-array Perimeter Acquisition Radar (PAR) site in North Dakota, a key component of the space-age Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system being developed at the time. He reported that one of the first things they did in the software was to allow for ranging and tracking the moon. They even went so far as to allow for detecting a possible real missile launch by an enemy using the moonrise as camouflage/decoy.
I'm going to start calling you Marvin, you know "Marvin the Martian."
Steve
[This message has been edited by 84fiero123 (edited 03-05-2014).]
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12:50 PM
Marvin McInnis Member
Posts: 11599 From: ~ Kansas City, USA Registered: Apr 2002
Originally posted by Formula88: I think the only reason they were "angry" at him for "breaking protocol" was because it exposed the failure and was embarassing, so they had to punish someone.
yeah, bureaucrats are funny like that.
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01:44 PM
pokeyfiero Member
Posts: 16189 From: Free America! Registered: Dec 2003
He did his job, that's why they didn't just tie the alarm into the launch button and remove the human from the equation Not that he didn't do his job exceptionally but isn't that why he was there and not just a relay or chimp?
Good job Thank you
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05:43 PM
Boondawg Member
Posts: 38235 From: Displaced Alaskan Registered: Jun 2003
He did his job, that's why they didn't just tie the alarm into the launch button and remove the human from the equation Not that he didn't do his job exceptionally but isn't that why he was there and not just a relay or chimp?
Good job Thank you
He got in trouble because he didn't follow procedure. I'm betting his actions were not part of "procedure". And although it turned out he did the right thing, it just as easily could have been the wrong thing. That's why there's a procedure in place.
I can't imagine the training manual said "When you get the launch warning, count how many blips are on the screen and decide if that amount seems like a reasonable nuclear attack"...
Starts at 2:35 (crank it up!):
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 03-05-2014).]
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07:58 PM
Mar 6th, 2014
lurker Member
Posts: 12351 From: salisbury nc usa Registered: Feb 2002
